This painting was commissioned and created in August 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic. In her interview for Stories of Wisdom from Bodies in Seperation (SWaBS) Burns, a visual artist, discusses how during this pandemic time her creativity has increased and she has had more time to paint. The original painting is acrylic on canvas, and is of a ...
Creator:
Burns, Amber
Created:
2020-08
Contributed By:
Archives and Special Collections, Kathryn A. Martin Library, University of Minnesota Duluth
This painting was commissioned and created in August 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic. In her interview for Stories of Wisdom from Bodies in Seperation (SWaBS) Burns, a visual artist, discusses how during this pandemic time her creativity has increased and she has had more time to paint. The original painting is acrylic on canvas, and is of a ...
Creator:
Burns, Amber
Created:
2020-08
Contributed By:
Archives and Special Collections, Kathryn A. Martin Library, University of Minnesota Duluth
Dora Eiger Zaidenweber was born in Poland in January of 1924. Dora and her father, mother, and brother lived a middle class life in the city of Radom in central Poland. The Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939 took her community by surprise, and disrupted her young life. Immediately, life changed, and Dora and her peers could not attend school. Dora ...
Creator:
de la Concha, Felix
Created:
2015
Contributed By:
University of Minnesota, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
Edith Fuhrmann Brandmann was born September 11, 1931 in Krischatik, Romania. Edith’s father was a prosperous sugar-beet farmer and cattle rancher, her mother owned a grocery store. In 1939, she was 10 years old when the war broke out. In 1941 Jews began being rounded up but Edith and her family luckily managed to escape the deportation as the Ro...
Creator:
de la Concha, Felix
Created:
2013
Contributed By:
University of Minnesota, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
Fred Amram was born September 19, 1933 in Hanover Germany, where he experienced the early years of the Holocaust. An only child, he and his parents found their way to Antwerp, Belgium in November 1939 before escaping later that month to New York City. For many years the family had no idea the fate their extended families members had suffered unt...
Creator:
de la Concha, Felix
Created:
2013
Contributed By:
University of Minnesota, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
Gustav “Gus” Gutman left Germany with his parents and grandmother in 1939, when he was four years old. His father (the owner of a successful dry cleaning and dyeing company) had been imprisoned during Kristallnacht, a pogrom against Jews which took place on November 9-10, 1938 in Nazi Germany and Austria. During that time, Gus, his mother and gr...
Creator:
de la Concha, Felix
Created:
2013
Contributed By:
University of Minnesota, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
Herbert Fantle was born an only child in Vienna, Austria on March 18, 1929. In March 1938, Fantle’s mother took then 9-year-old Herbert to see Hitler give his welcome speech to the Austrians. He recalls his mother telling him not to get too close. His mother sensed danger and felt that leaving Austria the best course of action, but at the time t...
Creator:
de la Concha, Felix
Created:
2013
Contributed By:
University of Minnesota, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
Lucy Smith (born Lucy Kreisler) was born on June 15, 1933 in Kraców, Poland. She was six years old when the German army occupied Poland. Lucy had to leave school after one month of attendance because education was no longer allowed for Jewish children. After many other indignities she was put in the ghetto where she and her mother hid from the N...
Creator:
de la Concha, Felix
Created:
2013
Contributed By:
University of Minnesota, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
Max Goodman (born Gutmann) was born in Radauti, Romania on November 23, 1923. Although his family had lived in Radauti since 1718, they were considered outsiders because they were Jews. When the Soviet Union occupied the Romanian provinces of Bessarabia and North Bukovina in June of 1940, a rumor spread that Jews in these provinces had attacked ...
Creator:
de la Concha, Felix
Created:
2013
Contributed By:
University of Minnesota, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
Victor Vital was born February 6, 1932 in Patra, Greece. When the Nazis invaded Greece in 1941, word spread through Patra that Victor’s entire maternal family of 90 had been murdered in Salonica. Friends urged Victor’s father to take his extended family of eight and flee before the Nazis entered the city. With the help of his father’s friend who...
Creator:
de la Concha, Felix
Created:
2013
Contributed By:
University of Minnesota, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
Walter Schwarz was born in 1921 in Timisoara, Romania. Formerly part of the Austro-Hungarian empire Timosoari was ethnically divided between Hungarian, Romanian and German speaking people. Walter and his family primarily spoke German, which would prove to be helpful later in Walter’s life. Walter was in Brno studying textiles at a Czech school w...
