A Plagiarized Testimony?: Authorship, Legacy, and the Holocaust Art of Henryk Beck and Zinovii Tolkachev

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article explores the case of an alleged plagiarism of Holocaust staple artistic images by two different artists on opposite sides of the WWII frontlines. From 1941–1944, Zinovii Tolkachev (1904–1977), a Soviet artist on a military mission, and Henryk Beck (1896–1946), a Holocaust survivor and artist in hiding, had created at least two pairs of identical works. Tolkachev’s images, included in his 1944 series ‘Majdanek’ became known as the earliest artistic representation of the Holocaust in East European art. Identical images created by Henryk Beck three years prior to those of Tolkachev remained unbeknownst to the general public until recently. By providing a comparative analysis of Tolkachev’s and Beck’s personal biographies, war-time itineraries, and artistic language, this essay seeks to reenact the historical circumstances for a possible encounter between the two artists, to identify the genuine author, and to understand the underlying personal motifs for this plagiarism. Bringing my analysis beyond the images’ iconography and visual semantics, I conceptualize these works of art as complex Holocaust texts bridging personal testimony, material culture, military history, Holocaust resistance, cultural geography, and art studies. A story of a migrating Holocaust image, the case of Beck-Tolkachev challenges our knowledge of Polish, Ukrainian, Russian, and Jewish artists’ relations during the war and reveals methodological uncertainties in dealing with the artistic legacy of the Holocaust.