Student Review of the Sid Chafetz "Perpetrators" Exhibit
By Coco Price
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Photo, far left: Volunteers Anita Sanctuary and Coco Price view Chafetz’s prints at a Jackson Center reception. Photo, left: Coco Price stands next to one of Sid Chafetz’s “Perpetrators.”
The truth of the old maxim, “appearances can be deceiving,” is on display at the Robert H. Jackson Center in a scary exhibition of black and white lithographs of Nazi “Perpetrators” by artist, Sid Chafetz. The stark, coarsely drawn portraits of Hitler’s top officers, enablers, and accomplices are framed above quotes and block-print descriptions
of their Nazi involvement. The drawings are hung, floor to ceiling, in one small room and a hallway at the Jackson Center, which adds to the overwhelming effect of the exhibit.
Chafetz’s prints provide an opportunity for visual learners to “see” the twisted philosophy and the faces of the men who supported Hitler in “perpetrating evil across the world.” Some of the drawings portray the “perpetrators” as beady-eyed, tight-lipped men with serious dark circles under their eyes, pictures that are consistent with the hateful
quotes attributed to them; their ugly faces match their evil utterances. Other portraits, however, look like ordinary, middle-aged men, the type one might see on the streets of downtown Jamestown.
Although most of the lithographs consist of single Nazi portraits, the truly unnerving drawings are the cozy compositions depicting German “perpetrators” and their families. It is hard to imagine that Reinhart Heydrich, doting husband and father, kissed his lovely wife and rosy-cheeked children goodbye everyday before he went out to kill
Jews. Or that Goebbels rationalized the implementation of Hitler’s schemes to his three young children whom he killed when he realized that the Nazi cause was lost. The viewer wonders about the kind of man who tucks his own children into bed at night and murders other people’s babies in the morning.
“Rather than depicting [Holocaust] victims,” Chafetz chose to “portray the people who made Hitler possible,” a change from the photos of Anne Frank, starving Jews, and concentration camp victims found in most history books. By juxtaposing the visual representation of ordinary men with happy families, good educations, and social position
against lists of their genocidal crimes and vituperative words, the artist heightens our revulsion of their acts and reminds us that “ordinary” people who don’t “recognize the boundaries of individual responsibility and personal culpability” may become Orwellian monsters.
Anyone who thinks that the crimes of the Holocaust weren’t as bad as some historians make them out to be should see this exhibit. Anyone who thinks that all “bad” people must necessarily have evil demeanors should see this exhibit. Anyone who deludes himself into thinking that ordinary men can’t become “perpetrators” must see this exhibit.
Coco Price, a senior at Jamestown High School, serves as Student Ambassador at the Robert H. Jackson Center.