Paintings, Watercolors and Drawings from the 1970s to the 1990s

The almost thirty years that Jan Komski spent without painting and drawing scenes of the concentration camps had a visible impact on his artistic style, making his brushstrokes and drawing lines and more detailed. It is important to bear in mind that also he did not depict such scenes for many years, he was still engaged with the graphic arts during the years he worked for The Washington Post. Unfortunately, while conducting the present study, it was not possible to gain access to the images he created for the newspaper. Further research still needs to be done on this matter to comprehend to what extent Komski’s experience with the graphic arts influenced the drawings, prints, watercolors and paintings he created after 1970.

Nevertheless, comparing the Za Drutami’s illustrations with those created decades later, differences in the way of depicting the scenes are evident. An example is the 1945 drawing Ewakuacja/Evacuation (fig. 32), described above, and Barbershop (fig. 36), a pen-and-ink drawing Komski created after 1970. Barbershop illustrates a group of prisoners inside the horse barracks in Birkenau, shaving their heads and faces. On the right side of the drawing, two men are standing next to each other: one of them holds a razor blade in his hand and is shaving another prisoner’s beard. His identification number is 9234, and he is wearing a single triangular badge on his uniform. Even though it is not possible to see the color of the triangle, one might guess it corresponds to a non-Jewish Polish political prisoner. The register of prisoners in Auschwitz indicates that the number 9234 belonged to a Polish prisoner named Tadeusz Lekki, who was a professional barber.¹¹⁵ On the left side of the image, other prisoners are maintaining their fellow prisoners’ look by shaving their heads and faces, while in the background, others observe from the crowded bunk beds.

Compared with Ewakuacja/Evacuation, one can find three main differences between

114 The next chapter will offer a deeper comparison between Komski’s drawings from 1945 and prints by Goya and Callot.

115 According to the database of prisoners of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, Tadeusz Lekki was born on August 1, 1920 in the Polish town of Brzeźnica. He joined the KL Auschwitz on January 10, 1941, and was murdered there on September 6, 1042. See “Auschwitz prisoners,” at http://auschwitz.org/en/museum/auschwitz-prisoners/ (accessed April 23, 2015).

the drawings. Even though Komski’s use of the hatching and cross-hatching technique is still evident, the lines in Barbershop are less hurried and chaotic, and delineate in a more precise way the bodies of the prisoners and the space.

Second, in Barbershop and other drawings created around the same time, Komski includes specific details about the identities of the prisoners. In the Za Drutami works, the artists did not draw numbers, triangles or other details to provide clues about the identity of those depicted, with the exception of one drawing:

Komski’s self-portrait Through Work to Freedom (fig. 1). A third difference is that all drawings from 1945 present scenes of starvation, exploitation, torture and murder, and most show the SS perpetrators. In Barbershop and other works created after 1970s, Komski depicts scenes dealing with the daily life of the prisoners in the camp in which no SS men or capos were portrayed.

The different materials and techniques Komski used from 1945 onwards had a visible impact on the details of his works. The drawings from 1945 do not give many clues about the possible identity of the prisoners, while in later drawings, we can see some hints about identify, as in the Barbershop. The oils and watercolors, however, are more detailed and reveal much more about the possible identity of the characters.

The color of the triangular badges is one of the main characteristics used to identify people Komski depicted: The triangles in red, yellow, green and sometimes black give important information about them. The triangular red badges, sometimes with a

“P” in the center meaning “Pole,” are present in almost all his paintings and watercolors: Red was the distinctive color for political prisoners, who in the case of Auschwitz were mostly Poles.¹¹⁶ In Komski’s works, one can also see the yellow triangle used to identify the Jewish prisoners, often placed on the top of a red triangle forming a six-point star that distinguished the Jewish political prisoners.

In addition to the triangular badges, Komski depicted in the paintings and watercolors the numbers of some of the prisoners, thus giving more precise information about them. The watercolor Kapo I podopieczni/Kapo and His Protégés (fig. 37), finished between 1970 and 1980, incorporates both triangular badges and numbers. In this work, Komski depicts a group of prisoners standing next to a capo, but it is not clear whether they are going to work or coming back to the camp. Most of

116 “System of triangles,” Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum at

http://auschwitz.org/en/history/prisoner-classification/system-of-triangles/ (accessed April 25, 2015).

