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[AUSCHWITZ] Kwiaty Oświęcimia = The Flowers of Oświęcim = Les Fleurs D’Oświęcim

Tolkachev, Z.

Item #2350

Wroclaw: Drukarnia Państwowa, 1946. [82] p. 21x26,5 cm. In original illustrated dust wrapper and original cloth binding. The spine and the edges of the dust wrapper are supplied, the loss doesn’t affect the design or the title. Small crack in the spine, foxed endpapers, but very good and clean internally. Design was created by Zdzisław Czaczko and A. Świety.

This well-known artbook features impressions of a Soviet Jewish artist who, as a soldier, participated in the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp. On behalf of the Polish government, copies of this album were sent to the leaders of the countries within the anti-Hitler coalition, ministers of the allied states and military leaders.

The book includes 32 reproductions (33, including frontispiece) of works by Belarusian Jewish artist Zinovy Tolkachev (1903–1977). Initially he studied under Alexander Osmerkin and Pyotr Konchalovsky in Moscow. Later Tolkachev moved to Kyiv where designed political propaganda. In the late 1920s, he started to teach in the Kyiv Art Institute. During the war, Zinovy Tolkachev served as an artist in a unit tasked with collecting documents about Nazi atrocities in the occupied territories. In late 1944, he was sent to the Political Department of the 1st
Ukrainian Front, which at that time was located in Lublin, not far from the Majdanek extermination camp. A series of artworks dedicated to Majdanek camp became the first. In early 1945, he joined a Military Commission investigating Nazi crimes in the Auschwitz concentration camp. Sketching victims of the extermination camps, he wrote down their memories side by side. One of the most terrifying series of drawings, ‘The Flowers of Oświęcim [Auschwitz]’, became one of the documentary evidence of the prosecution at the Nuremberg trials. During the antisemitic campaign launched by Soviet authorities, Tolkachev's works were declared "Zionistreligious" and "deeply flawed" in the 1950-1960s. He was severely criticized for “cosmopolitanism and bourgeois nationalism".

The artist participated in international exhibitions before WWII, but this work has become truly internationally significant. The art exposition of the Polish Historical Museum "Auschwitz" began with the drawings by Zinovy Tolkachev.

Worldcat shows copies located in LoC, Princeton, Hartfort, Arizona State, Nebraska at Omaha, Southern California, UC Berkeley, Tulane, Wake Forest Universities, Hebrew Union College, Tauber Holocaust Library.

Price: $1,900.00