University of South Carolina
College of Arts and Sciences
Jewish Studies Program
Stolen Art or Recovered Heritage?
The Murals of Bruno Schulz
An illustrated talk by Theodore Rosengarten
Now that the communist boot has been lifted from the neck of eastern Europe, and people are
free to discuss the Holocaust, can the material legacy of the victims be trusted to the countries
where they lived and died, or do the world’s surviving Jews have a moral right to claim it as their
property? Professor Theodore Rosengarten will tell the tale of what the New York Times has
called the “Murals of Pain,” the wall paintings of Polish-Jewish artist and writer Bruno Schulz,
which were discovered in 2001 in the pantry of an old house in Drogobych, Ukraine, and spirited
out of the country to Yad Vashem, in Jerusalem.
“We feel robbed,” says Konstanti Gebert, writing as a Pole and a Jew. “A limb of our heritage was
cut off, our pain is indescribable.” To the contrary, writes a correspondent in the Times. “The wall
minus Bruno Schulz’s art should be displayed as a monument in Poland as a reminder of what
was not done to save the Jews.” Using stunning images of the “polychromes” that were painted
under duress in 1942 and of scenes from Drogobych today, Rosengarten will explore the competing claims of Poland, Ukraine, and Israel to control and exhibit the work of the murdered artist,
and the consequences of its removal from its Ukrainian hiding place.
TUESDAY
February
12
2:00 – 3:30 PM
Gambrell Hall
Room 005
FREE AND OPEN
TO THE PUBLIC
The University of South Carolina is an equal opportunity institution.