Overview

The Nazi concentration and extermination camps were places of incomprehensible cruelty, misery and death. But even here, creation took place. Creation as a means of survival against destruction. Art against dehumanization. On behalf of the SS, but also secretly at the risk of their lives, people drew and painted, sculptors and model makers worked, concerts were performed and theater was played. Prisoners created paintings and other works of art, which the SS henchmen sold or sent home to their families. In the Austrian Mauthausen concentration camp, inmates made sketches of the crime scenes where fellow prisoners had allegedly died while trying to escape. In the Buchenwald concentration camp, prisoners had to rehearse a camp song in the freezing cold until it sounded perfect to the ears of their tormentors. In addition to this forced art, however, there were also illegal drawings that could give the outside world an insight into actual camp life.