Never before have so many works from the Yad Vashem collection been shown together in one exhibition outside Jerusalem. On show in Berlin are a total of 100 works by 50 artists, persecuted as Jews, locked up and tortured in ghettoes or concentration camps. Many of them were murdered.

The exhibition offers a starting point to address this, the most dreadful chapter in German history, said Chancellor Angela Merkel after she had toured the exhibition. It gives us food for thought and accompanies us in our contemplations she added.

"Never again!"

"The fact that these works tell us more than might be apparent at first sight, and the fact that they address us directly today and strike a chord deep within us, make them so valuable," said Angela Merkel. Art allows us to feel something of the strength and the suffering of these people, and thus to follow their footsteps to some extent, she continued.

The opening of this exhibition in the run-up to the day on which we remember and pay tribute to the victims of National Socialism underlines the fact that we can only look forward to a good future if we are aware of our enduring responsibility, said the Chancellor. "The pictures we see here are a reminder to us, each one in its own way, that we must always remember what happened, we must preserve the memory of the victims, and with all our strength we must ensure that it never happens again."

It will always be Germany’s responsibility to keep alive the memories of the breach of civilisation that was the Shoah, she assured her audience.

German-Israeli cooperation project

In her address Angela Merkel also mentioned the fifty years of diplomatic relations that link Germany and Israel. She described the exhibition as "an exemplary German-Israeli cooperation project".

The fact that the two countries have forged such a wide spectrum of links at so many levels is nothing short of a miracle, given the historical facts, said Angela Merkel. "And we in Germany should never forget that it is far from self-evident; that it is indeed a miracle."

Works of art from concentration camps and ghettoes

Behind every work of art and every artist there are people and individual fates. Felix Nussbaum, for instance, was already a successful artist when an informer betrayed him in 1944 in Brussels where he had gone into hiding. He was deported to the concentration camp in Auschwitz where he died half a year later.

Nelly Toll painted the picture "Girls in the Field" in 1943, when she was only eight years old. She was in hiding with her mother in Lemberg’s ghetto at the time. She was taken in and hidden by a Christian family and survived. She was the only survivor to attend the opening of the exhibition.

The artists whose works are on show worked in secret under inhuman conditions. Often they risked their lives even to obtain materials with which to paint. This is why many of the works are painted on paper, which was easier to obtain.

Exhibition in three sections

Three sections of the exhibition look at three different aspects of the works. The first section is dedicated to "Reality". The works depict the transport of prisoners, everyday reality in concentration camps or broken, tortured bodies – they bear witness to the atrocities and humiliation to which inmates were subjected in the concentration camps.

The second section is dedicated to portraits: self-portraits and portraits of their fellow-sufferers. What shines through is the artists’ need to give these often doomed individuals a face, and to preserve their memory as they would like to be seen by future generations – not as victims, but as human beings. "Transcendence" is the third section of the exhibition. The works in this section tell of the longing of the inmates for a different reality, and of their escape into a world of memories, fantasy and faith.

Witnesses of an indomitable spirit

All works communicate in a very personal and extremely moving way the experiences of the artists. At the same time they testify to an unshakeable creative force. "Every single one of these works is both a living testimony of the Holocaust and a reaffirmation of an indomitable human spirit," declared Avner Shalev, Yad Vashem Chairman, who also attended the opening of the exhibition.

The exhibition "Art from the Holocaust – 100 works from the Yad Vashem collection" can be seen at the German Historical Museum until 3 April. It was initiated by the German national daily newspaper BILD in cooperation with the German Historical Museum, the Bonn-based Foundation for Art and Culture and Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Israel.