An Artist Witnessing the Concentration Camps: Testimony and Artistic Expression in the Works of Jan Komski

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(1)National Taiwan Normal University Graduate Institute of Art History. 國立臺灣師範大學藝術史研究所 Master’s Degree Thesis. An Artist Witnessing the Concentration Camps: Testimony and Artistic Expression in the Works of Jan Komski. Advisor: Prof. Valentin Nussbaum. 指導教授: 諾斯邦博士. Graduate Student: Karen Insignares. 研究生：章卡倫. 中華民國 105 年 07 月 July 2016.

(2) Table of Contents Abstract…………...…………………………………………………………………...4 中文摘要………………………………………………………………………………5 Acknowledgments.…………….………………………………………………………6 1. Introduction: Finding Jan Komski…………...……………………………….…......7. 2. Who Was Jan Komski?..................................………………………………..……12 2.1. 1934-1939: Artistic Formation at the Academy of Arts in Krakow……………………………………………………….........................12 2.2. 1940-1945: Working as an Artist in Auschwitz and Other Concentration Camps………………………………………………………………………...14 2.3. 1945-2002: Migration to the United States and Postwar Works…….......23 2.4. The Eyewitness Documentary and the 1998 Exhibition…………………25 3. Understanding Jan Komski’s Artistic Style……….……………………………....27 3.1.The “Central European Triangle” and the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow……………………………………………………………………….27 3.2. Artists in Auschwitz: The Case of the Polish Catholic Political Prisoners……………………………………………………………………...30 3.3. Jan Komski’s Works from 1940 to 1945: Landscapes and Drawings…..31 3.4. Paintings, Watercolors and Drawings from the 1970s to the 1990s…….35 4. Re-enacting, Witnessing and Re-creating: Jan Komski’s Repeated Scenes and the Shapes of Memory…………………………………………………………………...43 4.1. Komski Re-enacting His Own Torture: Memories of the Reverse Hanging………………………………………………………………………45 4.2. Witnessing and the Spectacle of the Gallows…………………………...62 4.3. Re-creating Other’s Executions: The Shooting Scenes………………….75 5. “Forgetful Memory,” “Unwanted Beauty” and Legitimacy: The Problems of Reconciling Testimony and Artistic Expression…….……………………………….84. 2.

(3) 5.1. “Forgetful Memory” and Testimony: The Problem of How to Remember the Holocaust…………………………………………………………………84 5.2. “Unwanted Beauty”: The Problem of How to Represent the Holocaust……………………………………………………………………..96 5.3. Contemporary Responses to the Holocaust and Museums: The Problem of Legitimacy……………………………………………………………………98. 6. Conclusion: Reconciling Testimony and Artistic Expression……………………104. 7. Bibliography……………………………………………………..……………….108 Archival Materials..……………………………..…………………….…….108 Interviews………………………………..…………………………….……108 Secondary Literature…………………………..………….…...……………109 Appendix: Illustrations...………………………………………………………..…..120. 3.

(4) Abstract The history behind the works produced by artists within Nazi concentration camps and ghettos between 1940 and 1945, and especially the art created by the survivors during the decades after the war, is a complex subject that has so far remained unattended by the majority of art historians. This study is an initial attempt to investigate and analyze the works of Jan Komski, a relatively unknown artist who survived five concentration camps and who created, between the 1940’s and the 1990’s, more than two hundred drawings in addition to watercolor and oil paintings that depict scenes of Auschwitz and other camps during the years of the war. The present thesis has two major purposes. First, it will analyze Komski’s works depicting three scenes: torture by reverse hanging, executions in the gallows, and executions by shooting at the “Death Wall” in Auschwitz. Second, it will discuss three problems that have interfered with the reception of Komski’s and other survivors’ works of art: the problem of the “forgetful memories,” the “unwanted beauty” and the legitimacy. By studying Jan Komski’s works and considering such problems, I will attempt to understand how it is possible to approach the tension between testimony and artistic expression in the images created by artists who were victims of the Nazi concentration camps.. Keywords: Jan Komski, concentration camp art, Auschwitz, memory, torture, executions.. 4.

(5) 中文摘要. 1940年至1945間，納粹集中營與猶太區藝術家之作品，以及特別是戰後數十年間集中營倖存者所創作之作品，其背後之歷史主體相當複雜，迄今仍未受多數藝術史研究者之注意。本文將初步嘗試研究與分析揚‧科姆斯基（Jan Komski）之作品；該藝術家是經歷五座集中營之倖存者，於1940年代至1990年代間創作超過兩百件繪畫作品，二戰期間更有描繪奧斯威辛（Auschwitz）與其他集中營之水彩畫和油畫，而該藝術家相對較不有名。本研究有兩個主要目的，其一為對科姆斯基描繪三類場景的作品進行分析：奧斯威辛集中營中倒吊之酷刑、絞刑台處決和「死亡之牆」之槍決；其二為探討妨礙科姆斯基與其他倖存者之藝術作品為人所接受的三個問題：「善忘的記憶」、「令人生厭之美」以及合法性。作者希望藉由研究揚‧科姆斯基之作品與思考這些問題，試圖釐清如何可能的理解，在納粹集中營之受難藝術家所描繪的圖像中，親身見證與藝術表現之間的張力。. 關鍵字: 揚‧科姆斯基 (Jan Komski)，集中營的藝術，奧斯威辛 (Auschwitz)，記憶，酷刑，處決。. 5.

(6) Acknowledgments Writing this thesis about Jan Komski and his art while living in Taiwan supposed various methodological and personal challenges. I would like to thank all the colleagues, professors, friends and family members who helped me to overcome them. I am deeply in debt to my friend Ania Alot, who carried out a dedicated and thoughtful archival research in Poland and retrieved for me invaluable materials and information about Komski. This thesis would not have been possible without her enthusiastic, generous and selfless help. I cannot express enough gratitude to the Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow and the Collections Department of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, for allowing Ania to explore their archives in my name. I would like to thank my thesis advisor Prof. Valentin Nussbaum for his patient and trustful guidance, and his encouragement in all the stages of the research. I am also grateful to the other members of the committee: Prof. Candida Syndikus and Prof. Chieh-Hsiang Wu (吳介祥), for their helpful comments and insightful remarks. My appreciation is extended to my former colleagues in Academia Sinica, and to my classmates and other members of GIAH for their continuous support from the beginning of my studies. My special gratitude goes to my sister Luisa, Lily, Łukasz and Tomasz. They assisted me with useful observations and feedback, translations from Polish to English and the English revision and correction of the text. Finally, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my family, friends and Łukasz for their loving presence in my life. Long hours of conversations with them inspired me and helped me to keep my head clear in the moments I felt deeply overwhelmed, affected and uneasy by the heaviness of the subject I dealt with. My heartfelt thanks go to all of you.. 6.

