Jerzy Zielezinski

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Jerzy Zielezinski , also George Zielezinski or George Ziel (born March 28, 1914 in Łowicz ; † February 28, 1982 in Connecticut ), was a Polish-American painter and illustrator who, as a Holocaust survivor, first gave artistic evidence of the everyday life of prisoners in left the concentration camps .

Life

Jerzy Zielezinski was born in Poland in 1914. From 1934 to 1939 he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw . After the German attack on Poland on September 1, 1939 and the murder of his father by the National Socialists due to a refused collaboration, Zielezinski was deported to the Warsaw ghetto in 1941. On March 18, 1943, he was transferred to the Pawiak prison in Warsaw and from there deported as a political prisoner to Auschwitz on April 28 , where he was given the prisoner number 119517. From January 1944 he was interned in the Flossenbürg concentration camp , where he was given the number 4817. In April the SS evacuated the camp. Zielezinski was taken to the Dachau concentration camp , where he survived until the liberation by the Americans. In Dachau, Zielezinski secretly made sketches with charcoal on scraps of paper, which he transferred into drawings and paintings immediately after the end of the war during his convalescence in a hospital and a stay in a camp for displaced persons in Schwandorf . During this time he changed his name to George Zielezinski . His first wife, a Jewish woman, was taken to Germany for forced labor and died in a bomb attack.

In 1949 he emigrated with his second wife (born 1922 in Czechoslovakia ) to the United States, where he changed his name again to George Ziel . The couple moved to New York City , where Zielezinski initially struggled as a dishwasher while his wife worked as a nurse. In 1956 he received American citizenship. In the 1950s he began a successful career as a commercial artist and illustrator for science fiction , horror fiction and detective novels, and designed a total of over 300 book covers. Aim spent his final years in seclusion in Connecticut. A few weeks before his own death, his wife died and the marriage remained childless.

plant

George Zielezinski, Folder 24 Drawings from the Concentration Camps in Germany , Munich 1946

In 1946, Zielezinski released two albums based on his experiences in the Warsaw ghetto and in the concentration camps, and which presented everyday camp life from arrival to the end. The first folder, the KZ Album (also Prisoner Album ), consisted of 18 drawings and contained a Polish foreword by DP Express editor Jerzy Szwede and a German text by Ernst Wiechert entitled "Die Tafeln des Grauens". The edition was printed in the letterpress W. Schütz, Kanalstrasse 1 in Munich 22. A copy of this edition is in the Benedictine Abbey of the Plankstetten monastery .

The second folder 24 Drawings from the Concentration Camps in Germany was an expanded version of the concentration camp album . It was published under the name George Zielezinski by Verlag F. Bruckmann KG, Munich, in an edition of 1000 copies and contained 24 rotogravures. The sheets are preceded by an accompanying text in four languages. The English version is by an unidentifiable author “LG”, the Polish text by Jerzy Szwede and the German and French text by Eljott. A copy of this edition is on hold at Princeton University . The drawings from the concentration camp album were shown in 1946 in an exhibition initiated by the UN Organization for the Repatriation of Deported Refugees ( UNRRA ) in the New Collection of the Bavarian National Museum in Munich, in which 71 artists from the US zone took part.

Both albums are now considered invaluable testimonials to memory, which are preserved and exhibited worldwide by Holocaust memorials such as Yad Vashem and the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum , but also in the collection of the University of Minnesota and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum . In America appeared on November 24, 1951 a first report on the albums in the journal Friends Intelligencer , which was published by the Religious Society of Friends in Philadelphia .

George Ziel was a member of the Society of Illustrators , to which he left some paintings.

41 drawings from the years 1946 to 1948, which deal with everyday life in the concentration camps, were donated to the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in 2019 .

Contents of the album 24 Drawings from the Concentration Camps in Germany , 1946

  • Sheet 1: Transport
  • Sheet 2: Access
  • Sheet 3: In front of the bathroom
  • Sheet 4: I am hungry
  • Sheet 5: Night shift
  • Sheet 6: When is my turn
  • Sheet 7: Foreman
  • Sheet 8: Punishment
  • Sheet 9: Suicide
  • Sheet 10: Longing
  • Sheet 11: Work sets you free
  • Sheet 12: Garotte
  • Sheet 13: Typhus
  • Sheet 14: Shadows on the roll call square
  • Sheet 15: Capo
  • Sheet 16: I'm cold
  • Sheet 17: Women's appeal
  • Sheet 18: Infirmary
  • Sheet 19: Little criminals
  • Sheet 20. The celebrities
  • Sheet 21: Hit
  • Sheet 22: To the wire!
  • Sheet 23: Evacuation
  • Sheet 24: Strange event

Literature (selection)

  • Ziva Amishai-Maisels, Depiction and Interpretation. The Influence of the Holocaust on the Visual Arts , Pergamon Press, Oxford / New York 1993.
  • Kathrin Hoffmann-Curtius , German Monument Policies after 1945 . In: Shame and Guilt. Gender (sub) texts of the Shoah , ed. By Maja Figge, Konstanze Hanitzsch, Nadine Teuber. Transcript Verlag , Bielefeld 2010, pp. 140, 141.
  • Kathrin Hoffmann-Curtius, pictures of the murder of Jews. A commented review of painting and drawing in Germany from 1945 to the Auschwitz trial . Jonas Verlag , Marburg 2014, pp. 74–85, ISBN 978-3-89445-495-1 .

Web links

Commons : George Target  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Press report from June 3, 2019 on the Auschwitz.org website , accessed on June 24, 2019
  2. ↑ see the biography on the page of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
  3. ↑ See: Kathrin Hoffmann-Curtius , Bilder zum Judenmord. A commented review of painting and drawing in Germany from 1945 to the Auschwitz trial . Jonas Verlag , Marburg 2014, p. 74.
  4. ^ Marquand Library, Call Number: NE735.P7 Z6f.
  5. ↑ See: Kathrin Hoffmann-Curtius , Bilder zum Judenmord. A commented review of painting and drawing in Germany from 1945 to the Auschwitz trial . Jonas Verlag , Marburg 2014, pp. 76-77, ISBN 978-3-89445-495-1 .
  6. ↑ Press report from June 3, 2019 on the Auschwitz.org website , accessed on June 24, 2019
personal data
SURNAME Zielezinski, Jerzy
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Zielezinski, Georg; Goal, Georg
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Polish-American painter and illustrator
DATE OF BIRTH March 28, 1914
PLACE OF BIRTH Łowicz
DATE OF DEATH February 28, 1982
Place of death Connecticut