The Israeli Declaration of Independence as You’ve Never Seen It Before
Arthur Szyk's magnificent artwork on the Declaration of Independence highlights the deep, meaningful connection between the new Jewish state and the ancient Jewish past.
On May 22, 1948, Jewish-Polish artist Arthur Szyk finally received his long awaited American citizenship. He loved and cherished his adoptive country. America had spared Szyk the horrors of the Second World War. It was where he established himself as a well-known artist with a passion to combat the fascist, Nazi ideologies that destroyed Europe. Yet for Szyk, the experience of becoming an American was entirely dwarfed by the realization of his ultimate dream that occurred just eight days prior to his receiving his citizenship: The establishment of the State of Israel.
His wife, Julia Szyk, would tell the story of her husband, the famed artist, who burst into tears as he listened to the founding of the Jewish state on the radio.
The Artist Who Refused to Shirk the Burden of History
Arthur Szyk in his home, 1945. Photographer unknown
For as long as he could remember, Arthur Szyk found himself torn between the two opposing forces of history and modernity. From an early age, growing up in a secular Jewish family, Szyk found himself drawn to the stories of the Hebrew Bible. As a teenager, Arthur was sent to Paris by his family who encouraged him to cultivate his craft and to experience the modern art movement in the capital of European culture. It was there that Szyk developed his artistic style that combined his love of comic caricatures and the decorative illustrations of Medieval manuscripts.
At age 20, Szyk returned from Paris to his hometown in Lodz, Poland, and was quickly swept up in the activities of the local Zionist movement. In 1914 Arthur had the opportunity to join a delegation to the Land of Israel and got to see the developing Jewish Yishuv with his own eyes. He was especially taken by the first Hebrew city, the fledgling five-year-old Tel Aviv. When the First World War broke out, Szyk returned to Poland. Szyk lived in Paris and London between the two World Wars and by the time the Second World War was in full force in 1940, he left Europe for good and made his way to the United States.
“The Dangerous Enemies of the Third Reich are to be Shot!” by Arthur Szyk, 1943, New York
When Adolf Hitler initially came to power, Szyk recognized the danger that the dictator posed to the entire world. With the outbreak of World War II in 1939, Szyk abandoned his personal projects and committed himself to fight with the Allies against the Axis of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Nationalist-Imperial Japan. His caricatures earned him a reputation as a single minded artist, relentless in his pursuit of justice and in following the tumultuous politics of his day. His critics however, labelled him as nothing but a propagandist – an opinion that is still commonly held today.
“We Declare…”
The Declaration of Independence designed by Arthur Szyk
Upon hearing of the establishment of the State of Israel, Arthur Szyk turned to the new Israeli government and requested permission to illustrate the Israeli Declaration of Independence and the declaration that immigration to Israel was now free and open for the Jewish Diaspora.
A Weeping Farmer Seeds a Field: Image from the Israeli Declaration of Independence Illustrated by Arthur Szyk
As befitting a Jewish Modern artist with a passion for Zionism, Szyk created a series of magnificent images for the declaration scroll. These images included multiple Stars of David, prayers to the Almighty, famous biblical figures including Moses and Aaron, as well as the depictions of more modern characters, including a Jewish farmer planting a field and an IDF soldier bearing a flag in one hand, and rifle in the other.
Defending the Newborn State – “If not me, then who?” – Image from the Israeli Declaration of Independence Illustrated by Arthur Szyk
It is possible that in this project, Arthur Szyk worked to artistically settle the conflict between the traditional position of trusting in God to protect the Jewish people from their enemies and the Zionist declaration that the Jews must stand strong and independent, protecting themselves from their enemies. As the phrase from Pirkei Avot, the Ethics of our Fathers, states, “If not me, then who?”
This 1933 drawing is apparently one of the earliest illustrations of a Nazi concentration camp
The materials in the archive of Hungarian-Jewish born artist Gyula Zilzer were bestowed to the Archives of National Library of Israel in 2002 as part of the estate of Mary Zilzer, the artist’s widow, after she passed away in 2001.
The story of the artist’s life can be traced back through the personal documents, photographs, correspondence, literary works, paintings and illustrations contained within the archive.