(7) 1. Introduction: Finding Jan Komski The first time that I ever saw Jan Komski’s works was in Krakow, during a trip that I made to Poland on February 2013. While traveling around the south of the country, I visited what used to be the concentration camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau, currently part of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum. Throughout the tour of the camps and their blocks, barracks and the debris of the gas chambers, the guides commented on the existence of thousands of artistic artifacts and images produced between 1940 and 1945 inside the camps by inmate artists and amateurs. The pieces include decorative objects, wall decorations, drawings and paintings, and some can still be seen in the museum and on the walls of some bathrooms and cells. The images the prisoners created that I saw while visiting Auschwitz and Birkenau were the main trigger that sparked my interest in the art produced inside the concentration camps. Even though I had a general awareness of the Holocaust and overall knowledge about the artistic production in Europe during the Second World War, I was not conscious, until that moment, of the many artistic works created inside the concentration camps and ghettos. As a student of art history, I started to speculate about why this kind of artistic production has been rarely or never been mentioned in books that discussed the development of European art during the first half of the twentieth century. I spent the following days walking the streets of Krakow. One day, I entered into a small gallery-bookstore, and there I saw, hanging on one of the narrow walls, three or four small drawings that caught my attention. The drawings depicted scenes of the Auschwitz concentration camp. I remembered one in particular: Through Work to Freedom, a black and white drawing depicting a man dressed in a striped uniform in front of the gates of Auschwitz, in the exact moment when he is dropping a cart full of bricks while a guard is hitting him on the back (fig. 1). According to the captions under the images, a Polish artist named Jan Baraś-Komski, a survivor of the Holocaust, had created them in 1945. I promptly assumed that Komski was a Jew, given the fact that most victims of the Holocaust were Jewish and the bookstoregallery was located in Kazimierz, the Jewish neighborhood of Krakow. That area of the city used to be part of the ghetto during the Second World War. I did not know that he was not Jewish, but Catholic, and that I was looking not at his original works, but reproductions of drawings he made in a refugee camp in Germany in 1945. I wrote down the name of Komski, but I forgot about him for a while, until I. 7.

(8) traveled to Cambodia in August of the same year. After arriving in Phnom Penh, I decided to visit the Choeung Ek Killing Fields and the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. Inside the museum, formerly the S-21 prison, are displayed the photographs of the victims of the Cambodian genocide and the paintings of the Cambodian artist Vann Nath, one of the seven survivors of the prison during the dictatorship of Pol Pot in the 1970s (fig. 2). The similarities in display of the photographs of the prisoners in Tuol Sleng reminded me of my visit to Auschwitz six months before: both museums display the photographs that had been taken of the victims’ faces to familiarize the viewers with the process of registration of the prisoners (figs. 3-6). The paintings of the Cambodian artist also reminded me of the works of Komski I had seen in Krakow, not because anything in their style was distinctively similar, but because both artists painted scenes of violence, murder and torture that the prisoners in Auschwitz and the S-21 suffered and witnessed. Jan Baraś-Komski and Vann Nath were two artists and survivors I would not have known about without having had the opportunity to travel to Poland and Cambodia that year. Perhaps because of the similarities I found in both museums and works, and the background of my study field, I could not help inquiring about the nature and meaning of these paintings. Additional research about the works of these two painters still needs to be done from an art historical perspective. However, it is not the purpose here to compare the particularities of the contexts, life experiences and artistic works of Komski and Vann. Instead, the central proposal of this study is to provide a comprehensive interpretation of the works of Jan Komski to achieve in-depth understanding of its artistic and testimonial qualities. The present study dusts off the works of Jan Komski and studies them to make them visible and evaluate their integration into the field of art history. The questions I asked after my encounter with Jan Komski’s works led me to investigate further, and the more I researched him, the more noteworthy and complex information I uncovered about his artistic production. Jan Mieczysław Komski was born on February 3, 1915, in the town of Bircza, located in the Southeast of Poland. He was a Catholic Polish artist who survived five concentrations camps during the Nazi occupation of Poland in the Second World War. Before the beginning of the war, from 1934 to 1939, Komski studied fine arts at the School of Fine Arts in Krakow. Soon after he graduated, the Second World War started with the German occupation of Poland, and Komski decided to join the army of the Polish resistance in France. However, on April 29, 1940, the Gestapo arrested 8.

(9) him when he tried to cross the border between Poland and Slovakia. 1 After his detention, he became one of the first 728 male prisoners ever sent to Auschwitz. On June 14, 1940, these prisoners arrived by train in what Komski describes as “an obscure deserted place with a sign that bore the inscription ‘Auschwitz,’” 2 fifty four kilometers from Krakow. He was registered in the camp under the name of Jan Baraś using the false identification he provided to the Gestapo when he was arrested, and in Auschwitz, he was assigned the number 564.3 Komski’s artistic production is extensive: Since 1939 and until his death in 2004, he executed a corpus of more than two hundred works that include images made officially in the concentration camps; drawings, paintings and watercolors depicting scenes of Auschwitz after the war; works created while he worked for the Washington Post as a graphic artist; and landscape watercolors executed during the last years of his life. His artistic repertoire comprehends a wide range of techniques, materials and styles, and the larger amount of his production was done intermittently between the 1970s and the 1990s.4 Nevertheless, his works have been rarely exhibited, published or commented upon by scholars. One of the first obstacles one encounters when researching Jan Komski is a dearth of primary and secondary materials about him. It is possible, however, to find a few references containing important information about his life and work. The first traceable source is Za Drumami/Behind Barbed Wires, a book published in Munich in 1946 that compiles fifteen drawings with scenes from the Auschwitz concentration camp that Komski painted in a refugees camp right after the war.5 These drawings are complemented by legends in English, German and Polish. Nevertheless, with the exception of the catalog Eyewitness: The Artwork of Jan Komski published by the Houston Holocaust Museum for the exhibition of Komski’s works in 1998, 6 the documentary film Eyewitness (1999) directed by Bert Van Bork,7 and the descriptive cards in Komski’s catalog of paintings in the archives of the Auschwitz-Birkenau. Jan Komski, “Jan Komski,” in: Richard C. Lukas (ed.), Forgotten Survivors. Polish Christians Remember the Nazi Occupation, Kansas, 2004, p. 53. 2 Komski, “Jan Komski,” p. 53. 3 Komski, “Jan Komski,” p. 53. 4 Komski, “Jan Komski,” p. 58. 5 Jan Komski, Za Drutami, Behind Barbed Wires, Munich 1946. 6 Jan Komski, Eyewitness: The Artwork of Jan Komski, exhibition catalogue, Houston Holocaust Museum, Houston 1998. 7 Bert Van Bork, Eyewitness, documentary, Los Angeles 1999. 1. 9.

(10) Memorial and Museum, relevant secondary literature that analyzes his oil paintings, drawings or watercolors does not seem to exist.8 However, there are some brief comments about his biography and work in certain secondary sources. The most important are Richard Lukas’ Forgotten Survivors. Polish Christians Remember the Nazi Occupation from 2004, 9 and the descriptions of some of the paintings Komski made while imprisoned in Auschwitz that appear in the book Kunst in Auschwitz 1940-1945/Sztuka w Auschwitz 1940-1945, published in a bilingual Polish and German edition in 2005.10 Therefore, considering the lack of consistent and comprehensive secondary literature that comments upon his work with rigor and depth, the main goal of the present study is to make a first attempt to interpret, analyze and understand the complexity of his works. Bearing in mind that Komski’s works have been little discussed by art historians, and that only a few secondary references exist, the outcome of the present study will be based on visual analysis of the works of art, as well as on other primary sources: interviews with the artist and archival images and documents from the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum and the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow. Jan Komski’s paintings and drawings have an unquestionable historical value. Most of his works were made after he had survived the concentration camps, and they portray the horrors that he and many others had experienced. At some point, it even seems reprehensible to ask ourselves whether these works have artistic value or not. It might also seem problematic to make a critical judgment about images that are meant to be, above all, a tribute to the memory of those who had suffered and had not survived. These images were not created mainly and uniquely to be displayed in art galleries or museums and subjected to aesthetic criticism, but as “artistic works” that bear witness. This might be perhaps one reason that could explain the lack of studies about Jan Komski’s work, as well as of other works created by artists who survived the 8. The works of Komski can also be found in other sources. However, while developing the present research it was not possible to have access to that material, or obtain relevant information about them. Therefore, the following publications will not be studied in the present research. The first one is Remember that/Denket Daran!/Pensez-y! a visual guide to the former concentration camp of Dachau published in Munich in1950, written by Erich Preuss and illustrated with drawings by Komski. The second one is the publication in Japanese 絶望の中の光 /Zetsubō no naka no hikari, published in Tokyo in 1996 that presumably narrates the story of the artist. And third Dlaczego/ Warum?/Why? the personal memories of Józef Czarski illustrated by Komski and published in Boston in 1999. 9 Lukas (ed.), Forgotten Survivors. Polish Christians Remember the Nazi Occupation. 10 Jochen Boberg and Hermann Simon (eds.), Kunst in Auschwitz 1940-1945/Sztuka w Auschwitz 19401945, Bramsche 2005.. 10.

