Flowers of Auschwitz, Zinovij Tolkachev – Black-and-white Sketches – Numbered Edition with the Artist's signature – ...

Flowers of Auschwitz, Zinovij Tolkachev – Black-and-white Sketches – Numbered Edition with the Artist's signature – 1945 – An Early Book, Most Rare
The book number is 331.
Zinovij Tolkachev was a Jewish, communist artist who believed in the justice of the revolution yet remained faithful to the Jewish nation. Until the war, he painted a series of pictures of the Jewish town named "The Town", according to the stories of Shalom Alechem.
As a soldier in the Red Army, he was among the releasers of the camps. He sketched the difficult pictures he saw in several series: "Majdanek", "Auschwitz" and "The Flowers of Auschwitz".
At the end of January 1945, he accompanied the Committee for Studying the Nazi Crimes in Auschwitz Camp. When he entered the camp, he felt an urgent need to sketch the pictures he saw. Since he had no paper, he entered the headquarters of the camp and took papers with the logo of the Auschwitz headquarters, papers that a few days earlier contained the Nazi decrees. Beside the sketches, he wrote some of the horrifying testimonies of the survivors. With the meager means he possessed, he succeeded in deeply expressing what he saw and heard.
The sketches were presented at the end of the War in Poland and in events that took place around the world to indicate the victory over Nazi Germany and the release of Auschwitz. The Polish government sent these albums to the governments of the Allies.
On his creations he said: "I did what I had to, I could not do otherwise. The heart commanded, the conscience demanded".
Additional bibliography: Yad Va'Shem, Exhibition: Private Tolkachev at the Gates of Hell.
Condition: Very Good.