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Art by Auschwitz prisoners on show at West Point

PR dla Zagranicy
Paweł Kononczuk 14.02.2017 12:17
An exhibition of art by prisoners of the former Nazi German Auschwitz concentration camp and other Nazi German camps is on at the West Point Military Academy in the United States.
The former Nazi German Auschwitz death camp in southern Poland. Photo: pixabay.comThe former Nazi German Auschwitz death camp in southern Poland. Photo: pixabay.com

Entitled “Forbidden Art”, it contains photographs of 20 items, mostly of graphic art, by prisoners in concentration camps who faced death if their work was discovered.

Each of the photographs is accompanied by a historical commentary and excerpts from archival accounts.

In addition to drawings, caricatures and fairy tales that prisoners wrote for their children, the exhibition features items such as a bracelet with scenes from the Łódź Jewish ghetto found near the gas chamber in Auschwitz.

Another item is a miniature figure of a devil which was made by an Auschwitz prisoner from a piece of fabric and metal wire and which was used for smuggling secret correspondence.

The exhibition has been mounted by the Auschwitz Museum. In a lecture for West Point Academy students, museum director Piotr Cywiński said that for anyone looking at the prisoners’ works of art, an inevitable question is how art could exist in such an inhumane world.

“Behind the camp’s barbed wire, artistic creation was a way to survive, to preserve and manifest one’s humanity”, Cywiński said. (mk/pk)

tags: Auschwitz
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