Workshops

What is Holocaust Art and the role it can play when teaching about the Holocaust.  
The Holocaust is a defining event in human history and the study of it can help students to think   critically about the world around them. Teaching the Holocaust in History is essential but it can be
taught with a cross curricular approach. A study of Holocaust art can highlight how the Nazis used art for propagandistic purposes, and how victims used artistic expression to document, communicate their protest, despair, and/or hope. 

                                                                                                                           

In the framework of my sessions, I invite the students to discuss historical artwork and to create their own works in response. Students approach the works as historical evidence, looking at what they reveal about life in the ghettos and camps.  It is hard to believe that art was created in camps by people who felt the need to record/express all that they experienced. This need to communicate was so very strong and often created at great risk to the artist. This art may be viewed by students as a form of documentation, witness, spiritual resistance and as evidence from the victim’s perspective.  Many Portraits and self – portraits were created they gave the subject a sense that if they did not survive then perhaps their portrait would.    

‘What is the role of the artist in times of moral and social crisis? What is the difference between Man and Beast if not the constructive action?  For it is only the constructive action which creates the continuity of mankind and its evolution. It is only the constructive action which creates the future and it is only with a future that man creates culture.’

Otto Freundlich a German Jewish Painter and Sculptor – born 10.7.1878 and killed on arrival in Majdanek,9.3.1943                                                                       

 Through the use of visual images, students are able to develop a visual literacy to add to their skills of critical thinking in order to understand, recognize and evaluate arts as a means of expression. Through this questioning students are able to investigate human behaviour. Learning about the Holocaust can evoke powerful emotions, and using the arts can help students to express their thoughts, ideas and responses in an appropriate and creative way.   

A workshop looking at the Art of Terezin ghetto (renamed Theresienstadt by the Nazis)

‘I have not seen a butterfly around here,’ a collection of children’s drawings and poems from Terezin. The children who were brought here knew nothing. They came from places where they had already known humiliation; had stars sewn on their jackets, expelled from their homes and schools. When herded into Terezin, they started to see the stark reality but some still managed to maintain their childish outlook.  

Session Aims:

To discover through the art and poems, the human faces behind the Holocaust in order to remember the 1.5 million children who perished.

To explore the children of Terezin personal reactions to the Holocaust through their artwork and poems.

For students to respond to the art and poetry, using their own creativity and experience in order to make their own artwork.

 Students find this body of work to be so pertinent with the children being of a similar age to them and are therefore able to gain an even deeper insight into the inner feelings of their authors and an understanding of their feelings as prisoners, their perception of ghetto life, their suffering and small childish joys, their fears and their faith in a better future.

Examples of student art responses to the session on Terezin art.

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Caroline Slifkin Terezin art, student art responses


A workshop looking at Holocaust Art as Spiritual Resistance
Austrian psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl, wrote in his book of his testimony. ‘Man’s Search for Meaning,’ ‘If a prisoner felt that he could no longer endure the realities of camp life , he found a way out in his mental life – an invaluable opportunity to dwell in the spiritual domain, the one that the SS were unable to destroy. Spiritual life strengthened the prisoner, helped him to adapt, and therefore improved his chances of survival.'     

When considering any individual or collective acts to maintain human integrity and identity through their religion.The act of creating can be seen as spiritual resistance and an attempt to oppose the Nazi attempts to dehumanise and degrade as. When looking at this artwork created during the Holocaust students can see a theme of depiction of secret religious observance. In others the act of creating the artwork was for them an act of Spiritual resistance.

Examples of student art response to the session on Holocaust Art Spiritual Resistance.

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Caroline Slifkin Holocaust Art Spiritual Resistance

Student art response to workshop looking at Holocaust Art by different victims.
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Caroline Slifkin Holocaust art different victims