oha 2015

Bund memorial sculpture, Jewish cemetery, Warsaw

Art: This larger Bund memorial drawing was begun in 1990; completed in 2015
Also see Bund memorial, a small ink drawing ca. 1990
Media: Ink, watercolor, with pieces of (Segan made) linocut & woodcut prints
Framed, 34 inches H x 32 ¼ inches W

I made the initial drawing in 1990. In 2015 I unshelved it and began more drawing on it.  During my summer studies in Poland in 1984 and again in 1985, I visited the Jewish cemetery in Warsaw. During the time of the Nazi occupation, the cemetery was outside of the walls that sealed the ghetto in as a concentration-death camp. 

~

I probably did the first stage 1990 drawing (ink, black & white, in the center) from a photo in the book Zydzi Polscy – Dziekje I kultura (Polish Jewry – Art and Culture), pub. Interpress, Warsaw, 1982, which I had bought a copy of in Poland.

~

On Nov. 6, 2015, I cut the shape of the drawing to its present contour shape. (It had been rectangular). Then he mounted it on acid-free illustration board; added woodcut print fragments (from a 1975 woodcut print, Tree with Setting Sun; and all but 2 of the last remaining drawing fragments of the 1984-85 artwork “Homage to Pawiak Prison, Warsaw, 1984.” That latter artwork was disassembled in 2010.

~

Some of the drawing fragments of the Pawiak Prison work were collaged onto the drawing section of the 2014 mosaic-drawing combo “Zlata Barshewsky of Bialystok” (artwork no. 62, Under the Wings Holocaust art series).

~

Other Pawiak drawing fragments were collaged onto the drawing of Chico Mendez, the murdered Amazonian rubber tapper, environmental activist and indigenous peoples defender (drawing 19 of the Sight-seeing with Dignity human rights art series).

~

The Polish writing at left, and Yiddish, at lower right, were inspired by a Bund poster from 1930. In English, the translation of that section of the poster’s text: BREAK THE FRONT.

The poster is titled “The Masses of Jewish Workers will Overcome the Front.”
Language: Polish, Yiddish / Year: Circa 1930 / Publisher: General Jewish Labour Bund in Poland

~
The Jewish Labor Bund in Poland was a pre-Holocaust socialist (anti-Communist; and akin to democratic socialism) political and social welfare organization.

~
A reminiscence by Abraham Brumberg (born 1926, Tel Aviv; died 2008, Chevy Chase, Maryland), who lived in Warsaw when he was a child, of his having attended a Bund rally when he was a child, was published in GRANTA 55, Autumn 1996 issue: Children.
His essay, on pages 242 to 256, was titled THE LAST JEWS IN WARSAW.

~
Obit on Brumberg in The Guardian, UK

~
A page on the Bund in the website of the YIVO Jewish research institute & library, NY