Witness : Images of Auschwitz
Witness: Images of Auschwitz  is a haunting collection of illustrations and recollections that portray the horrors of that death-camp. David Olére, a survivor of the Auschwitz, was assigned as a laborer to the gas chambers and furnaces from 1943-1945, and saw the horrors that took place there.  Stylistically, David Olére's work is fairly representational.  In some ways, it is reminiscent of the drawing style of Pontormo; however, much of the work has an expressionistic edge to it.  While not as emotionally seething (nor nearly as abstract) as the art of Munch and some of the other German expressionists , there is a quiet darkness here.  And, like the expressionists, for Olére, pictorial form is inseparable from the pain and stress of experience-very appropriate for a subject as dark and disturbing as the Holocaust.  While the content of the drawings and paintings are a firsthand account and documentation of Nazi atrocities, this work is beautifully executed and serves as a grim reminder of the genocide reigned upon the Jewish race.  The images of Witness are accompanied by text that Olére's son, Alexander Olére, assembled based upon his father's memoirs. To be sure, the read is as compelling and memorable as the book's illustrations. --FromIndependent Publisher