Most of the paintings in the archive are lithographs, which, unlike a painting, can exist in more than one original copy. Making duplicates with the lithographic method involves a lot of effort and all duplicates are made by the same artist, using the same stone on which the original image was painted.
“Opium”. Lithograph by Gyula Zilzer
Gyula Zilzer, a descendant of an artisan family, was born in 1898 in Budapest, Hungary. Members of this illustrious family include the Bavarian king’s court painter Antal Zilzer, the sculptor Hajnalka Zilzer, and the modern painter Frigyes Frank.
In his youth, Zilzer had a special interest in machines and spent time working on inventions.
Certificate from the Royal Hungarian Museum of Technology given to Gyula Zilzer concerning absolving a gas engine operator course in 1920
In 1917, together with two of his friends, Trotzer and Mintz, he worked to create a radio controlled torpedo. During the Russian Revolution, the Russian Army gave the three young men access to a factory to build their torpedo model and to produce it for military purposes, but the project was never completed.
The model became a secret German patent and later served as the basis for several technological innovations, including the dial mechanism of telephones and missile control systems developed in other countries.
The artist Gyula Zilzer in his study. Photo by André Kertész
As a Jew, Zilzer was prevented from continuing his academic studies in mechanical engineering due to the implementation of Numerus Clausus. In 1919 he fled from Hungarian nationalists to Trieste, Italy. There, while involved in the leadership of a factory that he founded along with his business partners, he began to paint. After displaying much talent, from 1922-1923 Zilzer went to study painting at the school of the famous German painter Hans Hoffman in Munich.
In 1924, after acquiring a Triestian certificate which attested to his status as a Christian, Zilzer returned to Budapest and signed up for the Academy of the Arts. When his Jewish origins were revealed to the academic administration, he was dismissed from the Academy as “untalented.” Despite this humiliation, Zilzer pushed forward and published his collection of lithographs entitled, “Kaleidoskop,” in 1924. This publication was so successful that it enabled him to leave Hungary for good. After leaving Hungary in 1924, he lived in Paris until 1932 where he worked for the French magazine Clarté and the daily newspaper L’Humanité, both of which belonged to the Communist Party. It was during this time that he became friends with the French writer and publicist Henri Barbusse.
From 1929, Zilzer’s works became clearly anti-fascist in nature with several of his pieces focusing in on Hitler and Mussolini. In 1932, in an exhibition in Amsterdam, he presented his “Gaz” album, a collection protesting the use of gas as a form of warfare against the civilian population. That year, following the success of the original installment, the collection was also displayed in the United States.
Zilzer, the socialist artist who suffered at the hands of anti-Semitism from his youth, expressed his political and general worldview through his paintings. He was an artist ahead of his time, presenting the horrors of the First World War in the 1920s. When he published the collections “Kaleidoskop” and “Gaz” in 1924 and 1932 respectively, he hoped they would forewarn of a future war that the fascist authorities may inspire. Additionally, his paintings criticized the cruelty of the National Socialist Party, as portrayed in his drawings of concentration camps from the early 1930s.
The cover drawing of the album “Kaleidoskop” by Gyla Zilzer, 1924
One of the drawings from the album “GAZ” by Zilzer from 1934
Concentration camps were not an original invention of the Nazi apparatus in Germany. The camps set up by the British in South Africa during the Boer War at the end of the 19th century, as well as the Russian Gulag (a punitive system based on forced labor), preceded and influenced the formation of the Nazi camps. The first concentration camp on German territory was established in Dachau after Hitler came to power in 1933. The camp intended to imprison opponents of the Nazi regime as well as people from social groups marked by the Nazis as “undesirable,” including homeless people, homosexuals, and others.
Two drawings from 1933 representing the concentration camps. The second (bottom) one served as the cover page of the English booklet “Women and Children under the Swastika”, which collected factual reports on terrorism and oppression in the Third Reich, published 1936 in New York, USA
Zilzer belonged to the expressionist artistic movement, protesting the fascist ideology, calling for unity against the Nazi horrors in his published paintings as early as 1933.
