Member-only story
Refugees, Painting by Josef Herman (1911–2000)
A First Attempt at Art Criticism
On a clear, cold night, a father and his family pause outside of town. In one hand, he holds a rolled-up blanket, but it would do little against the snow even if there were a safe place to sleep. In the other hand, he helps to support the infant, who is slipping down her mother’s chest.
Each character in the painting has a story to tell.
The older daughter, barely bigger than a toddler, has her eyes wide open, sucking not just her thumb but her entire hand down to the wrist, so fearful is she of what might be coming up the road. She has already witnessed too much horror.
The mother’s expression is both watchful and sad, knowing her husband cannot protect them from the growing Nazi onslaught.
The cat with the bleeding mouse in its mouth appears to be standing ominously over the entire town, like the advancing Third Reich, a foreboding black cloud over them.
But the father’s eyes are the real center of the piece, the whites of them showing from…alarm? distress? They practically pop out of his head. A man whose manhood has been nullified. No head of any household should have to stand by while his spouse and children are taken from him to the death camps. He is desperately trying to…
