ORT Creates Extensive Online Collection of Holocaust Art

12.12.11

Learning about the Holocaust through Art World ORT has designed and created one of the most extensive online collections of Holocaust-era art with the completion of the 2nd phase of its website Learning About the Holocaust through Art . The site, launched in 2001 in conjunction with Beit Lohamei Haghetaot, and with the generous support of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, now displays 250 works of Holocaust-era art created by 27 artists, and is available in four languages: English, Hebrew, Spanish and Russian. The website ( http://art.holocaust-education.net/ ), an online exhibition of artwork created during the Holocaust, is possibly the only multilingual online resource of its kind. Providing high-quality images and full documentation including artist biographies, articles on the camps and ghettos, and educational resources, Learning about the Holocaust through Art is an invaluable art based resource for Holocaust education and research, especially when combined with the accompanying biographical and historical material. During the Holocaust, artists were imprisoned in various camps and ghettos, each one providing different circumstances. In some cases works were commissioned by the Jewish leadership; in others, by the Nazi authorities; some artists worked clandestinely, using materials from their official jobs as artists or draftsmen. The works of art document scenes that would have been hard to capture in words and give an insight in to the lives of the inmates. They are historical documents, and the first to acknowledge their importance were the artists themselves. With one of the foremost collections of art relating to the Holocaust and Jewish resistance, the Ghetto Fighters House selected, photographed, researched and documented the art works and provided the accompanying biographies, articles and educational materials.