SHOAH ON EXHIBIT for DONATION 2023/24

This is how the art could look in a Holocaust Museum

Thomas Dellert- Bergh SHOAH - Holocaust Art Donation

DONATION
My art collection consists of paintings, collages, photography, and a short documentary film and I'm looking for an organization or Holocaust museum that accepts my donation of these works. Having over 50 original, one of a kind works and the copy rights to both my Shoah art photography and my short film dealing with the architecture of Evil filmed in a closed down Auschwitz Birkenau.
My intention is to give this work I have dedicated over 45 years to create, to an Institution or Museum that will show my work to the public in order to spread the important message of what happened in order to try to prevent it from happening again.

The SHOAH ART Collection

Never Again is Now !
Over the last 45 years, this collection of works has gradually evolved. It's vital to keep the story alive and to ensure the truth reaches out, especially during these denial times, with the help of this project that combines my interest in history, humanity, and the urge to share the Holocaust's story loudly and clearly. Moreover, I see it as a warning and wake-up call for the younger generation, which is so easily misled. Today, we face new dangers in the form of New full out anti-Semitism, Neo-Nazism and Islamic fundamentalism, and Islamic terrorism . We all need to take these threats very seriously. We must do everything we can to prevent a repetition of this aspect of modern history. After the attackes on Israel in 2023 that mirrored the atrocities of the Holocaust, parts of the world once again turned Anti- semitic and now again we could hear young people infected by hate shouting " Gas the Jews "
I thrilling reminder of that history often repeat itself. Now more then ever we must stand tall against this dangerous movements and support of anti Jewish Terrorism in the name of humanity as a whole. We can not be bystandards or look the other way. Now we must be brave.

I today 2023 / 24 still work tireless with art in all its many forms but my heart is with this art collections for donation. I aslo work today since 11 years in symbioses with my Jewish wife and together we create art for peace and humanity and against all kinds of racism.

My interest in the Holocaust evolved as a child from my grandmother's stories of how, as a Swedish tourist in Germany, she was thrown off a tram by two SA soldiers- Sturmabteilung - for insisting on wearing a Swedish flag instead of the star of David on her and my mother's coats . As a result of these stories and after seeing the documentaries from the liberation of Buchenwald and Bergen Belsen in the cinemas in Sweden , I began creating art about its horrors at the age of ten. My childhoods drawings and watercolours remain in my possession.
During the 1920s, my grandmother was good friends with Raoul Wallenberg's mother in Stockholm, so I have also had contact with his family. My Shoah collection includes one of his Swedish military hats, as well as other original memorabilia. Additionally, I have been in contact with Per Anger since 1986 when he visited my art exhibit in New York. During the Holocaust, Mr Anger was Raoul Wallenberg's associate in Budapest. Together with Wallenberg, he saved many Jewish people risking their lives in the process. In 2000, I had the opportunity to meet Elie Wiesel when I exhibited some of my Shoah art at the first International Forum on the Holocaust Conference in Stockholm. As an Absolut Vodka Artist, I donated a Shoah artwork titled "Playing for Time" to Michel Roux. It now resides in the collection of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC.

The Shoah project uses a range of media, including painting, collage on canvas, and sculptural pieces that relate to the persecutions and exterminations, or to the lives of Jewish families before the deportations. Aside from traditional photography and video installations, I also used remnants of the actual places where the crimes took place.
SHORT FILM
The short film "White Silent Hell" documents the remnants of Auschwitz Birkenau's architecture of evil. Filmed and edited chronologically to show the gradual humiliation of those who walked their way to death. In the midst of this, death technicians who handle death machines go about their routines in ice cold, calculated ways.

Several of my works have an educational approach, but others are more poetic in their reflection upon one of mankind's darkest periods. It is impossible to portray the horrors of the Holocaust justly, since the scale of the crime is beyond all comprehension. Despite this, we must still try for the sake of our children and the millions who died. Moreover, I believe that we must approach the subject in different ways in order to reach as many people as possible while also conveying the message to future generations, not just to Jews for whom the Holocaust may be a family memory. We must tell all people, regardless of their faith or nationality, the story of the Shoah so they won't be deceived. While it may be hard to understand, or even accept, the truth cannot be questioned or denied.
Art is only one tool, but often a very effective one, in this mission to "tell the story." Through art, we reach and connect with groups of people who aren't interested in reading books about history or watching documentaries about the Holocaust.
I see my humble involvement, through this collection of pictures, as no more than a handful of dust, yet this dust is a part of our testament, my contribution to collective memory, one could say. I photographed both Auschwitz Birkenau and Kazimierz the Jewish quarter in Krakow during the winter of 2007, and I have combined images so that I can tell the story chronologically. The 'triptychs' in the form of vast landscapes in silence, and crumbling ruins of gas chambers take the form of organic monsters. Images of piled-up shoes, glasses, pots, and pans serve as harsh reminders of people's scattered lives. The walls still bearing inscriptions of pain, and the worn down floors on which thousands walked on their way to a premature death, bear evidence of the agony of those men and women. As if by a razor, the barbed wire cuts through the clear blue sky. There is all of this, frozen in time, covered in frosty ice, like the annual rings of a tree in the forest of remembrance. At the same time, the images contrast with each other while telling the same story. In short, they tell a story of pain. In this frozen landscape, time stands still, but thought and spirit travel freely: A silent hell, in which ashes, and everyday items, such as spoons and forks, hide under a frozen pond.
In silence and with respect for the many victims of this landscape, I entered it.

Thomas Dellert-Bergh