(11) camps. The case of the artworks made by well established artists such as Christian Boltanski and Harun Farocki, among many others, that deal with the subject of the Holocaust and that are hosted in art museums and institutions is different. During the postwar period, numerous responses from the arts to the Holocaust emerged and have had an influence until this day. The art concerning the Holocaust and the concentration camps has been created by artists who survived the war, by artists who had not suffer directly or by those with few or no connections with it.11 However, it is peculiar that among the artistic responses to the Holocaust, the works created by those who actually lived through it and survived it, especially by the ones who were artists before the beginning of the war, have not been commented upon carefully enough. The particularities of these works makes the task of judging them from the point of view of their artistic qualities harder. However, this fact does not imply that these particular works do not have any artistic value at all, particularly if we take into consideration that many were created by inmates who, like Komski, had an artistic formation and background before being confined in the camps. The objective of this study is to consider the problem of the tension between the artistic expression and the testimony present in the works of art representing the concentration camps, taking Jan Komski’s works as example. My aim in this research is dual. First, I will analyze three groups of images Komski depicted about three motifs: the torture by reverse hanging he suffered in Block 11, the executions on the gallows and the shooting executions at the “Death Wall.” My objective will be to evaluate them from an art historical perspective to comprehend their artistic characteristics and qualities. Second, I will explore why Komski’s works have been overlooked by scholars and discuss three major problems that have interfered with the reception of Komski’s and other survivors’ works of art. I will close my study by discussing how the tension between the artistic expression and the testimonial value of such works can be approached.. 11. Monica Bohm-Duchen examines multiple cases. See Monica Bohm-Duchen (ed.), After Auschwitz: Responses to the Holocaust in Contemporary Art, London 1995.. 11.

(12) 2. Who Was Jan Komski? Everywhere he went, it was the painting that kept him [Komski] from the mines, the gas factories, the killing jobs. Like the singers and soccer players and boxers, he was valued by Germans. Michael Kernam, The Washington Post, 197912 During my incarceration, I worked as a portrait artist for the Nazis and also created architectural renderings; my profession help me to survive. If I had tried to create a body of work like these while I was at Auschwitz [sic], I would have been killed. Jan Komski, 199813. Bearing in mind that Jan Komski’s life and works have not been extensively commented upon, I will describe the events and circumstances that determined his artistic formation and career. Thus, I will review key biographical data from the moment he started his artistic education at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow until the end of his life.. 2.1. 1934-1939: Artistic Formation at the Academy of Arts in Krakow After starting to study art history at the Jagiellonian University of Krakow at the beginning of the 1930s, Jan Komski developed a strong interest in arts that led him to enroll in a fine arts program.14 On October 5, 1934, Komski joined the Department of Painting and Sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, 15 where he was. Michael Kernam, “Muted Works of One Man’s Silent Rage,” in: The Washington Post, April 29, 1979, at https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1979/04/29/muted- works-of-one-manssilent-rage/215f484e-db39-4944-a9f2-f5c7dfd963f3/ (accessed June 12, 2015). 13 Jan Komski quoted in Ellen Rosenbush Methner and Bert Van Bork, “Jan Mieczslaw Komski,” in: Jan Komski, Eyewitness: The Artwork of Jan Komski, exhibition catalogue, Houston Holocaust Museum, Houston 1998, p.6. 14 Linda G. Kuzmack (interviewer), “Interview with John Komski June 7, 1990,” Transcript, USHMM, RG-50.030.0115, at http://collections.ushmm.org/oh_findingaids/RG-50.030.0115_trs_en.pdf (accessed October 2, 2014), p. 2. The videotape of this interview is also available at the website of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. See Linda G. Kuzmack (interviewer), “Oral history interview with John Komski June 7, 1990,” Videotape recording, USHMM, RG-50.030*0115, at http://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn504609 (accessed October 2, 2014) 15 See Komski’s certificate of enrollment at the Academy: Jan Komski, Rodowód (Filiation), October 5, 1934. Do. L. podania 755/3h, L. księgi wpisowej (Book of Enrollment) 47zw/stu30. Archives of the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, Poland (December 11, 2015). The school was renamed in 1979 in honor to Jan Matejko, the Polish painter who founded the academy in 1879. It is currently known as Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow. See Monika Żarnowska, “History,” in: Akademia Sztuk 12. 12.

(13) trained in the studio directed by Professor Władysław Jarocki, a Polish artist member of the Vienna Secession.16 According to the academy’s archives, during the five years that Komski studied there, he took courses in art history, drawing, architecture and painting techniques.17 He was especially outstanding in the course of graphic arts and painting given by Professor Wojciech Weiss, an artist who also belonged to the Vienna Secession. 18 Other professors Komski studied under included Kazimierz Sichulski and the painter and sculptor Xawery Dunikowski, who shared captivity with him in Auschwitz.19 The records also reveal that Komski was greatly commended during the last years of his studies for his graphic and painting works, and he also won drawing and painting competitions in the school.20 After Komski graduated from the academy in 1939, the Nazis occupied Poland. Ellen Rosenbush Methner and Bert Van Bork state that when the war started, Komski was initiating his artistic career while supporting himself by restoring furniture and church buildings.21 During the months that followed the invasion, the Polish Underground was established, and Komski decided to take part in its activities. He worked actively on the underground’s newsletters and was in charge of doing the lettering and political caricatures and cartoons that accompanied many of the texts.22. Pięknych w Krakowie im. Jana Matejki, at https://www.asp.krakow.pl/index.php/en/academy/history (accessed May 8, 2014). 16 See Jan Komski, Rodowód (Filiation), October 5, 1934. Do. L. podania 755/3h, L. księgi wpisowej (Book of Enrollment) 47zw/stu30. Archives of the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, Poland (December 11, 2015). Władysław Jarocki joined the Vienna Secession in 1911. See Stefania Krzysztofowicz-Kozakowska and Piotr Mizia, “‘Sztuka’, ‘Wiener Secession’, ‘Mánes’. The Central European Art Triangle,” in: Artibus et Historiae 27, n. 53, 2006, pp. 217-259, p. 221. 17 The courses in graphic arts were taken during the last two years of his studies (academic years 1937/38 and 1938/39). See Jan Komski, Book of Grades Academic Years 1934-1939, No. 103, Archives of the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, Poland (December 11, 2015). 18 Wojciech Weiss joined the Vienna Secession in 1909. See Krzysztofowicz-Kozakowska and Mizia, “‘Sztuka’, ‘Wiener Secession’, ‘Mánes’”, p. 221. 19 Komski, “Jan Komski,” p.53. 20 Jan Komski, Book of Grades Academic Years 1934-1939, No. 103, Archives of the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, Poland (December 11, 2015). 21 Rosenbush Methner and Van Bork, “Jan Mieczslaw Komski,” p.6 22 On January 20, 1992, Komski commented in an interview that during that year he depicted many caricatures including one of Hitler. Some years after the war, those caricatures helped him to prove in a Bavarian court that he was engaged actively with the Polish resistance movement against the Nazis. This evidence allowed him to win his case in the court and shortly afterwards he immigrated to the United States. See Sandra Bradley (interviewer), “Interview with John Komski January 30, 1992,” Transcript, USHMM, RG-50.042*0016, at http://collections.ushmm.org/oh_findingaids/RG50.042.0016_trs_en.pdf (accessed October 2, 2014), p. 4. The video interview can be seen at: Sandra Bradley (interviewer), “Oral history interview with John Komski January 30, 1992,” Videotape recording, USHMM, RG-50.042*0016 at http://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn505569 (accessed October 2, 2014).. 13.

