Autumn in the Time of Hitler Painting

This is the companion painting, called “Springtime in the Time of Hitler” that I did in 2004. It is a potato field just beyond the Polish artillery barracks that later became the site for Auschwitz-Birkenau. The year is August 1939. This painting, called “Autumn in the Time of Hitler” is based upon a photograph surreptitiously taken by Alberto (Alex) Errera, a greek Polish resistance member who was mistakenly taken for a Jew because he was witnessed taking a shower by his comrades as being circumcised. They assumed he was a double agent type, so they turned him in to the Nazis, who promptly sent him to Auschwitz. He became a Sonndercommando, because of his size and strength. After taking the photo, which he buried, he tried to escape, but was caught, tortured and killed after 2 days on the lamb. His colleagues who declined to join him in the escape, later dug up the photo roll and sent it to the Polish resistance in a tube of toothpaste. This is August, 1944. The Russians had a big breakthrough on the Eastern Front and are fewer than 100 miles away. The Camp has taken on the Hungarian Jews finally, and also have decided to kill the reliable workers who were the Roma (gypsies). 3,000 were killed in August, with another 50,000 Hungarians. "By 9 July 1944, 434,351 Jews in 147 trains had been deported, according to László Ferenczy of the Hungarian Royal Gendarmerie. According to Edmund Veesenmayer, the Reich plenipotentiary in Hungary, the figure was 437,402.[b][c] About 80 percent of deportees were gassed on arrival.[3] Because the crematoria were unable to cope with the number of corpses, pits (actually pyres) were dug where bodies were burned." The camp was closed down in November, in order to destroy as much evidence as possible before the Russians arrived in January 1945. Just prior to that the “death march” took the lives of thousands of jews who were deemed strong enough to make it. The idea is to represent a semi-abstract reimaging of the photograph, showing the living dead (the Sonndercommandos), and the actual dead. They are shown as deceased humans with stories to tell, not the discarded empty sardine can bodies represented in the photos of the time. Three (4) victims of Joseph Mengele are shown metaphorically as well.

Painting:Oil on Canvas

Original:One-of-a-kind Artwork

Size:60 W x 48 H x 1.9 D in

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