Raquel Partnoy
Argentinean Painters Pintores Argentinos
SURVIVING GENOCIDE - 4 - SOBREVIVIENTES DEL GENOCIDIO
Cuando comencé a leer testimonios de sobrevivientes, noté mucha similitud de procederes entre el genocidio cometido por la dictadura militar en Argentina y el cometido durante el Holocausto.
En ambos casos las víctimas eran sacadas de sus hogares o lugares de trabajo por la armada, policías con uniformes o fuerzas para-policiales. Ellos cometían sus secuestros durante la noche pero muchas veces también lo hacían de día. Castigando y gritando a las víctimas éstas eran llevadas a campos de concentración donde las sometían a todo tipo de tortura física y psíquica antes de ser asesinadas.
En el proceso de deshumanizar a los prisioneros, las fuerzas represoras no les permitían usar sus nombres. Ellos eran identificados sólo por números. Sus pertenencias eran destruidas o robadas por los secuestradores. De manera que eran despojados de todo, sus nombres, sus familias y sus pertenencias.
committed during the Holocaust and that perpetrated by the military dictatorship in Argentina.
After losing everything--their families, their names, and their possessions--the victims were taken to concentration camps where they endured all types of physical and mental torture before being murdered. In the process of dehumanizing prisoners, the military forces did not allow them to use their names. They were identified only by numbers.
Their family members remained for weeks, months, years, without knowing anything about their disappeared loved ones. Relatives entered a world of madness where it was impossible to get information from the authorities concerning the whereabouts of their son, their daughter, or their parent. Frequently, several members of the same family were abducted by the military forces; this left the ones who remained at home absolutely helpless,
The testimonies written by the survivors of the Holocaust told me about the horrors they both experienced and witnessed. Some were writers before being kidnaped by the Nazis, but many times they began writing after being liberated as a way to relieve themselves of the pain they had endured. Through their testimonial books, I was able to learn about the
atrocities the Nazis committed against the Jewish people, the Gypsies, the homosexuals, and the handicapped. I also saw photographs taken in the ghettos and the concentration camps. Long lines of naked women, many of them holding their babies, on their way to be executed. Mountains of corpses of men, women, and children before they were buried in a mass grave dug by the Germans and oftentimes by the victims. Gas chambers, pipes, ashes . . . all these images speak very loudly about that massacre.
“Rebirth” is a triptych related to the children who survived the Holocaust. In spite of such a tragedy I wanted to express hope; in spite of the Nazis’s desire to eliminate an entire race, those children would generate life.
“Rebirth: From The Ashes” shows two boys playing in the bare ground of a ghetto and wearing yellow stars. A girl is playing her fiddle for coins to get some bread, while another child is wrapped in rags to protect himself from the cold.
From the chimneys, instead of ashes birds are rising, as a symbol of the return of life.
“Rebirth: From The Black Flower” alludes to the spotlight in the main tower over the entrance to the unloading ramp at the Birkenau concentration camp. Under its light rolled the trains taking the Jews to their death. People used to call it The Black Flower of
Brzezinka. I painted a child who was able to survive by hiding in the forest. He stands between abutterfly’s wings, which was in the camps a symbol of lost freedom. Above the child, there is a girl dressed in a communion gown. Some Jewish parents saved their children by leaving them with Christian families.
In my canvas “Rebirth: “From The Broken Wires,” I tried to catch the bittersweet expression on the faces of young survivors, whose photographs were taken the day of the liberation by the Allied forces. Through the broken wires of that inferno, a promissory sun arises, while in the background there is a sad landscape, composed by a texture of brushes. Before murdering the victims in the concentration camps, the Nazis, applying systematic plunder, confiscated all their belongings. First they took money and other valuables and after that articles needed for daily living: clothes, shoes, glasses, and brushes, which were gathered separately and later sent to German settlers.
Raquel Partnoy
Rebirth: From the Broken Wires
oil on canvas
Los testimonios escritos por los sobrevivientes del Holocausto expresan los horrores vistos y padecidos durante esa cruel época. Algunos eran escritores o escritoras antes de ser capturados por los nazis, pero muchas veces las víctimas comenzaron a escribir al ser puestos en libertad como manera de aliviar la gran carga de dolor sufrida. A través de los libros de testimonios pude conocer las atrocidades cometidas por los nazis al pueblo judío, como así también a los gitanos, homosexuales y discapacitados. He visto las fotografías tomadas en los guetos y en los campos de concentración. Largas filas de mujeres desnudas, muchas sosteniendo sus pequeños bebes, esperando ser ejecutadas. Montañas de esqueletos de hombres, mujeres, niños antes de ser enterrados en fosas comunes por los alemanes, y a menudo por las mismas víctimas. Cámaras de gas, chimeneas, cenizas... todas estas imágenes hablan con fuerte voz sobre la masacr
"Renacer" es un tríptico relacionado con los niños que sobrevivieron el Holocausto. En vez de contar en estos trabajos tremendo drama humano, quise expresar esperanzas; a pesar del deseo de los nazis de eliminar toda una raza, estos niños sobrevivientes generaron
Rebirth: From the Ashes
oil on canvas
Rebirth: From the Black Flower
oil on canvas
