Race Defiler

Photo is courtesy of Judith Weinshall Liberman who sent me the following caption:
RACE DEFILER is a wall hanging - a work on fabric - and is part of Judith Weinshall Liberman's Holocaust Wall Hangings series. This wall hanging is 44" by 21" (110 cm by 52 cm) and was created in 1998. Fourteen of the Holocaust Wall Hangings, including RACE DEFILER, are in the Florida Holocaust Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida, U.S.A., together with the artist's Holocaust Paintings series and other works by this artist. Two of the insignia worn by Jewish inmates of Nazi concentration camps are featured in this work. Both insignia represented “race defilers”, a term used by the Nazis to describe Jews – male or female – suspected of having engaged in sexual relations with “Aryans”. Both insignia combine a yellow triangle, which indicates “Jew”, with a black triangle. The two insignia are based on illustrations found in a row of “Special Insignia” in the table of insignia of camp inmates contained in an original document at the camp museum in Dachau.
All rights reserved to Judith Weinshall Liberman 2007

Avinoam Damari, Peace

Photo is courtesy of my dear friend, Avinoam Damari. This Star of David mosaic, with the word Peace in Hebrew in its center, is part of a series of mosaics in the shape of Star of David that Avinoam intends to make on the fence of his house in Ness Tziona, Israel. So far he made, aside from the above-mentioned work, a Yellow Badge mosaic, which I also published in this blog.

About half a year ago I visited the empty fence, and took a photo of it so that in a few years I’ll have the opportunity to compare it to a fence full with many Star of David mosaics, each would tell a story of a period and all of them would tell the story of the nation.
Copyrights: Avinoam Damari, 2007

Avinoam Damari, Yellow Badge

Photo is courtesy of my dear friend, Avinoam Damari, who works in the Israeli Educational TV in his working hours and on the mosaics on the fence of his house in his spare time. Avinoam Damari wrote to me that this Yellow Badge mosaic is a reminder for the Jewish people to do what is necessary in order to never again be in a situation of holocaust.
I find it interesting that although Avinoam Damari’s family is from Yemen – and didn’t suffer in Europe during WWII - he chose to express his Jewish identity by the Yellow Badge.
Another interesting point is that he chose street art, which becomes part of everyday life, and not art that is closed in galleries and books.
IMHO there are too few art works in the Israeli neighborhood – it seems that Israelis carry the traumas of their previous generations, and find it hard to invest in beautifying their environment, afraid that they will have to leave it in the near future.
These considerations make a respected room for this Yellow Badge mosaic in “my virtual exhibition” titled “Star of David on a Yellow Badge”.

BTW I think that showing art on the internet is a kind of art street that makes art works accessible to those who never put a foot in a gallery.
Copyright: Avinoam Damari, 2007