Student-Led Exhibit Reveals Holocaust Art

The lived experiences of those imprisoned during the Holocaust came to Lawrenceville’s Hutchins Galleries this spring through The Auschwitz Experience in the art of prisoners. The exhibit featured artwork created by prisoners of the notorious Nazi concentration and extermination camp KL Auschwitz. Prepared by the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum of Oświęcim, Poland, the traveling exhibition offers a deeply personal window into one of history’s darkest chapters.

Siblings Mia Linert ’27 and Nico Linert ’27 worked last summer at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum, where they began thinking about how to share the stories they encountered more widely. School Rabbi Lauren Levy H’96 ’97 ’01 ’12 P’01 ’02 ’09 suggested the exhibit be shown during Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Memorial Day, in May.

“It’s been a really important exhibition for our community here,” Levy said, “teaching our students about a chapter in world history many of them know very little about.”

The exhibit featured 24 panels, reproductions of works held by the museum, pairing visual art with first-person accounts from survivors.

“There’s a lot of misinformation and disinformation online, so I’m hopeful the exhibit will be helpful in correcting that,” said Melina Guarino, director and curator of the Hutchins Galleries.

For Nico, the exhibit helps close the distance people sometimes feel from this history.

“People often feel like, since I’m not Jewish, I don’t have to care about this,” he said. “But fundamentally it was humans killing other humans, and it is an issue that everyone should care about. […] Just because it happened a long time ago doesn’t mean it can’t happen again.”