See as well “Classification System in Nazi Concentration Camps,” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum at https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005378 (accessed April 25, 2015).

the prisoners are shown in the traditional blue and white striped uniforms, holding shovels and other work tools. One shirtless prisoner stands out in the image by his gaunt appearance; in addition, he displays a number drawn on his chest. In the background are visible the roofs of the buildings of Auschwitz I, a watchtower, and an electric barbed wire fence in front of a sign in German and Polish with the warning

“Halt/Stój.” The composition of the watercolor is not symmetrical. The prisoners stand toward the left, and the bodies and faces of those depicted in the corner of the left side are cut out, creating a fragmented scene. Some prisoners are looking out of the picture, as if they were looking at the viewers, but others are turning their gaze slightly to the left side and stare at something we cannot see.

The prisoner standing at the right side of the picture is distinguished from the others by his clothes and the yellow label on his left arm that reads “Capo,” a tag indicating he was a prisoner in charge of supervising forced labor. The inverted green triangle on his chest, often assigned to Germans, suggest he was a professional criminal.¹¹⁷ The number 25 under the green triangle tells us that he was part of the first thirty German criminal prisoners in Auschwitz.¹¹⁸ The blushing gaze and robust body shape of the capo suggest a healthy condition and contrast with the pale and skinny prisoners. He sports a frowned and rather tough facial expression, in contrast to the other prisoners, who hint at possible emotional flattening. In the watercolor, Komski also depicts the numbers of four inmates. Those with numbers 20345 and 83326 wearing yellow and red triangular badges are Jewish political prisoners; the Polish Catholic political prisoner is identified by a single red triangle and the number 637, that might be partially covered by the wooden handle of the shovel; and the half-naked prisoner has the number 75834 painted on his chest.

Komski made a second version of this work around the same period, although it is not possible to determine if it was made before or after Kapo I podopieczni/Kapo and His Protégés. In A Capo and his Troops (fig. 38), Komski depicts a variation of the same scene of a Capo standing with a group of prisoners. Comparing both watercolors the first difference one can note is the background. In Kapo and His Protégés, the inmates stand somewhere inside the camp, whereas in A Capo and His Troops, they are standing at the entrance of the camp. In the background, the “Arbeit

117 See “System of triangles” (accessed April 25, 2015).

118 The first thirty numbers were asigned to German criminals who arrived from KL Sachsenhausen of May 20, 1940. See “Prisoner numbers,” Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum at

http://auschwitz.org/en/museum/auschwitz-prisoners/prisoner-numbers (accessed April 26, 2015).

Macht Frei” sign can be seen, and the open doors of the camp seem to indicate the group is coming back after working. Even though Komski’s asymmetrical and fragmented composition is similar, the way he arranged the prisoners on the left side of the work varies slightly. When looking in detail at the prisoners another difference can be spotted: Komski changes the numbers that identify the Jewish political prisoner to 18443 and the partially fragmented [...] 834 and the half naked inmate’s number to 19386. The numbers of the capo and the Polish political prisoner remain the same. The only additional change the artist introduces is a “P” in the center of the red triangular badge of the Polish political prisoner.

After comparing these two watercolors, one can identify three important characteristics about Komski’s work after the 1970s. On the one hand, Komski’s scenes of the camp are likely to have been influenced by his own experience. But even though his condition as a Polish Catholic political prisoner is highlighted in most of his works, he also emphasizes the suffering of Jewish prisoners. He depicts circumstances that Jewish and Polish political prisoners endured together in the concentration camps, where SS officers and capos often did not made distinctions in how they treated them. ¹¹⁹

On the other hand, Komski’s assigning of numbers to the prisoners is ambiguous. Comparing the two watercolors, one notices that the only inmates who keep the same numbers in both works are the Polish political prisoner and the capo.

