Eyewitness

Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short, Bert Van Bork's Eyewitness--subtitled "The Legacy of Death Camp Art," examines the WWII-era experiences and work of Jan Komski, Dinah Gottliebova, and Felix Nussbaum, three former inmates of Nazi concentration camps. Komski was one of the few survivors who not only used artistic expression to record the atrocities he saw during his internment at Auschwitz (the film opens with his 1998 visit there at the age of 84), but also continued to do so after the war. In fact, it was his skill with the brushes, pen, and pencil that kept him alive (as an “employee” of the Nazis). Ditto for Gottliebova, presently an animator in Hollywood; during her imprisonment, she was spared the gas chambers because she worked for Dr. Josef Mengele sketching the unique features of gypsies shortly before they were sent to their deaths. Frenchman Nussbaum was not so fortunate; his chilling series of self-portraits (“The Secret,” “The Organ Grinder,” and “The Dance of Death”), painted after his escape from Auschwitz, document his growing fear of capture (ultimately, he and his wife were sent back to the concentration camp and put to death). A harrowing look at a lesser-known aspect of the Holocaust, this is recommended. Aud: C, P. (C. Block)