Monday, April 29, 1996
With whatever they could find, with whatever strength they could muster, the victims of the Holocaust created artwork that testifies to the horror of their experience. A new exhibit at the Museum of Tolerance pays tribute to these artists and their 'Enduring Spirit.'By Rodney Tanaka
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
Six million Jewish inmates and millions of other prisoners died in Nazi camps during World War II.
"The purpose of the camps, prisons and ghettos were to dehumanize people, to wear down their resistance, to turn them into either automotons or ashes," says Arnold Band, director of the UCLA Center for Jewish Studies. "Anything that you did which resisted that process, such as painting and drawing pictures, is an attempt to preserve your humanity, your creativity."
"Under those circumstances, people have usually been starved and beaten for a long time," Band continues. "Usually they don't have the strength of will to create, yet these people did."
"The Enduring Spirit: Art of the Holocaust," at the Simon Wiesenthal Center's Museum of Tolerance through June 16, collects the work of artists who experienced the Nazi horrors of World War II firsthand. Their drawings, crafts and songs testify to the experience of concentration camps, transit camps and prisons throughout Europe.
The artists take viewers inside the camps with their trained eyes and hands. Prisoners carry heavy barrels from one location to another and transport wagons overflowing with corpses to disposal sites. They cling precariously to life, their bodies frail, their eyes hollow and sunken. The images offer a different perspective of camp life than photographs.
"Usually when you see photographs they are taken by the perpetrators," says Gerald Margolis, director of the Museum of Tolerance. "These (images) are taken by the victims."
The artists often used disposed material such as cardboard and the backs of administrative forms to create these images. Many sketches utilize pencil or charcoal. Only more "liberal" prisons allowed inmates to use ink and paint.
"The materials reflect the lives that people lived," Band says. "They couldn't go down to the art store to buy materials. You found a piece of charcoal and a piece of paper and you just did it."
Artist Milos Bajic used the materials available to convey the hardships he endured. A self portrait blends with the faded newsprint used as a canvas. His drawing "Breakfast" shows a man peering over a bowl of soup clutched in his hands.
"It's a haunting image of a person holding soup so close you get a sense of how grasping they are for that precious soup," Margolis says. "That soup is the only thing that keeps you alive."
A song by Zbigniew Koczanowicz, with the translated title of "Mr. and Mrs. Are Gone," describes the arrest of the songwriter and his wife. Men force their way into the residence and search the place. These men single out the writer's wife and he knows that trouble lies ahead. The lyrics were handwritten in ink in Auschwitz.
"For the artist it was a form of protest, certainly a form of spiritual resistance and a way of coming to terms with the reality they found themselves in," Margolis says. "They're also documenting what they see, bearing witness to what is going on."
The prisoners created these works despite the possibility of serious reprimand, possibly death in certain camps.
"At Auschwitz something like this is absolutely not permitted," Margolis says. "You don't find that many that are signed and they would hide them in different places."
The 245 works in the show come together from a variety of circumstances and sources.
"Sometimes if a person was in a camp they might have done 10 drawings and two or three might survive. The person was put to death and someone else picked them up," Band says. "If a person was a political prisoner, sometimes they could keep their belongings."
The artwork sometimes speaks for the artist when they do not survive. Friedl Dicker-Brandeis painted landscapes and sketched portraits. She also taught art to children at the camp called Theresienstadt. She was transferred to Auschwitz and killed. Her artwork, and the work by her contemporaries, incorporate eyewitness accounts with artistic talent to create special documents of a pivotal time in history.
"It is expressing and interpreting a piece of history that needs constant analysis and review," Margolis says. "It's a lesson that we need not learn again."
ART: "The Enduring Spirit: Art of the Holocaust," at the Museum of Tolerance through June 16. TIX: $5 for students with I.D. For more info, call (310) 553-8403.
MY LINH TRUONG
"Doll" by Helen Brun, Christmas 1943. On display in the "The Enduring Spirit: Art of the Holocaust" exhibit at the Museum of Tolerance.MY LINH TRUONG
Owen Yeates, a 67-year-old financial planner, explained that his appreciation for what Jews went through and desire to learn more about the Holocaust prompted his visit to "The Enduring Spirit: Art of the Holocaust" exhibit . Here he views "Portrait of Aleksander Kulisiewicz," by Edward Glowaki, a colored pencil on paper piece created in 1944.