Events
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Building the Largest Digital Memorial
to the Victims of Nazism:
The Arolsen Archives
with Floriane Azoulay and Giora Zwilling, Arolsen1014 - space for ideas 1014 5th Avenue, New York, New York, NY, United StatesThe International Tracing Service (ITS), since 2019 called Arolsen Archives, was established by the Allies in 1948 as a central search and information center. They house the world’s most extensive collection of documents about the victims of National Socialist persecution, including documents from Nazi concentration camps, ghettoes and penal institutions, documents about forced laborers, and documents from the early post-war period about Displaced Persons, mainly Holocaust survivors, former concentration camp prisoners, and forced laborers. People who had fled the sphere of influence of the Soviet Union for political reasons are also included. The archive's holdings consist of 30 million documents in total and belong to UNESCO’s Memory of the World. At this event, Floriane Azoulay (Director) and Giora Zwilling (Deputy [...]
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Cartoon Crusader:
Arthur Szyk’s War against Nazism
Steven Luckert, Washington DC1014 - space for ideas 1014 5th Avenue, New York, New York, NY, United StatesDuring the first four decades of the twentieth century, Polish Jewish artist Arthur Szyk (1894–1951) was best known for his richly detailed book illustrations and magnificent illuminations on Jewish themes. He portrayed the Jews as a heroic nation that had resisted oppression through the ages and eventually triumphed. His Jews were fighters for their own freedom and the freedom of others. Szyk sought to redefine how the Jews viewed themselves and how others viewed them. His works thus challenged the notion that Jewish history was merely one long saga of suffering and, at the same time, refuted the then common antisemitic canard that the Jews were a cowardly people. With the coming to power in Germany of Adolf Hitler [...]
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Oskar Kokoschka (1886-1980):
The Making of an Artist
by Rüdiger Görner, London (UK)1014 - space for ideas 1014 5th Avenue, New York, New York, NY, United StatesThe Austrian artist Oskar Kokoschka (1886-1980) achieved world fame with his intense expressionistic portraits and landscapes. Rüdiger Görner, author of the first English-language biography, depicts the artist in all his fascinating and contradictory complexity. He traces Kokoschka’s path from bête noire of the bourgeoisie and a so-called ‘hunger artist’ to a wealthy and cosmopolitan political and critical artist who played a major role in shaping the European art scene of the twentieth century and whose relevance is undiminished to this day. In 1934, Kokoschka left Austria for Prague, and in 1938, when the Czechs began to mobilize for the expected invasion by the German Wehrmacht, Kokoschka fled to the United Kingdom, where he remained during the war. Although he [...]
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#EVERYNAMECOUNTS
LIVE ZOOM DATA ENTRY EVENT1014 - space for ideas 1014 5th Avenue, New York, New York, NY, United StatesJoin the Fort Tryon Jewish Center (FTJC) and the Fritz Ascher Society for a LIVE DATA ENTRY EVENT to help build the world’s largest digital monument to victims of the Holocaust: the Arolsen Archives’ #everynamecounts. THIS EVENT WAS NOT RECORDED. Opening Remarks Rabbi Guy Austrian Fort Tryon Jewish Center in New York Rachel Stern Director and CEO of the Fritz Ascher Society in New York Introduction and Moderation Elizabeth Berkowitz Digital Interpretation Manager of the Fritz Ascher Society in New York #everynamecounts is a crowd-sourced data entry initiative to return the names of Holocaust victims, their families, and details of their lives into the findable, keyword-searchable public record. Participants enter information about Nazi victims and family members from digitized [...]
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Through the Prism of Time:
John H. Less (1923-2011)
and His Visual Impressions of
Holocaust Refuge in Shanghai1014 - space for ideas 1014 5th Avenue, New York, New York, NY, United StatesPresentation by Steven Less, PhD Senior research fellow emeritus of the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law and son of the artist in Heidelberg (Germany) and Hannah-Lea Wasserfuhr PhD Candidate at the Center for Jewish Studies in Heidelberg, Heidelberg (Germany) Moderated by Rachel Stern Director and CEO of the Fritz Ascher Society in New York Born in Berlin, John Hans Less (1923 – 2011) fled to Shanghai in September 1940 as a 16-year-old together with his family to escape Nazi persecution. Largely dependent on relief organizations to survive, the Less family soon went through further disruptions when the Japanese occupied the city and later confined Jewish refugees to the Hongkew [...]
