From March 31, the Warsaw Zachęta will present Natalia Romik’s exhibition “Hideouts. Architecture of Survival”, which is an artistic tribute to the hideouts built and used by Jews during the Holocaust. The exhibition is organized by Zachęta – National Gallery of Art and TRAFO Trafostacja Sztuki in Szczecin.
The exhibition summarizes the research carried out so far by Natalia Romik and Aleksandra Janus together with anthropologists, historians, archaeologists and city explorers. For commemorating the history of Jews, Romik was recently honored with one of the most important historic awards in the world – the Dan David Prize, which aims to advance research into survival architecture.
About 6 million Jews died in the Holocaust; half of them were Polish Jews. It is estimated that during World War II in occupied Poland, about 50,000 Jews survived in hiding on the so-called Aryan side. Another 80,000 survived in concentration camps, and between 170 and 180,000- in the Soviet Union. In total, between 250,000 – 350,000 Polish Jews, or about 10% of the Jewish population of pre-war Poland survived.
The hideouts of the persecuted Jewish population presented at the exhibition were created during World War II. They are evidence of determination, courage and creativity of users who had to provide for basic life support needs, sometimes for many years, with minimal resources, without the possibility of radically changing their space.
The exhibition halls of Zachęta will present mirroring casts of nine hiding places from Poland and today’s Ukraine. The sculptural forms will be accompanied by an exhibition presenting the effects of interdisciplinary research supported by anthropologists, historians, archaeologists and city explorers.
Hidouts were often created ad hoc, out of the need of the moment, in originally unsuitable places. Attics, cellars, caves, trees and even tombs gained a completely new function to maintain the appearance of their previous form in order to ensure effective protection, the attic had to look like an ordinary attic, and the tree had to look like an ordinary tree.
Arkadiusz Słomczyński