Sean Gallup/Getty ImagesThe artwork "The Funeral" by Leo Haas, which he drew while an inmate at the Theresienstadt ghetto, hangs on display at the exhibition: "Art from the Holocaust" during a press preview at the Deutsches Historisches Museum on January 25, 2016 in Berlin, Germany.
Nelly Toll was 8 years old when she and her mother went into hiding in 1943 in Poland to escape the Nazis’ death camps. The Jewish girl spent long hours in her tiny hideaway at a Christian family’s home writing stories, keeping a diary and creating wonderful, bright paintings of a lost world.
Today, her art is on display in the centre of Berlin at a special exhibition of Art from the Holocaust that opened at the German Historical Museum on Monday.
Sean Gallup/Getty ImagesThe painting "Portrait of a Woman" by artist Sara Gliksman-Fajtlowicz, which she painted in the Lodz ghetto in 1941, hangs on display at the exhibition: "Art from the Holocaust" during a press preview at the Deutsches Historisches Museum on January 25, 2016 in Berlin, Germany.
“I hope that generations to come will look at this and know what atrocities made me do this,” Toll told The Associated Press at the opening.
Toll’s paintings are among 100 artworks created by Jewish artists during the Holocaust on display, the first time the collection from the Yad Vashem memorial in Jerusalem has been shown outside Israel.
The exhibition includes work by Jewish artists in hiding, in concentration and labor camps, and in ghettos. Of the 50 artists featured, 24 were killed by the Nazis. Alongside the mostly unknown names are acclaimed artists such as Felix Nussbaum and Ludwig Meidner.
Toll is the only artist represented in the show who is still alive. One of her paintings, “Girls in the Field,” shows two girls, dressed in bright blue, red and yellow-dotted dresses walking across a sunny lawn confined by lush green trees.
“I made 60 paintings while in hiding and all of them express happiness,” said Toll, who lost her father and brother in the Holocaust. She emigrated to the United States with her mother after the war.
Like many Jews who created art while being surrounded by death, fear and suffering, painting was a way for Toll to break free and escape from the Holocaust’s harsh reality to imaginary places of beauty and happiness.
“I would have conversations with the characters in my paintings for hours,” Toll remembered.
Not all the works show an escape into a happy imagination. Some artworks are shocking in their depictions of life in the ghetto, daily discrimination and fear of being killed by the Nazis.
Sean Gallup/Getty ImagesHolocaust survivor and artist Nelly Toll and Yad Vashem Chairman Avner Shalev stand outside the exhibition: "Art from the Holocaust" at the Deutsches Historisches Museum on January 25, 2016 in Berlin, Germany. The exhibition, which will be open to the public from January 26 through April 3, shows 100 artworks from the Yad Vashem Collection by 50 artists, half of whom died in the Holocaust. Toll has two gouaches in the exhibition that she painted while she was a child in the Lviv ghetto.
Halina Olomucki’s 1939 pencil work, “After the Shearing of the Beards,” shows two orthodox men with bandages around their heads after their beards had been torn or burned off by Germans in the Warsaw ghetto.
Leo Haas’ “Transport from Vienna” shows the arrival of a train full of elderly Jews at the Theresienstadt ghetto in 1942. Painted in dark, monochrome India ink, people with faces like hollow skulls can be seen tumbling out of cattle cars, many lying lifeless on the ground as a soldier keeps pulling more people off the train.
The show’s curator, Yad Vashem’s Eliad Moreh-Rosenberg, called the creation of art during the Holocaust an “uncompromising act of resistance” by artists in mortal danger.
It was very difficult for the artists to get painting supplies, but despite that and their appalling living conditions they managed to portray life during the Shoah, fighting their dehumanization by the Nazis and leaving behind painted witness accounts, Moreh-Rosenberg said.
Sean Gallup/Getty Images"One Spring"
Among the most touching works is a postcard painted in 1941 by both Karl Robert Bodek and Kurt Conrad Loew while at the Gurs camp in southwestern France, which was then under the Vichy regime that collaborated with the Nazis.
Titled “One Spring,” the watercolor shows a bright yellow butterfly sitting on top of black barbed wire, free to fly wherever it desires, while the two artists were confined to the dark barracks of the camp depicted at the bottom of the painting.
Bodek was killed a year later in Auschwitz-Birkenau, while Loew survived and died in his birth city of Vienna in 1980.
Chancellor Angela Merkel, who was to officially inaugurate the show on Monday night, said on her weekly podcast released over the weekend that such exhibitions are still critical for educating younger Germans about the Holocaust.
“It reminds us that we have an enduring responsibility for what has been done in the past…” she said. “I think it is very, very important that every generation reacquaints itself with Germany’s history.”
Merkel specifically cited fears raised by German Jewish leaders about a possible rise in anti-Semitism with the arrival of nearly 1.1 million migrants last year.
“We have to deal with it, especially among young people whose family background is from countries where hatred of Israel and the hatred of Jews is widespread,” she said.
The exhibition runs through April 3.
Sean Gallup/Getty ImagesThe gouache "By The Piano" by Nelly Toll, which she painted as a child while living in the Lviv ghetto in 1943, hangs on display at the exhibition: "Art from the Holocaust" during a press preview at the Deutsches Historisches Museum on January 25, 2016 in Berlin, Germany. The exhibition, which will be open to the public from January 26 through April 3, shows 100 artworks from the Yad Vashem Collection by 50 artists, half of whom died in the Holocaust.
