ART IN RESPONSE TO THE HOLOCAUST

The Holocaust has become the subject of countless works of art as individuals and communities seek to memorialize victims and make sense of a senseless event. This section contains hundreds of examples ranging from small drawings to large memorials.

Camps

Many former camp locations are now memorials. In many cases, buildings have been preserved or even reconstructed for visitors. At other sites entirely new memorials have been constructed. The following photo galleries offer examples of all three approaches to camp memorials.

International Monument at Dachau PHOTOS Memorials at Dachau concentration camp including the International Monument by Glid Nandor.

MOVIE This VR movie shot from the center of the roll call square at Dachau includes views of reconstructed barracks, preserved buildings, the Roman Catholic memorial, and the International Monument.

PHOTOS Jewish memorial at Dachau concentration camp.

PHOTOS Protestant memorial at Dachau concentration camp.

PHOTOS Roman Catholic memorial at Dachau concentration camp.

PHOTOS The exhibits at Auschwitz include a number of artworks in response to the Holocaust.

MOVIE Virtual reality movie of the International Monument to the Victims of Fascism at Birkenau.

PHOTOS Memorial at the Majdanek death camp.

PHOTOS Holocaust memorial in Drancy.

PHOTOS The memorials of the nations at Mauthausen camp including: Albania, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, France, Great Britain, Germany, Greece, and the Gypsy (Roma and Sinti) memorial.

PHOTOS The memorials of the nations at Mauthausen camp including: Hungary, the Jewish memorial, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, Slovenia, the Spanish Republican Army memorial, the Soviet Union, and Yugoslavia.

PHOTOS Other monuments and memorials at Mauthausen.

PHOTOS Photographs of monuments at the Neuengamme camp including the memorials of the nations and the Commerative House.

PHOTOS Monuments at the Plaszow camp.

PHOTOS Sculptures at the Ravensbrück camp including Muttergruppe, Burdened Woman, Frau mit Abgeschnitten Haar, and Frau mit Tuch.

PHOTOS Memorials at the Ravensbrück Camp including the rooms of the nations and other exhibits.

The memorial at Treblinka was designed by Francisek Duszenko and Adam Haupt. The original camp was completely destroyed by the Nazis. Visitors arriving at the site of this extermination camp now walk about 600 feet through dense woods along a path of concrete railroad ties leading to 17,000 granite stones surrounding a central monument. This memorial is suggestive of a graveyard, with the standing stones representing towns and communities destroyed during the war.

PHOTOS The memorial at Treblinka.

PHOTOS Three VR movies of the memorial at Treblinka.

Warsaw Ghetto Memorials

WarsawLike Treblinka, the Warsaw Ghetto was completely destroyed, so monuments here mark the locations of former sites. The first World War II-related memorial was built in 1946 to mark the third anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Designed by L.M. Suzin, it is a red sandstone disk which was tilted toward the entrance gate to the ghetto. It marks the site of the first armed confrontation. The inscription reads:

To the memory of those who died in unparalleled and heroic struggle for the dignity and freedom of the Jewish nation, for free Poland, and for the liberation of mankind--the Jews of Poland.
Unfortunately the entrance gate to the ghetto was torn down, depriving the marker of its specific point of reference. Thus, the marker is now often misinterpreted as a sewer entrance, like those used by the fighters to leave the ghetto.

The largest monument in the former ghetto is the Monument to the Ghetto Heroes designed by Natan Rappaport. This monument, which was unveiled in 1948, is built of stone originally quarried for a Nazi victory monument and is the site of annual commemorative events.

A series of granite blocks leads from the Rappaport memorial to the Umschlagplatz, the deportation point for the ghetto residents. Each block commemorates an individual or event in the ghetto.

The trail ends at the new Umschlagplatz memorial, an enclosure in white marble, with an entrance topped by a black semi-circle resembling a tombstone. Unlike the Ghetto Heroes monument, the Umschlagplatz is designed as a small, contemplative space.

PHOTOS Memorial to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

PHOTOS Memorial Route of the Jewish Martyrdom and Struggle in Warsaw.

PHOTOS Memorial at the Umschlagplatz in Warsaw.

Other Sites

Many towns and cities have dedicated Holocaust memorials. Some mark locations of actual events or significant sites. Other memorials commemorate the victims of National Socialism in a more general way.

Sculpture at Berlin CemeteryPHOTOS Holocaust memorial at Yad Vashem.

PHOTOS Memorial to the Warsaw Uprising.

PHOTOS Memorials to Janusz Korczak.

PHOTOS More memorials to Janusz Korczak.

PHOTOS Memorials to homosexual victims.

PHOTOS Holocaust memorial in Paris (Mémorial des Martyrs de la Déporation).

PHOTOS Holocaust memorial art in Hamburg, Germany.

PHOTOS Sculpture group in a Berlin park commemorating Jewish victims of the Holocaust.

PHOTOS Sculpture group in Berlin marking the location of the former Jewish cemetery.

Photo of the Avenue of the Righteous Gentiles, a Yad Vashem memorial to the righteous Gentiles.

The Children's Memorial at Yad Vashem by architect Moshe Safdie is hollowed out from an underground cavern.

In the Hall of Remembrance at Yad Vashem an eternal flame remains lit in memory of those who died in the Holocaust.

The Palm Springs Holocaust Memorial includes seven figures mounted on a double-tiered Star of David 20 feet across.

WEBLINK Color photos of Palm Springs Holocaust Memorial and statement by the sculptor, Dee Clements.

Personal Responses

Survivors, witnesses, and others touched by the Holocaust have created many personal works of art as they struggle to comprehend this tragedy.

Gassing by David OlereARTWORK Drawings and paintings by David Olère, a camp survivor.

ARTWORK Stuart N. R. Wolfe's installation of Figuren gegen das Vergessen (Figures against Forgetting) at Ravensbrück Women's Camp.

ARTWORK A special exhibition of ten photographs of former Ravensbrück Camp prisoners.

ARTWORK Josef Elgurt, a survivor of Nazi ghettos, recalls his experience in the drawing, In Memory of the Holocaust.

WEBLINK The Legacy Project is building an archive of images related to the major historical tragedies of the 20th century. From this link you can find many Holocaust artworks by selecting "Holocaust" from the "Event" dropdown menu. This is also a useful link for comparing art created in response to the Holocaust with art created in response to other major targedies.

WEBLINK An interview with Art Spiegelman, creator of Maus. He chose the form of a graphic novel for the story of his parents' survival of the Holocaust. The two-volume book won a Pulitzer Prize. It was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1992.

WEBLINK Maus Resources on the Web: scholarly articles, interviews, exhibits, reviews, and creative work inspired by Maus.

WEBLINK Indifference: an online Holocaust art exhibit featuring four paintings by Fritz Hirschberger, a Jew, who was forced out of Germany prior to World War II.

WEBLINK Haunting Memory, a triptych by R.A. Beecroft uses digitally altered historic photographs of the Holocaust.

WEBLINK Read about "Wings Of Witness," a Holocaust memorial sculpture being constructed by thousands of youth nationally incorporating 11 million soda can tabs under the direction of artist Jeffrey Schrier.

Propaganda

The Allies also produced propaganda during the war. The following gallery contains artwork by Ben Shahn, Thomas Hart Benton, and Lawrence B. Smith.

ARTWORK Four Allied propaganda posters warning of the Nazi threat.

| Ghettos & Camps | Reich Art | "Degenerate" Art | Response | Teacher Resources |

A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust
Produced by the Florida Center for Instructional Technology,
College of Education, University of South Florida © 1997-2013.


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