“The Peace Talk” of Hitler calling for war. Caricature from 1934
” Let us share it” – Mussolini and Hitler sharing the globe. 1935
By 1932 Zilzer left Europe and moved to the United States, where he spent a year traveling throughout the country all the while continuing to draw and to paint.
Letter of recommendation from G. P. Putnam’s Sons given to Zilzer concerning his US citizenship. 1934
US Social Security Card of Zilzer Gyula
Gyula Zilzer apparently in the late 30s
He moved to Hollywood in 1939 where he worked designing stage sets of famous films as an art director. Outside of his work in the film industry, Zilzer created more patents for items such as a toy book for children, a helical underground parking area with shelter and the “VISI-Recorder”.
A stage set planned and drawn by Zilzer for the film “The short happy life of Francis Macomber”A patented toy book for children planned an designed by Zilzer
A helical underground parking area with shelter planned by Zilzer, Kovacs and Williger
Another version of the same shelter as above called “Air raid precaution parking place”
Logo of the patented Visi Recorder by Zilzer
Membership certificate from The Institute of American Inventors given to Gyula Zilzer in 1940
After the end of the Second World War, Zilzer returned to Europe and traveled between Paris and Budapest for a few years. In 1954 he moved to his final residence in New York City where he worked for the television networks NBC and Cinerama, all while continuing to paint and manage his private exhibitions, until his death in 1969.
An oil painting by Gyula Zilzer
Gyula Zilzer in his atelier in ca. 1943
Throughout his tumultuous life, Zilzer rubbed shoulders with many well-known, contemporary personalities including American writer and publicist Upton Sinclair, the French director Jean Vigo, the Mexican painter Diego Rivera, the movie actor Gregory Peck, the writers Roman Roland and Ilya Ehrenburg, the Romanian sculptor Constantin Brâncuși, the Hungarian poet József Attila, the author and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel. Zilzer was also in close contact with the physicist Albert Einstein who received a collection of paintings gifted from Zilzer himself. This is certified by a letter of thanks sent from Einstein to Zilzer on March 26th 1933.
Records on “My Heritage” database show that Gyula was married to Irene P. Kellog. After their divorce he married Mary (Fuchs) Pitjel. Mary met Gyula in the USA, where she moved after the death of her first husband Kalman Pitjel, who fell during Israel’s War for Independence in 1948. This information is based on Tanya Rubinstein-Horowitz from Düsseldorf, Germany. Her father was a cousin of Kalman Pitjel.
I am glad you have found a wife – a real one! – writes Henry Miller to Zilzer in 1956; apparently regarding Mary
The cover of the Hebrew version of the book "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone", published by Miskal, Books in the Attic
In 1407, an underground passageway was built next to a large mass grave in Paris’ central burial ground, known as “The Holy Innocents’ Cemetery” (Cimetière des Saints-Innocents). The upper section of the new passageway was decorated with a group of statues featuring the typical Christian iconography of the time.
The statues depicted Jesus, surrounded by Saint Peter and Saint Paul, as well as by the couple who donated the underground passageway: Nicolas and Perenelle Flamel. Under these figures are several plates portraying traditional early 15th century Christian symbols.
A picture of the group of statues in the Parisian cemetery by Charles Levi-Bernay (1786)
Very little is known about Nicholas and Perenelle Flamel. Were it not for the group of statues in the Parisian cemetery, Nicolas Flamel would undoubtably have been forgotten by the residents of the city within a few decades of his death. The statues were destroyed towards the end of the 18th century, but Nicolas Flamel’s name outlived that destruction as well.
During the Renaissance period, many people attempted to decipher the deeper meanings of the Middle Age Christian symbolism displayed in the statues, among them several alchemists. One of these, Robert Duval, immediately identified two dragons featured on one of the plates placed below the statues as an alchemist symbol for the creation of metals.
From this point forward, the plate drew a great deal of attention from those familiar with various secret teachings, and the cemetery became a site of pilgrimage for alchemists and other dabblers in the occult and the hidden sciences.
