German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Monday opened a major exhibition featuring works by Jewish concentration camp prisoners http://www.whitesoxteamproshop.com/white-sox-ron-santo-jersey/ , as she pledged to combat a feared rise in anti-Semitism in Germany linked to a record influx of refugees.
The show, "Art from the Holocaust", brings together 100 works on loan from Israel's Yad Vashem memorial by 50 artists created in secret between 1939 and 1945 while they were confined to the camps or ghettos.
Twenty-four of the artists did not survive the Nazi period, even as their works endured.
The drawings and paintings on display at Berlin's German Historical Museum depict the suffering, drudgery and terror endured by the detainees.
Merkel, looking ahead to the opening and Wednesday's commemorations of the 71st anniversary of the Auschwitz liberation in her weekly video podcast, said such exhibitions served as a crucial tool for educating younger generations.
She cited in particular the fears of German Jewish leaders that the need to impart the lessons of the Holocaust has grown more urgent with the influx of a record 1.1 million asylum seekers to Germany last year, many from the Middle East.
German chancellor Angela Merkel poses by a painting "The Refugee" by Felix Nussbaum on January 25, 2016 in Berlin during the opening of the exhibition "Art from the Holocaust -100 Works from the Yad Vashem Collection" at the History museum in Berlin A man is seen among paintings at the exhibition 'Art from the Holocaust -100 Works from the Yad Vashem Collection' during a press preview in Berlin on January 25 http://www.whitesoxteamproshop.com/white-sox-paul-konerko-jersey/ , 2016 A catalogue is pictured at the exhibition 'Art from the Holocaust -100 Works from the Yad Vashem Collection' in Berlin on January 25, 2016
"We must focus our efforts particularly among young people from countries where hatred of Israel and Jews is widespread," she said.
They are "the expression of human beings under these unique circumstances to try and prevail... above the atrocities and deaths," he told reporters at a press preview of the exhibition.
"After thinking and rethinking, we thought it might be the right time, the right place, to bring this collection to Germany."
"That moved me very much," she was quoted as saying by German news agency DPA.
- Memory and imagination -
The only surviving artist, Nelly Toll, travelled to Berlin from the United States to take part in the opening.
She said she created the two pencil-and-watercolour works when she was six years old and in hiding with her mother in a small room in the home of a Christian family in Nazi-occupied Poland in 1943.
One drawing shows two carefree girls in a sun-dappled field wearing brightly coloured dresses with floral patterns.
The bulk of the works in the exhibition, however, are stark testimonials to savage treatment at the hands of the SS men and the fragility of daily life.
An artist named Jacob Lipschitz, who survived Dachau, immortalised his brother in a watercolour called "Beaten" http://www.whitesoxteamproshop.com/white-sox-luke-appling-jersey/ , showing his scabbed and scarred back with his head bowed after a vicious attack by guards.
A wrenching ink drawing by Josef Schlesinger, "The Hanging of Nahum Meck", depicts the execution of a prisoner accused of shooting a guard while trying to escape the Kovno Ghetto, as other detainees are forced to watch.
A chilling unfinished work entitled "Rest" by Malva Schalek, who would perish at Auschwitz http://www.whitesoxteamproshop.com/white-sox-luis-aparicio-jersey/ , shows an exhausted elderly woman sneaking a brief nap during a work shift in the kitchen at the Theresienstadt camp.
Curator Eliad Moreh-Rosenberg said many of the pieces were created in the certainty that they would send a message from the grave.
"The artists were conscious that they were painting for posterity," she said.
"It was their hope that something would survive for generations to come -- to leave a trace."
The exhibition will run until April 3.
MEXICO CITY, Nov. 1 (Xinhua) -- Spanish Formula 1 driver Fernando Alonso of McLaren Honda had to abandon the Mexican Grand Prix after the first lap due to a failure in his car, local media reported Sunday.
Alonso made radio contact with his team to alert about an electric failure in his car.
The Spanish driver had run just one lap at Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez, the Mexican circuit located in the eastern region of Mexico City.
Alonso said that "we had an electric problem since Saturday and we did not have time to solve it."
"The question was to run or not to run the race. We decided to run as a sign of respect for the fans. In the first lap we have won four or five positions, but then we did not have more power," he added.