Proud Zionist

Now that Zionism has become more a knee-jerk accusation than description, a visit to the Museum of Jewish Heritage:  A Living Memorial to the Holocaust in Lower Manhattan provided a useful lesson about what the term meant a century ago, when Israel was an aspiration, not a right-wing government that I abhor as much as our own. Realpolitik has transformed the dream into a nightmare.

Had the Garden of Stones been open, I would have been able to see the Statue of Liberty from the second floor as well as the Staten Island Ferry.  The museum is impressively--and symbolically--situated.  I'd meant to visit when artifacts from the Anne Frank house were exhibited last year, but missed the opportunity, perhaps because I'd already seen them in Amsterdam twenty-five years earlier.

Art of Freedom: The Life & Work of Arthur Szyk finally got me in the door for the first time even though the museum has been open for more than two decades. His name recognition may have faded, but his life as a proud Pole, Jew, Zionist and American remains exemplary. The British and Polish-in-Exile governments, recognizing his illustrative talent and the power of his political cartoons, dispatched him to North America 1939 as a propagandist against the Axis powers. 

"Bubbe" from Celebration of Life (1936)

"Schmoozing" from Celebration of Life (1936)

"Poland on a Platter" (1939)

Shortly after his arrival in New York City in late 1940, he pulled out the venomous stops. There's a LOT going on in this work, just 14" x 13," but the perfect size for reproduction on a magazine cover.  Can you find Mussolini, Goebbels, Göring and Tojo?

"Anti-Christ" (1942)

The museum has enlarged the detailed painting considerably--making the tiny skulls in Hitler's eyes more apparent--and provided a key helpful in spotlighting less obvious details. Szyk embedded the Latin phrase "vae victis" (which means "woe to the vanquished") in the dictator's slicked-back hair. The banner in German held above the skeleton's head at the top declares "Europe is ours today, tomorrow the whole world."  

There's nothing subtle about Szyk's caricatures which appeared in Esquire and Collier's magazines, often on the cover.  To its credit, the museum connects the dots between his racist and dehumanizing depictions of the Japanese and Germans to the interment of American citizens whose ancestors immigrated from those countries.  Sometimes, the ends do justify the means.

"December 7, 1941" (Esquire, 1942) 

This wartime public service advertisement from Young and Rubicam informs readers that "By means of a series of sly rumors and clever propaganda, the Nazis are attempting to pit class against class, race against race in America." It exhorts American companies to appoint "rumor wardens," something we need just as desperately in Trumpian America, where some people believe that Haitian immigrants dined on cats in Springfield, Ohio, fake news that no doubt made their subsequent loss of Temporary Protection status more palatable.  

"Detour on the Glory Road" (Esquire, 1942)

I'm really surprised I didn't see this stirring work reproduced in the Warsaw Rising Museum.   It's as if Szyk had illustrated Mila 18, a novel by Leon Uris published a decade after his death.  Uris did for the Jews in best-selling fiction what Szyk accomplished in art.

"The Repulsed Attack (Warsaw Ghetto)" (1943)

Szyk's work may remain better known in the United States than Poland.  When I searched the website for the Polin Museum of the History of Polish Jews, I found only a single item in its collection, his illustrated edition from 1928 of the Statute of Kalisz, a decree that made Poland one of Europe's most welcoming places for Jews in the Middle Ages.  Szyk highlights his tribe's contributions to Polish life with this depiction of tradesmen and craftsmen.  His father worked as a textile factory director until a worker threw acid at his face during the Łódź insurrection,  permanently blinding him when Szyk was just 11 years old.  

 

In 1948, the year Szyk became an American citizen, he published The Holidays, looking back at his roots in Łódź.  The paintings feature the likenesses of his parents and other family members, the only time he ever incorporated a personal element into his work.  I recognized Purim because of the hamantaschen in the lower right-hand corner.  An orthodox Jewish printing company I once worked with for years delivered a batch to my office every spring.  Yum!

The museum's permanent collection documents Jewish life before, during and after the Holocaust.  Much of the material presented was familiar from previous visits to Jewish museums in Amsterdam, Berlin and Krakow, as well as numerous concentration camps.  But I was particularly struck by this 1921 photograph of young Zionists gathered around the grave of Theodor Herzl in a Vienna cemetery.  These vigorous young men look less like oppressors than idealists, a group in search of a land (which migh have been Uganda!) where they could thrive and observe their holidays without being treated like second-class citizens. They also don't seem like victims which is the unfortunate stereotype that I have come to associate with most early 20th century Jews as a direct result of "Never Forget."

In fact, eighteen-year-old Szyk had spent six months touring Palestine with other writers and artists to observe nascent Jewish settlement efforts when World War I began.  Forced to return to Poland, he was conscripted in the imperial Russian army which sought to invade Germany during the Battle of Łódź.  No doubt the idea of establishing a Jewish state became even more appealing as a result.  Is it any wonder that in the wake of the Holocaust the much older and wiser artist--whose mother and brother were killed by the Nazis--used his propagandistic skills to support the creation of Israel by any means necessary, including Biblical allusions and guns?

"The Modern Maccabees" (1942)

These virile young men--who gave me Tom of Finland vibes--personify rival Jewish militias that fought together in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War which resulted in the Nakba, a perspective with which it has taken me more than 70 years to become familiar, thanks largely due to New York City's last mayoral election. Haganah (center), formed in 1920 with funding from both Poland and the United Kingdom to defend Jewish settlers from attack by Arabs, initially wasn't as militant as Irgun and the Sternists but after World War II it, too, attacked the British occupiers of Palestine who had begun turning away Holocaust survivors and other Jews with nowhere else to go.  Once Israel finally became an independent country--with the support of the United Nations--these militias comprised the Israeli army, long respected throughout my lifetime for its sill and ferociousness.

"Irgun, Haganah, Sternists" (1947)

When Israel declared its independence on May 10, 1948, Szyk said it was the happiest day of his life.  He promptly set to work illuminating the document in Hebrew.

By then, he and his family had settled in New Canaan, Connecticut where he remained until his death three years later.  Illuminating the U.S. Declaration of Independence was one of his final projects although he also continued to produce work that reflected his unease with the social injustices of his adopted country.  The House Un-American Activities Committee eventually accused him of communism.