Warsaw 1943

about Warsaw 1943

This piece was created following WWII, when the artist Ben Shahn sought to grapple with the insurmountable violence that it wrought.

In this, he commemorates the 20th anniversary of the uprising of the Warsaw Ghetto Jews against their Nazi occupiers, a powerful armed fight of Jews against efforts to send their remaining populations to death camps. The text below is a prayer said on Yom Kippur and translates as follows: These I will remember and my soul overflows with sorrow. For evil people have swallowed us, like a cake, unturned, for during the days of Caesar there was no reprieve for the ten martyrs, put to death by the [Roman] government.