Catholic Survivor and Artist Jan Komski (1915 -2002)

Catholic Survivor and Artist Jan Komski (1915 -2002)

Presentation: 5 September 2009

Lecture and exhibit of the work of Jan Komski, a retired Washington Post artist who, during five years of World War II, survived five concentration camps in Poland and Germany.

On June 14, 1940, Mr. Komski was in the first group of about 750 prisoners assigned to Auschwitz, in southern Poland, on the day it opened. On April 29, 1945, he was in the Dachau concentration camp in Germany when the camp was liberated by the U.S. Army. In 1949, after four years in displaced-persons camps in Germany, Mr. Komski came to the United States He continued painting and drawing until shortly before his death, producing art scenes of death, barbed wire, brutality and starvation from the concentration camp years, 1940 to 1945. His work has been displayed at the Auschwitz memorial museum in Poland, at shows in Houston and Chicago, and in the collection of The Polish Mission. The reason I am doing these paintings is because I always thought it only destiny or providence that allowed me to live when I knew there were tens of thousands of people who died there.