"In 2005, the UN declared January 27th as International Holocaust Remembrance Day because on this day in 1945, the Russian Red Army liberated Auschwitz-Birkenau, the infamous Nazi death camp.
The 70th anniversary of this historic event is this year. In Israel, this year's Yom haShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) falls on April 16th.
This brings to mind the gifted Jewish artist Moshe Hoffman and his body of work. Hoffman was born in Budapest in 1938. In a poem dedicated to his father, he wrote: “Dad, I cannot understand why you fathered me in 1938 when the Holocaust was already so apparent...” Hoffmann died in Jerusalem in 1983 at the age of 45.
I got to know him personally as a man who struggled with his identity. He was never able to get over the horrors of the Holocaust. His struggle to forget is particularly evident in his wood carvings, which he produced in stark black and white. One of his pictures portrays black demons and white angels fighting over his soul. With a warm sun before him and the cold darkness of evil behind him, he arrived in Israel in 1949.
Hoffman’s studio was in Jerusalem, but his works were hailed abroad at exhibitions in London, Florence and other cultural centers. In 1959, he received the Ze’ev Ben-Zvi Art Award and in 1971, the Jerusalem Prize for Literature. His sculptural works of art are accompanied by his many volumes of poetry. His core work is the woodcut series 6,000,001 which he completed in 1967 after six months of meticulous labor.
But Six Million and One he did not release to public view until after the Yom Kippur War in 1973. The series contains 10 images in a 100 x 70 cm (39 x 28 inch) format. Each successive image is more vivid and powerful. The series begins with several skeletons, depicted as martyrs with halos, lying in front of concentration camp prisoners guarded by faceless uniformed men. It culminates with prisoner number 6,000,001—who happens to be Jesus.
As 6 million Jews walk to their graves, a Nazi SS guard pulls Jesus down from the cross to join the death march. The Jew Moshe Hoffman places Jesus squarely in the fold of the Jewish nation, its plight, suffering and destiny. He is also alluding to the endless spiral of destruction which—if Hitler had won—would not have stopped short of the Christians themselves.
The Nazis had already created a new theology to cover this: The Jew Jesus was transformed into an Aryan, and the Jewish Bible was replaced by myths of the Nordic gods. Thus, the Holocaust would not have been restricted to being just a Jewish tragedy. At the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem you can see Moshe Hoffmann’s piece 6,000,001 as a modern Way of the Cross, on which everyone can identify themselves, either as a victim or as a perpetrator."
The above piece............................... Written By Ludwig Schneider – Israel Today
