The Holocaust Through Art and Pictures The Artwork

The Holocaust Through Art and Pictures

The Artwork of David Olere • David Olère was born in Warsaw, Poland, on January 19, 1902. From March 2, 1943, to January 19, 1945. • David Olère was interned at Auschwitz. The horrors he witnessed there are incomprehensible to anyone who did not personally experience the Holocaust. • No photographs were taken at Auschwitz of what went on in the gas chambers and crematoria. Only the memories of Olère, reproduced as art in his drawings and paintings, give an account of the horrible reality.

He saw the victims of the gas chamber undress in the cloakroom, paralyzed with fear and the knowledge of certain death. He saw the incineration of countless bodies. He saw the so-called medical experiments performed on the weak and the sick and the old. He saw the SS rape and torture young Jewish girls. He saw prisoners suffer terrible cruelties while living under the most deplorable of conditions. And on a regular basis, he saw disease, despair, and death. David Olère was one of the few laborers to penetrate the dark interiors of the crematoria and the gas chambers of Auschwitz and to emerge alive.

An aerial reconnaissance photograph of the Auschwitz concentration camp showing the Auschwitz II (Birkenau) camp. (September 13, 1944)

A large pile of prayer shawls (tallesim, tallitot), that were confiscated from arriving prisoners, are stored in one of the warehouses in Auschwitz. (After January 27, 1945)

Photograph taken immediately after the departure of the Germans from Auschwitz-Birkenau. Sacks of human hair packed for dispatch to Germany. The women had their hair cut prior to gassing. In Auschwitz warehouses 7, 000 kilos of human hair was found at liberation. (January 1945)

Bales of the hair of female prisoners found in the warehouses of Auschwitz at the liberation. (After January 1945)