Events
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Resistance and Art:
The “Red Orchestra” Anti-Nazi Group in Berlin
Presentation by Stefan Roloff, Berlin (Germany)
School of Visual Arts, 133/141 West 21st Street, Room 101C, New York, NYSchool of Visual Arts 133 West 21st Street, New York, United StatesBFA Visual and Critical Studies, the SVA Honors Program and the Fritz Ascher Society for Persecuted, Ostracized and Banned Art host a lecture by painter and filmmaker Stefan Roloff, exploring the visual art and resistance of three members of the "Red Orchestra" underground anti-Nazi group. Image above: Katja Meirowsky, Photo of cabaret performance at the jazz club “Die Badewanne” [“The Bathtub”] in Berlin-Wilmersdorf, 1949/50. The so-called “Red Orchestra” fought against the Third Reich within Germany from 1933 to 1942. The Gestapo labeled them as Communists and traitors, a theory that was upheld by Allied Secret Services until recently. Historians now officially recognize their work as that of the largest and most diverse civil anti-Nazi resistance [...]
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Flight or Fight? Artists in Nazi Germany, 1933-1945
Presentation by Rachel Stern, New York
Kupferberg Holocaust Center @ Queensborough Community College, Queens, NYKupferberg Holocaust Center 222-05 56th Avenue, Queens, NY, United StatesBetween 1933 and 1945, the National Socialist regime controlled artistic work in Germany. Join Rachel Stern, founding director of the Fritz Ascher Society for Persecuted, Ostracized and Banned Art, for a discussion about the system of fear and control installed by the Nazis, its impact on the national cultural landscape, and artists’ strategies of survival. This event is part of the 2025-26 KHC and National Endowment for the Humanities Colloquium, “Resistance, Resilience and Reinvention: Artists and Academics Escaping Nazism.” It is co-sponsored by the Holocaust & Human Rights Education Center in White Plains; the Center for Genocide and Human Rights Research in Africa and the Diaspora at Northeastern Illinois University; the Center for the Study of Genocide and Human [...]
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Looted! The Nazi Art Plunder of Jewish Families in France
Book talk by Peter Elliott (France)ONLINE VA, United StatesIn this book talk Peter Elliott speaks about the lives and art collections of four French Jewish families, whose art was looted and whose businesses were confiscated during the Nazi Occupation of France (1940-44). He speaks about their businesses and art collections, and the journeys of their paintings during wartime and beyond. The four protagonist families all made an important cultural and economic contribution to France. Image above: Detail of book cover The four protagonist families all made an important cultural and economic contribution to France. The Bader/Heilbronn/Meyer family were founders of the French department store, Galeries Lafayette. Their entire art collections were looted by the German ERR (Reichsleiter Rosenberg [...]
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Under Il Duce’s Shadow:
Italian Art and Artists During the Fascist Regime
Presentation by Nicola Lucchi, PhD, New York (NY)ONLINE VA, United StatesItalian artistic life under Mussolini was defined less by rigid prescriptions than by a continuous negotiation between competing aesthetic and political demands. Italy, the birthplace of Futurism, had long experimented with modernist innovation, and elements of that movement’s rhetoric and visual language found sympathetic audiences within the fascist state. At the same time, powerful factions within the regime promoted a return to classicism, academicism, and the revival of Italy’s artistic past. The government’s cultural policy therefore oscillated between these poles, attempting to reconcile—and ultimately absorb—contradictory artistic currents into the fascist body politic. Image above: Xanti Schawinsky, Sì , 1934. Artists responded in very different ways: some worked with the regime [...]
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Filmmaker Stefan Roloff discusses THE RED ORCHESTRA
A documentary film about the Anti-Nazi Group in Berlin, 1933-1942ONLINE VA, United StatesJoin film director Stefan Roloff in conversation with Rachel Stern about the The Red Orchestra, a Berlin-based resistance group that fought against the Nazis from 1933 to 1942. A special focus will be artist Rainer Küchenmeister (1926-2010), who became a painter while incarcerated at the age of sixteen, inspired by a fellow female inmate and resister who was later beheaded. After the war his work was shown at documenta among other venues. WATCH THE TRAILER: The Red Orchestra (2003) is a documentary by Stefan Roloff about a Berlin-based anti-Nazi resistance group that operated during WWII, using interviews with survivors and their children, and pioneering animation to tell their story. [...]
