Ben Shahn (1898-1969)
Artist Exhibit
Above right: Warsaw, 1943. Seriagraph with black and brown calligraphy in Hebrew. 33 1/2" x 23 1/2". 1963. From the collection of Temple Israel, Minneapolis. Donated to Temple Israel in memory of Arthur and Sarah Rosenberg, from their children.
Translation of the Hebrew text, from the Martyology service on Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement:
These I remember, and my soul melts with sorrow, for strangers have devoured us like unturned cakes, for in the days of the tyrant there was no reprieve for the martyrs murdered by the government.
A list of the Ten Martyrs is first enumerated in Lamentations Rabah (2:2) and in Song of Songs Rabbah (8:9). During the time of the First Crusade (1099), the Ten Martyrs served as a model for contemporary martyrdom.
Above left: Detail.
Left: One of Ben Shahn's posters issued when he worked for the Department of War Information in 1943. "This is Nazi Brutality" refers to the aftermath of the destruction of the Czech town of Lidice, destroyed as a retaliation for the murder of SS Leader Reinhardt Heydrich by Czech partisans. Image is in the public domain, US Government issued 1943.
Artist's Statement
The Warsaw ghetto was created by the Nazis in 1940 to confine the local Jewish population and deportees from other countries. Its population soon increased from 300,000 to half a million people. In July, 1942, the Nazis began their systematic liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto Jews, and thousands were deported daily for uncertain destinations. By fall of 1942, only some 40,000 people remained.
In the meantime, an underground movement had prepared the people for resistance, and when the Nazi forces arrived in April 1943, to remove the remaining Jews, they met with armed resistance. After the Nazis had leveled the ghetto with tanks and flame throwers, only a few dozen survived.
It was this tragedy- the incredible courage of the Warsaw Jews and the futility of their resistance-that Shahn commemorated with this print in 1963. The Nazis could announce, as they did in 1943, that Warsaw was at last free of Jews. But the tortured hands in Shahn's print remain to remind us of these acts of Barbarism.1
The Ten Martyrs:
"These I remember, and my soul melts with sorrow,
for strangers have devoured us like unturned cakes,
for in the days of the tyrant there was no reprieve
for the martyrs murdered by the government."
From the Yom Kippur, Day of Atonement, Martyrology Service referring to ten rabbis executed by the Romans, 1st Century. The Roman Emperor Hadrian decided to execute ten Jewish sages, corresponding to the ten sons of Jacob who had sold Joseph into slavery. The sages accepted the decision as a divine decree and were tortured and executed in a violent manner. A list of the Ten Martyrs is first enumerated in Lamentations Rabbah (2:2) and in Song of Songs Rabbah (8:9).
During the time of the First Crusade, the Ten Martyrs served as a model for contemporary martyrs.2
1 Kenneth W. Prescott. The Complete Graphic Works of Ben Shahn. (NY, Quadrangle. 1973) pg. 56
2 Source. Encyclopedia Judaica, vol.15, p.1006.
- Ben Shahn