Creator:
de la Concha, Felix
Created:
2013
Contributed By:
University of Minnesota, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
The title of the painting comes from a line in T.S. Eliot's 1920 poem "Gerontion," excerpted below by artist: "After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Think nowHistory has many cunning passages, contrived corridorsAnd issues, deceives with whispering ambitions,Guides us by vanities. Think nowShe gives when our attention is distractedAnd what she...
Creator:
Hirschberger, Fritz, 1912-2004
Created:
1990?
Contributed By:
University of Minnesota, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
On April 19, 1943, the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto began. The remaining Jewish population, depleted by transports to the death camp at Treblinka, was exterminated. Units of SS stormed the Ghetto under the command of General Stroop. Unexpectedly, Jewish resistance was strong, and it took more than a month for the Germans to subdue the Warsaw...
Creator:
Hirschberger, Fritz, 1912-2004
Contributed By:
University of Minnesota, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
Slogan over the main entrance to Auschwitz I. Many artists during and after the Holocaust used the image of a crucified Christ to represent the Jewish people, most famously Marc Chagall’s White Crucifixion (1938). In this image, "Work Makes You Free" replaces the typical Latin INRI, Iesvs Nazarenvs Rex Ivdaeorvm (Jesus of Nazareth, King of the J...
Creator:
Hirschberger, Fritz, 1912-2004
Created:
1990?
Contributed By:
University of Minnesota, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
Ilse Koch, "The Bitch of Buchenwald" (as she was called due to her cruelty and sadistic treatment of prisoners), was a member of the Nazi party and the wife of concentration camp commandant Karl Otto Koch. Together they shared a passion for collecting patches of tattooed human skin and shrunken human heads. Ilse was the one who selected the livi...
Creator:
Hirschberger, Fritz, 1912-2004
Contributed By:
University of Minnesota, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
Hirschberger depicts a prisoner being tortured in a manner that Nazis favored. The desperation of the situation is highlighted by a need for a refuge- in the midst of the mass murder-the indifference to the suffering by the United States, which repeatedly refused refugees based on outdated immigration laws and a prevailing feeling of antisemitis...
Creator:
Hirschberger, Fritz, 1912-2004
Created:
1990?
Contributed By:
University of Minnesota, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
Naked and shorn, husband and wife dance in a final embrace in Zyklon B's blue crystal deadly rain.Rain, rain - blue rainGo awayRain, rain - blue rainNever comeAgain.Zyklon B, a commercial form of hydrocyanic acid, which became active on contact with air, was manufactured by a firm called Degesch, which was largely owned by I.G. Farben. The chemi...
Creator:
Hirschberger, Fritz, 1912-2004
Contributed By:
University of Minnesota, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
At Auschwitz/Birkenau extermination camp some of the world's finest musicians were forced to perform for the amusement of the Nazi SS guards, while their Jewish victims were tortured and gassed. Henry Meyer, Gisela Hirschberger’s (Hirschberger’s wife) cousin played the violin in one of the death camp orchestras at Auschwitz/Birkenau. He survived...
Creator:
Hirschberger, Fritz, 1912-2004
Created:
1990?
Contributed By:
University of Minnesota, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
The visual text of this painting relates to testimony given at the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials between 1963-1965, in "Auschwitz: A report on the proceedings against Robert Karl Ludwig Mulka and others before the court at Frankfurt" by Bernd Naumann, published in 1966. At the trial four Polish witnesses (three of whom were doctors), two SS men tes...
Creator:
Hirschberger, Fritz, 1912-2004
Contributed By:
University of Minnesota, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
Arrested by the Nazis in September 1939 in Hamburg, Germany; Mr. Landau was shipped to the notorious concentration camp Dachau, located in Bavaria about 15 km northwest of Munich. While in Dachau, Mr. Landau was murdered and cremated by the SS camp guards. His ashes,placed in a cigar box,were then delivered by an official of the Gestapo (Secret ...
Creator:
Hirschberger, Fritz, 1912-2004
Created:
1990?
