Exhibit 7: Art in Response to the Holocaust
Part I: Explore Art
Click on the link below to view different pieces of Art that were created by Holocaust victims.
After you complete the first part of this exhibit, choose three poems below to read for your museum guide.
From “Death Fugue”
by Paul Celan
He calls out more sweetly play death
death is a master from Germany
he calls out more darkly now stroke your strings
then as smoke you will rise into air
then a grave you will have in the clouds
there one lies unconfined
Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night
we drink you at noon death is a master from Germany
we drink you at sundown and in the morning we drink and we drink you
death is a master from Germany his eyes are blue
he strikes you with leaden bullets his aim is true
a man lives in the house your golden hair Margarete
he sets his pack on to us he grants us a grave in the air
he plays with the serpents and daydreams death is a master from Germany
your golden hair Margarete
your ashen hair Shulamith
-Trans. Michael Hamburger
Tale of a Sprinter, in the Winter of 1938
by Sudeep Pagedar
THE PAST -
I am an athlete from Berlin,
my feet are fast and swift.
I can run faster than anyone!
Truly, this is the Lord's gift!
Any race I participate in,
I always come in first,
for I tell myself, "I HAVE to win";
it is like a great thirst.
Even if someone, somehow passes me,
I put on an extra burst of speed
and run past him, leaving him behind;
thus, I take the lead.
I once thought, "If I keep running this way,
I might be in the Olympics, some day..."
THE PRESENT -
But now the year is nineteen-thirty-eight
And for my dreams, it's just too late.
My running days are all gone,
I'm not going to see tomorrow's dawn.
Yes, it is true
that I can run very fast;
But it is also true
that I am a Jew...
There's no running, from the Holocaust.
Shema / Primo Levi
You who live secure
In your warm houses,
Who return at evening to find
Hot food and friendly faces:
Consider whether this is a man,
Who labors in the mud
Who knows no peace
Who fights for a crust of bread
Who dies at a yes or a no.
Consider whether this is a woman,
Without hair or name
With no more strength to remember
Eyes empty and womb cold
As a frog in winter.
Consider that this has been:
I commend these words to you.
Engrave them on your hearts
When you are in your house, when you walk on your way,
When you go to bed, when you rise.
Repeat them to your children.
Or may your house crumble,
Disease render you powerless,
Your offspring avert their faces from you.
“O the Chimneys” by Nelly Sachs
And though after my skin worms destroy this body,
yet in my flesh shall I see God. JOB 19:26
O the chimneys
On the ingeniously devised habitations of death
When Israel's body drifted as smoke
Through the air -
Was welcomed by a star, a chimney sweep,
a star that turned black
Or was it a ray of sun?
O the chimneys!
Freedom way for Jeremiah and Job's dust -
Who devised you and laid stone upon stone
The road for refugees of smoke?
O the habitations of death,
Invitingly appointed
For the host who used to be a guest -
O you fingers
Laying the threshold
Like a knife between life and death -
O you chimneys,
O you fingers
And Israel's body as smoke through the air!
-Translated by Michael Hamburger
Frozen Jews
Avrom Sutzkever
July 10, 1944
Have you seen, in fields of snow, frozen Jews, row on row? Blue marble forms lying, not breathing, not dying.
Somewhere a flicker of a frozen soul - glint of fish in an icy swell. All brood. Speech and silence are one. Night snow encases the sun.
A smile glows immobile from a rose lip's chill. Baby and mother, side by side. Odd that her nipple's dried.
Fist, fixed in ice, of a naked old man: the power's undone in his hand. I've sampled death in all guises. Nothing surprises.
Yet a frost in July in this heat - a crazy assault in the street. I and blue carrion, face to face. Frozen Jews in a snowy space.
Marble shrouds my skin. Words ebb. Light grows thin. I'm frozen, I'm rooted in place like the naked old man enfeebled by ice.
“On Wiesel’s Night”
By Thomas E. Thorton
I cannot teach this book.
Instead, I drop copies on their desks,
Like bombs on sleeping town, and let them read.
So do I, again.
The stench rises from the page
And chokes my throat.
The ghosts of burning babies haunt my eyes.
And that bouncing baton,
That pointer of Death,
Stabs me in the heart
As it sends his mother
To the blackening sky.
Nothing is destroyed
The laws of science say,
Only changed.
The millions transformed into
precious smoke rode the wind
to fill our lungs and hearts
with their cries.
No, I cannot teach this book.
I simply want the words
To burn their comfortable souls
And leave them scarred for life.
First They Came For The Jews / Martin Niemöller
First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.