The exhibition Survive, in Order to Create, which opened at the Moshe Castel Museum of Art in Ma’ale Adumim on the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day, April 23, 2025, presents the works of 18 artists who, against all odds, survived the Holocaust and World War II.
It comprises 60 artworks – drawings and graphic works, most of which have not been previously displayed in the museum space. The exhibition is divided into two halls: The first, titled “The Destroyed World,” presents pieces that depict the world of East European Jewry before and during the Holocaust.
The second hall, titled “The Rebirth,” displays works that are full of life, joy, and love, alongside landscapes of the Land of Israel. The artworks have come to the museum from the artists and their families, as well as private collectors. Art lovers now have a unique opportunity to see them for the first time. The exhibition is accompanied by an extensive bilingual catalogue.
Israel is home to two esteemed institutions – Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, and the Ghetto Fighters’ House in Kibbutz Lohamei HaGeta’ot – that maintain collections of artworks depicting the experience of living and dying in the ghettos, the concentration camps, and even the death camps.
These works have miraculously survived, while many of their creators perished in the Holocaust. The dominant approach to exhibiting Holocaust artists emphasizes the presentation of the world of death in the museum halls. Not all of these artists died, and those who had survived did not always dedicate the rest of their lives to mentally reliving that inferno.
The majority of the survivors – artists and non-artists alike – went on to fall in love, raise children, and travel extensively in Israel and abroad.
The artists among them convey the whole spectrum of human emotion on their canvas. Many of them address the subject of the Holocaust in some way in their art; however, the treatment of the subject varies greatly from artist to artist.
The greatest innovation of the current exhibition is the fact that “The Rebirth” section features an entire hall of works by Holocaust survivor artists on subjects that are not necessarily connected to the Holocaust; rather, these pieces depict the artists’ personal recovery on the one hand, and our national rebirth on the other: landscapes, flowers, loving couples, the construction of the independent State of Israel, etc. – all the things that fill life with passion and meaning.
By contrast, “The Destroyed World” hall presents the experience of the destroyed Jewish life, driving home the message that, apart from the killing of millions of people, the Holocaust involved the destruction of a whole world of Jewish spirit and identity. This hall allows visitors to walk the streets of that vanished world, as filtered through the artists’ memories…
As mentioned, the exhibition includes works by 18 artists, some of whom are well known to the art-loving public, such as Naftali Bezem, Samuel Bak, Osias Hofstätter, and Zeev Kun.
Outstanding artists
Alongside these familiar names, the exhibition seeks to draw public attention to a group of outstanding artists who have not won the recognition they deserve, such as Adolf Adler, David Labkovski, Rafael and Rivka Chwoles, Moshe Fishzon, Jacob Vassover, Haim Aronstam, Arthur Ritov, Zoltan Perlmutter, and Simcha Nornberg.
They came to Israel from Poland, Ukraine, Hungary, Romania, and Lithuania, each of them bringing his or her own emotional baggage, which was sometimes unbearable. Nevertheless, each of them has enriched Israeli art with works that are brimming with love of life.
This exhibition has an important message for Israeli society after the Black Sabbath of October 7, 2023. The survivors of any tragedy, any disaster, any destruction – no matter how horrible – must overcome it and go on living.
The Holocaust survivor artists whose works are now exhibited at the Castel Museum prove that it is quite possible. This, then, is the message of the exhibition, a message of revival and hope for the future.■
