Left: Completed art in metal stained-glass window frame
Right: Art alone, on wood, created in acrylic and oil pastel
KRISTALLNACHT
Kristallnacht - The Night of Broken Glass--official start of the Holocaust
Kristallnacht the "Night of Broken Glass" took place throughout Germany and Austria on the night of November 9-10, 1938. Prior to Kristallnacht, Nazi police took precautions to ensure that Jews could not fight back effectively. On November 8th, police entered Jewish households, removing anything that Jews could use to defend themselves. In the course of just a few hours on November 9th, hundreds of synagogues were burned, thousands of Jewish owned places of business were destroyed, almost one hundred Jews were killed, and thirty thousand Jews were arrested and sent to concentration camps. The Kristallnacht prisoners who were released were forced to emigrate immediately, to have their properties "Aryanized," or both. The shards of broken window glass seen in front of Jewish owned stores all over Germany the next morning gave this event its name..
Completed piece mounted in frame: 19" x 39" x 4 1/2"
The stained glass window frame is from The Community Synagogue.
Drawing the torn Torah and broken Judaic objects is one of the few times that creating an image affected me more dramatically than I expected.
