About Fritz Hirschberger
Sur Rational Holocaust Paintings
The contents of the paintings represent the views of a survivor artist and his response to the Holocaust. The majority of the paintings are based on my personal experience or a historical fact. The paintings ask questions, but give no answers.
As my generation which experienced the Holocaust is fading, artists with no direct links to the Shoah are responding to it, and a growing number of people are applying "Holocaust language" to current and personal disasters. In the article "Death Camps as Kitch", the OP-ED page the New York Times (March 18, 1999), Gabriel Schoenfeld, senior editor of Commentary magazines writes:
"Efforts to comprehend the terrible event, and to commemorate the worlds that were destroyed, are a moral necessity. But much of what goes by the name of remembrance today serves neither cause. Instead it drains the nightmare of its horror, treating the most shattering event in modern history as a banality, or worse, as entertainment".
I also agree with Elie Wiesel, who believes that the subject can be properly addressed only by those who suffered it.
I am often asked why I paint this "Jewish" genocide. I paint this genocide, because I am a Jew. If I would be an American Indian I would paint the genocide of the American Indians, etc..
Others are objecting to the contents of my paintings. My answer to them, I am a historian who paints history. If you do not like the contents of my paintings, don't make such history and I won't have to paint it!
Some accuse me of singling out the Catholic Church. Not so. I challenge all main Judeo-Christian religions to examine their reason for their "Indifference" while six million died.
History of the Artist
I was born January 15th, 1912 in Dresden, Germany, to Jewish parents. My father was an Austrian from Galicia, My mother a Czech from Strizovice, near Prague, in Bohemia. Both Galicia and Bohemia were until 1918 part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. After the end of W.W.I, Galicia became part of the reborn Polish Republic, and as a result my parents and I became Polish citizens.
I received my education in the arts and humanities in Dresden. From an early age on (pre Hitler) I was active in the International Jewish sports organization the "Maccabi" and competed in 1936 in the First International Jewish Winter Olympics in Banska Bistrica in Slovakia.
1931, after graduating firm the Kreuz Gymnasium, I joined the display department of the Residence Kaufhaus in Dresden. I continued my art education working with expressionist artists like Wieland.
1933, the year Hitler became chancellor, I founded the Dresden chapter of the right wing Zionist organization the "Betar", the youth organization of the Irgun Zwai Leumi (National Military Organization).
1936, my father and I lost our jobs because of "Arysierung". (forced sale of a Jewish business to a German, sic Aryan) My father found another job in Leipzig, and I one in Dresden.
1938, I lost my job again for the same reason and joined my parents in Leipzig. The same year my father and I were arrested by the Gestapo (Secret Police) as undesirable aliens and deported to Poland. In Cracow a friend from the Betar, owner of an iron work, gave me a job as a blacksmith.
1939, I fought in the Polish Army against the invading Nazis and Soviets. After Hitler and Stalin divided defeated Poland between them.
1940, in January, I was shipped to a prison in Nikolajew, near Odessa in the Soviet Union. In March the same year without a trial, I was sentenced to 20 years of hard labor and deported to a concentration camp (Gulag), near the Polar Circle in the Soviet Socialist Republic "Komi".
1941 after Hitler attacked the Soviet Union, all Poles held prisoner or in forced exile, were released. I made my way across Russia to join the forming Free Polish Army (Under General Anders, sometimes referred to as The Anders Army) in Soviet Central Asia. On the way I worked as a cotton picker, blacksmith. and camel driver.
1941, after enlisting with the Free Polish Army, my unit the Seventh Ulan Regiment of the Warsaw division was shipped to Palestine and later to North Africa, where we fought against the forces Germany's "Afrika Corps" under the legendary General Ernst Rommel.
1943, the invasion of Italy and Monte Cassino. For my service I was decorated by the British, and in 1992 by the the President of the Polish Republic.
1946, I received my honorable discharge from the Free Polish Army in Scotland..
While I survived, most of my family did not. My wife Gisela, a gifted artist, and old friend from Dresden, had managed in 1939 to escape to England. When the Second World War broke out, she was imprisoned as an enemy alien (German, sic) in a London prison, despite the fact that she was Jewish. Later she was interned at the Isle of Man. Eventually she was released to join the British war effort. Her parents were murdered at Auschwitz.
1946, after being separated for over eight years Gisela and I got married in London.
1947, we moved to the United States.
My work has been exhibited in the United States coast to coast, the Czech Republic and Germany. In Germany, Posters have been produced from the series "Indifference" and are used to teach the history of the Holocaust in German High Schools. My paintings are in the collection of the Regis Foundation Minneapolis, Mn.; the Holocaust Museum in St. Louis, Mo.; the Judah L. Magnes Museum Berkley. Ca.; Yad Vashem Jerusalem; the Kreuz Schule Dresden, Germany. On book covers "Inside Hitler's Germany", D.C. Heath & Co. and 'The Holocaust and the Catholic Church, 1930 -1965 by Michael Phayer, release date summer/fall 2000. In addition the Regis Foundation has produced posters of two of the paintings from the exhibit "Indifference" for free distribution and a lecture with slides with English & German text.
Style of Paintings
Finally after thirty years, in 1985, I confronted my long suppressed feelings about the Holocaust. I began reading hundreds of books, articles and viewed almost all available documentaries on the Holocaust. I was horrified by the obsessive use of numbers: the numbers of people killed in each camp, the number of people exterminated by various methods; the numbers of Jewish villages erased. However most of the writings, documentaries and paintings were only descriptions of the Holocaust, only a few succeeded to convey the gist of the Holocaust. Consequently I concluded, that to try to explain the unexplainable, I had to translate each deed of horror from the general to the personal by isolating the incidents - by reducing the astronomical numbers to "One".
Rejecting the classic; abstract, non-objective and other styles of painting and the available media unsuitable for the subject matter, I created for the Holocaust series a new style and painting technique. I developed a specific oil based, that permits multiple consecutive applications of thin transparent layers of colors to the canvas. Combined with an innovative technique of paint application to the canvas, it produce a startling luminous effect.
The stark black outlines are created with a grease charcoal pencil used in lithography. The black opaque outlines created with the pencil remain visible through as many as eight layers of paint, due to the medium created translucency of the colors.
The idea of combining the content of the paintings with text, is based on the medieval German "Moritat" (song), meaning a song of Mori = deadly + Tat = deed. The lyrics of the Moritat were usually based on a heinous crime and performed by strolling minstrels in combination with illustrations painted on a banner, like today's comic strips.
Brecht used a Moritat as the prologue to his 'Three Penny Opera", I use text (Moritat), to introduce the viewer to the content of the painting.