Contributed By:
University of Minnesota, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
The identification card was valid for only 30 days. If another 30 day renewal was denied, the bearer was subjected to deportation or evacuation, the Nazi euphemism for extermination. The 30 day renewal threat, hung over the bearer of the ID, like the sword suspended by a hair over the head of Damocles in Greek Mythology. Upon the liquidation of ...
Creator:
Hirschberger, Fritz, 1912-2004
Contributed By:
University of Minnesota, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
Fear not your enemies, for they can only kill you.Fear not your friends, for they can only betray you.Fear only the indifferent, who permit the killers andbetrayers to walk safely on earth.- Edward Yashinski, Yiddish poet who survived the Shoah only to die in a Communist prison in Poland.[Note: The painting is based on a photograph taken by SS-H...
Creator:
Hirschberger, Fritz, 1912-2004
Created:
1994?
Contributed By:
University of Minnesota, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
Hirschberger took the first part of the title from a prayer that was part of the Roman Catholic liturgy until it was rescinded by the Second Vatican Council (1965). In 1984 a small group of Carmelite nuns established a convent at Auschwitz Concentration Camp in a building that had stored Zyklon B, the prussic acid used in the gas chambers to ext...
Creator:
Hirschberger, Fritz, 1912-2004
Created:
1990?
Contributed By:
University of Minnesota, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
Born a Jew, Edith Stein converted to Catholicism and became a nun before Hitler assumed power in Germany. She lived as a Catholic, yet she died in 1942 in an Auschwitz gas chamber as Jew number 44074, during the time of the Concordat. Edith Stein, a Carmelite nun was recognized by the Vatican as Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, upon her can...
Creator:
Hirschberger, Fritz, 1912-2004
Contributed By:
University of Minnesota, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
Some German Jews, when informed of their deportations, committed suicide. In Mannheim, out of 2,500 deportees, 10 committed suicide. In Baden-Baden, with scarcely 100 community members, 10 killed themselves. More suicides occurred during the transport. Most of these cases of suicide involved German Jews, who had moved away from Judaism, been bap...
Creator:
Hirschberger, Fritz, 1912-2004
Created:
1990?
Contributed By:
University of Minnesota, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
"Puppets on a String" refers to the manipulation of German Jews after the rise of Hitler to power on January 30, 1933. More than 2000 laws were passed limiting the rights of Jews. Hirschberger suggests they became like puppets, unable to act with any freedom within Germany, and without sufficient possibilities to seek places of refuge.
Creator:
Hirschberger, Fritz, 1912-2004
Created:
1990?
Contributed By:
University of Minnesota, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
"Passion of Christ." "Simon Peter said to him [Jesus], 'Lord, where are you going? [Quo Vadis?].'Jesus answered him, 'Where I am going you cannot follow Me now, but you shall follow Me afterward."John 13:36People and their basic instincts have not changed since the beginning of time. They only have adjusted to the changing ecological, social, an...
Creator:
Hirschberger, Fritz, 1912-2004
Contributed By:
University of Minnesota, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
The names in the painting refer to places where pogroms occurred against Jews after liberation in Poland, between 1945 and 1946: Kielce, Lublin, Krakow, Turek, Boleslawiec and Mordy.
Creator:
Hirschberger, Fritz, 1912-2004
Created:
1990?
Contributed By:
University of Minnesota, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
The painting is based on an article that Hirschberger read about medical experiments conducted at Neuengamme concentration camp, located outside of Hamburg, Germany. The article told the story of 20 children who had been transported from Auschwitz to Neuengamme at the request of SS physician Kurt Heissmayer, who was conducting experiments to dev...
Creator:
Hirschberger, Fritz, 1912-2004
Contributed By:
University of Minnesota, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
With the arrival of Hitler, Jews that had converted to Christianity - many before the turn of the century - were (without any real resistance) abandoned by their churches to the terror of Nazi persecution and death in concentration camps.Marrano (Spanish, literally meaning pig) was a derogatory term used to describe Jews who converted to Christi...
Creator:
Hirschberger, Fritz, 1912-2004
Created:
1990?
Contributed By:
University of Minnesota, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
One of the cruelest stories of the Holocaust is the deportation of orphans. This took place in nearly every country, but the best-known stories are the deportations from France and from the Polish cities of Krakow and Warsaw."At Jozefinska Street, the Germans started to liquidate the Kinderheim (home for children). Wagons arrived into which the ...
