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BACKGROUND
to
"Under the Wings of G-d"
&
"Sight-seeing with Dignity"
HOW
was the series started?
The first drawing in Under the Wings..., of the Muranow Street trolley car in
the Warsaw Ghetto, was
inspired by a photo of the "Muranow Street" trolley car photographed
in the Warsaw Ghetto (probably by a Nazi soldier) and seen in the book The 45th
Anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (Interpress, Warsaw,
Poland, 1988.)
The first wings drawings was begun in November 1991. "After completing the ink
drawing of the trolley I scheduled appointment times to use the University of
Washington's Burke Museum's ornithology dept. collections to draw actual birds
wings on my drawing of the trolley. The series was born was my photographer at
the time, Bill Wickett, took photos of this drawing and gave me 8x10" black and
white glossy prints of it a week later.
The linear ink drawing lines reproduced beautifully. I looked at the photos and
thought
to myself "This looks like it should be in a book." I decided then to begin a
series, which I would begin using photos from the 45th Warsaw Ghetto Anniversary
book.
PLEASE CLICK PHOTO TO ENLARGE
Perry, Junior Art Critic for
The Jewish Transcript of Seattle, at the Seattle Central Community College
Exhibit of Under the Wings of G-D drawings, May 1998 (photo by Jerry
Brozowski)
WHO ARE THE DRAWINGS MADE FOR?
The drawings have been created to appeal to people of
all ages, especially children and youth, and of all national, racial, ethnic and religious backgrounds,
through the use of the universally accessible media of art.
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WHO IS DEPICTED?
Approximately one hundred of the six million murdered Jewish children,
women and men from across Europe are portrayed in the series. Many of the drawings depict Jews imprisoned in the Warsaw Ghetto (itself a Nazi
concentration camp) including some were still alive in the Warsaw Ghetto during the
heroic Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of April 1943 when the ghetto was liquidated. Other depict
Jews from elsewhere in Europe
who were hunted and targeted for death by the Germans in their fascist campaign
of racial superiority and genocide against an "inferior race." Later,
wings drawings were created of non-Jewish victims of the Nazis, including one
Christian teacher who was executed for helping to save 200 Dutch Jews.
PLEASE CLICK PHOTO TO
ENLARGE
Pastor Peter Ilgenfritz of
University Congregational Church, Seattle, with a parishioner at the 1996 Under
the Wings of G-D exhibition
WHY ARE SOME OF THE VICTIMS NAMELESS?
Of the six million
murdered Jews, over one million remain nameless. One and a half million were children
and babies. Most of the victims depicted in Under the Wings of G-D are
anonymous and nameless. The drawings that depict anonymous victims are titled simply
based on how the person looks in the photo from which the drawing was created, e.g.: CHILD WITH SOUP PLATE, MAN WITH
TATTERED COAT, TWO STANDING CHILDREN.
WHO ARE THE VICTIMS PORTRAYED WHO WE KNOW BY
NAME?
Some were created from photos loaned by Holocaust
survivors and relatives of victims. One of the victims depicted in SHOAH DREAMS
was Segan's murdered
maternal great-grandmother, Zlata Barshewsky. An elderly woman at the
time of the German invasion of Poland, she lived in the Jewish Home for
the Aged in Bialystok, Poland. The home's residents were arrested and
deported with thousands of other Bialytoker Jews between February 5 and 12,
1942.
All were gassed to death at the Treblinka death camp in Poland. The photo
used to draw Zlata was taken in 1938 and given to the artist by a first cousin of the artists mother.
This cousin was born and raised in Vilna, Lithuania and visited Zlata while
a teenager several times in the 1930's. She survived the war in the Soviet Union
with her mother as did her father and brother, who served in the Red Army
fighting the Nazi's. In the mid-1950's they emigrated to Israel.
HOW MANY ARTWORKS WERE
ORIGINALLY PLANNED?
The series was originally intended to be fifty works; the original target goal
was to complete the series to overlap the dedication of the United States
Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., which was dedicated in April
1993.
WHEN DID THE SERIES EXPAND TO INCLUDE THE "SIGHT-SEEING WITH DIGNITY"
DRAWINGS DEPICTING MORE CONTEMPORARY VICTIMS OF HATE HATE AND GENOCIDE?
