The Buchenwald Series

An Artist Depicts the Persecution of Jehovah’s Witnesses by the Nazi’s.

About the Artist

A Jehovah's Witness survivor's introspection opens a window

into the Nazi darkness. As prisoner #1795, Johannes Steyer

shares 27 freeze-frame visions that contrast ten years of Nazi

terror with individual religious determination and hope.

Born on September 28, 1908, in Röhrsdorf, near Chemnitz,

Steyer went to work right out of elementary school straightening needles on

knitting machines (Nadelrichter für Strickmaschinen). After his retirement,

Steyer pursued painting as a hobby.

Using aquarelles, he created a vivid record of his Nazi-era experiences. In the

1970s, he completed the chronological Buchenwald Series from his

memories, printed pictures and personal photographs of the former camp.

The artist chose to use bright colors, perhaps reflecting the hope and

optimistic yearning that infused his Christian faith. Steyer left his watercolor

autobiography to the Wachtturm-Gesellschaft History Archive in

Selters/Taunus, Germany. He died at the age of 90 on March 1, 1998.

1. "We do not want Jehovah God's Kingdom. We have our church and our

Fuehrer!"

The artist Johannes Steyer stands mute and faceless at the centre of the

composition, the garden gate crosses and circles the centre of his body. He is

targeted because of his ministry. Over his head hangs a swastika flag. The

family vehemently rejects the message, releasing a dog and a huge,

snakelike echo of the Nazi salute. Ominously, the figure of a brown-shirted

Nazi storm trooper stands down the road. Storm clouds roll on the horizon.

2. "I'll have you arrested!" Steyer is denounced to the police by a Nazi and is

arrested on March 5, 1935. The storm clouds are now fully overhead, and the

darkness of the composition is interrupted by the spotlighted Nazi flag, now

taken up by a stiff breeze.

3. "'He will return at about noon, so it is said." Steyer is arrested by the

Gestapo and locked in a tall-gated van that drives into pale uncertainty.

He is bound for Sachsenburg concentration camp. A clock stands in

dramatic shadows that lengthen on the table, marking the agony of the

passing hours for Steyer's wife as he fails to return. He will be in

custody for the next ten years.

4. "Deported to a concentration camp." Arrival at the concentration camp

is the beginning of abuses, being forced to do the so-called Saxon

Salute for hours within the shadow of the walls. A red stain now marks

the clouded sky. The dark shadow of the walls are repeated in each

depiction of camp violence.

5. "Under construction”—behind this, the first barracks are being built in

the woods. A new concentration camp arises in the middle of a great

forest.

Jehovah's Witnesses are among the first arrivals of prisoners at

Buchenwald. For the first time, the alien darkness of the forest is depicted.

Buchenwald means "beech-tree forest," and the thick forest is a profound

and recurring image in Steyer's paintings. The foreground is dominated by

the deep and broad roots of beeches, which must be dug out by hand and

with hoes. These roots will emerge in many of the forest paintings. The

forest frequently contains glimpses of a soft glow, the concept of freedom

beyond its confines.

6. "Foundations are ready." The prisoners, including Jehovah's

Witnesses, are forced to build barracks that they will live in when

complete. The foreground is considered in Steyer's characteristic

palette of pale earth tones and pastels, which contrast with the dark

background of the ever-present forest. In the shadows, guards are

stationed regularly, only their faces and hands discernable.

7. "An inmate was is missing during role call”: after a long search, the

prisoner was finally found, sometimes only the next morning." Huge

indefinite masses of figures are standing for role call—an ordeal that

could last 18 hours or more until an escapee could be captured. A

figure staggers forward for punishment by another prisoner and

stalking SS guards.

8. "Strapped to the block”, 25 strokes for laziness at work. Two SS men

administer brutal punishment to a half-naked prisoner before the block-

like ranks of other prisoners, who are forced to watch. Guards encircle

the gatehouse and all its windows. Another prisoner lies in the

shadows nearby, apparently beaten unconscious or dead.

