The Holocaust in art and the art of the Holocaust are two distinctly different forms of art. The former refers to any art depicting or alluding to the Holocaust. It includes works created both during and after the war, by victims as well as people not directly threatened by the event. Whereas the art of the Holocaust is limited to works created by the victims from 1939 to 1945. What is most important about the art of the Holocaust is it’s means of reflecting its time both in its subject matter and in what it reveals about the artists themselves and the condition in which they worked. These people who struggled through the most deplorable conditions risked their lives to produce art. Art became their reason to live, and they used their talents to survive.

Expressionism was the prevailing artistic force in Germany and Eastern Europe in years preceding Hitler’s rise to power. It was a movement born a round the turn of the century, in artistic and social ferment, a rebellion against the formalism and sterility of academic art, which promoted the ideas of the bourgeoisie and the German empire. The Expressionist artist was driven by “inner necessity” t

What unites the art created by victims during and after the Holocaust is that all of it expresses the intense need to give meaning to human suffering through creative self expression. Whether it meant going without a meal, a beating or death, the artists had the ability to create because they all carried one unifying feeling, hope. These people who struggled through the most deplorable conditions risked their lives to produce art. Art became their reason to live, and they used their talents to survive. The art depicts a “landscape of screams,”3 and, like a scream, it affirms the individual soul for the artist who being was threatened by anonymous death, whose voice the Nazi’s sought to condemn to eternal silence. Through art the victim asserted his uniqueness. The art of the Holocaust breaks the silence with the resounding beauty of the defiant human spirit, which, although assaulted and weakened, is ultimately vindicated. The body of material that has been left behind by both the victims and survivors of the Holocaust is small. It marks as a historical record of the crimes of the regime and the agony of its victims. The images can reveal much of the era in which it was created and about the role of culture in an epoch dominated by atrocity. Unfortunately, very little has been done about this art. Most museums have either ignored it or only promoted small portions. Over 30,000 works survive in America, Europe and Israel, sadly the majority of these works have never been seen due to lack of interest and “artistic” merit. If not realized soon, everything these victims worked so hard to preserve for the future, could seem, hardly worth the sacrifice.

Some topics in this essay:
Ernst Ludwig, Eastern Europe, Red Cross, Birkenau Mengele’s, Leo Haas, Israel Lichtenstein, Zoran Music, Auschwitz Museum, Holocaust Holocaust, Peter Edel, art holocaust, artists themselves, deplorable conditions, art supplies, red cross, auschwitz artists, artist materials, leo haas, art created, forms art, people struggled deplorable, risked lives produce, deplorable conditions risked, conditions risked lives, struggled deplorable conditions,