Description:

CONCENTRATION CAMP SURVIVOR'S ARTWORK - 1945
A horrendous original black ink and watercolor painting of a German officer bearing a skull face hovering above a large pile of bodies outside a concentration camp. In the background bodies are suspended from gallows, while inside the camp's barbed-wire fence smoke bellows from chimneys above what appear to be barracks. Most frightening of all is that this painting was most likely undertaken by a concentration camp survivor very shortly after his liberation. The painting, undertaken on an 11 1/2" x 9" piece of heavy stock, shows wear and mounting traces absolutely consistent with age. We have been unable to decipher the artist's signature, which appears at lower left, but he did note his location and the date: "Zeilsheim 1945" Zeilsheim was a "Displaced Persons" camp 12 miles west of Frankfurt in the American-occupied zone. The town's German homes were requisitioned to accommodate inhabitants of the nearby DP camp, almost all of whom were concentration camp survivors. The streets and building complexes of Zeilsheim were named after towns and kibbutzim in Palestine, and the camp was visited by David Ben-Gurion. Ironically, the camp closed on November 15, 1948 as the U.S. Army wanted to return the houses to workers from the IG Farben plant. Of course, IG was a notorious user of slave labor and provided the concentration camps with the poison gas, Zyklon B.

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December 16, 2010 11:00 AM EST
Stamford, CT, US

Alexander Historical Auctions LLC

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