(14) 2.2. 1940-1945: Working as an Artist in Auschwitz and Other Concentration Camps When Komski’s activities in the underground became dangerous, he decided to leave Poland and join the army of the Polish Resistance in France. However, on April 29, 1940, he was arrested while attempting to cross the border of Poland with the former Czechoslovakia. On June 14, 1940, after spending a few months in Tarnów’s prison, he joined the first mass transport to Auschwitz with other 727 prisoners.23 Describing his entrance to Auschwitz when he and other prisoners were forced to get off from the train, Komski narrates: “We had no time to gather our few personal belongings. We grabbed what we could while the beatings continued. Without food and our personal belongings, we were assembled into columns. Assigning us prisoner numbers (mine was 564), they ordered us to perform gymnastics, to jog, and to jump.”24 When he was arrested, however, Komski showed false identification provided by the Polish Underground and was registered in the accounts of Auschwitz I under the name of Jan Baraś (fig. 6). Shortly afterward, Komski and the rest of the prisoners were moved into a complex of 21 brick buildings that originally had seen military use. In that moment, the full operation of Auschwitz as a concentration camp officially started. 25 Once they established it, the Gestapo used the skills and labor of those first prisoners to enlarge the camp. That expansion resulted in the construction of the crematorium and gas chambers in the area of Auschwitz II, which later would be known as Birkenau. During those first months, Komski and other fellow prisoners artists started their artistic activities in the camp.26 It is well documented that some ghettos and concentration camps such as Auschwitz had art workshops in which the prisoners painted under the supervision of the authorities. Some ghettos and camps even had separate crafts, drawing and/or painting rooms, the most notable being those in Terezín, Auschwitz, Sachsenhausen, Mauthausen, Buchenwald, and the ghettos of Białystok, Kovno, Łódź, Warsaw and Vilnius (fig. 7).27 However, the vast majority of the art created in such spaces was Komski, “Jan Komski,” p. 53. Komski, “Jan Komski,”p. 53. 25 Komski, “Jan Komski,”pp. 53-54. 26 Bradley, “Interview with John Komski January 30, 1992,” pp. 6-7. 27 See Mary S. Costanza, The Living Witness: Art in the Concentration Camps and Ghettos, New York & London 1982, p. 23. These camps and ghettos, unlike the extermination sites, were also places where some prisoners were selected to make works of different natures. Since the camps were different from 23 24. 14.

(15) requested by SS officers and produced for functional purposes. Mary S. Costanza describes the various types of works created at these workshops: It was partly mechanical and technical. All types of graphic work were needed: maps, charts, graphs, diagrams for construction of roads and buildings, signs, posters, emblems, post-cards, and greeting cards. Some of the camp Kommandants had artists do portraits of them, their families, or the staff. Artists were also required to paint landscapes and genre pictures for the Nazis’ personal pleasure and for propaganda. In additions, artists were asked to copy masterpieces stolen from the museums of Europe that were intended for eventual resale in Germany and elsewhere.28 The official duties of the artists in the camps and ghettos were diverse and served the general purposes of the Nazi regime; furthermore, they contributed to the particular inner dynamics and needs of each camp or ghetto. In Auschwitz, there were several craft shops and an artist workshop. 29 The official works produced by artists in those spaces had two main goals: to be displayed in the internal Museum of Auschwitz or to fulfill any useful purpose related to expansion of the camp and its daily life. The art created there ranged from woodcrafts, portraits of SS officers and capos, decorations on the walls of the baths, posters, architectural rendering and landscapes (fig. 8). It is important to stress that Auschwitz was the place where countless pieces of art were created and, in addition, it was the first concentration camp in which Jan Komski worked as an “official artist” for the SS guards. Costanza observes that the first artistic workshop in Auschwitz opened eight months after the official inauguration of the camp, when Kommandant Rudolph Hoess wanted to create a space in Block 24 of Auschwitz I in which the prisoners could create arts and crafts for him and other SS functionaries. Because the interest of other officers in the arts was increasing, a second room was created to employ more artists who could create plans, paintings, postcards and other items.30 In the winter of 1941, the Museum of KZ Auschwitz was officially created, and a section of paintings and photographs that each other in many ways, the conditions in which art was produced at this time varied depending on the place. However, those ghettos and camps in which the inmates carried out various physical works made largely possible the creation of art, in contrast to other places such as Majdenek or Treblinka that were only establish as extermination camps. 28 Costanza, The Living Witness, p. 21. 29 Costanza, The Living Witness, p. 23. 30 Costanza, The Living Witness, pp. 25-26.. 15.

(16) “(…) could show the inferior racial characteristics of the prisoners” was opened under Hoess' orders.31 The museum also had a second purpose: to have a cultural and artistic space to display in case a committee of the International Red Cross arrived to review the living conditions and activities of the prisoners.32 In addition to the artworks created by commissions in the workshops, the artists were also ordered to make other works. Some of them, for example, were requested by Josef Mengele to draw pictures of the victims of his experiments. Among the artists who fulfilled this task were Leo Haas and Dinah Gottliebova Babbitt. Hass’ drawings for Mengele’s experiments on twins are lost, but the watercolor portraits of German Romani and Sinti Gypsies depicted by Dinah Gottliebova Babbitt survive (fig. 9).33 Other projects, frequently ordered by the capos, included the decoration of the walls in bathrooms and cells (fig. 10).34 Many other artists created art within the camps and ghettos that was prohibited by the authorities. Some of this art inmates did secretly and hid, in contrast with the works created “officially” in the workshops. Apart from scenes of death, violence and torture, some inmates executed devotional and religious drawings, landscapes, still lifes, abstract art, cartoons and even sculptures (figs. 11-13).35 Among many others who painted numerous forbidden works in Auschwitz-Birkenau are Peter Edel, Jósef Szajna, Maria Hiszpańska, Mieczysław Kościelniak, Władysław Siwek, Włodzimierz Siwierski, Waldermar Nowakoski, Marian Ruzamski and Xawery Dunikowski.36 After Jan Komski joined the camp and due to his artistic formation, he was promptly assigned to the architect’s office at the Baubüro Zentralbauleitung. In a. 31. Costanza, The Living Witness, p. 26. Bradley, “Interview with John Komski January 30, 1992,” p.8. 33 Sybil Milton, “Gypsies and the Holocaust,” in: The History Teacher 24, n. 4, August 1991, pp. 375387. See as well Sybil Milton, “Culture Under Duress: Art and the Holocaust,” in: F.C DeCoste and Bernard Schwartz, The Holocaust’s Ghost. Writings on Art, Politics, Law and Education, Edmonton 2000, pp. 84-96, p. 88. 34 Joseph P. Czarnecki explains that: “Decorating the washrooms and latrines seems to have been one of the capo’s favourite projects. Images of cherubs splashing each other with water and young men riding horses in a pond immediately suggest the Nazi obsession with youth and cleanliness- but, perhaps, with more sinister undertone.” Joseph P. Czarnecki, Last Traces: The Lost Art of Auschwitz, NewYork 1989, p. 25. Czarnecki explains that were also many drawings and paintings on other walls made illegally and anonymously around the entire camp. Some of these images sought to document the daily life, while others were satirical or did not seem to have an obvious connection with the conditions of the camp, as in the case of the countless landscapes or the image of a ballerina found in the wall of a basement that served as the storage area, painted by an unknown artist. Czarnecki, Last Traces, p. 72. 35 Sybil Milton, “Culture Under Duress,” p. 94. 36 Agniezka Sieradzka, “Examples of Illegal Art from the Auschwitz Museum Collections,” in: Agnieszka Sieradzka and Gabriela Nikliborc (eds.), Forbidden Art: Illegal Works by Concentration Camp Prisoners, Oświęcim 2012, pp. 84-101. 32. 16.

