Who Will Draw Our History?
Hadassah/Brandeis Institute
Friday, March 20 at 11 am
Hadassah/Brandeis Institute
Friday, March 20 at 11 am
Join us on Friday, March 20 at 11 am for a private docent-guided tour of the exhibit Who Will Draw Our History? at the Kniznick Gallery in the Hadassah/Brandeis Institute. The exhibit features graphic narratives of 10 women who survived their times in German and Polish concentration camps.
HBI is just down the street from BOLLI. We will have lunch together at the 51 Sawyer Road cafe across the street from HBI after the tour. No charge for this tour but you must register with Marsha Semuels mhsemuels@gmail.com. We have participated in several events sponsored by HBI and they have all been excellent. Read below to learn more.
Between 1944 and 1949, scores of survivors created graphic narratives of their personal and collective experiences under Nazi persecution. Who Will Draw Our History? introduces ten Jewish women who survived Majdanek, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Ravensbrück, and outside the Warsaw ghetto under “Aryan” papers and then, days after their liberation, began recording their memories in images and words. Lacking photographs of what they witnessed and endured, they turned to visual storytelling to represent Jewish suffering during the Holocaust, particularly as it affected women.
This exhibition showcases their little-known “books of memories”: wordless novels, handmade albums, pictorial diaries, illustrated books and portfolios. Culled from private collections and museum archives around the world, these works contribute vital evidentiary material about the Holocaust, but they also reveal how the “return to life” was experienced and represented. In so doing, they radically transform how we understand the role and reach of art in early survivor publications, exhibitions, and community building.
Arriving at a crucial moment, as we near an age “after testimony,” Who Will Draw Our History? brings together these works of early Holocaust memory for the first time, placing them within their historical and cultural context.