Kate Ann Gonta: 432

I have never been one to want to go to an art museum or one to be moved by art, so when we were told that we were going to an art exhibit, I wasn’t exactly excited.  However, after arriving, I knew that this art exhibit would leave a lasting impression on me.

“Negative of a Memory: Labyrinth” is a very unique art exhibit, if you could even call it an art exhibit.  The drawings were drawn by Professor Marian Kolodziej, who was prisoner number 432 in Auschwitz and who survived.  Kolodziej was not one to talk about what he saw or experienced in the camp, until one day he suffered a stroke.  Instead of using traditional rehabilitation techniques for his hand he asked for a pencil.  Labyrinth was the result.

His drawings are both engulfing and haunting.  You want to look away but you just can’t.

A series of pictures stood out to me.  There was one wall of the exhibit that had multiple pictures of faces and as the wall went on, each facial expression started to get lighter and lighter until the last thing left on the face was the eyes. To me this meant that, the eyes were the last to go before a person died.  This left me with chills.

Another drawing of Kolodziej’s that stood out to me was the drawing of the entrance into the standing cells and then the 3 wooden people standing inside of the cut out in the wall and their faces.  I thought seeing the standing cells in Auschwitz was bad enough, but now seeing this painted a clearer picture for me and how horrifying it must have really been.  I will never forget the drawing of the faces on the wooden people.  They had such fear and pain sketched into their faces and eyes.

I do not think anyone can describe or explain the creators’ artwork better than him, so I will leave you with his own words because they could not be more true:
"This is not an exhibition, nor art.  These are not pictures.  These are words locked in drawings.  It wasn't my intention to complete the obligation of the memory and testimony through art.  Art is impotent before that which man has organized for man.
So, I do not invite you to an "exhibition".  It wouldn't be right to say.  Instead I propose a journey by way of this labyrinth marked by the experience of the fabric of death.  Please, read my designed words, words born also from the yearning for clarity of criteria, from the yearning to understand what separates good from evil, truth from lie, art from appearance.  Also, this expresses my disagreement with the world as it is today.  Everything speaks about us, about what we have done with our humanity.  It is a pretext for consideration...thought and for a fundamental deduction for today.  This is the letter of an elderly man to himself 55 years ago.  It is a rendering of honor to all those who have vanished in ashes."
Kołodziej, 432