The art was created during extreme suffering, often in the face of imminent death, in concentration camps, ghettos, or during flight.
By JERUSALEM POST STAFFohrdruf camp 298 88(photo credit: )
Paintings and drawings by Holocaust victims will be put on display in an eastern German museum in a first-of-its-kind collaboration with Israel's Yad Vashem, the director of Dresden's art collection said Thursday.
The art created under conditions of extreme suffering, often in the face of imminent death, in concentration camps, ghettos, or during flight, will be paired with older works from the Dresden State Art Collection, director Martin Roth said.
"It's about the dialogue between our collection of traditional art, mirroring European cultural and intellectual history, and an art that was inspired by this tradition, and shaped by the reign of barbarism," Roth said.
Many of the artists whose paintings and drawings will be displayed did not survive the Holocaust.
Roth said he hoped the exhibit would underline the significance of holding onto art in the face of death, terror and inhumanity.
Roth said the idea for the exhibit came to him after visiting Yad Vashem, and the Israeli museum agreed to it.
"It will be the first time that Yad Vashem carries out such an exhibit in cooperation with a German museum," Roth said.
Roth expressed hope the exhibit would help deepen understanding of the Nazi era, an especially important issue in the economically depressed east, where Dresden is located, where the far-right party and another extremist party has representation in the state parliament.
"I want to put the art center stage and to show with it how artists who were victims of the Nazi terror used art to endure the nightmare in the death camps and to tolerate the intolerable."
The exact location of the exhibition remains to be determined before the opening scheduled for 2009.
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