On January 18th, 1945, the French inmate Camille Delétang drew a portrait of the Polish resistance fighter and composer Kazimierz Tymiński in the Buchenwald subcamp “Hecht” near Holzen.1 Both had previously been imprisoned in the Buchenwald main camp, where Tymiński compiled an artistic album in which he collected songs, poems and pictures by his fellow inmates.2
The portrait shows Tymiński in profile, his head slightly tilted back appearing to rest on a suggested cloth. The lines disappear below the neck and shoulders. The face is covered with a thick layer of foam just below the eyes and nose. A half-smoked cigarette, still burning, sits in his mouth. His shadowed eyes are closed and relaxed. His hair is rendered in pencil as gray, short and bristly. It almost seems reminiscent of a protective helmet. A blue checkered shirt collar peeks out from under his prisoner’s jacket, which is striped in blue and white. The image conveys pleasure, relaxation and luxury, which is unsettling when we consider the prisoner’s jacket and the context of the camp.
Cumbersome artifacts between resistance myth and illustration
Since the end of the Second World War, researchers and memorial institutions tend to remain in a state of astonishment over the existence of these images from camps and thus reduced them to expressions of spiritual resistance: Defying the prohibitions of the SS, Camille Delétang created this portrait, honouring his friend and thereby preserving his individuality amidst the anonymity of the camps. Such an interpretation often leads to political instrumentalization. Valuing every expression of creativity as a contribution to the preservation of humanity elevates those who were artistically active above other inmates. In Buchenwald, it was primarily political prisoners with anti-fascist backgrounds (such as Delétang and Tymiński) who had access to the necessary materials due to their position in the prisoner society. However, this was not a result of their moral superiority, but due to their position in the camp. This position influences the images as much as the artists’ backgrounds did.
Even today, images from camps are often used merely as illustrations. But the objects oppose this view. This portrait in particular goes beyond a simple depiction of “how it was”. Misunderstood as an illustration of camp life, it suggests a luxury that does not represent the reality of the vast majority of prisoners and could even trivialize the conditions. While both the documentary and the resistance aspects are certainly present in these works, my aim is to show that their significance goes far beyond this.
Images as testimonies?
The majority of Delétang’s drawings was rediscovered in a spectacular attic find in Celle and handed over to the Mittelbau-Dora Memorial in the summer of 2012.3 In the resulting exhibition project and catalogue, the drawings were titled “Testimonies from the Holzen concentration camp”. Framing these cumbersome artifacts as part of the multifaceted ways to bear witness to the concentration camps is not uncommon.4
The precarious conditions surrounding their production, the generally limited time and materials available hardly allow the works created in Nazi camps to be categorized as autonomous art. In addition, although some of the creators were trained artists, there were also children or amateurs such as Camille Delétang among them. Art historian Detlef Hoffmann declared Delétang’s “visible striving for accuracy and similarity to be a special characteristic”.5 According to Hoffmann this also shows that the prisoner was not a trained artist: “A professional artist, trained at an academy, perhaps even by different teachers, has a larger reservoir of techniques at his disposal. For him, similarity is not the goal, but the prerequisite for a successful drawing.”6
Describing these pictures as testimonies emphasizes that they are primarily valued as visualizations of experiences – not for their aesthetic quality. But what experiences do they bear witness to? My aim is to take these images seriously as visual interpretations of camp reality and to develop an art-historical approach to researching visual testimonies from concentration camps that is informed by history and sociology.
The epistemological potential of visual testimonies of camp societies
What does the image of the prisoner Tymiński, smoking with relish at the barber in the camp, testify to? How does it relate to our historical knowledge of the camps? What can we learn about camp society by analysing the image?
The act of shaving depicted by Delétang is a very intimate moment and at the same time an everyday practice. Shaving in the context of a concentration camp evokes associations with the degrading full-body shave that prisoners had to undergo upon arrival in the camp. In addition to being a hygiene measure by the camp administration, this procedure was an instrument of torture and discipline and was neither an everyday occurrence nor a pleasure for the prisoners subjected to it. Full-body shaving was visually represented and explored quite frequently. Few pictures, however, show individuals shaving their beards, although it was compulsory to shave in Buchenwald.7 Rolf Kralovitz, a Jewish inmate from Leipzig, worked as a barber in Buchenwald for a time and recounted that “not everyone could go to the barber, to the Blockfriseur”.8 The scene is therefore an expression of Tymiński’s privileged position working in the clothing store of the subcamp.9 Shaving also stands for the attempt to maintain personal hygiene and order in the chaos of everyday life in the camp. The cigarette underlines this interpretation: tobacco was a scarce currency in the concentration camps and its consumption was the exception.10
The art-historical significance of the cigarette goes further. The amateur artist Delétang depicted Tymiński, who was himself also not a trained artist, with attributes that are traditionally found in portraits of artists. To him, they apparently seemed adequate to represent his friend’s nature. Since the late 19th century, artists often appeared in portraits smoking cigarettes to express their affiliation with decadent bohemian culture. The fascination with illness, death, addiction and excess enters the picture here. The cigarette conveys a tension between potency and morbidity; it is both a vice and a symbol of creativity. In contrast to the pipe or cigar, the cigarette has been associated with the working class since the 1880s.11 This corresponds to Tymiński’s self-image, who was active in the camp as a resistance fighter in the Polish Workers’ Party.12
Delétang made at least 190 drawings during his imprisonment, most of them in Holzen, including numerous portraits of fellow prisoners. Nevertheless, it is remarkable that he drew not one, but at least four portraits of Tymiński.13 All of these portraits emphasize Tymiński’s status as an artist in different ways, which suggests that the shaving scene can be interpreted in this context and not exclusively as a genre scene, which depicts an artist by chance. Although it is rather unlikely that Delétang was familiar with the pictorial tradition of smoking artists, he chose this attribute to represent his friend. The composer Tymiński had a privileged position in the Holzen subcamp. As one of the leaders of the Polish resistance organization, he commuted back and forth between Holzen and the Buchenwald main camp. The smoking cigarette in the shaving scene is an ambiguous attribute used to comment on his position in the inmates’ hierarchy.
