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A wandering Holocaust mural : Arnold Belkin's Warsaw Ghetto Uprising is still looking for a home more than a decade after the artist's death
Globe and Mail, December 20, 2004
Photo: Searle R. Friedman
It's 100 square feet of pain, torment, and despair. In 1959, the Canadian Jewish artist Arnold Belkin began painting Warsaw Ghetto Uprising: a mural intended as a memorial to victims of the holocaust. Several years later, he tried to find a home for the giant mural and inadvertently set his painting on a wandering journey that continues to this day, more than a decade after Belkin's own death.
Arnold Belkin was raised in Vancouver, but spent most of his career in Mexico, where he was heavily influenced by the tradition of Mexican mural painting. Although he isn't well known in Canada, his works are still highly regarded in Mexico and other Spanish-speaking countries.
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising is a dark-coloured oil painting showing rows of people being burned and the haunting faces of emaciated holocaust victims. Belkin also included symbols of hope: adults and children looking towards to the future. The mural represents a deeply symbolic moment in Jewish history: the uprising of Polish Jews in Warsaw, where brave ghetto residents fought against the heavily armed Nazis. After a hopeless one-month battle, surviving Jews were shot on the spot or transported to death camps.
After Arnold Belkin's father died in 1962, the artist decided to offer Warsaw Ghetto Uprising to the Vancouver Peretz Institute, a secular Jewish organization where his father had been active. According to Barb Schober, a University of British Columbia PhD student who wrote a recent paper called "the Vancouver Holocaust Monument that Wasn't," for the Canadian Jewish Studies Reader, the members of the Peretz Institute were honoured, but they felt the painting would be better off in a location where the entire Jewish community could see it.
Paul Heller, a member of Vancouver's Warsaw Ghetto Memorial Committee, heard about Belkin's painting. As a young man, Heller had lived in Warsaw, escaping only two days before the Germans surrounded the city. He lost over 30 relatives in the uprising. In 1962, the Warsaw Ghetto Memorial Committee wrote a letter to Belkin, asking him to donate the painting to Vancouver's Jewish Community Centre (JCC), and the artist agreed. But from the beginning, the painting created controversy.
"There was quite a fight and a discussion," recalls Heller. "Some Jewish parents felt it wasn't a suitable painting for the community. They found some authorities who said children shouldn't be exposed to the painting. Then some holocaust survivors brought in a doctor specializing in children's psychiatry who said we can't keep this type of information from children-they need to understand our history."
After much debate, the JCC accepted the gift and the painting was unveiled in the lobby during a Warsaw Ghetto Memorial Evening in 1964. Over the years, the painting was removed or covered up many times for art exhibitions. Renovations in the 1990s removed the wall where the painting was hanging, and the mural was relocated to the upper wall of the auditorium. According to Schober's paper, the painting still provoked strong emotions: some felt the more obscure location didn't do the piece justice, while others found it "disturbing…or simply ugly."
Several years ago, the piece was taken down from the auditorium, and today it's in storage at the Centre. JCC Executive Director Gerry Zipursky says the painting has an important message, but it wasn't appropriate for the auditorium, which is used for dinners and bar mitzvahs. He says some holocaust survivors complained to him about the painting's location.
"In some respects, it's an insult to the memories of people to have the painting in a place where there is singing, dancing and celebrations," he says. "It should be in a gallery where you can have a solemn moment to reflect and pay tribute to the victims. I don't think the Centre has the right place for the painting. I wish we did."
The JCC board wants to find a new home for the mural: they're currently talking about giving it to another Jewish organization in Vancouver. But that won't necessarily settle the issue: Gertie Zack, an 86-year old woman who fought to have the painting accepted when she was JCC vice-president in the 1960s, was surprised to hear of the planned donation.
"It's a wonderful piece of art and it should be held at the community centre somewhere. It was given by Belkin to the JCC and that's where it belongs," says Zack, "Of course it's not a happy painting, but that's the whole point. We need to remember the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising for the rest of our lives."
However, people who remember the uprising, and Belkin's tribute to it, are becoming harder to find. Several months ago, a fellow artist and former classmate of Belkin's who spoke in favour of the painting died, and just a few weeks ago, a longtime friend of Belkin's who published a biography of the artist in a Jewish journal passed away. And of the original Warsaw Ghetto Memorial Committee, Paul Heller says he's the only one left. Meanwhile, Jewish communities around the world have shifted from memorializing the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising to holding broader holocaust ceremonies. Dr. Roberta Kremer, Executive Director of the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre (located inside the JCC) says even if she had space for Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, she wouldn't want to permanently display something the only represents holocaust victims from one place and time. Plus, she says the painting might be too horrific to show to schoolchildren who visit the institution.
Gerry Zipursky says he expects a decision will be made about the fate of the painting in the next few months. One of the organizations interested in the mural is the Peretz Centre for Secular Jewish Culture (formerly the Vancouver Peretz Institute). Harold Berson, a self-described "old-timer" from Peretz, hopes they'll get a second crack at displaying Belkin's controversial mural, but he isn't sure where they could put the massive painting, and he suspects some members of the organization might not want this type of art permanently on display.