Elisabeth Mann, wartime art, 1944 -- 1949, 1944-1955 | Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust

Elisabeth Mann, collection of postwar portrayal sketches created in Sweden, in 1949.

Elisabeth Mann depicts scenes rendered by her reflective memory recorded in Auschwitz concentration camp and Braunschweig concentration camps.

Elisabeth Mann is a former prisoner of German concentration camps and survivor of the Holocaust. After liberation she settled in Sweden. Her mind remained occupied with anxious thoughts and memories holding her from disentangling of the horrifying reality of incarceration. Portraying the images of her intrinsic past perhaps enabling Elisabeth Mann with a meaning of life.

ELISABETH MANN (ERSZEBET MOHR): FLICKERING REFLECTIONS OF ART, 1945

We present here six sketches of Elisabeth Mann, created in Sweden in 1945.

Elisabeth Mann a former prisoner of German concentration camps and survivor of the Shoah settled in Sweden after the war. Although free and safe, her mind remained overwhelmed with angst and distressing memories of wartime. It was time when loss of loved ones and unexpected witnessing of killings as ordinary process became a mundane flow of life under death.

In postwar Sweden she remained entangled with existential realities of the war.  She portrayed the images of the past, so intrinsic to her despondent inner world. Perhaps it was her redemption for the regaining the meaning of her own life.

Elisabeth Mann was born Erszebet Mohr in Hungary in 1925.  For the Mohr Family’ a relative stability and predictability of prewar life ultimately expired in March -- April 1944. Followed by extreme geo-political changes in Europe in general and in Hungary in particular, the new pro-Nazi Hungarian government commenced a full scale ghettoization and deportation of the Jews from Hungary and Hungarian-controlled territories. Between 400,000 and 500,000 Jews were ghettoized and deported in the course of April – June 1944. The majority of collectively referred Hungarian Jewry ended up in Auschwitz – Birkenau.

Since then Elisabeth Mann saw the life flickering before her eyes as a series of uncontrolled borderline situations: deportation to Auschwitz, then transfer to Bergen Belsen Concentration camp, then again transfer to Braunschweig concentration camp for women. She survived them all.

Owing to the efforts of International Red Cross she and a group of other female prisoners of the Braunschweig camp were released to Denmark.  It was in the beginning of May 1945. In a psychological sense, it was a new status, marked by deliberation from her being an object of persecutions to her becoming a subject of her own.

In the autumn of 1945, she was admitted as a refugee to Sweden. She lived in small, rural communities.  Those were Oster Korsebrga, Sjoberga. Later, Elisabeth found employment at a local school. Formally free, she remained a captive of her daunting memories. Elisabeth Mann found self- realization in teaching. It was partially a reckoning. She coped with her past by sketching scenes reflecting her wartime experience.

In 1945 – 1949, she created a series of sketches related to mundane life in Auschwitz and Braunschweig concentration camps. She also depicted a Swedish landscapes.

Elisabeth Mann lived in Sweden until 1955 and then she and her husband immigrated to the United States.

American mode of life has not erased her wearisome memories. Elisabeth is not seeking disentangling from her deeply disturbing Past.  This selection of her sketches does attest to the continuity of the Past and its inerasable marks.

Elisabeth Mann, sketches,

RG-22.01, Portrait of a woman, 1945

RG-22.02, Portrait of a child, 1945

RG-22.03,  Prisoners at Auschwitz, ca 1945

RG-22.04, Forced labor at Auschwitz Birkenau, ca 1944

RG-22.05, A small boat with oars, a fragment, 1945

RG-22.06, Women at agricultural work, Braunschweig concentration camp, 1945

RG-22.07, A woman at work, Braunschweig concentration camp, 1945RG-22.08, Germany, a family on the way, 1944

RG-22.08, Germany, a family on the way, 1944

RG-22.09, Woman from Auschwitz. 1945