The Holocaust and the Arts

Art forms of all kinds have become increasingly visible to describe the Holocaust and grapple with its meaning. During the Holocaust itself, Jewish artists struggled with their own experience in their musical, artistic and literary works. After the Holocaust, survivors created a whole genre of art linked to their experiences.

Cultural Programme

The Holocaust Centre’s cultural programme facilitates artists from the performing and visual arts to reflect this representation of the Holocaust in words, images and actions. Visual art, literature, music, dramatic arts and film all contribute to representing a trauma that defies representation.

Visual Art

The visual art displayed at the Centre has almost exclusively been created by survivors and eyewitnesses – such as the stained-glass windows by survivor Roman Halter and his daughter Aviva, and the paintings of survivor Edith Hofmann.

The Centre also regularly displays temporary exhibitions of paintings and photographs.

“The work of the Holocaust Centre has inspired me as a sculptor to give expression to my feelings regarding the horrors of the Holocaust. I find that through my art, my aspirations and those of Beth Shalom converge.”

Mark Pope

Literature

Since Tadeusz Borowski’s first bold literary depictions of his incarceration in Auschwitz in the late 1940s, authors have explored their experiences through short stories, novels and poetry.

Literature forms an important part of the Centre’s cultural programme, including launches of our own literary publications and events designed to profile specific new works of Holocaust literature and research.

Music

The first music infused with the haunting dissonance of the Holocaust was written by composers themselves caught up in the events, attempting to confront their experiences through their music. Other works were written by their non-victim Jewish and non-Jewish contemporaries.  Since then, many well known composers have created works in commemoration of the Holocaust.

Concerts and recitals form an important part of the Centre’s cultural programme, ensuring that this anguished art is heard, both for the beauty of the music and as a memorial.

“The music of Kroke gave an insight into a whole culture… How good to leave the Centre feeling the vibrancy of a living culture when you could have been easily overwhelmed by sadness in a place that remembers the Holocaust.”

Rowan Cozens, Musician

Dramatic arts

Dramatic performances are a regular part of the Centre’s cultural calendar, with plays, readings and sketches reflecting the legacy of the Holocaust.

Across the Bridge was based on a true story that happened at the Holocaust Centre shortly after it opened. In April 1996, two Holocaust survivors, Victoria Ancona-Vincent and Trude Levi, met at the Centre and realised that they had been on the same death march and liberated at the same bridge on the same day.  Across the Bridge explores their personal life stories and the issues of survival that emerged for them after liberation.

“Making their stories into a play added one more brick to the activities of the Holocaust Centre, telling survivors’ stories through drama, so that it should never happen again.”