A Californian art exhibition is showcasing artwork authored by Auschwitz-Birkenau prisoners. Forbidden Art is a joint venture between UCLA Hillel and St. Alban’s Episcopal Church, running until January 31. The exhibition displays 20 artworks created in the concentration camp, the site of the murder of one million Jewish prisoners. Providing a rare and poignant insight into life at the world’s most infamous concentration camp, Forbidden Art is intended as a reminder of human resilience and dignity in the face of great adversity.
Todd Presner, Director of the UCLA Jewish Studies Centre, explains that the exhibition represents “‘Art as a message in a bottle’ sent from the grave to future generations”. Featuring portraits, sketches, pages of diaries and miniature sculptures, Forbidden Art is somewhat of an artistic time capsule. Messages were inserted into jars and bottles and buried with the recovered artifacts. One portrait of an inmate is accompanied by a note asking for the picture to be smuggled out of Auschwitz and delivered to his family, with the intention of reassuring them that he ‘still looked like a human being.’
Pawel Sawicki, a spokesman for the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum explains that ‘Art was the inmates’ escape from brutal reality.’ The artworks certainly reflect escapist sentiment, with artists creating caricatures of Nazi guards, idyllic scenes of women relaxing and children’s books. The original works permanently remain at Auschwitz, with high quality photos used as substitutes to prevent damage to the travelling exhibition.
Of particular interest are the sketches of Franciszek Jazwiecki, a Polish prisoner. Despite the maximum penalty of execution for creating illicit artwork, Jazwiecki drew 114 of his fellow inmates. One drawing, A Portrait of Piotr Kajzer, features in the exhibition. Although Jazwiecki avoided execution, he was sent to a particularly punitive prison camp for his subversive activity. Testament to his courage and human decency, Jazwiecki denied being a hero, explaining that his noncompliance with Nazi authorities permitted him ‘to stay and create in my own world.’
Elzbieta Cajzer, a representative of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, will provide further historical background on the artworks at 4pm on January 17. This speech will be complemented by the keynote address, “Images in spite of all”, to be presented by Art Historian Lisa Saltzman.
Forbidden Art has been greeted with considerable support from the local Jewish community and private benefactors. The German and Polish governments are sponsoring the exhibition, in addition to the Departments of History and German at UCLA, the Gilbert and Goldrich foundations and the “1939” Club of Holocaust survivors.
