The Beauty

"What deeply moved me was the terrible beauty of all those bodies piled up like branches on a funeral pyre, with hands and feet poking out. I was fascinated by the tragic elegance... It was absolutely necessary to reproduce, represent and show that, in order to preserve it for what came after."

Zoran Music

The art created in Nazi camps is unknown to most of us: it is hard to imagine the desire drawning and event art, and the ability to create it within concentration camps. And yet, nearly 30,000 works have survived from the camps. 30,000 – a considerable number, one which is completely unacknowledged.

How can we speak about beauty and aesthetic pleasure in a concentration camp?

With this film, I set off to discover firsthand the works secretly produced in Nazi concentration camps between 1933 and 1945. Seeking out the drawings, wash drawings and paintings held in different collections means opening up boxes, closets and drawers, unwrapping tissue paper in France, Germany, Israel, Poland, the Czech Republic, Belgium, etc.

I visit the Holocaust memorial museums, art and history museums, the sites of former concentration camps and the memorials associated with them: in Auschwitz I and II, in Theresienstadt, Buchenwald, Hinzert, Dachau, Ravensbruck, Dora, Sobibor, etc.

I talk with the people who are currently responsible for the works: museum directors, curators and historians. We carefully handle these fragile works made out of newspaper, stationary, packaging or scraps of posters... There is a wide variety of supports and techniques; we recognize graphite pencil, ink, felt-tip marker, charcoal, sometimes chalk, clay, dust... The bits of paper vary in size but are generally no larger than half a page. Some works are sketches while others, much fewer, are highly elaborate and carefully executed in color. There are portraits, genre works and scenes of everyday life, landscapes, figure studies, erotic drawings, vanitas, etc.