Nathan Rappaport

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Sculpture from the Warsaw Ghetto Memorial
Menorah from the Warsaw Ghetto Memorial

Nathan Jakow Rappaport (also Rapoport, Rapaport) (born 1911 in Warsaw ; died 1987 in New York ) was a Polish-born Jewish sculptor .

Life

Nathan Rappaport studied from 1931 to 1936 at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts under Tadeusz Breyer. In 1936 and 1939 he visited France and Italy thanks to a scholarship from the Academy .

After the start of the Second World War in 1939, he fled to the eastern part of Poland occupied by the Red Army . In 1941 he fled to Tashkent during the German-Soviet war and later came to Novosibirsk . In the summer of 1946 he returned to Warsaw.

Together with the architect Leon Marek Suzin, he designed the Warsaw Ghetto Memorial , which was unveiled on April 19, 1948.

In 1950 Rappaport went to Paris , then to Israel , in 1959 he settled in New York, where he was naturalized in 1965.

He first dealt with portrait sculpture, also during his stay in the Soviet Union. Under the influence of the Shoah tragedy, he was interested in monumental sculpture. In addition to the Warsaw Ghetto Memorial, he erected other monuments in Israel and the USA. The art critics especially appreciate the Monument Fire rolls (1971) in the Forest of the Martyrs of the Judäahügeln in Jerusalem as two Torah scrolls depicting scenes from the Pentateuch , the Jewish Diaspora , the creation of Israel and the Six Day War concern. Another monument in Israel is in Kibbutz Negba .

In 1985, in Jersey City , Rappaport created a monumental sculpture depicting an American soldier carrying a Holocaust survivor.

literature

  • Martin Gilbert: The Holocaust . Random House, New York 1987, pp. 317-324.
  • Zvi Sohar: Fighters Memorial, Monuments to the Fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising . Workers' Book Guild, Sifriat Poalim 1964.
  • Richard Yaffe: Nathan Rapoport Sculptures and Monuments . Shengold Publishers, New York 1980.
  • James E. Young : The Texture of Memory. Holocaust Memorials and Meaning . New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993, pp. 155-184

Web links

Commons : Natan Rapoport  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Rappaport, Nathan
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Rapaport, Rapoport; Rappaport, Nathan Jakow (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Polish sculptor
DATE OF BIRTH 1911
PLACE OF BIRTH Warsaw
DATE OF DEATH 1987
Place of death new York