(17) letter dated April 10, 2001 and addressed to Corinne Granof, the curator of Academic Programs at The Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Komski writes: The majority of my pictures in Auschwitz were done at “Baubüro” (The Central Management of Construction Works) where I was a draftsman. While I was in “Baubüro,” my official function was to make perspective renditions from the architect’s plans and occasionally I helped surveyors draw up the first map of Auschwitz and its environs. On the side I painted portraits and landscapes. Some landscapes were done in the neighbourhood of Auschwitz far from the concentration camp....I was in a favourable position in “Baubüro” right from the beginning. As an artist, I was able to learn skills quickly, (lettering, perspective, architectural renditions) which later became critical to my survival in Auschwitz and in other concentration camps.37 In addition to the skills Komski had learned while studying at the Academy of Arts in Krakow, in the camp he also learned new artistic abilities that proved crucial for his survival. Thus, although the years of imprisonment in Auschwitz and other camps were for him years of intense anguish and suffering, they were also a time of artistic formation, practice and exchange with other artists who worked in the workshops.38 After Komski was arrested and sent to Auschwitz, he remained active with the Polish Underground. Besides the drawings and works he made in the architect’s office, and because of his knowledge about the camp expansion, he also managed to draw maps of the region surrounding the concentration camp and its defense. He relates: On one of my trips, the SS supervisor allowed me to paint landscapes. For more than an hour I was alone, abandoned by guards. For that brief time, I had freedom. I even flirted with the idea of escaping. Back in the office, I drew secret maps that contained information about the defenses of the camp. The Polish Underground requested this vital information. In return, we were promised that an attempt would be made to recue us. It never happened.39. Jan Komski’s letter quoted by Corinne Granof and David Mickenberg in: Corinne Granof and David Mickenberg, “Complexity and Contradiction: An Introduction to The Last Expresion,” in: David Mickenberg, Corinne Granof and Peter Hayes (eds.), The Last Expression: Art and Auschwitz, Evanston 2003, pp. xiv-xv, p. xv. Komski comments these circumstances as well in as: Komski, “Jan Komski,” p. 54. 38 Komski estimates that during his confinement in Auschwitz he was able to share the Museum’s workshop with around 500 artists. See Kuzmack, “Interview with John Komski June 7, 1990,” p. 12. 39 Komski, “Jan Komski,” p. 54. 37. 17.

(18) Some works Komski created in that period are still preserved: portraits, landscapes, paintings of flowers and letters.40 The maps he drew for the architect’s office and the Polish resistance seem to be lost. One of these works is Troubadour (fig. 14), an oil on canvas executed between 1940 and 1942. On the right side of the image, a troubadour is singing for a group of knights. The architecture of the chamber the group inhabits is characterized by Gothic pointed arches. The architectural space, the clothes the knights are wearing and the armors hanging on the walls suggest a medieval atmosphere.41 Although the circumstances in which the painting was executed are not completely clear, it seems that it was part of a commission for the Auschwitz Museum and was created to please the taste of SS officers.42 Mieczysław Kościelniak, a Polish artist who attended the Academy of Arts in Krakow with Komski and who at the time worked at the Auschwitz Museum, depicted the moment in which Komski was painting Troubadour. In the painting Interior of the Auschwitz Museum (fig. 15), perhaps made illegally by Kościelniak in the workshop, we can see Komski in the studio painting a canvas.43 Komski’s face is not shown, nor are the red triangle and the identification number sewn to his clothes. However, it is possible to identify the image on the easel, which shows the shapes of the knights and the Gothic pointed arches. In the background of the scene, the red flag, 40. These works are part of the art collection of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and State Museum. It is not my intention here to analyze this painting in detail. However, I shall add that currently it is also possible to see the sketch of Troubadour, depicted by Komski using colored charcoal on cardboard. Both images remain in the archives of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and State Museum (PMO –I16 and PMO –I-12-1395). The Italian scholar Letizia Evangelisti in her book Auschwitz e il ‘New Humanism’ commented Komski’s study of the painting as follows: “L’opera, creata con la tecnica del carboncino colorato su cartoncino, che dà l’effetto “sfumato”, con dimensioni 19x23,5 cm, è stata realizata, como le altre, mentre l’artista si trovava ad Auschwitz. Essa prende ispirazione dal modo dei trovatori, ossia dai poeti in lingua d’Oc dei secoli XI-XIII, che erano soliti svolgere la loro attività artistica all’interno delle corti feudali, a volte anche declamando i versi, in qualità di cantori accompagnati dalla musica. (…) La scena proposta da Komski, quindi, si inserisce in un contesto architettonico conforme alle tendenze gotiche del periodo rappresentato, con la descrizione di volte ed archi a sesto acuto. Il soggetto declamatore risulta circondato da altri personaggi, che lo stanno ascoltando, dando l’idea del movimento, pero come appaiono collocate sulla sedia, o in piedi.” This is perhaps the most extensive comment on Komski’s work done so far by any scholar. See Letizia Evangelisti, Auschwitz e il ‘Nuevo Humanismo’: Il Canto di Ulisse delle vittime della ferocia nazista, Roma 2009, pp. 120-121. 42 Boberg and Simon, Kunst in Auschwitz/Sztuka w Auschwitz, p. 246. Even though Komski did not worked officially at the Museum but in the architect’s office, he was able to work in its workshop doing commissions. When commenting in an interview his artistic activity in the camps, Komski explained why he painted such scenes: “[I painted] the things that German allowed and really were interested in. So, for example, troubadours; you know, medieval scenes. They were very fond of it (…) and the knights in medieval times. Himmler himself, I think he organized it that way. So I painted this kind of scenes.” See Kuzmack, “Interview with John Komski June 7, 1990,” p. 26. 43 See Evangelisti, Auschwitz e il ‘Nuevo Humanismo’, pp. 148-149. 41. 18.