Did the artist assign random numbers to the rest of the characters? Do the numbers of the capo and the Polish prisoner correspond to inmates he knew personally and shared captivity with? Keeping in mind that in drawings such as Barbershop the artist represents an accurate number of a real Polish barber who lived and died in Auschwitz, one might inquire to what extent Komski’s works offer clues about the

119 During an interview in 1998 Jan Komski manifested his intentions of including both Jewish and Polish political prisoners as victims in his works exhibited at the Houston Holocaust Museum: “I am of course in favor of having it [the 1998 exhibition of his paintings] travel around, because my goal is not just the showing of pictures. I hope that this exhibit will prove helpful in forging closer ties between Polish Catholics and American Jews. My paintings show the community of suffering which Catholics and Jews shared in Auschwitz. As you know, Polish-Jewish relations could be better. (…) I live in Virginia and I often go to the Holocaust Museum in Washington. Over there, hardly anything is said about Poles as victims. The standard statement is that the victims of the Holocaust were Jews and

‘others.’ Yet it is a fact of history that Poland lost six million citizens, three million of them Christians.

How can one bypass such a large number of victims I cannot understand it. But recently, I noted a tendency to reverse that neglect. (…) Poles are being reintroduced as victims of the Holocaust, and it has become acceptable to speak of Poles as victims of World War II. I think that this exhibit may be helpful in reinforcing this tendency.” See “The Sarmatian Review interviews Jan Mieczysław Komski,”

p. 532.

identity of “real” persons he depicted. This ambiguity is reinforced by the impossibility of knowing the identity of all who once were prisoners of the camp, given the partial destruction at the end of the war of the registers of prisoners.¹²⁰

A third characteristic of Komski’s works is the existence of two or more versions of the same scene, which is persistent in his work. The creation of repeated variations of the same event is one of the most important characteristics of Komski’s work, as will be seen in the next chapter. For now, perhaps it is enough to add that the repetition might be interpreted as part of Komski’s artistic consciousness to compose and recompose his work, as well as an indication of the repeating memories and flashbacks in the artist’s mind.

Jan Komski executed a great variety of motifs on the subject of the concentration camps: roll calls, starvation, living conditions inside the barracks, daily life scenes, mistreatments of the capos, threatening working conditions, punishments, tortures and murders. An example of such scenes is the canvas Po robocie-defilada/After Work-Parade (fig. 39), painted between 1970 and 1980. The painting represents the ceremony that takes place after a working day in Auschwitz. In the foreground, two prisoners are being punished by being forced to squat while holding a brick on each hand. The hats full of potatoes in front of their feet suggest they have stolen them. Behind them is the band of musician prisoners who are playing instruments such as violins and trumpets, while the director of the orchestra conducts them. All the musicians are wearing the blue and white striped uniform except for the prisoner playing violin at the left side, who is wearing the coat of the uniform of a Soviet POW marked with a red cross on his back.¹²¹ The band plays while a group of prisoners carrying shovels on their left shoulders is entering through the gate where we can read the “Arbeit Macht Frei” sign. At the right side, an SS officer supervises

120 “About the available data,” Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum at http://auschwitz.org/en/museum/about-the-available-data/ (accessed April 27, 2015).

While conducting the present research was not possible to find the identity of the prisoners assigned with the numbers in both watercolors. However, further research in the archives of Auschwitz might provide more details about it.

121 “In the meantime, practice at Auschwitz “ran ahead of such directives: as early as in the spring of 1942, the uniforms left behind by Soviet POWs who had been liquidated were passed out to new arrivals” (Iwaszko2000: 58). Greek Jews, men and women alike, who arrived in Auschwitz from Thessaloniki during 1943, were among those dressed in Russian military clothing (Cunio-Amarilio/Nar 2002). These Russian uniforms were marked on the trousers and jackets with the capital letters S and U, standing for Soviet Union (Sowjetunion) in German. The back of these jackets bore red crosses painted on them with acetone paint (oil paint).” See Sofia Pantouvaki, “Typology and Symbolism in Prisoners’

Concentration Camp Clothing during World War II,” Conference paper, Endyesthai (To Dress).

