Northwest Center for Holocaust, Genocide and Ethnocide Education

Holocaust Art

Examples of art pieces created by the 10th grade English students of NEH Participant, Brian Hanrahan, at Mount Vernon High-School.

Mr. Hanrahan's unit on the Holocaust included the reading of The Diary of Anne Frank, Night, and an excerpt from Mein Kampf, as well as the viewing of the documentary film, Hitler. Leo Hymas, a former US soldier and concentration camp liberator, spoke with the students. A culminating project included student research on a Holocaust topic of their choice.

My Imagination
by Jake Koopmans

When you think of the Holocaust what goes on in your mind? When you hear the word “Holocaust” what do you think of? Is it a good thought, or is it a bad thought? I can clearly show you what goes on in my mind when I think of the word “Holocaust”, or when I think of it in general. I am what I call a visual person, I like to draw pictures in my mind to help me comprehend the things I learn. When I read stories I always have a movie playing in my mind of the book, so it is like watching a movie as I read. If the scripture does not tell me a detail such as hair color of a certain character I will give the character a hair color.

As I think of the Holocaust I play a movie in my mind, and it is a very scary sad movie that has given me many nightmares. The movie is very color, but still somewhat blurry. I picture a big room full of fire with people in it that are not yet dead. They are innocent Jews that did nothing wrong to deserve death. There are five people in the picture, three women and two men. There are more women than men because often the Germans would keep men as slaves. I know that they also kept some women, but this is the way I envisioned it. The innocent people in the fiery room are crying and screaming from the torturing pain. The colorful background stands for the echoes of the screams of pain. Each dash of color stands for one person that was murdered in that room, and each person screamed, and their scream will last forever in that room echoing around the room, bouncing from wall to wall. Now there have just been five more dashes of color added to the background to represent five more echoes of the death scream from the five people in the painting.

I know that the Jews were not necessarily burned alive, but they were gassed and murdered, and then thrown into the crematory machines. The vision that I had was of their bodies, what their bodies were doing while being burned in the room of fire, and it was a scary sight.

by Anna Sanger

This picture was created as a representation of my feelings towards the Holocaust. The flames, symbolizing Nazi cruelty as a whole, appear to be surrounding a young, emaciated and innocent concentration camp victim. The image of Hitler’s face in the child’s eyes symbolizes his deceit towards the German people and all of the people persecuted. It is as if the child can only see what he allows her to see. Jewish and other persecuted people were constantly lied to right up to their deaths. The German people were fed stereotypes pf these people through Hitler’s own opinions. The fact that she has no defined hands symbolizes her helplessness towards the events taking place around her. The black fuzzy blotches, (ashes) in the flames symbolize the murder of the child’s relatives under Nazi order in front of her very eyes.

Almost all of this picture was created with melted crayons. I feel that this represents the disintegration of a child’s right to be a child under the hands of the Nazis. While these children should have been exploring life’s joys (such as many of us do through art with crayons at a young age) they were mercilessly killed and put through horrible events.

by Kristen

My artwork is an interpretation of what stands out in my mind when I think of the Holocaust. The eyes shedding tears are symbolic of God's eyes and what he must have seen during the Holocaust. The tears drip to form the drowning pool that was the Holocaust. On the bottom right there is a heart with a dagger through it. I always think of this when I think of the War because my grandfather had this tattooed on his arm. He never would tell me what it meant but he would say that he got it after he liberated a concentration camp, then I think it may have something to do with how his heart and mind were inflicted by the dagger of hate. On the top left corner there is an eternal flame, which represents love that will never die. The Latin phrase next to the torch means "Through a divine shield, love conquers all" this is meant to show that no matter how much hurt is inflicted on people love always come though as the victor. The sword on the top-center page is the sword of Truth that God said would protect his people from eternal harm and damnation. In the center of the page is another Latin phrase which means "From the inferno region, I cry to you oh Lord!". I think that this adequately represents what the victims of the Holocaust were thinking. The words on the page are words that are associated with the Holocaust as a whole. Finally the burnt edges of the paper, to me signify the cremation of the victims of the Holocaust's horror.

Additional Pieces
by 10th grade Mount Vernon Students