NEVER TO FORGET - The Battle of the Warsaw Ghetto - by Howard Fast and illustrator William Gropper - published by Book League of Jewish Peoples Fraternal Order I.W.O. [New York], April 1946 - signed copy by illustrator William Gropper. Rare.
"With a six-pointed star on my arms... I died in the streets of Warsaw, take the weapon that I entrust to you and use it well..." - A special memorial booklet dealing with the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, with lithographic illustrations by William Gropper alongside text by the writer Howard Fast. The booklet contains nine illustrations depicting the atrocities committed by the Nazis in the ghetto, and the Jewish resistance. Alongside the images, on the opposite page of each scene, there is a description by Fast of the events on the Jewish side, describing the world's silence in the face of Jewish suffering, the self-sacrifice of Jews who go to their deaths with "Shema Yisrael" on their lips, condemning the Nazis for their wickedness, praising the resistance of Jewish partisans, and glorifying the words of the fighters of the uprising, as well as those who perished in it. The lithographs depict extremely harsh scenes of Nazi brutality - SS soldiers are shown rounding up an unarmed Jewish population. In one of the illustrations (which was later widely reproduced in the years after the war), a group of Jews who were hanged by the Nazis can be seen as the SS soldiers smile and one of them photographs the horrific sight. Another illustration shows how the Nazis loot a Jewish menorah and leave behind the bodies of those killed in smoke, and more.
William Gropper (1897-1977) was an American Jewish caricaturist, painter, lithographer, and muralist. Gropper was known primarily for his political art, which contributed to left-wing publications. In 1917, Gropper was offered a job on the staff of the Tribune newspaper in New York. Over the next few years, he created illustrations for special articles in the paper on Sundays. At this point, Gropper, a political radical, joined the group of artists such as Robert Minor, Morris Becker, Art Young, Lydia Gibson, and Hugo Gellert, who belonged to the radical left in New York. During the second half of the 1930s, Gropper devoted his artistic talent to efforts to arouse popular resistance to fascism in Europe. Because of his involvement in radical politics, in the 1920s and 1930s, Gropper was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1953. The experience provided inspiration for a series of fifty lithographs entitled "The Capriccios." After World War II, Gropper traveled to Poland to participate in the World Congress of Intellectuals for Peace in 1948 in Wrocław. Afterward, he decided to pay tribute to Jews who died in the Holocaust by painting one picture each year on the subject of Jewish life. Gropper's artwork adorned the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and more.
[24] p. 21x14 cm. Very good condition.
