Rachel Stern2022-06-22T15:01:42-04:00June 1st, 2022|Events, Lectures, Past Events|
Join us as the film's producer, Julia Rosenberg, speaks with Ori Z Soltes from Georgetown University in Washington DC about her motivation, thoughts and decisions that went into the creation of her newly released animated film "Charlotte." Moderated by Rachel Stern, Executive Director of the Fritz Ascher Society. Image above: Film poster "Charlotte" "Charlotte" is an animated drama that tells the true story of Charlotte Salomon (1917-1943), a young German-Jewish painter who comes of age in Berlin on the eve of the Second World War. Fiercely imaginative and deeply gifted, she dreams of becoming an artist. Her first love applauds her talent, which emboldens her resolve. But [...]
Rachel Stern2022-12-07T18:53:36-05:00May 25th, 2022|Events, Lectures, Past Events|
Image above: Samuel Bak, Warsaw Excavation, 2007. Oil on canvas, 16 x 20 in. Image Courtesy Pucker Gallery © Samuel Bak Samuel Bak was 6 years old when the Nazis began ending his childhood, as the war that they engendered would soon extend to his native Vilnius. The number “6” became an important element in his art, since it is also the number of the Commandment with which God enjoins us not to commit murder, for which the Holocaust represented such a profound abrogation. His father smuggled him out of the ghetto in the sack that he was still permitted to use to gather firewood—and was subsequently murdered by the regime. By then Bak himself had already [...]
Rachel Stern2022-08-03T14:52:23-04:00May 19th, 2022|Events, Lectures, Past Events|
When Ludwig and Else Meidner met in 1925, he was already an established artist well-known for his so-called Apocalyptic Landscapes. Although Else started as Ludwig’s student, she developed a distinct independent style and he always praised her art as more refined than his own “coarse” works. As Else Meidner slowly gained recognition in Berlin art circles, her career was abruptly cut short by the Nazi-regime in 1933. She moved to Cologne with her husband in 1935; and they emigrated to England in 1939 only a few weeks before the war started. In London both lived largely unnoticed by the English art scene. But while Ludwig frustratedly returned to Germany, she decided to stay in England. Their complicated relationship developed from [...]
Rachel Stern2022-04-28T09:33:15-04:00April 26th, 2022|Newsletter|
Dear Friends, Thursday is Yom HaShoah - Holocaust Memorial Day. In January, we invited you to actively commemorate victims of National Socialism by contributing to the Arolsen Archive’s digital memorial #EVERYNAMECOUNTS. I know that some of you found the project so meaningful that you are still donating your time to it. Right now, you can choose to enter data of documents from Buchenwald, Flossenbürg or Dachau: PARTICIPATE HERE This Thursday, I invite all to donate time to help build this important digital memorial. On our website you find further information about the project and our partnership with the Arolsen Archive: https://fritzaschersociety.org/digifas/everynamecounts/ And please share your experience with us! In May, we turn to the experience of [...]
Rachel Stern2022-05-19T05:21:58-04:00April 25th, 2022|Events, Lectures, Past Events|
Between 1933 and 1945, the National Socialist regime controlled artistic work in Germany. Particularly artists who were persecuted based on their religion, race, or political views fled into exile due to threats from the government. But what happened to the artists who remained in the country? Isolation, lack of an audience, and limited exchange impacted the creativity of the individuals who were deprived of a basis for work and life under National Socialism. Their situation is often described in a generalized way as “ostracism” or “inner emigration.” In light of the multilayered and divergent personal circumstances, however, these terms fall short of the mark. Image above: Hans Grundig, Clash of the Bears and Wolves, 1938, Oil on plywood, 90,5 [...]
Rachel Stern2022-05-04T15:26:49-04:00April 11th, 2022|Events, Lectures, Past Events|
On October 26, 1933, Hans Uhlmann was arrested by the Gestapo on the street. In the notorious Columbia-Haus, he was interrogated for several weeks and then found guilty by the court of appeal of “preparations for a traitorous enterprise.” He spent a year and a half in prison—first in Moabit and then in Tegel Prison. The artist recorded his experiences of those years in diaries. In parallel with these diaries, he produced four books of sketches. In his diary entries Uhlmann describes his arrest as well as scenes from daily life in confinement but above all his artistic concerns and projects: “I think often of freedom; of my first works; I occupy myself here by imagining these figures” (May [...]
