Holocaust and Art

Art from and about the Holocaust has served as an important means of expression for the artists who created it and as a critical means of understanding for audiences who have consumed it.

From the collection

The New Order by Arthur Szyk

J.J. Horowitz, a friend of internationally renowned illustrator Arthur Szyk, urged him to create a series of cartoons mocking the architects of European Fascism, and help to fight what Horowitz called "the battle in which all lovers of democracy are engaged." The series, published in 1941 in New York before the Americans entered the war, features highly rendered and deeply cutting caricatures. Szyk died in 1951.

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Art out of Agony

Canadian politician, broadcaster and humanitarian Stephen Lewis interviewed 10 prominent writers, artists and filmmakers for a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation radio series that aired in May and June of 1983, to understand how they interpret the Holocaust.

Aharon Appelfeld

Survivor, novelist and literature professor Aharon Appelfeld tells Lewis that the tragedy of the Holocaust is so vast and powerful that, like the sun, it cannot be observed directly. At the same time, he says, it crystallized the Jewish identity of its survivors, many of whom had been drifting toward assimilation.

Elie Wiesel

Survivor and writer Elie Wiesel debates whether the Holocaust can be understood through fiction. If it can't, he argues, it ought not to be described at all. Wiesel, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986, may have been the first to use the term "Holocaust" in reference to the genocide of European Jews.

Annette Insdorf

Film critic and historian Annette Insdorf, author of Indelible Shadows: Film and the Holocaust, discusses the ability and inability of film to portray the Holocaust. She concludes, with difficulty, that even superficial depictions of the Holocaust ultimately do more good than harm.

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