Dr. Steve Luckert, curator
"Szyk channeled his anger, pain, and frustration into works that directly confronted the viewer.... Though he did not draw gas chambers or shootings, his works included evidence of mass murder with piles of skulls and bones or the bodies of the dead or dying. He delivered his messages quickly and with clarity." Dr. Steve Luckert, in the Art and Politics of Arthur Szyk.

	[Interview: Steve Luckert United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C. 2002 Playing time 1:08] Dr. Steve Luckert, curator of The Art and Politics of Arthur Szyk, speaks about Szyk's illustrations of the biblical Book of Esther. Szyk illustrated the Book of Esther twice, in the 1920s and again in the 1950s. Both times, says Dr. Luckert, the themes portrayed in the artwork were Szyk's "answer to the antisemitism of his times."
	[Interview: Steve Luckert United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C. 2002 Playing time 1:11] Dr. Steve Luckert, curator of The Art and Politics of Arthur Szyk, speaks about Arthur Szyk's portrayals of Adolf Hitler and the Axis leaders. Dr. Luckert also describes how Szyk emphasized what he saw as the embedded nature of militarism and antisemitism in German society.
	[Interview: Steve Luckert United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C. 2002 Playing time 1:20] Dr. Steve Luckert, curator of The Art and Politics of Arthur Szyk, speaks about Szyk's love for the United States and American history. He describes how Szyk saw "in American history the struggle for freedom that he would later portray in the Jewish struggle for a state in Palestine."
	MORE Szyk
	[Back]