Mindy Wiesel

Art Works

	Mindy Weisel Barbed Souls, 1980 Oil on paper 40 x 60 The artist's father's Auschwitz number appears repeated around the outside of the painting.
	Mindy Weisel The Drowned and the Saved,1994 Canvas with suitcase 66 x 78 The Drowned and the Saved reflects on a statement by Primo Levi that the best were those who drowned, while the saved often had to make uncomfortable moral compromises. On the suitcase are her father's Auschwitz number, the work Shema (Listen) in Hebrew (in red), and in the small postage stamp-like area in white, green and blue is painted over the text of the Tefillat Ha Derekh. Top, left to right: full view; detail. Bottom: suitcase details.
	Mindy Weisel Just,1994
	Mindy Weisel Eydel "Eydel" was the name of the artist's mother, a survivor of Auschwitz. The name appears in Yiddish & Hebrew in the paintings, as well as the Auschwitz Camp number. The image suggests the isolation and dangerous spaces of Holocaust memory. Top, left to right: full view; detail. Bottom: detail.

Artist Statement

Weisel is an artist born in Bergen-Belsen Displaced Persons camp after the war. The artist lives in Washington, D.C. Her work suggests personal reflections through abstraction and some solitude.

"My parents are survivors of the Auschwitz concentration camp. I was born in 1947 in Bergen-Belsen, Germany, in a displaced persons camp after the war. While growing up, I was told stories not only of the horrors of Nazi Germany and what my parents endured, but also of the beauty of their lives before the war. These paintings deal with the destruction of beauty as well as hope and survival. The numbers 'A3146' are those on my father's arm from the camps; the color blue, my mother's favorite color, expresses the beauty and spirituality I was raised with."

Teaching Applications

Questions:

1. Can abstraction be a way to deal with the Holocaust?
2. What images strike you in these works?
3. If the paintings are abstract, what makes them related to the Holocaust?
4. What did Primo Levi mean by "the drowned and the saved?"
5. Why does the artist have a suitcase as part of her work?
6. Does the artist raise theological questions which lurk in the minds of survivors after the Holocaust?