Educational Resources: Art and the Holocaust

Art is a very powerful and thought provoking tool that educators can utilize to teach the Holocaust. The following are a selection of links to web sites that specialize in artwork created during or in response to the Holocaust. and other genocides.

• Art of the Holocaust, Web page devoted to art of the Holocaust from University of South Florida. Complete from Nazi art through art by survivors and teaching guides.
• The Last Expression, Major exhibition of art from the Concentration Camps curated by David Mickenberg from Northwestern University's Block Gallery. The site is an exceptional educational resource and includes full videotaped interviews with artists who survived the German camps and continued to paint.
• Learning About the Holocaust Through Art, An important new contribution to Holocaust education. This free website provides high-quality reproductions of art works produced during the Holocaust. It also includes biographies of the artists and histories of the ghettos and camps in which they were interned. Study resources and lesson plans support its use in the classroom and an interactive section enables users to choose and annotate works for their own online collection. The website is available in both English and Hebrew, with Russian and Spanish versions planned. The website has been jointly produced by World ORT (an international educational charity) and Beit Lohamei Haghetaot (a major Holocaust museum in Israel).
• Exhibtions: Yad Vashem, A collection of online exhibitions produced by Israel's living memorial to the Holocaust.
• The Legacy Project, Framing a dialogue in the global language of loss among works of creative art and scholarship is an unprecedented cultural event. Through it, The Legacy Project seeks a collective, retrospective reflection on the losses that constitute the legacy of the last century.

Propaganda

German Propaganda Archive, Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan. A most complete examination of the use and misuse of art and the visual during the the Nazi period.

Art of Diversity and Acceptance

COEXISTENCE, An outdoor exhibition by the Museum on the Seam, Jerusalem brings the universal message of diversity and acceptance of the other to the world community. In 2004 CHGS, the University of Minnesota and several community partners brougnt the exhibition to the Twin Cities.
COEXISTENCE: 2004 (PDF)