Creativity in the Face of Adversity: Holocaust Art and Our Personal Endeavors
The last place you would expect art to flourish is in the concentration camps.
The Holocaust was the genocide of 6 million Jews across German-occupied Europe during World War II. The concentration camps are beyond the imagination of those of us who have not seen war, oppression or terror at this scale.
The prisoners in the concentration camps were starved and tortured, and most of them were murdered while forced to live in inhuman conditions.
In such an unending nightmare, where survival every single moment was questionable, the last thing you would expect is art and music to play an important role in their horror.
There are many memoirs written by holocaust survivors which tell us about how informal orchestras were formed by the prisoners and music performances given at the camp after the work shift.
There are many stories of how the prisoners scrounged any material they could lay their hands on and created art.
Most of us are familiar with Anne Frank’s “The Diary of a Young Girl.” Anne wrote her diary while hiding in a secret annexe in Amsterdam.
The urge to create is very human.
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a popular theory used to explain motivation. Maslow states that individuals are motivated by unmet needs and must satisfy lower-level needs before progressing to higher-level needs. His hierarchy of needs from the bottom up are physiological, safety, love and belonging, esteem, and self-actualisation needs.
Though lacking empirical evidence, this model has firmly established itself in how many of us think about motivation. According to this model, art, literature, and music should not have flourished in the concentration camps.
We think we must have the “basics” in place before we can dream of creating. We want our lives to settle down, our work to ease up, and our children to grow up before we can make time to create.
I wasn’t one of those people for whom “creation” was a need at all. Growing up, I was by no means inclined towards art, literature, or music. I enjoyed a good piece of music like anyone else, but I did not create or practice music. Art was not even something I considered possible for me, of course. I could not even draw a straight line. Literature was too complex for me.
But as I’ve gotten older and built up the courage to explore and create art, music, and literature, I find it has become easier to get through the drudgery of the day and the ups and downs of life.
In the way we have been working for the past decade or so, in the “always switched on” mode, many of us don’t have time for appreciation or creation or just experiencing art, music or literature. This limits our enjoyment of our life and work.
We don’t create despite our circumstances, we create independent of our circumstances.
I’ve slowly cultivated an appreciation for slow cooking, aimless doodling, fun reading, peppy music and quilting.
If you’re finding it hard to make time for a “hobby” in this season of your life, consider this: What’s one small thing you could do purely for the sake of creation—something that adds no utility but brings you joy?
💌Siri
P.S. If you are feeling stuck in your career right now and would like to figure a way forward, I invite you to book a 30 minute, “no-obligation” discovery session with me. If you know a friend who could use this free session, please forward them this email and link!