(19) desks, papers and other items decorate the space of the workshop. Bearing in mind that Komski did not paint any self-portraits while in the camp, Kościelniak’s representation of his artistic activity there is invaluable. Between 1940 and 1942, Kościelniak painted a second portrait of Komski (fig. 16). In the watercolor, apparently unfinished, the colorful face of a young Komski in the middle of the paper can be recognized. 44 Painting other prisoners was not an unusual activity: The portrait was one of the most popular genres the artists executed both legally and illegally in the concentration camps and ghettos (figs. 17-18).45 Scholars such as Sybil Milton believe that this category of works constituted twenty-five percent of the total art produced between 1939 and 1945 in the camps. 46 This appears to be particularly true of Auschwitz-Birkenau, where it is still possible to find many portraits and self-portraits executed with pencil, charcoal and wood chips on paper, although other less traditional mediums were employed as well. 47 Other techniques and materials that were less commonly used include watercolors, pastels, ink and oils.48 Kościelniak’s portraits of Komski were depicted in these less used materials because of the access he had to them in the artistic workshop. Besides landscapes and works such as Troubadour, Komski also executed a few portraits of other prisoners and the SS officials and kapos. In 1943, right after escaping from Auschwitz, Komski made portraits for a member of the Polish This portrait was featured in Bert Van Bork’s documentary. See Van Bork, Eyewitness, 17:42 min. Monica Bohn-Duchen, “Art of the Holocaust: Creativity in Extremis,” in: Bohn-Duchen, Art and the Second World War, pp. 190-211, p. 194. 46 Sybil Milton, “Culture Under Duress,” p. 88. Today thousands of portraits of inmates that died and survived Auschwitz remain. Most of them show the prisoners wearing the camp’s uniform and their distinctive bench and number. Among the inmates depicted in different styles and media can be seen Jewish, Catholics and political prisoners from various nationalities. 47 Regarding the variety of materials used by the artists, Janet Blatter comments that: “Auschwitz artists scavenged empty toothpaste tubes from officer’s garbage bins and used them to store and mix pilfered paints. Brushes could be made with human hair, straw or feathers. Daghani used hairs plucked discreetly from the fur coats of Nazi visitors. Partisans on the woods used twigs and even blades of grass. Boris Taslitzky used old SS circulars and target papers full of bullet holes; Léon Delarbre used torn-up office forms. (…) Other artists squeezed colors from vegetables and other foods or from scraps of clothing. Zoran Music tinted his paintings with rust from the bars of his jail cell in Dachau. (…) Jacques Gotko found an old type in Compiègne and made a printing plate similar to a linoleum block. Yeahda Bacon would save some of his potato rations to make potato cuts; when they were finished, he ate them.” See Janet Blatter, “Art from the Whirlwind,” in: Blatter and Milton, Art of the Holocaust, pp. 25-26. Monica Bhom-Duchen in also quotes this passage in: Bhom-Duchen, “Art of the Holocaust: Creativity in Extremis”, p. 193. 48 Costanza, The Living Witness, p. 117-134. Commenting the works he painted inside the camps, Komski affirmed that panting portraits gave him better chances of survival: “I painted practical pictures, like portraits. This is how I could survive and live a little bit better than other prisoners, because they were bringing me food for that.” See Kuzmack, “Interview with John Komski June 7, 1990,” p.26. 44 45. 19.

(20) resistance and his family. In late 1942, Komski succeeded in escaping with the help of the Polish Underground and three fellow prisoners: the German Otto Küsel and Bolesław Kuczbara and Mieczysław Januszewski from Poland.49 On December 29, 1942, the escape came to fruition. On that day, Mietek [Mieczysław] and Otto went to the head of the Landwirtschaft to borrow a pair of horses and a cart in exchange for two office cabinets. They drove back to the camp and loaded four cabinets on the cart, and delivered two of them to the Landwirtschaft as part of the bargain. Then they set out for the prearranged meeting place. At the meeting place, Kuczbara was already dressed in an SS uniform, and he looked dangerous. It was 10 o’clock when we all set out through the Bauleitung, towards the gate. Otto drove, with Mietek assisting him. I sat behind them facing backwards. Kuczbara—the SS man—took a place on one of the cabinets, at the far end of the cart. Halfway to the Bauleitung, we had to stop and our whole plan threatened to go disastrously wrong. In front of us, 60 meters down the road, Lagerführer Aumeier appeared out of nowhere. He stopped and was thinking about something….Then we saw him move…as if he intended to come our way…then he stopped again….he waved and turned back towards the camp, and our cart sprinted like lightning through the gate. Kuczbara waved the exit pass (which the Arbeitsführer had signed the previous day), the barrier went up, and in the twinkling of an eye we were on the public road along the Soła. The cart flew along so that we could get away from the labor columns as quickly as possible.50 Komski depicted their escape years later in the watercolor Big Escape (fig. 19). In the image Komski represents himself carrying some papers that he smuggled out of the camp to give to the Polish Underground.51. 49. Otto Küsel was a German Kapo. While in Auschwitz he was the prisoner number 2 and he wore the green triangle. Kuczbara and Januszewski were Polish Catholic political prisoners with the numbers 4308 and 711 respectively. See: Monika Bernacka, “Otto Küsel- Green Triangle (On The 100th Anniversary of His Birth,” in: Oś—Oświęcim, People, History, Culture magazine 5, May 2009, pp. 8-9, p. 8. According to Komski it took them one year to plan the scape. See as well Bradley, “Interview with John Komski January 30, 1992,” p.9. 50 Bernacka, “Otto Küsel- Green Triangle”, pp. 8-9. 51 In addition of his artistic activities, Komski was also assigned to the office in charged of the archives and files that contained the records of the death prisoners. When he escaping he took along with him registers with thousands of names of prisoners that had died in Auschwitz until 1942, and gave them to the Polish Underground. See Bradley, “Interview with John Komski January 30, 1992,” pp. 13 and 19.. 20.

(21) After leaving the camp. the fugitives hid in the home of Andrzej Harat in Libiąż.52 That evening, a photograph of the group was taken during dinner (fig. 20). Komski and his colleagues appear on the photo alongside Harat and his daughter Władysławy. 53 Between that day and the following morning, Komski made six portraits depicting Andrzej, Władysławy and Stefanii Harat.54 Shortly afterwards, however, Komski was captured in a railroad station trying to take a train from Krakow to Warsaw and was shot in the foot when he tried to escape.55After several months at the Montelupich prison, where he painted portraits for the SS officers, he was sent back to Auschwitz on October 1, 1943. 56 Once in Auschwitz I, he was quickly transferred to Auschwitz II and registered under another false name, Josef Nozek, and received the number 152884. Unlike the first time he entered the camp, the number was tattooed on his forearm.57 Living in constant fear of being discovered by the SS and kapos of Auschwitz I, Komski volunteered when the officers of Birkenau were selecting prisoners to transfer them to Buchenwald. From 1943 to 1945, Komski lived in four different concentration camps: Buchenwald, Gross-Rosen, Hersbruck (sub-camp of Flossenbürg) and Dachau. While in Buchenwald, he suffered from a strange case of eczema on his face that kept him in. Komski continues his narration as follows: “We changed into civilian clothing, threw the striped camp uniforms and the SS uniform down the well, and went out onto the road. Once again, things turned dangerous. The surveyors, with SS [guards], were coming our way. We had to linger in a lane and wait. When they had passed, we set out towards the Vistula Bridge where four men were waiting for us. One of them was Andrzej Harat of Libiąż, the brain behind the escape. We walked from the bridge to Libiąż in pairs, at intervals of a kilometer, taking all cautionary measures because we had to pass two German police outposts. It was afternoon when we met up at the Harat house, and then came dinner and we posed together for a picture. As we talked with our hosts, we realized that, in the general haste, our camp documents had been left behind in Broszkowice. A special Messenger delivered them that evening. Later, they were sent to Warsaw.” See Bernacka, “Otto Küsel- Green Triangle”, p. 9. 53 Bernacka, “Otto Küsel- Green Triangle”, p. 9. 54 Komski made two portraits of each one of them in different poses and with different techniques. The portraits are currently at the art collection in the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum. See catalog numbers: PMO-I-1-209, PMO-I-2-703, PMO-I-1-210, PMO-I-2-702, PMO-I-1-211 and PMO-I-2-701. 55 Bernacka, “Otto Küsel- Green Triangle”, p.9. After interviewing Komski Michael Kernam describes this recapture as follows: “Suddenly the station was surrounded by tanks. Everybody on the scene was hauled in, bound for the labor camps. This sort of mass kidnaping -- much like the British press gangs of old -- occurred whenever the slave labor force slacked off. (…) Realizing that if he went back to Auschwitz he would be recognized and instantly executed, Komski seized his moment as he was being loaded onto a police truck, raced off into the night. He was shot in the right ankle, recaptured, beaten and taken to a prison infirmary. Through a window he saw one of his friends being put on the trucks for Auschwitz. He never saw the man again.” See Michael Kernam, “Muted Works of One Man’s Silent Rage,” (accessed June 12, 2015). 56 Rosenbush Methner and Van Bork, “Jan Mieczslaw Komski,” p.6. When describing his stay in the prison, Komski comments in an interview: “(…) And then we start talking (with the SS officers), and they found out that I am an artist. In two days, they brought, you know, all the paints and materials, and I start painting portraits.” See Kuzmack, “Interview with John Komski June 7, 1990,” p.17. 57 Komski, “Jan Komski,” p.54. 52. 21.

