Art in Concentration Camps

In our class discussion about the Holocaust, we briefly touched on the artwork made by prisoners in concentration camps. Despite the creation of art being restricted and having next to no access to art supplies, victims of the holocaust often made artistic pieces with whatever materials they could find (such as toilet paper or scraps of food), then hid them to avoid the severe punishment that it could bring.  The artists risked their lives to depict and memorialize the intense hardships and fights for survival.

The majority of works were directly related to life at the concentration camps. Franciszek Jaźwiecki was a Polish prisoner at Auschwitz. During his imprisonment, he made forbidden portraits of fellow prisoners. He placed special emphasis on the face and facial expressions, in contrast to the subject’s shirts, which were fairly unadorned. On the shirts, Jaźwiecki was careful to include the number and badge of the inmate, possibly so that the portrait could be matched with a name later on. Agnieszka Sieradzka, a curator at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum where the works are held, feels as though Jaźwiecki knew that the works would be important historically later on and sought to depict the pain he saw in the eyes of other prisoners.

Because this type of art was restricted, Jaźwiecki hid the pieces in his bed and in his clothing

Sometimes art could be found inscribed on the walls of the camps themselves. This type of art was often created by child and adult prisoners alike.

This particular example comes from the ceiling of a particularly brutal barrack in Birkenau, tasked with digging a canal known as Königsgraben. It housed political prisoners and those who were suspected of plotting revolts. Because of this, these prisoners were kept away from other blocks in addition to being given less food and stricter punishments.

In some cases, prisoners made or kept stencils, and used them to create a variety of designs around barracks.

This design was made by a stencil on a wall of block 14 in Auschwitz. The same stenciling can be seen in numerous locations around the block in different arrangements.

Sometimes, a particular prisoner would be forced by SS officers to create art either for administrative purposes, in the form of models or maps, or personal purposes for the SS officer, such as greeting cards that the officer would then send to family or friends.

Meticulous records were kept by Nazis during the holocaust, which is why we have such a sheer volume of historical information about prisoners, administrative functions, and deaths. By parsing these records, we can know the reason a prisoner was admitted, their basic description, their location, etc. Because of brave artists such as Jaźwiecki, or those who drew on the walls of their barracks, we can catch a glimpse of the pain and toil they experienced. Even when every day was a fight for survival, and the prisoners were stripped of their freedom, they still had the drive to preserve and document the atrocities that they endured in a far more human way than the documents we reviewed in class.

Boyette, Chris. “Auschwitz's Forbidden Art.” CNN, Cable News Network, 26 Jan. 2015, www.cnn.com/2015/01/23/world/art-auschwitz/index.html.

www.auschwitz.org. “AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU.” Polski, auschwitz.org/en/museum/historical-collection/works-of-art/.

“Inmate Art from Auschwitz and Birkenau.” Gallery - Inmate Art - Photos, USF, fcit.usf.edu/holocaust/resource/gallery/FWALL.htm.