Once upon a time

Jewish children drawings in Germany of world war two

Tuesday, 14.11.17, 10:00

Sunday, 20.05.18

Opening hours: Sunday to Wednesday, 10:00 - 14:00, Friday, 13: 00-10: 00, Saturday 10: 00-14: 00.

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Once upon a time:

Art of Jewish Children in Germany on the Eve of World War II

The exhibition is a gift of Düsseldorf, Haifa’s sister city, to mark the 70th anniversary of Israel’s Independence

 

At the heart of the present exhibition are fifty paintings by Jewish children in Germany on the eve of the Second World War. The pictures were selected from a unique collection of over 1,800 items, part of the estate of artist and teacher Julo Levin (born 1901, perished in Auschwitz, 1943). His close friends worked hard to save Levin’s works and preserve his legacy, and donated the collection to the Stadtmuseum of Düsseldorf.

Levin taught art at the Jewish school of Düsseldorf (1936–1938), and later in Berlin (1938–1941). Fascinated by his pupils’ creativity, he collected the best of their pictures and protected them as he would a child.

With the Nazis’ rise to power, and the subsequent surge of harassment and persecution, most Jewish children in Germany transferred to their community’s private schools. Increased provocation and social ostracism, and the exclusion of Jewish children from regular public schools, made it urgent for the Jewish community to create its own separate institutions.     

The school in Düsseldorf aimed to strengthen the children’s spirit, to encourage them to express themselves, to draw them close to their Judaism, to train them for work and independent living – and prepare them for emigration. The art classes were designed to serve these goals; and many of the children’s pictures dealt with journeys and migration, Biblical stories and Jewish holidays, family life and the life of the community. Many others reflected close and distant environments: city life and workmen, portraits, subjects from Western literature, foreign peoples and faraway cultures.    

The pictures reflect the innocence and hope of childhood, but not without expressions of fear. Art gave the children space to dream and be free, a chance to ‘unload’ their anxieties and give expression to their inner world. The high standard of the artwork is a tribute to Levin, who found a way to touch his pupils’ souls. And the paintings themselves tell of the inner freedom that teachers and pupils alike were able to find, despite the growing persecution. In the end, most of them perished in the Holocaust.

Exhibited alongside the pictures are photographs of Düsseldorf before the war. They provide a window on the urban environment in which the children grew up, the public spaces they explored and played in, snapshots of people and their style of dress, views of city buildings, squares and streets, and the inevitable signs of the Nazi regime. 

The exhibition provides ‘creativity corners’ for young visitors to do art, play, and learn about the lives and childhood of children their age in Germany on the eve of the war.

We hope that the art of these children, so universal in character, will encourage a sense of identification and closeness, and offer an exceptional way of imagining the unimaginable human price of the “Shoah,” the Holocaust. 

 

Curators of the exhibition:

Bernd Kreuter, Stadtmuseum, Düsseldorf

Adi Selach, Haifa Museums

 

 

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