Different Perspectives: The Postwar Period as Reflected through Art

The Eli and Diana Zborowski Centre for the Study of the Aftermath of the Holocaust and the Yad Vashem Art Museum recently hosted a research workshop on the topic of “The Postwar Period as Reflected through Art.”

In the months and years following their liberation, survivors of the Holocaust produced powerful works that record or reflect on their experiences during those darkest of years. A number of survivor artists turned to their craft in order to work through their past, rebuild their emotional worlds, and commemorate their losses. Art was created in different locations, from displaced persons’ camps, orphanages, and children’s homes to sanatoriums, immigration vessels and even in their new homes.

The choice of their subject and the grip on the pencil or brush symbolically renewed their feeling of control, after years of helplessness. The act of painting was for some a process of mental and spiritual rehabilitation through which they could express and process the trauma. Through their art, many survivors endeavored to cope with the feelings that overwhelmed them and express the sense of loneliness, agony and devastation. Furthermore, for many who found it difficult to talk about their experiences (and were not always encouraged to), art became a medium through which they could express what they had endured and lost.

Most survivors grappled with the conflict between the anguish of the past and the desire to return to life, and art enabled a space in which the artist could navigate these contradictory feelings.

The interdisciplinary workshop endeavored to address how art was used in the early postwar period by survivors to communicate their experiences and as a medium for emotional rehabilitation. Researchers and educators engaged in a fascinating dialogue exploring this under-researched area, moderated by Eliad Moreh-Rosenberg, Curator and Director of the Art Department at Yad Vashem, and Dr. Sharon Kangisser Cohen, Director of the Eli and Diana Zborowski Centre for the Study of the Aftermath of the Holocaust. The research presented was varied and spanned various geographical locations.

In the opening session of the seminar, Moreh-Rosenberg gave an insightful lecture on the topic of "Facing the Trauma: Self-Representation after Liberation."

For artists, the ability to paint once again freely expressed their freedom, and symbolized their renewed independence. It represented a space for addressing questions regarding their identity, which was challenged as a result of their wartime experiences.

After giving a survey of self-portraits produced in the first years after the war, Moreh-Rosenberg revealed some recurring devices used by the survivors to depict themselves as witnesses, such as representing themselves in prisoner uniforms, integrating their prisoner number in their signature as a way of self-assertion, emphasizing the eyes through disproportion or using expressive blurry lines to convey their distress.

In her lecture, Mariann Farkas (Bar-Ilan University) explored the unresearched area of Hungarian Jewish women artists through the life and creative work of Zsuzsa Szenes (1931–2001) and Hédi Tarján (1932–2008) in the postwar period. These two women were Hungarian Holocaust survivors and frequented the Secondary School of Visual Arts and then the College of Arts and Crafts in Budapest. Their early works and life stories were used by Farkas to “illuminate transforming political, sociological and cultural circumstances in East Central Europe between 1945 and 1952.” Another interesting paper given by Olga Stephan was entitled: "Art of the Holocaust in Romania: Vapniarka as a Case Study." Her presentation discussed an art exhibition that took place in 1943 inside the camp, an event that barely is seemingly absent from research on the Holocaust in Romania.

Michael Tal, the Director and Curator of the Yad Vashem Artifacts Department, gave a fascinating presentation titled: "'This is My First Shirt after the Cement Bag': Objects in the Yad Vashem Collection that Symbolize the Moments of Liberation and the Complex Transition from the Horror of War to Freedom." In his moving talk, he presented some of the “first objects” survivors had kept from the immediate postwar period providing some tangible examples of the feelings and concerns of the survivors after being liberated.

The responses of the participants were very positive and emphasized the interdisciplinary nature of the workshop, which was enabled by the professional collaboration between Yad Vashem’s International Research Institute for Holocaust Research and Museums Division. Michala Lônčíková from the Czech Academy of Sciences, who lectured on postwar trials in cartoon in the Slovak humoristic magazines, wrote: “Organizers brought together scholars with various backgrounds who conduct their research on different countries and offered generous timeslots for the presentations. This real interdisciplinary and comparative perspective stimulated discussions stemming from the variety of presented sources. I am not an art historian, and I usually analyze the artistic reflections of the Holocaust content- and context-wise. It was inspiring to see how understanding the visual aspect could take the interpretation to a more advanced level.” Kobi Kabalek, from Penn State university who gave a visually stimulating presentation on "Visualized Nightmares in the Art of Concentration Camp Survivors" wrote:

“One of the best things in this workshop was the combination of historians, art historians, and curators. The different perspectives and pools of knowledge worked so well in the workshop and allowed me and others to gain a deeper, multilayered understanding of the creation of postwar art by survivors.”