Art as a Means of Survival in Buchenwald Concentration Camp

Several prisoners of Buchenwald concentration camp captured the camp reality with sculptural (like Bruno Apitz) and graphic works (among others Herbert Sandberg, Henri Pieck, Paul Goyard, and Boris Taslitzky) already during their imprisonment. Visual art in its various forms of expression helped the prisoners to survive and was a medium to show their own resistance. After liberation, art was a form of making the unspeakable visible. Survivors process the images in their heads in this way. To this day, works of art continue to shape memories, as Fritz Cremer’s group of figures in front of the bell tower and the memorial plaque by Horst Hoheisel and Andreas Knitz on the roll call square show. This raises the question of whether visual art can be an approach to a reality that is difficult for those born afterwards to comprehend.

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