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Art in Auschwitz, 1940-1945. An Album of Art Work by Auschwitz prisoners
The Museum's internet bookstore is offering for sale this 400-page album full of high-fidelity reproductions of 175 works of art, mostly sketches, drawings, and paintings made by prisoners in Auschwitz Concentration Camp during the Second World War.
It is hard for many people to understand today how it was possible for impressive works of art to have been created in Auschwitz. The prisoners created illustrated letters, idyllic landscapes, hunting scenes, nudes, harvest scenes, depictions of the construction of the camp and industrial facilities, and above all portraits, in oil, pencil, or water color. After all these years, the works have lost none of their expressive power.
In viewing these works—frequently joyful or romantic but also, at times, shocking depictions of camp life—the conditions under which they were made must be borne in mind. They were desperate attempts on the part of the prisoners to salvage even a tiny fragment of their dignity.
Works made on orders of the SS included instructional posters, mockups and images depicting plans for the development of the camp, as well as artistic craft work. The illegal works of art are above all depictions of scenes from camp life, often taking the form of documentary reportage and evidence of misdeeds.
Published in Germany in a German-Polish version, Art in Auschwitz 1940-1945 is both an album and the catalogue for the exhibition of the same title, held from May 2005 to February 2006 at the Centrum Judaicum in Berlin, the Museum of the History of Culture in Osnabrück, and the Museum of the Independence Tradition in Łódź.
Table of contents:
- Introduction - Hermann Simon 11
- A Narrow Footpath - Jürgen Kaumkötter 15
- Suffering and Hope - Irena Szymańska 59
- Art. in Auschwitz 1940-1945: Between Art. Under Compulsion and Free Creativity - Swantje Schollmeyer 83
- Portraits from Auschwitz Concentration Camp - Swantje Schollmeyer 115
- Art. in Auschwitz 1940-1945 (reproductions and descriptive notes) - 151
- Biographies 351
- Bibliography 391
Published by Stiftung Neue Synagoge Berlin - Centrum Judaicum and Museumspädagogiischen Dienst Berlin
Rasch Verlag, Bramsche 2005
400 pp., text, reproductions, biographies, bibliography
24 x19 cm.
ISBN 3-89946-051-0