Rachel Stern2022-09-07T15:52:51-04:00March 28th, 2022|Events, Lectures, Past Events|
Maurice Blik has lived in England since being liberated from Bergen Belsen concentration camp, where he was taken as a small child from his birthplace, Amsterdam. The ability to come to terms with this experience and to confront the face of humanity that he has witnessed, stayed silent in his life for some 40 years. It finally found a voice in the passionate sculptures which began to emerge in the late 1970s when he created a series of horses’ heads. These noble and benevolent creatures posses an energy and a life force that seem just barely harnessed long enough to take their shape in the clay itself. Later he progressed to more figurative work in which the irrepressible joy [...]
Rachel Stern2022-03-28T05:26:02-04:00March 28th, 2022|Newsletter|
Dear Friends, When the artist Ben-Zion was born in 1897, his hometown Starokostiantyniv belonged to the Russian Empire. By the time he left for the United States, it belonged to the Ukraine/Poland. Today it again belongs to the Ukraine, and is brutally attacked and destroyed by the Russian army. As the casualties are mounting, we hope for peace, democracy and independence in the Ukraine. Join us on Wednesday, April 6 for a ZOOM LECTURE in our monthly series "Flight or Fight. stories of artists under repression” about the painter, printmaker, sculptor, educator, and poet: Wednesday, April 6, 12:00pm “Ben-Zion (1897-1987): Man of Many Faces” Featuring Tabita Shalem and Ori Z Soltes ) ZOOM EVENT REGISTRATION Ben-Zion, Prophet [...]
Rachel Stern2022-03-28T04:56:27-04:00March 1st, 2022|Newsletter|
Dear Friends, Join us TOMORROW for a ZOOM LECTURE in our monthly series "Flight or Fight. stories of artists under repression" about a recently re-discovered artist: Wednesday, March 2, 12:00pm EST: Jussuf Prince of Thebes – Re-constructing the life and work of a forgotten talent from Safed Featuring Dorothea Schöne, Berlin (Germany) ZOOM EVENT REGISTRATION Jussuf Abbo, Head of a Black Man, ca. 1939, plaster, painted, H: 28 cm. Estate of Jussuf Abbo, Brighton/UK, photo: Gunter Lepkowski Born in Safed, in the province of Beirut of the Ottoman Empire, the sculptor Joseph M. Abbo (1888–1953) – who later renamed himself Jussuf Abbo – came to Berlin in 1911 and began studying at the Royal Academy of [...]
Rachel Stern2022-03-25T18:43:40-04:00February 15th, 2022|Newsletter|
Dear Friends, Our new online exhibition is ready to be launched, and we want to celebrate with you, together with our new partner, the Sheen Center! Please join us: Sunday, February 27, 3:00-4:30pm “Identity and Migration: Artists and Composers who Fled Persecution” The Sheen Center for Thought & Culture, New York MORE INFO AND TICKET LINK During the first half of the 20th century, with the rise of Nazism and other fascist movements across most of Europe, the numbers of people migrating were second only to today. Many refugees made the United States their destination. During this event, expert panelists discuss the degree of receptivity of America to incoming refugees, as well as [...]
Rachel Stern2022-06-07T11:49:44-04:00February 13th, 2022|Events, Lectures, Past Events|
Charlotte Salomon (1917-1943), was a hugely talented Berlin-born artist who was murdered at Auschwitz, four months pregnant, at the age of twenty-six. Her main body of work, a sequence of nearly 800 gouache images entitled Leben? oder Theater? (Life? or Theatre?), and created while seeking refuge in the South of France, is an ambitious fictive autobiography which deploys both images and text, and a wide range of musical, literary and cinematic references. The narrative, informed by Salomon's experiences as a cultured, and assimilated German Jewish woman, depicts a life lived in the shadow of Nazi persecution and a family history of suicide, but also reveals moments of intense happiness and hope. Challenging the artistic conventions of Salomon’s time, it remains [...]
Rachel Stern2022-03-25T17:53:06-04:00January 25th, 2022|Newsletter|
Dear Friends, For this Holocaust Remembrance Day, we invite you to participate in building the largest digital memorial to the victims of National Socialism. In partnership with the Arolsen Archives and Yad Vashem, our event kicks off a 48 hour data entry challenge, during which we ask the global community to get together to enter data from 20,000 documents of the Central Location Index, an umbrella organization based in New York that coordinated the search for missing relatives. This collection, which is now in Yad Vashem, has never been indexed before. Wednesday, January 26, 12:00pm EST: International Holocaust Remembrance Day #EVERYNAMECOUNTS Challenge in Partnership with Arolsen Archives and Yad Vashem FIND OUT MORE AND [...]