Nicolas and Perenelle Flamel praying next to St. Paul, from an 18th century French manuscript preserved in the British Library
As early as the late 16th century, a legend spread that Flamel owned an old and mystical book from which he studied occult teachings. The esoteric information in the book’s pages helped Flamel to crack the secret of the creation of gold and silver by means of a “philosopher’s stone”. The legend was recorded in a French text known as Le Sommaire Philosophique (“The Philosophical Summary”), which includes a description of pictures similar to the figures displayed in the cemetery statues.
It seems that turning Nicolas Flamel into a mystical sage was not sufficient and an autobiography attributed to Flamel himself was suddenly discovered in the early 17th century. This book was given the mysterious name “Exposition of the Hieroglyphical Figures”(Livre des figures hiéroglyphiques) and relates a classic tale in the field of alchemy: one day, while working as a registrar of estates of the deceased, Flamel encountered a book bound in a gilded copper binding whose 21 pages were made of tree bark.
A picture of the group of statues in the Parisian cemetery printed in the book “Exposition of the Hieroglyphical Figures”, attributed to Nicolas Flamel
The book was written in what appear to be Greek letters, which Flamel did not know how to read, and was replete with unusual illustrations. According to the title page it was authored by “Abraham the Jew”, a prince, Levite, astrologist and philosopher. Flamel bought the book and managed to decipher its contents but was unable to understand the hidden symbols in the illustrations. Flamel, therefore, traveled to Spain, where he hoped to find a scholar able to explain the true meaning behind the images.
According to the tale, in Spain, the Parisian scholar found a Christian doctor with Jewish origins named Canche, who managed to decipher the message hidden in Abraham the Jew’s mysterious book. The doctor claimed that the illustrations contained the secrets behind the creation of metals. Canche died on their journey back to Paris, but after his return, Flamel managed to create high-quality strands of silver and gold in alchemical experiments based on Canche’s interpretations of the images. This discovery, the autobiography tells us, improved Nicolas and Perenelle Flamel’s financial standing to such an extent that they could make large donations to welfare institutions in Paris.
The autobiography also notes that the mystical drawings in Abraham the Jew’s book were evemtually reproduced in the aforementioned underground passageway in the Paris cemetery.
It is important to note that the original manuscript of Flamel’s book was never discovered. Abraham the Jew’s book was also never found. Historical research has proven that the book “Exposition of the Hieroglyphical Figures” was written by a 17th century author and alchemist. The autobiography contains language typical of that time, and mentions people not yet born during the lifetime of the historical Nicolas Flamel.
The qualms about the background and history of the supposed autobiography did not prevent it from enjoying a long and fruitful shelf life. After its publication in French in 1612, the text was translated into other languages (English in 1624, and German in 1681). One of the enthusiastic readers of the autobiography was none other than Isaac Newton (1643-1727), the father of modern physics. Newton summarized the book by hand and even copied out the picture depicting the group of statues in the Paris cemetery, including the mysterious plates which have been referred to as hieroglyphics. This manuscript can be found, together with Newton’s other alchemistic writings, in the Sidney M. Edelstein Collection at the National Library of Israel.
Isaac Newton’s drawing in his summary of the book “Exposition of the Hieroglyphical Figures”, from the Sidney M. Edelstein Collection at the National Library of Israel.
Copies of the fantastic autobiography attributed to Flamel can still be found today. The last edition we are aware of was printed in 1996 in Spain under the name El libro de las figuras jeroglificas. The figure of the supposed author, Nicolas Flamel, was also brought back to life in contemporary literature. In J.K. Rowling’s book Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (published in the U.S. under the name Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone), Flamel is described as a man who is hundreds of years old, a friend of Albus Dumbledore the headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and the owner of the Philosopher’s Stone.
Flamel also makes an appearance in Dan Brown’s popular book TheDa Vinci Code, and the Irish author Michael Scott even dedicated an entire six-book series to the imaginary Flamel: The Secrets of the Immortal Nicolas Flamel. Needless to say, all these literary works are unconnected to the historical Nicolas Flamel.
So who was the historical Nicolas Flamel?
To the best of our knowledge, Nicolas Flamel was born around the year 1330, not far from the French capital. In 1370 he married a widow named Perenelle and spent most of his life as a transcriber of manuscripts, an author and low-ranking legal clerk – positions from which he made a living. He later became a manuscript merchant in the service of the University of Paris.
