For the 11th summer, or since 1994, Florida State University in Tallahassee has presented a Holocaust Institute for Educators. And each year the public is invited to two lectures. I was privileged to attend the first one tonight for this year. It was presented by Dr. David Gussak, an assistant professor of Art Education, FSU and the Clinical Coordinator for the FSU Art Therapy Program. His lecture, entitled "Drawing Strength: The Art of the Holocaust" was excellent. You can see the slides he used in his Presentation at
http://www.tfn.net/holocaust/2005/david1.html#anchor234222
Most of the art he showed was done at Terezin (the so-called Paradise Ghetto or camp) and Auschwitz.
It was fascinating to hear how these pieces of artwork were sometimes smuggled out of the concentration camps, some even being published in Swiss papers during the War, which led into an investigation by the Nazis in trying to catch the culprit artists. Some were caught and sent to their deaths at Auschwitz. Others were not caught, their works sometimes hidden in walls, under floorboards, in the eaves of a camp bakery, buried in the ground at the camps and later retrieved after the war. It is these pieces that tell the real story of what was really going on behind the barbed wire. They tell a different story from what the Nazis staged to show the Red Cross.
Online sources Dr. Gussak recommended:
http://www.holocaustforgotten.com/holocaustpictures.htm
http://www.connectexpress.com/~holocaustart/
http://art.holocaust-education.net/
http://lastexpression.northwestern.edu/
http://motic.wiesenthal.com/albums/palbum/p00/a0021p3.html
The next presentation open to the public will be on Thursday night with Mary Wygodski's "Memories and Reflections of a Survivor." I'm really looking forward to seeing, hearing and hopefully meeting a survivor. I also intend to give a report on her lecture.