Israel is the dream of 2000 years, the beautiful land and Jerusalem.
There we will plow, we will plant in tears. There we will reap, we will
reap in joy.1
These words are the opening of a poem titled Palestina, originally written in Hebrew by an unknown Greek Jew who did not survive imprisonment in the concentration camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau. The poem
appears as part of a collection of poetry written by prisoners, most of
whom were murdered in the Holocaust, that is mounted on the walls
of the Testimony House Museum in Israel. The author of this poem
attempted to transcend his or her surroundings by dreaming of both a
personal redemption, as well as one for the Jewish people as a whole.
This Essay explores how the works of artistic enterprise, such as this
poem, created by Jewish prisoners during the Holocaust, can provide
widespread education while simultaneously serving as a much-needed
mechanism for promoting Jewish unity and thwarting the escalating
antisemitism plaguing our current society. Works of art in general are
an important source of education because they have a special communicative power that can stimulate dialogue between the work’s creator
and its viewer. But ghetto art, defined broadly as visual art, literature,
music, theater, and other genres of creative endeavors, has an unparalleled communicative power given the unique circumstances under
which it was created.
Recently, several Israeli legal scholars have written about the problematic aspects of copyright law as applied to ghetto art produced by Jews
imprisoned in the concentration camps and ghettos during World War
II.2 These scholars focus largely on how the current application of copyright law cripples the public’s ability to view these works because they
are held captive in inappropriate institutions. They also discuss the inadequate legal protections for the authors’ original messages and meanings
of these works. Their arguments are grounded in recognition of the unique
circumstances under which these works have been created, resulting
in what two authors have called the most “inhuman copyright scene.”3
My focus here is not on the specific applications of copyright law
other scholars have mined, but instead on why ghetto art is a critical
component of Holocaust education that can also mobilize communities
and be utilized as an effective tool as part of a larger program for combatting antisemitism. All works of authorship tell a story about not just
the author of the work, but also about the author’s surrounding environment that played an integral part in a particular work’s creation. Ghetto
art represents a singular model of storytelling because it is a response to
a distinct, unparalleled historical event—the systematic targeting and
attempted extermination of the Jewish people and their entire culture.