April 19th, 1943: The Day The Gods Went to Lunch and Never Came Back (47" x 36")

The Day the Gods Went to Lunch and Never Came Back.Docent Guide

On April 19, 1943 the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto and the extermination of the remaining Jewish population, depleted by transports to the death camp at Treblinka, began.  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 Ghetto.

Four weeks later, on May 16, 1943, SS Major General and Major General of the (German/State) police made the following announcement:  "The Jewish Quarter of Warsaw is no more!" 56,065 Jewish survivors of the ghetto were sent to concentration or death camps. Many of those who survived immigrated to Palestine after the war and established Lochemai Hagedaot, The Warsaw Ghetto Fighter's Kibbutz north of Haifa, now Israel.

With the some irony, on the same day the extermination of the Warsaw Ghetto began, April 19, 1943, representatives of the United States and Great Britain met in Bermuda to seek a solution to the refugee problem. As at Evian in 1938, no solution was found.

The title of this painting suggests some theological problems. God and the Jewish people have always been seen together. The artist's title suggests the absence of God during the Uprising, as well as the Holocaust. In this painting, the image of a Jewish martyr appears on the right with a "Jewish" halo in the form of a Star of David. His right hand is raised is the form of a Jewish sacramental blessing of the Hebrew letter "shin," one of the symbols of the name of God. But this rendition is incomplete, as the usual method for this symbol is two fingers separated from the next two fingers and the thumb separate, forming in Latin letters what looks like a "W." The incomplete form suggests perhaps the Christian concept of the Trinity, and the failure of all religious systems. The figure looks at a painting showing the rubble of the Warsaw Ghetto. At the top of the painting is the Latin inscription, "INRI," which in traditional religious paintings of the Crucifixion of Jesus stands for "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews."

Theologians have debated the question raised here. One answer is that God gave man free will. Therefore, according to theologian Franklin Sherman, Man is free to create gas chambers and use them. On the other side are the commandments, the 6th of which is "Thou shalt not commit murder."  The Jewish martyr in this painting also gazes at a cubist-like painting on the easel. This is perhaps a commentary about "Entartete Kunst," or "Degenerate Art," which was attacked by the Nazis. Between 1933 and 1939, the avant garde artists of Germany were purged, their works displayed as "Degenerate" (as opposed to being pure and "Aryan") and then either sold overseas or destroyed. The avant garde artists were a danger to the Nazis because they possessed an imagination.