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Eva Hesse (1936–1970): Returning to the Source?
Featuring Eva’s sister Helen Charash and Ori Z. Soltes, PhD1014 - space for ideas 1014 5th Avenue, New York, New York, NY, United StatesEva Hesse arrived to the United States as a 3-year-old, was raised in a community largely of Holocaust survivors, and by her Twenties was a rising star on the New York art scene, contributing a unique voice to the shaping of post-Abstract Expressionist art. A key turning point in her innovative art was a return visit to Germany on an artist fellowship. How do we understand the work of this brilliant figure whose life suddenly ended, from brain cancer, at the age of 34? She was born into an observant Jewish family in Hamburg, in a Germany being devoured by the Nazis. She and her older sister Helen were sent to the Netherlands in 1938—when she was not [...]
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Rudi Lesser (1902–1988):
The Forgotten and Rediscovered Artist
Featuring Lillie Johnson Edwards, PhD and Ori Z. Soltes, PhD1014 - space for ideas 1014 5th Avenue, New York, New York, NY, United StatesRudi Lesser, a graphic artist already gaining significant recognition in his twenties in Germany, survived the Holocaust in Scandinavia. Interestingly, he immigrated to the US just after the war, in 1946, and although achieving success in New York--and as the founder of the graphic arts department at Howard University in Washington, DC--never felt at home here. He returned to a different Germany, in 1957, where he lived in relative poverty and obscurity--but apparent contentment--for the remaining thirty years of his long life. Lesser was one of over 10 Jewish refugee professors at Howard University and among the more than 60 at Black colleges, primarily in the South. Like other Jewish and white progressives and liberals of his era, [...]
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Remembering Friedel:
An Intimate View of Friedel Dzubas (1915-1994)
Featuring Karen Wilkin and Sandi Slone1014 - space for ideas 1014 5th Avenue, New York, New York, NY, United StatesIn a prolific career that spanned nearly five decades, Friedel Dzubas (b. Berlin, 1915–d. 1994, Newton, Mass.) articulated his mature style by the 1970s, creating a striking visual language from counterpoised abstract shapes of brushed color that he juxtaposed, overlapped, and opened to reveal his gessoed grounds. Yet, in prior years, Dzubas’s early work in Berlin were influenced by Expressionist artist of the two primary groups known as Die Brücke and Die Blaue Reiter. As Dzubas told curator Charles Millard in 1982, “Their unheard-of brashness of color; that was really brave. That was very exciting. Color’s an emotional thing. These people not only spoke directly; they felt deeply. There was passion.” His early pen and ink watercolors embed the [...]
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From Sea to Shining Sea:
Anni Albers in America (1899–1994)
Featuring Laura Muir and Ori Z. Soltes, PhD1014 - space for ideas 1014 5th Avenue, New York, New York, NY, United StatesAnni Albers (Berlin 1899 – 1994 Orange, CT) found her artistic identity at the renowned Bauhaus--but not where she expected to. The gender-restrictive conditions at the school pushed her to textile work. As the Nazis forced the Bauhaus closure, Anni and her already well-known husband, Joseph Albers, immigrated to the United States, where Joseph and later Anni were invited to teach at Black Mountain College in North Carolina. From there to New York and Yale University, while her husband gained renown as a teacher and practitioner of painting, Anni expanded her presence as an innovator in diverse textile media and styles, shaping a far-flung, influential career that resonates to this day. The United States presented Albers with new [...]
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The Cartoon Crusader Comes to America:
Arthur Szyk’s Battle against the Nazis in the New World
Featuring Steven Luckert and Irvin Ungar1014 - space for ideas 1014 5th Avenue, New York, New York, NY, United StatesPrior to World War II, Polish-born Arthur Szyk (Lodz 1894 – 1951 New Canaan, CT) was best known for his ornately detailed renderings of historical subjects and Jewish themes. But after the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, he gained the accolades of international audiences for his biting caricatures of Nazi leaders and his efforts to garner support for the Allied cause and Europe’s persecuted Jews. In 1940, Szyk took his mighty pen to the United States, where he quickly became a popular artistic sensation. His images graced the covers and inside pages of leading magazines, like Time, Colliers, Esquire, Look, The American Mercury, Coronet, and Liberty. Szyk’s cartoons regularly appeared in The New York Post, The Chicago [...]
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