9. “The Punishment Battalion” The scene is forced labour designed to kill.

Arriving Jehovah's Witness inmates are always assigned to this

battalion. Prisoners are hunched over at work in a quarry, forced to

carve chunks of stone that they load a cart nearby; they dig holes that

look like graves. On the ledges above, the guards and their guns form

grave markers, symbolic of death. Steyer here has evidently paused to

look up from his work. He views mistreatment, but he also sees a patch

of lightly colored flowers. Flowers and a beautiful sky remind him that

God is still with him, giving Steyer endurance, strength, and hope.

10. “Torture by Stones” Jehovah's Witnesses (Bible Students) and a group

of Jews struggle to carry stones from a quarry." Figures march along a

low path, creating an impression of crawling underground. The first set

of figures bears the yellow star, identifying them as Jewish prisoners.

One figure has collapsed, and he holds his hands up in futile defence

against the guard who aims his rifle at him. Behind this is another

group of prisoners, Jehovah's Witnesses, or Bible Students. All are

forced to carry huge stones. The line is fluid and uniform in the bearing

of their burdens. Above the path, amid the dark trees, stand guards

armed with rifles and dogs. Barely visible beyond the claustrophobic

forest are pale houses recollecting the dream of freedom.

11. "Craving for Freedom”. A desperate prisoner lies dead on the electric

fence, shot from the tower.

A harsh juxtaposition is formed between the grim realities of the camp, the

jagged barbed-wire fence, the looming shadows, the squat towers that

march into the distance, and the pale unreality of the dawn of spring.

12. "The Kapos." The SS appointed prisoners as Kapos to control other

inmates. The prisoners march along ant-like, carrying huge round

stones balanced on their shoulders, while the weight seemingly

crushes their heads. The prisoners march into an indefinite distance,

seeming to come from a great subterranean cavern. The distances

involved are illusionistic: the dimensions of the quarry are seemingly

modest, but the work involved is titanic. The Kapo is darker and larger

than his fellow prisoners, at once less and more. In the foreground a

crude figure lays sprawled and contorted, bleeding from the head,

probably dead, a victim of Kapo violence. But the march goes on

unendingly and no one is allowed to aid him. The SS officers look on

with approval.

13. "Get out for roll call!!" Additional Kapo abuse is depicted. Two Kapos

flank the door, brandishing symbols of official and personal violence.

Both wear a green triangle, marking them as "professional criminals."

The prisoners are disgorged chaotically through the doorframe,

flinching and falling.

14. “Roll Call”. Guards armed with guns and the commandant

complacently gazes at their handiwork as the prisoners stand for roll

call. Dark figures of the SS stride through the ranks of compressed

prisoners. A dead prisoner lies in the shadow of the guardhouse.

15.“Returning to the Concentration Camp”. After long day, exhausted

prisoners in a work detail are watched by a guard. Elongated evening

shadows delineate their path. Two figures support a third, their eyes

downcast. The figure groupings of the prisoners stand in contrast with

the isolated guard and his rifle.

16 "Between life and death." In the midst of the dark forest, a group of

prisoners carrying an injured or dying figure walk along a branching path on

their way back to concentration camp. One branch leads to the indistinct light

of sunset, perhaps a symbol of life or freedom; the other terminating abruptly

at the margin of the painting, the return to the darkness of imprisonment,

which could mean death.

17."Done for the day." In the moonlit forest, almost obscured by the trees,

a late labor detail walks back to concentration camp, following a fellow

prisoner pushing an injured comrade along in a wheelbarrow. The

ever-present guards seem inhuman in the night.

18. "After morning roll call, moving out to work …" At dawn, the prisoners

had begun their day. Now, arranged in anamorphic ranks, punctuated

by the dark figures of guards and SS officers, they pass below the

looming guardhouse into the dim forest. The clock tower shows 6

o'clock.