Creator:
Hirschberger, Fritz, 1912-2004
Created:
1990?
Contributed By:
University of Minnesota, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
On July 20, 1933 a treaty (the Concordat) was signed between the German government and the Vatican.The agreement gave Catholics the freedom of private religious practice in return for the Vatican’s recognition of the legitimacy of the Nazi government. The treaty also effectively dissolved Catholic political and trade union organizations which in...
Creator:
Hirschberger, Fritz, 1912-2004
Created:
1990?
Contributed By:
University of Minnesota, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
The hooked cross (swastika), placed in the center of the traditional symbol of Christianity, was adopted by the Protestant German Christian Movement (Deutsche Christen, or D.C.) as their symbol. As a group within the German Protestant Church, it was openly endorsed by the Nazi party. In 1933 they dominated the unifying process of the 29 regional...
Creator:
Hirschberger, Fritz, 1912-2004
Created:
1990?
Contributed By:
University of Minnesota, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
For every evil under the sunThere is a remedy or there is noneIf there be one, seek till you find itIf there be none, never mind it.- Mother GooseIn the Christian Bible, the Book of Revelations (6:1-8) tells the story of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse who symbolize the four elements of destruction: Famine, Pestilence, War, and Death. The fo...
Creator:
Hirschberger, Fritz, 1912-2004
Created:
1990?
Contributed By:
University of Minnesota, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
This painting is a reference to the Catholic Church failing to honor the legacy of Saint Peter, the First Pope. It criticizes Pope Pius XII's resistance to intercede for the Jews because of his fear of Communism. The ten men holding the fish (a symbol of St. Peter) refer to a "minyan," which in Hebrew refers to the quorum of ten Jews necessary f...
Creator:
Hirschberger, Fritz, 1912-2004
Contributed By:
University of Minnesota, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
The image refers to the medical experimentation done on inmates at various concentration camps. The most infamous experiments were at Dachau (hypothermia and high-altitude experiments), Dr. Mengele’s lethal experiments on twins at Auschwitz and simulated gunshot experiments on women at Ravensbruck. The paradox of the Nazi era was that an order f...
Creator:
Hirschberger, Fritz, 1912-2004
Created:
1990?
Contributed By:
University of Minnesota, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
Kulmhof, or Chelmno, located in Poland, was the first Nazi extermination camp. After the victims arrived at Chelmno, they were taken in groups of fifty - men, women and children - to the ground floor of the Schloss (manor-house). There, they were told to strip and put their valuables in a basket. The victims were then taken to the cellar, past s...
Creator:
Hirschberger, Fritz, 1912-2004
Created:
1990?
Contributed By:
University of Minnesota, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
A Nazi guard talking to a nine year old Jewish boy who is on his way to be gassed in an Auschwitz gas chamber:"Well my boy, you know a lot for your age""I know that I know a lot, and I also know that I won't learn any more," the boy replies.- From the sworn testimony of witness Wolken; 1965 trial of Nazi criminals. Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
Creator:
Hirschberger, Fritz, 1912-2004
Created:
1990?
Contributed By:
University of Minnesota, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
The painting resembles various paintings of the Last Supper. the most famous being Leonardo da Vinci's from (1494-98). The Last Supper serves as a symbol of betrayal by the world to accept and protect Jews fleeing from Nazi Germany.
Creator:
Hirschberger, Fritz, 1912-2004
Created:
1990?
Contributed By:
University of Minnesota, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
The "price for silence" is the loss of one's own rights. One of the best commentaries on this was by Martin Niemoller (1892-1984):First they came for the Communists,and I didn't speak up,because I wasn't a Communist.Then they came for the Jews,and I didn't speak up,because I wasn't a Jew.Then they came for the Catholics,and I didn't speak up,bec...
Creator:
Hirschberger, Fritz, 1912-2004
Created:
1990?
Contributed By:
University of Minnesota, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
Hirschberger created a visual pun combining the name of the ship and the name of a famous Blues song. The "Blues" is a genre of music that originated among African-Americans in the Deep South, blending African and European Folk tunes, incorporating chants, spirituals and work songs (which during slavery were sometimes used to convey codes and me...
Creator:
Hirschberger, Fritz, 1912-2004
Created:
1990?