Historical, Mociological and Methodological Approaches Conference Proceedings, Athens, April 9, 2010, pp. 80-87, p. 83.

the procession of tired prisoners and the moment in which two other inmates carry the dead body of a fellow who possibly died while working that day.

In Po robocie-defilada/After Work-Parade, Komski represents different aspects of life in the camp: the artistic activities represented by the musicians, the punishments, the military order imposed by the SS officers and the daily death of the inmates working in physically extenuating activities. The title of the painting indicates the ambiguous and contradictory nature of the scene. The term “parade”

seems to have two connotations: first, it refers to the military type of parade represented in the way the prisoners are marching, and second, it might refer as well to a celebration, suggested by the presence of the musicians. That “festive”

characteristic of the parade heavily contrasts with the images of punishment and death.

Jan Komski also made images related with the Catholic faith he shared with most of the Polish political prisoners, as in Msza więzienna/Prison Mass (fig. 40), a watercolor executed around between 1990 and 1997. This works depicts the moment in which the Catholic Polish prisoners celebrate a mass, hiding from the SS guards.

The prisoners gather around the priest conducting the mass, who can be distinguished by the purple stole around his shoulders and the glass he holds instead of a chalice.

About twenty prisoners gather before him to pray and hear his words: some are standing, while others are kneeling. Meanwhile, another prisoner remains in the door to warn the group if he spots a SS officer.

Komski’s watercolor highlights the prohibition of religious expressions in the camp. The artist Mieczysław Kościelniak once commented upon the circumstances in which religion was practiced in the camp and the importance it had for the prisoners:

“It was forbidden to practice religion, it was severely punished by the company; that was a death judgment. There were, however, priests of all denominations, there were rabbis who in spite of (the situation) fulfilled the spiritual needs of the prisoners, constantly and in spite of danger. Religion meant, that one saved one’s soul in this gruesome reality, that in one’s essence, one could not be broken down....”¹²² Thus, religion was fundamental for both Jewish and non-Jewish prisoners, and it was part of their spiritual resistance to endure the life of the camp. Komski was not the only one representing such scenes. Others include the Polish artists Waldemar Nowakowski and his watercolor Confession (fig. 41), painted between 1943 and 1944 in Auschwitz,

122Mieczyslaw Koscielniak quoted by Granof and Mickenberg, “Complexity and Contradiction,” p. xv.

and the Polish-born French artist David Olère and his India ink drawing from 1945 titled Praying Together (fig. 42), which represents Jews and Christians praying together inside the barracks.

It is possible to trace other religious references in Komski’s works, as in Choinka/Christmas Tree (fig. 43), a watercolor painted between 1900 and 1997. This work shows the moment in which a group of Jewish and Polish political prisoners are marching to work, looking at the corpse of a fellow inmate hanged as an ornament at a Christmas tree. A SS guard stands beside the tree, observing the reactions of the prisoners, who keep marching through the slippery snow. This work seems to be based on an event the prisoners witnessed the day before Christmas Eve of 1940. An entry in the catalog of Komski’s works at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum describes the episode:

As Christmas Day approached in December of 1940, Polish prisoners gathered to sing carols and with tearful eyes recalled the joyful times of past holidays spent with family and friends. But the SS guards decided to treat such sentimentality with contempt and make a mockery of Polish holiday celebrations. Two days before Christmas a Christmas Tree was lit in front of the kitchen. On that same day, after roll call, a prisoner was hung on the gallows. The next morning the SS guards decided to demonstrate their superiority over the Polish nation and their irreverence for Polish emotions by removing the dead man from the gallows and hanging him on the Christmas Tree as an ornament.¹²³

Culturally and intimately attached to the tradition of celebrating Christmas, Polish Catholic prisoners were profoundly affected by this episode—they could not forget it.

Komski commented, “The SS men removed the corpse from the gallows and hang it up on a Christmas tree as a decoration. We had to watch it while marching to the

Komski commented, “The SS men removed the corpse from the gallows and hang it up on a Christmas tree as a decoration. We had to watch it while marching to the