Around the year 2000 the series became an ongoing project.
In 2002 the artist created his first response to post-Holocaust racism with the
drawing of a fifteen year old victim of a so-called 'neo-Nazi' group who
murdered the youngster, whose name was Benjamin Hermansen, in Oslo, Norway in
January 2001.
Depictions of non-Jewish victims of the Nazis have included a Roma child drawn
from a photo taken at a Nazi concentration camp for Roma, who were, like the
Jews, targeted exclusively for death. Other Shoah time period depictions have
included three anti-Nazi resistance activists: the French poet and writer Robert
Desnos; the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and the German Protestant
university student Sophie Scholl. One 'Righteous Gentile," the Dutch teacher
Joop Westerweel, has been depicted thus far.
In 2005 the artist decided to give the post-WWII depictions their own catalogue
name: SIght-Seeing with Dignity. As of June 2005, depictions include three
victims of the "auto-genocide" in Cambodia and a victim of anti-gay hate in the
United States. More works are planned.
WHY ARE THE VICTIMS DRAWN WITH WINGS?
All of
the drawings include the depiction of wings with the figures. In most of the
drawings, the wings are drawn on-site from actual bird wings at the zoology
dept. of the University of Washington's Burke Museum in Seattle.
WHERE DID YOU FIND THE PHOTOS USED AS
SOURCE MATERIAL FOR
THE DRAWINGS?
The people portrayed in the series are drawn from archival and family photos and
documents, published and unpublished. There are hundreds if not thousands
of books written by Holocaust survivors, many of which include pre-war family
photos. Since 1980 or so three books have been published with photos taken by
Nazi soldiers who went into the Warsaw Ghetto.
A new book: Last Album - Eyes from the Ashes of Auschwitz, to be
published in January 2001 (W.W.Norton, NY) is based on over a thousand photos found
at the Auschwitz death camp complex after it was liberated by the Soviet Red
Army. Ann Weiss of Philadelphia, founder/director of Eyes from the Ashes (lectures
and video) spent 13 years researching the victims in this photographic treasure trove.
Nazi concentration and death camp
guards destroyed photos that new arrivals had with them, but this one group of
photos survived. It is an incredible and priceless visual testament -
and record - of Jewish life before the Nazi inferno swept the victims out of their
homes and communities into the jaws of race-hate inspired death.
The depiction of the murdered German-Jewish painter Felix Nussbaum was drawn
from Nussbaum's own self-portrait painted while in hiding in Brussels, Belgium
[see SHOAH DREAMS ARTWORK]. Nussbaum is the only victim drawn in the series created
not from a photo but from an artists own self-portrait.
WHO ELSE WAS MURDERED BY THE GERMAN SOLDIERS AND THEIR
ALLIES IN ADDITION TO THE SIX MILLION JEWISH VICTIMS?
According to
The Guidelines for Educators of the U.S. Holocaust
Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., 500,000 roma and sinti (Gypsies); 250,000
mentally and physically disabled Germans; thousands of Jehovah's Witnesses and
political prisoners, among them Christian clergy; two million Soviet Red Army
soldier Prisoners of War; and over one million (non-Jewish) Poles were
murdered. 
PLEASE CLICK PHOTO TO ENLARGE
Under the Wings of G-D Exhibition at the Fairwood Library, Renton, Wash,
1996.
WHY WINGS?
The depiction of
the victims with wings makes the drawings unique. It also provides a workable
metaphor for audiences of all ages and backgrounds. For thousands of years
humans have thought about and been enchanted with the idea of flight. Wings are
a metaphor for freedom. Wings in Torah (the Old Testament) are symbolic of
shelter and redemption. The wings are drawn from bird
wings in the collection of the University of Washington's Burke Museum in
Seattle.
HOW ARE THE WINGS SELECTED FOR EACH DRAWING?
I choose the wings for
compositional reasons, as the figures or heads depicted in each drawing are
drawn first. The drawings are done in two distinct phases. First I choose
someone to draw from Holocaust-era photos and after that's completed, I take the
entire drawing to the University of Washington's Burke Museum in Seattle and the
staff help me find wings that I'd like to use to draw from.