Contributed By:
University of Minnesota, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
Melting the tallow heretics,Ousting the Jews.Their thick palls floatOver the cicatrix of Poland, burnt-outGermany.They do not die.Grey birds obsess my heart,Mouth-ash, ash of eye.They settle. On the highPrecipiceThat emptied one man into spaceThe ovens glowed like heavens, incandescent.It is a heart,This holocaust I walk in,O golden child the wo...
Creator:
Hirschberger, Fritz, 1912-2004
Created:
1990?
Contributed By:
University of Minnesota, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
The making of Hitler and the seduction of Germania was the direct result of the harsh conditions of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, imposed on Germany on the insistence of a vengeful France. The treaty was never ratified by the United States Senate. Hitler blamed all the ills that befell the Weimar Republic in 1922, 1923, and again in 1929 on the...
Creator:
Hirschberger, Fritz, 1912-2004
Created:
1990?
Contributed By:
University of Minnesota, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
This image is a variant of the "hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil" theme. The Catholic priest on the left has no mouth; the Rabbi in the center has no eyes; the Protestant Minister on the right has no ears. This is the artist's commentary on the indifference of the outside world toward genocide, especially by religious leadership.
Creator:
Hirschberger, Fritz, 1912-2004
Created:
1990?
Contributed By:
University of Minnesota, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
Dr. Josef Mengele was known in Auschwitz as "The Angel of Death" for his demeanor during the selections on the ramp. Mengele earned his Ph.D. in physical anthropology from the University of Munich in 1937 and worked at the Institute for "Erbbiologie und Rassenhygiene" (Hereditary Biology and Racial Hygiene) with Dr. Otmar von Verschuer, a leadin...
Creator:
Hirschberger, Fritz, 1912-2004
Contributed By:
University of Minnesota, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
The scene juxtaposes two images. In the foreground, there is a survivor in old age, holding a toy that evokes the images, fragments of memory, of those in his family, particularly children, who have been lost during the Holocaust. In the background, a woman with a child, possibly his wife, is going into the gas chambers, which were routinely lab...
Creator:
Hirschberger, Fritz, 1912-2004
Created:
1990?
Contributed By:
University of Minnesota, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
We have lived here in believingWhat we were taught:That things consist in their consistencyAnd we have built on this foundationA castle of playing cardsWith the appearance of appearancesWith shadows of shadows.- Miguel de UnamunoGerman Jews had lived for hundreds of years in Germany, making tremendous contributions to German science, industry, e...
Creator:
Hirschberger, Fritz, 1912-2004
Created:
1990?
Contributed By:
University of Minnesota, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
In this painting, Hirschberger uses the image of the Virgin Mary and Jesus, as seen in pre-and early Renaissance painting, most likely a reference to Giotto’s Ognissanti Madonna (1310) an artist Hirschberger admired. In contrast he also places a Jewish mother and child appearing naked and in concentration camp garments. Attached by the contrapti...
Creator:
Hirschberger, Fritz, 1912-2004
Created:
1990?
Contributed By:
University of Minnesota, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
"The Fifth Horseman Series" continues the work begun in Fritz Hisrchberger’s “Sur-Rational Holocaust Paintings” series, and should not be be seen as independent of one another. The exhibition draws its title from Hirschberger’s painting of the same name, which references the Book of Revelations (6:1-8): “And now I saw a pale horse, and its rider...
Creator:
Hirschberger, Fritz, 1912-2004
Created:
1990?
Contributed By:
University of Minnesota, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
Zegota is the code name of the Council for Aid to Jews (Rada Pomocy Zydom), an underground organization that operated in occupied Poland from 1942-1945. Its express purpose was to aid Poland's Jews, finding them places of safety. Zegota was the only rescue organization that was run jointly by Jews and non-Jews from a wide range of political move...
Creator:
Hirschberger, Fritz, 1912-2004
Contributed By:
University of Minnesota, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
Shamefullythe bluefills roomswith death color,it swirlsamethyst-crystalsto paintdeath ontocanvasforgetting the blueof the seato pour deaththrough skyto take awaybreath,deceiving with themost beautifulof blues,raining deathblue.- Alice Rogoff, San Francisco, 1991Zyklon B (Prussic acid in the form of amethyst-colored crystals) was used as a killin...
Creator:
Hirschberger, Fritz, 1912-2004
Created:
1990?
Contributed By:
University of Minnesota, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.