(22) the hospital under the care of a curious German doctor.58 Komski narrates: “My stay at Buchenwald was largely limited to the hospital, where I needed to recover from eczema, which attacked my face and head. Upon my release, the Germans transferred me to the Gestapo in Krakow, where I underwent an extremely harsh interrogation.”59 Komski was then sent to Groß-Rosen concentration camp in 1944.60 Commenting his stay at Groß-Rosen in an interview in 1990, Komski describes how, once more, his artistic skills saved his life: I was always able to utilize this [artistic skill], someway. So I painted landscapes mostly, and portraits; and, of course, by working in that office, I was assigned a map that was hanging—a huge war map—in the commandant’s office. And on it, I had to write in Gothic characters all the data concerning that particular camp, and all the camps, you know. So to the very end I had to do it, even when we all were already locked up in the camp. There was no work. They still were calling my name. I would have to go to the commandant’s office and change that map on a given day. Therefore, I knew completely everything what is going on, all the secrets.”61 Shortly after his arrival at Groß-Rosen, the SS ordered the evacuation of the camp, and he was transferred to Hersbruck, where he was assigned to the employment division of the camp.62 Less than two months later, on April 13, 1945, the day after Easter, Komski was forced to join a death march of 3,800 men moving from Hersbruck to Dachau.63 After two weeks, on April 14, 1945, only 2,000 men, including Komski, reached Dachau.64 He relates that upon his arrival, the Dachau camp was ready to collapse: “In spite of the confusion, they processed us and even gave us numbers. But we had no clothes. We were naked to the end. We had to wrap ourselves in blankets, which proved to be an advantage. They did not require us to stand for roll calls or go to work.. Kuzmack, “Interview with John Komski June 7, 1990,” p.18. Komski, “Jan Komski,” p.55. 60 Komski, “Jan Komski,” p.56. 61 Kuzmack, “Interview with John Komski June 7, 1990,” p.20. 62 According to the records on February 15, 1945 Komski was registered in Hersbruck, sub-camp of Flossenbürk concentration camp, with the number 85000. See Ceil Wendt Jensen, “Discovering Displaced Persons,” in: Ancestry, March-April 2010, pp. 30-33, p. 32. 63 From Hersbruck to Dachau additional 1,600 prisoners were transferred by train, and reached their destination two days later. See Daniel Blatman, The Death Marches. The Final Phase of Nazi Genocide, Cambridge, Mass. & London 2011, p. 208. 64 Komski, “Jan Komski,” p.56; Blatman, The Death Marches, p. 208. 58 59. 22.

(23) Actually, no serious work was done anyway. The camp was lifeless.”65 A few weeks later, on April 29, 1945, U.S. troops led by General George Patton liberated Dachau.66. 2.3. 1945-2002: Migration to The United States and Postwar Works After the liberation, Komski spent over a year in a Displaced Persons Camps in Bavaria, and then he moved to Munich.67 During his stay at the camp in Bavaria, he painted 15 drawings using Indian ink on paper that depicted scenes of death and torture and the life of the prisoners in Auschwitz. In 1946, these works were published in a book in Munich under the name of Za Drutami/Behind The Barbed Wires.68 Some of the drawings anticipate certain scenes and memories that Komski painted repetitively in his postwar works.69 In 1949, Komski, his wife Zdzisława “Jean” Komski and their daughter Christine immigrated to the United States.70 From 1949 to 1954, after moving to New Jersey, he had to stop his artistic production because he did not had enough time to paint.71 As he explained in an interview in 1998: The beginnings were very difficult. They called us “greenhorns.” It took me some time to get a job that paid enough to provide a modest standard of living.. Komski, “Jan Komski,” p.56. His assigned number in Dachau that day was 161260. See Wendt Jensen, “Discovering Displaced Persons,” p. 32. 66 Rosenbush Methner and Van Bork, “Jan Mieczslaw Komski,” p.6; and Michael Kernam, “Muted Works of One Man’s Silent Rage,” (accessed June 12, 2015). A detailed account of the liberation and they days that follow it was narrated in detail by Komski in an interview in 1995. See Sandra Bradley (interviewer), “Interview with John Komski February 14, 1995,” Transcript, USHMM, RG50.470.0013, at http://collections.ushmm.org/oh_findingaids/RG-50.470.0013_trs_en.pdf (accessed October 2, 2014). The video interview can be seen at: Sandra Bradley (interviewer), “Oral history interview with John Komski February 14, 1995,” Videotape recording, USHMM, RG-50.470.0013, at http://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn511058 (accessed October 2, 2014). 67 During his stay at the Displaced Persons Camp Komski met the woman who would become his wife, another concentration camp survivor, and got married in 1945. He relates: “Shortly after the liberation, I met my future wife. We married in Garmisch. Interestingly, we were both freed on the same day, April 29, 1945, but in two different camps. The camp where my wife was incarcerated as a forced laborer was a hundred kilometers away from Dachau.” See “The Sarmatian Review interviews Jan Mieczysław Komski,” in: The Sarmatian Review, iss. 02, 1998, pp. 529-532, p. 530. 68 Komski sold his 15 drawings for 25000 RM (Reichsmark) and the rights to publish them to Stanisław Siwiec in 1946. The original agreement between them is currently at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum. See Jan Komski and Stanisław Siwiec, Umuwa zawarta pomieddzy p. Komskim Janen a p. Siwcem Stanisławem, 1946, p. 9, Jan Baraś-Komski’s File, Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, Poland (December 10, 2015). The original drawings published in Za Drutami are currently hosted at the art collection. See catalog numbers from PMO-I-2-1256 to PMO-I-2-1270. 69 This exercise of re-painting, re-drawing and re-composing memories seems to be very strong in Jan Komski’s work. This will be discussed further in chapter 4. 70 “The Sarmatian Review interviews Jan Mieczysław Komski,” p. 530; and Michael Kernam, “Muted Works of One Man’s Silent Rage,” (accessed June 12, 2015). 71 Komski affirmed: “When I came to this country, I had no time for painting, I had to look for a job.” See “The Sarmatian Review interviews Jan Mieczysław Komski,” p. 531. 65. 23.

