WWII – Holocaust Era1933-1945

• Adolf Hitler

• Jewish, Gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Communists, Liberals, homosexuals, poor, homeless, mentally ill, mentally retarded or other birth defects, and anyone who opposed Nazi politics or supported one of the target groups.

• 11 million people killed (Genocide) Over 6 million of those were Jewish men, women and children murdered (The Final Solution)

• Boycotts

• Ghettos

• Kristillnacht

• Train ride to work camps/death camps, medical experiments, crematoriums

• Death march

• Survivor camps 1945-1957

Degenerate Art (Entartete Kunst)“Modern artists are degenerate.” –Adolph Hitler

• Hitler painted realistically, landscapes and architecture. To him art was about depicting a pleasant scene in a realistic way.

• The Expressionists – Realism was not important, they were concerned with what was “beneath the surface” or what was happening psychologically.

• They reflected on their own World War I experiences and traumas, or other cultures (primitivism)

Oskar Kokoshka

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

Max Beckman

Marc Chagall

Emil Nolde

Kathe Kollwitz

Kathe Kollwitz

Wassily Kandinsky

Otto Dix

Otto Dix

Choose one of the following perspectives for the piece you will create:

1. Direct historical reference – you are referencing someone’s holocaust/WWII experience, or a setting/scene, or an emotion. Examples: a landscape of a Jewish ghetto or some other setting; a person or people (holocaust prisoner, soldier, child, trains, death march, etc); a non-literal representation of an emotion experienced by victims/survivors (grief, shock, illness, loss, death)

2. Degenerate Art – create an artwork “in the style of” one of the Degenerate Artists censored by Hitler.

3. Direct present day reference – you are referencing a personal, present-day experience of hate, prejudice, war, or loss. This doesn’t have to be YOUR actual experience but can be that of a family member or friend – something that affected you strongly.

Video LinksSurvivor Interviews:• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoI1I1BMRvE

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leqkGOqyWMI&list=FLChFBXy4mX-nMYM2VgLjAgQ&index=4

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeixVrnS7r8

Color film coverage of concentration camps:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfNvVSQXtDw&feature=fvwp

Degenerate Art:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QE4Ld1mkoM