Photo EssayHis family died in the Warsaw ghetto — in these paintings, he honored their fight
‘These faces don’t let me rest,’ Maurice Mendjizky told a friend
A work from Maurice Mendjizky’s Homage to the Martyr Fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto. Courtesy of Patricia Mendjizky
Photo EssayHis family died in the Warsaw ghetto — in these paintings, he honored their fight
‘These faces don’t let me rest,’ Maurice Mendjizky told a friend
By Tani Levitt April 19, 2023
Before the onset of World War II, Maurice Mendjizky had lived many lives. After his childhood in Łodz, Poland, he studied musical conducting in Berlin, undertook military service in his home country and launched a successful career as an artist in Paris.
In 1933, with the specter of Nazism rising in Germany, Mendjizky, then 43, co-founded the Mouvement des Intellectuels pour la Paix (Association of Intellectuals for Peace) and began his next act, as a man singularly dedicated to resisting Nazism. He joined the French resistance with his family, and lost his wife and a son in that fight, while his parents and two sisters perished in the Warsaw ghetto.
Riddled with grief after the end of the war, Mendjizky brought his experience with resistance to his art, painting a series of works titled Homage to the Martyr Fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto between 1947 and 1950.
This year is the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw ghetto uprising, which began on April 19, 1943. In his paintings, Mendjizky might have anticipated the lasting impact the image of those desperate fighters would have on the world’s imagination. “These faces don’t let me rest,” he told a friend. “I must draw them. Perhaps then it will be easier for me.”
1 / 6
From Maurice Mendjizky's Homage to the Martyr Fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto. Courtesy of Patricia Mendjizky
2 / 6
From Maurice Mendjizky's Homage to the Martyr Fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto. Courtesy of Patricia Mendjizky
3 / 6
From Maurice Mendjizky's Homage to the Martyr Fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto. Courtesy of Patricia Mendjizky
4 / 6
From Maurice Mendjizky's Homage to the Martyr Fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto. Courtesy of Patricia Mendjizky
5 / 6
From Maurice Mendjizky's Homage to the Martyr Fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto. Courtesy of Patricia Mendjizky
6 / 6
From Maurice Mendjizky's Homage to the Martyr Fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto. Courtesy of Patricia Mendjizky
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.
If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
