The Last Expression

If cliche leads us to believe that art is made out of suffering, there are few circumstances in which the language of art could be more direct or more profound than art made in the European concentration camps of World War II. While Auschwitz itself has come to represent the evil that is often considered a paradigm and example of modern barbarity, art and culture played significant roles there as well. In the extreme and physically threatening circumstances that would seem to thwart creativity, art functioned as a survival strategy, catharsis, documentation and, at times, a means of psychological escape. Auschwitz functions as a symbolic and historical focus for this catalogue. It serves as a thematic focal point and a common thread that touched so many victims of various nationalities and disparate backgrounds. While this publication presents art that was created at Auschwitz, as well as art produced at other sites, including Theresienstadt, Buchenwald, Gurs and the Lodz Ghetto, all of the artists featured were ultimately victims at Auschwitz. The catalogue includes reproductions of some 200 artworks, each of which tells a piece of history. Each remnant of these personal journeys and individual travails contributes to our understanding of the victims of the Holocaust, their experiences, the nature and function of the camps, the strategies of the perpetrators, as well as the will and the need to create art.