UTW 60

Orthodox Jewish prisoner under barbed wire, Olkusz, Poland, 1940

Art: 2012
Size: 69 inches H x 48 W.

The drawing is ink, gouache, colored pencil.
The mosaic is made from hand made tiles, mainly from broken plates, saucers, cups, etc.
A rowboat oar piece and metal candle sticks are part of the frame and base.
Also see below re barbed wire and metal bits from British Army WWII years constructed anti-tank fortifications.

The drawing paper was prepared in mid-Dec 2010 on a sheet of 60 x 40 inch paper. I began with pencil on Dec 25th, 2010; the drawing was completed the following month.  I constructed the frame for the mosaic in July 2011. I began the mosaic work August 1, 2011; it was completed in Dec. 2011.
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Exhibit installation includes the placement of a piece of driftwood I had carried home from Myrtle Edwards Park, Seattle waterfront, and which is placed in front of the work. The driftwood has 2 metal rods protruding up in the same direction as the victim hands are seen in the drawing.

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A diagonal metal rod seen on the left side of the mosaic, upper half, was picked up by the artist on a beach walk with British artist David Atherton, in Newburgh, Scotland, 2010. Also seen in the mosaic, at right: A glass ash tray,which Segan bought at a Salvation Army store in Seattle. Inside the ash tray: bits of metal barbed wire, also picked up on the beach walk. Along the Newburgh beach there are various concrete or cement, and metal ruins from British Army constructed anti-Nazi, anti-tank fortifications. Some are sometimes hidden under the shifting sands.

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Pieces of these British army fortifications; metal and some bricks, from another beach walk in Newburgh a few years later, were used in UTW 63, the mosaic-drawing combo portraying the murdered French priest and school head, Pére Jacques of France.

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The source photo (unattributed in the book) appears on page 63, The Pictorial History of the Holocaust, pub. by Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, 1990. Later I wrote the Yad Vashem library asking for info about the photo; I saved this excerpt from the reply letter:

"...We assume that it was taken in the Polish town Olkusz in July 1940 during the so-called “Bloody Wednesday”. You can find more about this event and compare the photo with photos of this event here.

Unfortunately we cannot confirm this thesis due to lack of written proof or confirmation."

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Thus the Jewish community of the town of Olkusz was liquidated that day. In this usage, the word liquidated means that Jewish residents were shot to death; albeit some may have been sent to one of the mass murder-extermination-death camps (e.g. Auschwitz, Sobibor, Treblinka, Majdanek, Belzec, et al) or to a concentration-death camp.

The word liquidation has an ongoing presence, and not for the good. During the Russian military suppression of Chechnya, I recall reading news articles in which Tass, the Russian news agency descended from the Communist era, was quoted using the term liquidation in their dispatches about Chechnyan rebels. A quote from a Feb. 20, 1996 NY Times article: “ A senior Russian commander, Anatoly Kvashnin, declared that the rebels would be "liquidated" by the end of the day, the Itar-Tass news agency reported.”

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The Israeli government uses the word liquidate in reference to military operations against Palestinian terrorists. A quote from a July 1, 2001 article in the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz: “The IDF will from now on be given a broader license to liquidate Palestinian terrorists, the kitchen cabinet decided yesterday.”

I find it peculiar and strange that Israel would use a word that was used by the Nazis during their mass murder operations against European Jewry.

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Onto the photo: When I first glanced at the photo it mesmerized me. It still does, years later.  The man was lying on his back, outdoors, face up, and wearing the garb of an Orthodox, devout Jewish man, with a  prayer shawl. He is lying under two strands of barbed wire. He is wearing tefillin around his left arm (seen on viewers right in the photo), which is worn by Orthodox Jewish men as part of prayer ritual.

His arms and hands are in the air. The feet of people seen in the background are likely that of other prisoners who had already been shot to death.   May his memory be blessed. He is among those who  had names but whose names are not known to us now. 

That fate is similar to the millions who have died in more recent genocides, whose names are also not known. Of the Congo, the International Rescue Committee has estimated five million, four hundred thousand people died from war in the Congo between 1998 and 2007.

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Some select video footage:
2 Protestant pastors view Orthodox Jewish prisoner, Holocaust mosaic-drawing art (12 min., 20 sec)

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A 1 min., 59 sec. video of the mosaic in-progress tile-making, titled:
Holocaust mosaic art: Orthodox Jewish prisoner, prayer shawl, 2011