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Jacob Pins (1917-2005): The Art of Laughter and Tears
Presentation by Ori Z. Soltes, Washington (DC)ONLINE VA, United StatesIn this image-rich talk, Ori Z. Soltes explores the pioneering Israeli printmaker Jacob Pins (1917-2005) and the unique place that he holds in the history of Israeli and modern Jewish art. Born into a Jewish family in Höxter, Germany, he immigrated to Palestine in 1936. He studied under German émigré Jacob Steinhardt (1941-45) and became a noted exponent of the woodcut as well as a noted collector. From 1956 to 1977, Pins also taught at Israel's leading art schools, most notably Bezalel School of Arts and Design in Jerusalem. Image above: Jacob Pins, Dance of Death, 1957. Color woodcut, 995 x 597 mm. Forum Jacob Pins, Höxter. Jacob Pins (January 1917 – [...]
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THE RESTLESS HUNGARIAN
Conversation with Film Director Tom WeidlingerONLINE VA, United StatesThe Restless Hungarian (2021) is a personal narrative set against the backdrop of the Hungarian Jewish diaspora, the rise of Modernism, and the Cold War. The film centers on Paul Weidlinger, one of the most important structural engineers of the twentieth century who created the strength behind iconic skyscrapers, churches, museums, embassies, and monumental sculptures by Picasso, Noguchi, and Dubuffet. Early in his career, he broke from mainstream modernism with his concept of the “Joy of Space”. Behind his professional success, however, was a deeply troubled private life marked by loss, denial, and family tragedy. As the filmmaker—his son—begins to explore Paul’s past, the story shifts into a deeply personal journey across continents, uncovering hidden Jewish roots and the family’s [...]
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Reconciling Identities:
Marcel Janco and the Romanian Avant-Garde in the Interwar Years
Presentation by Amelia Miholca
followed by a conversation with Nicola Baird, PhD, London (UK)ONLINE VA, United StatesIn her presentation, Dr. Miholca will spotlight the artistic and historical significance of Marcel Janco and the Romanian avant-garde group during a period of tremendous creative experimentation and productivity, when artists and writers merged their Jewish identity with the international identity they sought to foster through their network of dadaist and constructivist magazines. Janco, alongside other Romanian-Jewish artists like M. H. Maxy, Victor Brauner, Mattis Teutsch, and Benjamin Fondane, wished to capitalize on the Dada movement initiated by Janco and Tristan Tzara—alongside Hugo Ball, in Zurich, 1916—with their own avant-garde movement in Bucharest that mainly emerged through magazines such as Contimporanul (1922-1932), 75HP (1924) and Integral (1925-1928). The presentation will be followed by a conversation with Nicola Baird, PhD. [...]
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Newish and Jewish from Europe:
Refugees, Survivors and the Spread of Modernism
Presentation by Samuel D. GruberONLINE VA, United StatesThe architecture of the American Jewish community was transformed following World War II by émigré and refugee architects engaged to design synagogues and Jewish Community Centers. Image above: Hamden, CT, Mishkan Israel sanctuary, photo S. Gruber, 2011. Architects: Fritz Nathan and Bertram Bassuk, Ark: Ben Shahn, Stained Glass: Robert Pinart and Jean-Jacques Duval Eric Mendelsohn’s synagogues for St. Louis, Cleveland and elsewhere are well known but the work of Fritz Nathan, Mendelsohn’s German-Jewish contemporary, is virtually forgotten. Erich Mendelsohn, sketch for Congregation Bnai Amoona, St Louis, MO Erich Mendelsohn, Model for Congregation Bnai Amoona, St Louis, MO Nathan arrived in the United [...]
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Pictures of Resistance:
The Wartime Photography of Jewish Partisan Faye Schulman
Presentation by Sheri Rosenblum, San Francisco (CA)ONLINE VA, United StatesIn the forests of Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe, Jewish partisan Faye Schulman carried two extraordinary weapons: a rifle and a camera. After witnessing the murder of her family and the destruction of her community, she joined the partisans, documenting daily life, resistance, and survival. Her photographs—taken while living and fighting with a partisan unit—are the only known images captured from within a partisan camp. Image above: Faye Schulman, Forest near Lenin, Winter 1944. This presentation explores Schulman's remarkable life through her wartime photography, highlighting its historical significance and artistic legacy. Drawing from the Pictures of Resistance exhibition, participants will discover how her images challenge misconceptions about Jewish resistance during the Holocaust while serving as [...]
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