(24) That job was with the Yellow Pages: I was doing logos and layouts. Then I got a job as a graphic artist with The Washington Post. I worked there for nearly thirty years. It was then that I started painting again. I have a lot of watercolours, not just camp watercolours but also others. I retired at the age of 68.72 After his retirement in 1984, he kept on painting scenes from the concentration camps and landscapes. Jan Komski started to paint his memories between the 1970s and the 1980s. He was not the only survivor doing so. As Monica Bohm-Duchen affirms: A substantial time lap seems to have been essential before some of the survivor-artists felt able to confront their wartime experiences in their art. The first to do so, in the early 1970s, was Zoran Music, whose new images, tellingly, were given the collective We Are Not The Last. In the mid-1990s (prompted in part by the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the war?), the floodgates of memory seemed to open. On the whole, the art produced by survivors in later years (an important subject that strays well beyond the boundaries of this volume) tends to be either more anguished and expressionistic, or more oblique and/or universalizing in its approach, more allegorical and/or symbolic.73 Many writers also described their concentration camp memories throughout the second part of the twentieth century. The Italian author Primo Levi can be taken as an example. Many years passed between the publication of the books that constitute his “Auschwitz trilogy.” If This is a Man (Se questo è un uomo) was published in 1947, The Truce (La Tregua) in 1963, and The Sunken and the Released (I sommersi e i salvati) in 1986.74 The process of remembering and the question of how to cope with the memories are fundamental to comprehending the images and writings created by the survivors during the decades that followed the war.75 Jan Komski painted almost every day, especially landscape watercolors (figs. 21-22), until he died on July 20, 2002. 76 At the time of his death, his artistic “The Sarmatian Review interviews Jan Mieczysław Komski,” p. 531. Bohn-Duchen, “Art of the Holocaust: Creativity in Extremis”, p. 209. 74 See Carmen F. Blanco Valdés, “The Auschwitz Trilogy by Primo Levi: Language as a Form of Survival,” in: Linguistics and Literature Studies 4, no.2, 2016, pp. 149-157, p. 149. 75 I will comeback to this important question and Primo Levi’s writings again in chapter 5. 76 Jan Komski died from cancer at 87, at the Virginia Hospital Center in Arlington, Virginia. See Komski’s obituary at: Bart Barnes, “Artist John Komski Dies; Survived 5 Death Camps,” in: The 72 73. 24.

(25) production depicting scenes of the concentration camps included more than 200 pen drawings, oils on canvas and watercolors.77 Since 2008, most of the works have been housed in the art collection of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum. On January 16, 2008, the collections department of the memorial acquired 37 paintings and 69 drawings by Komski, which were donated by the American Institute of Polish Culture in Pinellas County, Florida. The collection of 190 of Komski’s works is according to the museum “one of the largest postwar cycles depicting scenes from the life of prisoners.”78. 2.4. The Eyewitness Documentary and the 1998 Exhibition Jan Komski’s works were discovered in 1995 by Chicago art patrons Granvil and Marcia Specks and the artist and filmmaker Bert Van Bork, who were researching in the archives of Buchenwald and Auschwitz for materials for a documentary film. 79 After contacting the artist through the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum and the United States Holocaust Memorial and Museum, Van Bork decided to change the original idea of his documentary and instead record the story of three artists in the concentration camps: Jan Komski, Dina Gottliebova Babbitt and Felix Nussbaum. Inspired by their discovery, Sperks and Van Bork arranged an exhibition of Komski’s works in the United States. His works were exhibited for the first time in 1998 at the Holocaust Museum in Houston, between January 22 and March 31, 1998. The exhibition Auschwitz Witness: The Artwork of Jan Komski, co-curated by Ellen Rosenbush Methner and Bert Van Bork, included more that 50 pen-and-ink drawings and 18 paintings.80 By the time Komski’s works were exhibited, Bert Van Bork was producing the documentary Eyewitness, which was finally released in 1999.81 Washington Post, July 23, 2002, at https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/2002/07/23/artistjohn-komski-dies/a3ad8a05-8bed-4447-a8ef-50844f2db43a/ (accessed June 12, 2015). 77 Komski, “Jan Komski,” p.58. In addition to the concentration camps works, Komski had about 700 landscape watercolors at his studio in Arlington by the time he was 82 years old. See Rosenbush Methner and Van Bork, “Jan Mieczslaw Komski,” p. 6. 78 Report 2008/Sprawozdanie 2008: Memorial Auschwitz-Birkenau/Miejsce Pamieci AuschwitzBirkenau, Oświęcim 2009, at http://auschwitz.org/en/museum/museum-reports/ (accessed April 11, 2015), pp. 9 and 37. 79 Ellen Rosenbush Methner, “Introduction,” in: Jan Komski, Eyewitness: The Artwork of Jan Komski, p.3. By the time they met Komski he had already a large amount of works depicting Auschwitz. As the artists explains: “At that point, I had about three-fourths of the paintings you now see in this exhibit in my workroom. Mr. Van Bork spent a long time looking them over, and he took many photographs. The paintings were not framed, they just stood by the wall in random arrangements.” See “The Sarmatian Review interviews Jan Mieczysław Komski,” p. 531. 80 Komski, Eyewitness: The Artwork of Jan Komski, p. 2. 81 Van Bork, Bert, Eyewitness, documentary, Los Angeles 1999.. 25.

(26) When asked about his first exhibition, Komski commented: “I had never exhibited these paintings before, partly because they were not framed. The framing of so many pictures is an expensive and time-consuming enterprise. They were framed at the expense of the Museum. Paintings were dispatched to Houston long before the exhibit opened. They made a favorable impression on another Museum curator, Ms. Ellen Methner, and her associates. This is how the project started.”82 Since 1998, his works have been exhibited in Arlington and Fairfax in Virginia, DePaul University in Chicago and University of South Carolina at Greensboro.83 The largest collection of his works is in Poland. On June 14, 2008, the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum inaugurated the temporary exhibition It Was My Skill at Drawing that Saved Me featuring 47 of Komski's paintings and drawings (fig. 23), to commemorate the proclamation by the Polish parliament of June 14 as the Memorial Day for Victims of Nazi Concentration Camps.84. See “The Sarmatian Review interviews Jan Mieczysław Komski,” p. 532. Barnes, “Artist John Komski Dies,” (accessed June 12, 2015). 84 Report 2008/Sprawozdanie 2008, (accessed April 11, 2015), pp. 13 and 41. 82 83. 26.

(27) 3. Understanding Jan Komski’s Artistic Style After a while, after the escape, after I have been liberated….sometimes, very often when I work at night in my studio, in my home, I sometimes remember…. it comes to my mind all those things…. Jan Komski, 199085. To comprehend Jan Komski’s artistic style, it is necessary to take a general look at his overall production. This chapter will discuss the general artistic context in which Komski was trained as artist in Krakow and will offer a bird’s-eye view of his works. My objective in this section will be to identify general motifs and characteristics of his works from the 1940s to the 1990s, and to point out possible artistic references and influences. A more insightful analysis and interpretation of selected works will be addressed in the next chapter. 3.1. The “Central European Triangle” and the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow The artistic context in which Komski was immersed during his formal training as an artist might hold important keys to understanding his style. Therefore, the particular atmosphere of the arts in Poland, especially in Krakow, before the outbreak of the Second World War should be taken into account. In the 1880s, when the south of Poland was still part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, Krakow was the historic and artistic center of Polish culture, part of what some scholars have named the “Central European triangle,” along with Vienna and Prague.86 Since Poland was not a free nation that only gained independence in 1918, during the end of the nineteenth century and the first part of the twentieth century, many Polish art historians and artists tried energetically to preserve Polish cultural. Kuzmack, “Interview with John Komski June 7, 1990,” p. 26. Within each city were created different artistic groups. The strongest ones were: the ‘Vienna Secession’ in Vienna, ‘Sztuka’ in Krakow, and ‘Mánes’ in Prague. These three groups were also engaged with the publication of their own literary and artistic journals: the Viennese Ver Sacrum, the Polish Życie and the Czech Volné Směry. However, the contacts between the groups definitely ceased with the start of the First World War. As Krzysztofowicz-Kozakowska explains: “The last act in the drama of mutual contacts between the Vienna Secession, the Prague Mánes and the Cracow ‘Sztuka’ had already been written by history: it was punctuated by the outbreak of World War I, the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian empire and the recovery of national sovereignty by the Czechs and the Poles.” See Krzysztofowicz-Kozakowska and Mizia, “‘Sztuka’, ‘Wiener Secession’, ‘Mánes’, pp. 217, 239 and 256. 85 86. 27.