The funds which helped him and his wife become patrons of a series of small churches, hospitals and other welfare institutions should be attributed to his wife – she appears to have been in possession of significant financial wealth when she was married to Nicolas, which she inherited from her two previous deceased husbands.
Nicolas Flamel
All the above information can be found on a 600 year old tombstone currently found in a museum in Paris (Musee de Cluny) which, together with several of the couples’ original documents, tell the story of the man immortalized both among lovers of secret teachings and readers of modern fantasy literature.
For many of the residents of the displaced persons camp in Munich in April, 1946, the upcoming Passover Seder symbolized more than the Jewish people’s historical redemption; it was the reality unfolding before their eyes. Many of the survivors clustered together in the displaced persons camp had hoped that they would celebrate Passover of 1947 far from the land where their loved ones had been slaughtered, far from the land in which the Nazis and their collaborators aimed to destroy them and the entire Jewish nation. Those in the know spoke about that Passover night as the “Seder of the exodus from Europe”.
Yosef Dov Sheinson, a resident of the camp, wanted to express this sentiment in a Haggadah which he wrote for the Seder in the displaced persons camp. The excerpts in Hebrew and Yiddish which Sheinson added to the traditional haggadah are accompanied by woodcuts by the Jewish-Hungarian artist Zvi Miklos Adler, who signed his name in the Haggadah as “Ben Binyamin”.
Depicting the horrors of the Holocaust which he himself experienced during the war years, Adler’s harsh drawings complement the text of the Haggadah. In an illustration corresponding with the well-known sentence “for not only one has risen against us to destroy us” we see a soldier shooting several wretched looking prisoners, while another soldier leads a group of stooped prisoners toward an unknown destination. The picture gradually fades away as the prisoners move away from the center of the event.
“For not only one has risen against us to destroy us”
The intertwining of traditional text and modern pictures illustrates the way the creators of the Haggadah grasped the historical moment in which they lived: in each and every generation a person must see himself as if he left Egypt, but it is not in every generation that a person undergoes horrors which darken his world and dwarf the suffering experienced by his ancestors.
“For Pharaoh only made decrees against the males, and Laban wished to uproot everything”
The need to talk about and deal with the terrible topic is tangibly and explicitly expressed in the Haggadah in an illustration which is hard to look at, and under which is written, “Therefore we are obligated…”
While this excerpt in the Haggadah is usually dedicated towards praise and thanksgiving to God for redeeming us from Egypt, the expression on the face of the survivor at the bottom of the picture shows quite the opposite.
“Therefore we are obligated…”
“And they oppressed us and imposed hard labor upon us”
Passover Seder in the U.S. Army
A copy of this haggadah reached Rabbi Avraham Klausner, an American army chaplain who was in the midst of preparing for a Seder of the U.S. Army forces stationed in Munich. He decided to conduct the Seder according to this haggadah, making a single change – he added an introduction addressed to soldiers in General Eisenhower’s army (whom Klausner compared in his introduction to a modern-day Moses).
Rabbi Klausner’s introduction is in the same vein as Sheinson and Adler’s work, equating Hitler with Pharaoh and the suffering the Jews endured in Egypt with what the Jews went through in the concentration and death camps.
“We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt”
The invite list to the Seder conducted by Rabbi Klausner in the Munich Theatre, held on the same night as the Seder of the displaced persons camp in Munich, is preserved in the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People. The list shows that only a few of the five hundred participants of the Passover Seder conducted by Rabbi Klausner were Holocaust survivors. The majority were soldiers in the U.S. armed forces.
A partial list of the invitees to the Passover Seder of the U.S. Army in Munich
The letter A was stamped on the title page of Rabbi Klausner’s private copy, indicating it belonged to the U.S. Army. On the same title page is the date and the location of the Seder at which the Haggadah was used: Munich, Germany, April 15-16, 1946″.
The title page of the Haggadah
Rabbi Klausner’s personal copy is currently stored in the Haggadah Collection of Aviram Paz. It was lent to the National Library for its “Next Year We Will Be Free Men” exhibition – an exhibition of unconventional Passover Haggadot from the years leading up to the founding of the state.
