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- Sybil Milton, "Art in the Context of Auschwitz", in Art and Auschwitz, ed. by David Mickenberg, Corinne Granof and Peter Hayes, (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2003), p.61.
- Stephen Charles Feinstein, "Art and the Holocaust", The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, accessed on November 12th, 2015.
- Sybil Milton, "Art in the Context of Auschwitz", in Art and Auschwitz, ed. by David Mickenberg, Corinne Granof and Peter Hayes, (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2003), p.62.
- The urge survivors had to paint, is further revised in the Newsletter "Art and Commemoration".
Introduction
There were more than three hundred1 Jewish and non-Jewish artists confined in Auschwitz and its sub-camps in different periods during its existence from 1940 until 1945. Nevertheless, only some of these artists were able to draw at Auschwitz, for most of them Auschwitz was just the last station at which they would arrive before being killed or assigned to some job that would eventually kill them.
Not all of the art from Auschwitz here included was created in Auschwitz, some of it was made by survivors immediately after liberation as it was forbidden for the inmates to paint, unless officially asked to do so. If they were caught painting illegally they would receive a harsh punishment, they could even be killed. Also, most of the inmates didn't have the materials needed to draw or paint. When they were liberated and had access to the material they required, they felt the need, the urge to draw the horrors they had experienced and witnessed.
It's also important to note that not all of the art we have from Auschwitz was made by professional artists, some of it was created by people that felt the urge to paint what they had lived. Generally, the great tragedy and immense physical and moral suffering was their inspiration, the driving force that lead them to create the works that
"...may be viewed as a form of documentation, witnessing, and spiritual resistance that plays a very important historical role as evidence from the victim’s perspective."2
The art from Auschwitz reveals the fragility of human life in Auschwitz-Birkenau, it reflects the will and urgency of inmate artists to document their horrific surroundings and their need for self-expression which became even stronger in such terrible conditions.
This artwork will keep on telling what happened in Auschwitz even when the last survivor of the Auschwitz camp isn't here to tell it anymore.
Art on Command and Clandestine/Illegal Art
During the Holocaust, in Auschwitz as well as in other camps and also in ghettos, art served different functions and was created for different reasons.
Commanded Art
If made by commission it meant that the prisoner was forced to do it, and was covering his/her work requirements and it constituted his/her means for staying alive. Some artists were commanded by the German camp administration to do it, some were ordered by SS members, which meant that they would provide the SS with a decoration for their quarters or a gift either to give to a superior or to take home. The artists' fate depended on the satisfaction of the SS with their paintings. The artists made works of art of very high quality and perfection both in their technique and in their execution.
The artists that were working under the commission of the SS worked indoors, which provided shelter from the outdoors and from works with worse conditions. The artists chosen to do this kind of work valued it immensely.
Officially approved work included paintings ordered by the SS for their living quarters and paintings that documented construction, such as building the Krupp factory and other things like signs for the barracks in the sort of "in case of fire-instructions".
In Auschwitz there was a painting workshop which employed more than one hundred inmates that were trained before the war, as housepainters, varnishers, and sign painters, including commercial and graphic artists. They got their painting supplies through different sources; some was brought to them from the Canada warehouses, where all the confiscated belongings of the Jews arriving to Auschwitz were stored. They managed to keep some of the material and smuggle it out of the workshop for the production of clandestine art, they also managed to produce some illegal work inside the workshop risking their lives by doing so.
Clandestine/Illegal Art
The art that wasn't commissioned by the SS was illegal and thus made in secret, including the art that was requested by fellow inmates. Contrary to commanded art, instead of being a way to secure one's life it was a way of risking it, as it was forbidden for the prisoners to produce art that hadn't been commanded to them. If caught their punishment would most likely be death. On the other hand, a portrait or a drawing, could also mean a way to survive as art was part of the camp's black market and artists could get a piece of bread or extra food in exchange for an artwork. The artists created clandestine art as a way to document, to bare-witness, as a testimony - to be able to say "I was there"- and to be able to convey to others what went on in Auschwitz; it was made as an expression of their inner world or as sarcasm. For the artists it probably provided a psychological escape and tranquility and it also constituted a form of rebellion.
For example, after the war, Alfred Kantor, an aspiring Czech Jewish artist, redrew from memory the sketches of scenes he had drawn, and later destroyed, in different camps where he had been interned including Auschwitz. He regarded the art he produced in the camps, as essential for his survival as he believed that art could help artists detach from the reality and horrors they were living, at least during the period of time they were creating it, and thus keep their sanity.
"He believed that an artist's detachment while creating art enabled inmate artists to temporarily transcend the brutal realities of the camp".34