Memorialization of the Holocaust in Visual Art

This chapter traces the worldwide evolving visual approaches to Holocaust memorialization from the end of World War II until 2025. Over the past 80 years, visual artists have engaged with the task of memorializing this atrocity in ways that reflect evolving historical understandings, cultural contexts, and esthetic strategies. Immediately after the end of the Holocaust, and for three decades after it, many survivor artists created artworks relating to their memories – their experiences and what they saw – from the Holocaust period. In the 1970s, buds of creation by the children of the survivors began to appear. This process intensified in the 1980s and continued in the 1990s when the art of the children of the survivors became mainstream. They expressed the impact of their parents’ experiences in the Holocaust on their lives and personalities. From the 2000s onwards, at a distance from the events of the Holocaust, artists who had no direct personal connection to the Holocaust also referred to the Holocaust in their art to express their ideas and opinions on general moral or political issues. Will the Holocaust continue to exist in visual art in the future, or will it fade away? Only time will tell.