Auschwitz Poster by Israeli Artist and Poet Joseph Bau, a Schindler Survivor

Authors

Object ID

2012.1.576

Object Name

Poster

Files

Content Warning

The Bulmash Family Holocaust Collection consists of images, documents, and artifacts related to the Holocaust. The collection contains materials that depict a number of topics that may be difficult for viewers to engage with, including: antisemitic descriptions, caricatures, and representation of Jewish people; Nazi imagery and ideology; descriptions and images of German ghettos; graphic images of the violence of the Holocaust; and the creation of the State of Israel. For more information, see our policy page.

Description

Colorful poster with Auschwitz written in the middle in red. Beneath is a line of prisoners in striped guard with soldiers in green with arm bands order them. No one has faces. A few dead bodies lay strewn on the yellow ground. Above the title is a list of black outlines coming out of smoke.

Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash:

This poster was created by Holocaust survivor Joseph Bau, who was one of the Jews saved from the fate depicted here by being an “Oskar Schindler Jew,” placed on Schindler’s list of “essential” Jews required to work in his factories. The poster depicts an endless line of Jews - guarded and urged on by screaming, faceless Nazi guards with whips and guns - being fed into the maws of a crematorium. The black smoke rising from the chimney takes the form of the victims themselves who seem bound heavenward. Bau has fused the Holocaust - the murder of six million Jews - with the idea of "Aliyah" - going up or arising toward Jerusalem, enacted whenever Jews are called to the Torah or return to their homeland. Bau himself had been imprisoned in the Krakow Ghetto and the notorious Plaszow concentration camp. He was saved by Schindler who was himself a Nazi. Bau was an artist of many talents who appeared as himself at the end of Spielberg's "Schindler's List," placing a stone - an act of remembrance - on Schindler's grave in Israel.

Dimensions

27 x 18"

Keywords

Auschwitz, Armband, Death, Joseph Bau

Subcollection

Concentration

Recommended Citation

"Auschwitz Poster by Israeli Artist and Poet Joseph Bau, a Schindler Survivor" (2022). Bulmash Family Holocaust Collection. 2012.1.576.
https://digital.kenyon.edu/bulmash/1836