There's been several exceptions. With the drawing of Dodye Feig [Drawing No. 32 in UNDER WINGS GALLERY] I asked the staff for the wing of a
bird that had symbolic importance for the theme of the drawing and the series.
The wings in Three Jews Jumping from Burning Buildings During the Uprising [No.
10 in UNDER WINGS GALLERY] were drawn from my imagination using decorative patterning
and negative space. The wings in the Lody -Eskimo Ice Cream [ No. 20 in
UNDER WINGS GALLERY] were also drawn from my imagination, among several others
in the series. For the Girl in Rags [No. 28 in UNDER WINGS GALLERY] and Bar Mitzvah
Age Boy in the Warsaw Ghetto [No. 30 in UNDER WINGS GALLERY] I used book photos
of birds in flight, as the drawings were too big to take to the Burke
Museum.
ARE THE VICTIMS ANGELS? AREN'T ANGELS A
CHRISTIAN IDEA?
Those familiar with European art traditions may think of
angels as a Christian image. The popularity of European paintings with Christian
Biblical motifs, with angels in abundance, contributes to this thinking. The visualization
of angels as humans may be found in many cultures. The concept of angels in
Jewish life goes back to Torah (the Hebrew Scriptures or Old Testament).
Christian motifs and interpretations of angels derive from Jewish Scriptures
(the Hebrew Bible), known to Christians as The Old Testament, and to Jews as
Torah, the word of G-D.
WHY IS GOD SPELLED G-D?
Because the name of
God is so holy, in Hebrew there are several ways to say God's without profaning
the name itself, which is not to be said aloud. Ha'shem or Adonai are examples
of words used to refer to God. Out of respect to Orthodox and very pious, or
devout Jews, the word God is frequently spelled in English as G-D. I wanted to
make the Under the Wings of G-D series acceptable not only to the many
non-Orthodox Jews but to Orthodox and Chassidic Jews as well.
The
Hebrew word for angel ~ malach, means "messenger." Angels
appear in Jewish folklore throughout the world. Many of these tales have only
recently been recorded and published. Angels appear in writings by the great
20th century Jewish theologian Martin Buber, in the novels of Isaac Bashevis Singer
(Nobel Prize Winner in Literature) and Elie Wiesel (Nobel Peace Prize Winner and
Holocaust survivor), among other great writers.
HOW ARE THE DRAWINGS EDUCATIONAL?
The Under the
Wings of G-D drawings are a catalyst for questions and discussion, demonstrating
the value as a tool for interpreting a troubled world. In the aftermath of
Auschwitz, many survivors expressed hope that people could learn co-existence in
a peaceful world. The struggle against anti-Semitism, racism and ignorance
continues on today.
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In the foreground is Shoah Dreams,
then in-progress at the time, at the 1996 Seattle Central Community College Art
Gallery exhibition. (Exhibit photo by Jerry Weissman).
ARE THE DRAWINGS FINE ART?
You bet. The drawings are
widely admired for their aesthetic beauty, while remaining true to the painful,
uncompromising reality of the Holocaust.
HOW ARE THE DRAWINGS FRAMED FOR EXHIBITIONS?
The
drawings are drawn on acid-free archival quality paper, and are beautifully
framed with museum quality conservation materials. Most are black and white;
many are color. There are several mixed media drawings that include the use of
fabric, stitching, wax, and wet and dry drawing media.
Most of the drawings are
approximately 28 inches x 36 inches framed. All are framed with plexiglass for
safety in transit. Drawings framed with wood moulding have been reinforced with
masonite backing and corner metal braces on the back of each frame.
PLEASE CLICK PHOTO TO
ENLARGE
Four Under the Wings of G-D drawings at the B'nai B'rith Klutznick National Jewish Museum Exhibition of Pacific
Northwest Jewish artists, Washington, D.C., 1996
HOW MANY ARE EXHIBITION READY?
As of spring 2005 twenty-five works are framed and
exhibition ready,
Three life-sized works are among them:
GIRL IN RAGS,
BAR MITZVAH AGE BOY IN THE WARSAW GHETTO,
& YOUNG MAN WITH STAR OF DAVID ARMBAND IN THE WARSAW GHETTO are available for
loan installation, and the four x eight foot
SHOAH DREAMS is beautifully framed and ready for local, national and
international loan installations.
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