As the analysis of this sheet of paper shows, its creation is indeed linked to the Buchenwald resistance network, and by critically analysing the drawing we can distill nuanced interpretations of the camp reality. However, these interpretations do not relate (exclusively) to the mimetic depiction of the environment but, as has been shown, concern the social dynamics between the inmates. These dynamics are interpreted, sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously, with the help of iconographic imagery and cultural-historical traditions. Examining visual testimonies of concentration camp inmates in the social context in which they were created and which they represent holds a hitherto untapped potential. The images from concentration camps are fascinating testimonies by victims of Nazi Persecution and rich sources for further study on the camp societies.14
Translation: Nils Bergmann
References
- Camille Delétang: Portrait of Kazimierz Tymiński, Państwowe Muzeum Oświęcim-Brzezinka, PMO‑I‑2–1298/37. I thank Catherine Grandjean for permission to publish the picture.
- Cf. Christine Oeser, Die Musikalien im Künstlerischen Album von Kazimierz Tymiński. Ein Spiegel der kulturellen Tätigkeit im Konzentrationslager Buchenwald?, Master’s thesis, Osnabrück 2013; Kazimierz Tymiński, To Calm my Dreams. Surviving Auschwitz, Sydney 2011 [1985].
- Cf. Jens-Christian Wagner (ed.), Wiederentdeckt. Zeugnisse aus dem Konzentrationslager Holzen, Göttingen 2013.
- Cf. Christiane Heß, Eingezeichnet. Zeichnungen und Zeitzeugenschaft aus Ravensbrück und Neuengamme, Berlin 2024; Detlef Hoffmann, Bild oder Reliquie. Bildnerische Zeugnisse aus den Lagern, in: Dagi Knellessen, Ralf Possekel (eds.), Zeugnisformen. Berichte, künstlerische Werke und Erzählungen von NS-Verfolgten, Berlin 2015, p. 175–192; Maike Bruhns, “Die Zeichnung überlebt…”. Bildzeugnisse von Häftlingen des KZ Neuengamme, Bremen 2007; Irit Salmon-Livne, Ilana Guri (eds.), Testimony: Art of the Holocaust, Jerusalem 1982.
- Detlef Hoffmann, Porträtzeichnungen aus Konzentrationslagern, in: Wagner (ed.), Wiederentdeckt, p. 198–212, here 207.
- Ibid., 203.
- Cf. Ronald Hirte, Über Spiegel in Konzentrationslagern, in: Gedenkstättenrundbrief 125 (2003), p. 18–24, here 20.
- Kralovitz, cited in ibid.; Cf. Noah Benninga, The Bricolage of Death. Jewish Possessions and the Fashioning of the Prisoner Elite in Auschwitz-Birkenau, 1942–1945, in: Leora Auslander, Tara Zahra (eds.), Objects of War. The Material Culture of Conflict and Displacement, Ithaca et al. 2018, p. 189–220, here 213.
- Kazimierz Tymiński, Meine Arbeit in der PPR während der Besatzungszeit, 3.4.1966, PMO Abteilung Dokumentenarchiv, translated to German by Dieter Rudolf, copy in Buchenwald Kunstsammlung, F, vol. 5, 2 of 6.
- José Fosty reported on his encounters with René Salme and Paul Goyard in the camp: “During good wheather, our palavers took place walking back and forth in the streets, or sitting on the edge of a sidewalk, puffing by turn on a god-sent butt,” José Fosty, Paul Goyard, or the Small Story of a Great Friendship, in: Volkhard Knigge (ed.), Paul Goyard. 100 Zeichnungen aus dem Konzentrationslager Buchenwald/100 Dessins du Camp de Concentration de Buchenwald/100 Drawings from the Buchenwald Concentration Camp, Göttingen 2002, p. 57–65, here p. 57.
- Cf. Patricia G. Berman, Edvard Munch’s Self-Portrait with Cigarette. Smoking and the Bohemian Persona, in: The Art Bulletin 75 (1993), p. 627–646, here p. 627; 631–633.
- Tymiński, report 1966, PMO, p. 2.
- The portraits of Tymiński did not remain with the artist, but with the person portrayed, who handed them over to the Auschwitz State Museum in an album containing 40 drawings by Delétang.
- Interdisciplinary approaches to researching the camp societies were recently developed by Michael Becker, Dennis Bock, Elissa Mailänder, Konzentrationslager als Gesellschaften. Einleitende Überlegungen und interdisziplinäre Perspektiven, in idem. (ed.), Konzentrationslager als Gesellschaften. Interdisziplinäre Perspektiven, Göttingen 2023, p. 7–26.