Then and Now
This exhibit contrasts contemporary photographs of these two camps, with images of what they were like 1940-45 as remembered by artist-survivors.
Much of the art was created soon after their liberation. Their art is the only visual record of day-to-day existence in Auschwitz/Birkenau.
In 1979, The Auschwitz Museum Archive reproduced selected pieces of art and sent them to writer/photographer Alan Jacobs.
After years of related work and many more trips, Jacobs, and his son Jesse, returned to the camps in 1996 to find and photograph the identical scenes depicted in the art.
Krysia Jacobs then devised a way to present them as you see here. They are the result of work over a 24 year period.
Photography and captions:
Alan Jacobs
Inquires email:
ajacobs@bravenewweb.com
Art:
Mieczyslaw Koscielniak
Jerzy Potrzebowski
Tadeusz Siwek
Janina Tollik
Copyright:
All graphics and text used in this exhibit are copyright protected and may not be reproduced without written permission from their authors.
Web design:
Krysia Hnatowicz Jacobs
Location assistant and video:
Jesse Jacobs
Acknowledgements:
The authors wish to thank:
The State Museum at Auschwitz/Birkenau
for their assistance in research for this exhibit and for the photographic reproductions of the artwork.
Adam Koscielniak,
the artist’s son, for graciously granting permission to use his late father’s work.
Michael Declan Dunn
for his unwavering devotion to preserving the memory of the Holocaust by building and maintaining Remember.org.
See also:
Other photography exhibitions by Alan Jacobs
https://remember.org/auschwitz/
https://www.ideajournal.com/birkenau79/
IDEA, a journal of social issues
H-genocide mailing list
https://www.h-net.org/~genocide/
Then and Now
