Learning About the Holocaust Through the Arts” is a UN program to commemorate Holocaust Remembrance Day, April 28, which this year featured presentations by accomplished artists in the fields of dance, literature, film, and music.
Speaking at a Remembrance Day event at the United Nations in New York on Monday night, World Jewish Congress CEO Robert Singer noted the importance of the arts to the persecuted Jews in Nazi Europe.
“The will to make art kept alive for a few more days countless Jews imprisoned in ghettos and camps,” he said.
“The art that Jews made lifted the spirits of those who heard the music of ghetto orchestras or saw a drawing scratched out in charcoal on a barracks’ wall. It was the finest kind of spiritual resistance.”
Singer drew a line from the Nazi propaganda of the last century to similar efforts by today’s neo-Nazi movements.
“Hitler’s heirs, the European neo-Nazis, still use art to attract followers,” Singer said. “Hungarian far rightists erect statues to honor the anti-Semitic politicians of World War II. Skinheads front all kinds of rock, rap and metal bands.”
Singer said that the arts could help human beings grasp the Holocaust’s crimes against humanity and the Jewish people and could enrich young people’s understanding of the Holocaust, which for them happened in a distant past.
He also expressed the hope that the arts could educate the rising generation about the dangers of hatred and promote peaceful coexistence among peoples and nations.