Sean Gallup/Getty ImagesThe gouache "Girls In The Field" by Nelly Toll, which she painted as a child while living in the Lviv ghetto during World War II, hangs on display at the exhibition: "Art from the Holocaust" during a press preview at the Deutsches Historisches Museum on January 25, 2016 in Berlin, Germany.
Sean Gallup/Getty ImagesThe ink drawing "Festival Prayer" by artist Felix Bloch, which he painted in the Theresienstadt ghetto during World War II, hangs on display at the exhibition: "Art from the Holocaust" during a press preview at the Deutsches Historisches Museum on January 25, 2016 in Berlin, Germany. The exhibition, which will be open to the public from January 26 through April 3, shows 100 artworks from the Yad Vashem Collection by 50 artists, half of whom died in the Holocaust.
Sean Gallup/Getty ImagesArtwork has been reproduced with the permission of the Deutsches Historisches Museum). The painting "Camp Synagogue In Saint-Cyprien" by Felix Nussbaum, which he painted in Brussels in 1941, hangs on display at the exhibition: "Art from the Holocaust" during a press preview at the Deutsches Historisches Museum on January 25, 2016 in Berlin, Germany.
Sean Gallup/Getty ImagesThe watercolor "Living Quarters In The Ghetto" by artist Frantisek Moric Nagl, which he painted in the Theriesenstadt ghetto during World War II, hangs on display at the exhibition: "Art from the Holocaust" during a press preview at the Deutsches Historisches Museum on January 25, 2016 in Berlin, Germany. The exhibition, which will be open to the public from January 26 through April 3, shows 100 artworks from the Yad Vashem Collection by 50 artists, half of whom died in the Holocaust.
Sean Gallup/Getty ImagesThe painting "Children In The Ghetto" by artist Zvi Hirsch Szylis that he painted in the Lodz ghetto during World War II, hangs on display at the exhibition: "Art from the Holocaust" during a press preview at the Deutsches Historisches Museum on January 25, 2016 in Berlin, Germany. The exhibition, which will be open to the public from January 26 through April 3, shows 100 artworks from the Yad Vashem Collection by 50 artists, half of whom died in the Holocaust.
Sean Gallup/Getty ImagesThe painting "Sewage Cart" by Zvi Hirsch Szylis, which he painted in the Lodz ghetto in 1942, hangs on display at the exhibition: "Art from the Holocaust" during a press preview at the Deutsches Historisches Museum on January 25, 2016 in Berlin, Germany. The exhibition, which will be open to the public from January 26 through April 3, shows 100 artworks from the Yad Vashem Collection by 50 artists, half of whom died in the Holocaust.
Sean Gallup/Getty ImagesThe gouache "Prayer" by artist Abraham Koplowicz, which he painted in the Lodz ghetto in 1943, hangs on display at the exhibition: "Art from the Holocaust" during a press preview at the Deutsches Historisches Museum on January 25, 2016 in Berlin, Germany. The exhibition, which will be open to the public from January 26 through April 3, shows 100 artworks from the Yad Vashem Collection by 50 artists, half of whom died in the Holocaust.
Sean Gallup/Getty ImagesA watercolor by Moritz Mueller, who died at the Auschwitz concentration camp, showing everyday life in the Theresienstadt ghetto during World War II hangs on display at the exhibition: "Art from the Holocaust" during a press preview at the Deutsches Historisches Museum on January 25, 2016 in Berlin, Germany. The exhibition, which will be open to the public from January 26 through April 3, shows 100 artworks from the Yad Vashem Collection by 50 artists, half of whom died in the Holocaust.
Sean Gallup/Getty ImagesThe watercolour "Mr. Scheuer Visits His Wife" by artist Charlotte Buresova, which she painted in the Theriesenstadt ghetto during World War II, hangs on display at the exhibition: "Art from the Holocaust" during a press preview at the Deutsches Historisches Museum on January 25, 2016 in Berlin, Germany. The exhibition, which will be open to the public from January 26 through April 3, shows 100 artworks from the Yad Vashem Collection by 50 artists, half of whom died in the Holocaust.
Sean Gallup/Getty ImagesVisitors look at artworks by Holocaust victims at the exhibition: "Art from the Holocaust" at the Deutsches Historisches Museum on January 25, 2016 in Berlin, Germany. The exhibition, which will be open to the public from January 26 through April 3, shows 100 artworks from the Yad Vashem Collection by 50 artists, half of whom died in the Holocaust.
Sean Gallup/Getty ImagesVisitors look at artworks by Holocaust victims at the exhibition: "Art from the Holocaust" during a press preview at the Deutsches Historisches Museum on January 25, 2016 in Berlin, Germany. The exhibition, which will be open to the public from January 26 through April 3, shows 100 artworks from the Yad Vashem Collection by 50 artists, half of whom died in the Holocaust.
Sean Gallup/Getty ImagesA visitor looks at artworks by Holocaust victims at the exhibition: "Art from the Holocaust" during a press preview at the Deutsches Historisches Museum on January 25, 2016 in Berlin, Germany. The exhibition, which will be open to the public from January 26 through April 3, shows 100 artworks from the Yad Vashem Collection by 50 artists, half of whom died in the Holocaust.