19.“Against the Sky” is a studied examination of the fortress-like camp

enclosure, which denies freedom and discourages escape. The camp

is patrolled from within by dark soldiers and machine guns. The

guardhouse and barbed wire create contrast with the pastel sky.

20. "I won't come out to work today … got an interrogation." In contrast

with the geometrically reduced prisoners in the background, an intimate

group of prisoners face one another during roll call, their eyes appear

bruised as they secretly discuss in innocuous terms the unexpected

event" of being interrogated by SS or Gestapo in the Political

Department. It means no outside labor for this day, but could also

mean torture or death during interrogation.

21. “Prisoner No. …000, report to the camp commandant immediately'!"

The call likely strikes terror into the heart of the prisoners. But to the

scowling guard, it is all in a day's business. The guard sits hunched at

his desk, taking the prisoner's number from the log book for the day

and announcing it to the camp population. Visible from his window: the

dusty roll call square; long lines of prisoner barracks; the guard towers;

and the great forest – the microcosm of the concentration camp. In this

painting the camp is depicted from the perspective of the guard in the

main tower. The room is dark purple, the color denoting the prisoner

group to which Steyer belongs – Jehovah's Witnesses.

22. “Prisoners stand facing a long desk”. Behind the desk are the clerks,

who are attempting to induct the prisoners into the Nazi army. The

repeat of prisoner, desk, clerk, and papers stretches the full length of

the long room. Massed like corded wood, more prisoners await their

turn. The central figure, Steyer himself, stands before a throng of

German military officials and SS who intently observe his refusal to be

inducted for military service. Only this clerk points to a purple form,

perhaps the infamous "Declaration," giving Steyer a chance to

renounce his faith and leave the camp.

23. "The Sword of the Church”. Hitler attacked Jehovah's Witnesses, Jews,

political [dissidents], and criminals. The intention was a disguised persecution

of Jehovah's Witnesses, i.e., not as Christians, but because they were

considered criminals. A huge, ranting caricature wreathed in a halo towers

over a German town, his finger pointed in accusation towards the objects of

his hatred. The town bristles with jagged church spires topped with crosses,

and from the windows fly Nazi flags, in turn emblazoned with the Aryan cross,

symbolic of the Nazi party. This iconography references the root of Steyer's

persecution as one of Jehovah's Witnesses, the exclusion of the Bible

Students from the sanctioned Christian religions.

23. "This brood will be exterminated in Germany!" Hitler reacts hysterically

to the flood of protest telegrams sent on October 7, 1934, by Jehovah's

Witnesses from around the world. A claustrophobic atmosphere is

created by color fields of black and red, the Nazi colors, that heavily

frame a manic Hitler. The Fuehrer stands pounding an SS podium with

reddened hands, memorialising the moment of Hitler's raving boast.

25. "The gladsome news." From an aerial view looking down at the barracks,

a great mass of prisoners surge into the dusty alleys of the camp, seen

rambunctiously gamboling, dancing, embracing one another, and running,

arms outstretched towards freedom, as the camp is liberated. Two prisoners

in the center join hands. A group of prisoners stage a revolt shortly before the

camp's official liberation.

26. "Thanks to God, the power of the evil ones is broken!”. “The SS have fled

… we are free!" The central figure, possibly Steyer himself, looks up at

heaven, arms outstretched as he thanks God for freedom. In the background,

liberated prisoners continue to dance, talk, and celebrate their liberation. In

the centre, again, two prisoners join hands. While the shadows indicate

sunlight off to the right, from the forest the symbolic glow of freedom beckons,

now seemingly extending into the camp.

27. "Free!" The familiar scene of the oppressive gatehouse, now free of

guards, and the dark forest are radically changed as the figures joyously

gesticulate, one haloed by the light of the now-open gate. The clock tower

shows almost 4 o'clock - the hour of liberation.