On February 12, Museum “Jewish Memory and Holocaust in Ukraine” and the Hesed-Menachem Foundation held another Open Lecture. This time, the Museum’s research associate, Dr. Olena Ishchenko, presented an exhibition opened at the Museum for the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, “The Auschwitz Experience in the Art of Former Prisoners.” The traveling exhibition was developed by researchers from the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum (Republic of Poland), a long-time partner of our Museum.

The exhibition was solemnly opened on January 25 and is still on display in the third museum hall. It consists of 24 banners depicting works by artists who were former prisoners of the largest death camp of the World War II. After the war, they made the traumatic experience of being in Auschwitz the theme of their own work. The canvases depict pictures of camp life, talking about various aspects of life and death in the camp – the arrival of the next “transport”, settlement in barracks, organization of work, food, sleep, selective procedures, executions... Along with the visual images are texts – fragments of memories of former prisoners. They were translated into Ukrainian especially for the Ukrainian audience  by the Museum's researchers. The words of the Italian writer of Jewish origin, former prisoner of Auschwitz, Primo Levi, struck a sad chord: “It happened, so it can happen again... It can happen anywhere.”

The audience of the Lecture was amazed by the virtual tour of the exhibition, stunned by the figurative embodiment of Absolute Evil. Apparently, the paintings that recreate the everyday life of the death camp find a deep response in the souls also because we live in a time when Evil is once again shamelessly coming to the forefront of history…