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Drawing on the Holocaust By Jonathan Lis Tags: Israel, prison, art  At first glance, the prisoners' drawings hung up this week in David Yellin Teachers College in Jerusalem seemed to depict life in Israeli jails: barbed-wire fences, watchtowers and stooped figures gazing at freedom. But the sketches positioned next to them, a portrait of Anne Frank with a yellow patch and an embedded Israeli flag, made it clear that the gloomy images were a recreation of life in the ghetto as imagined by prisoners in Israeli jails. Blurring the distinction between life in the concentration camps and life in jail is one of the underlying principles of the Victory of the Spirit (Nitzahon Ha'ruah) project that has been going on for the last two years in the Israel Prisons Service. "Prisoners don't feel an attachment to anything," said Prisons Service sources. "Learning about the Holocaust, even for prisoners from minority groups, gives them some perspective on life and hope for rehabilitation in the future." S., a native of the Commonwealth of Independent States, is one of three prisoners whose works were exhibited at the college. He is currently serving a five-year sentence for fraud. Last Tuesday, he stood proudly opposite one of his paintings, his impression of Michaelangelo's famous fresco in the Sistine Chapel. On one of the two arms, which are folded over each other, he etched the number 6,000,000. At first, it looks like a copy of the painting," he explained. "Only afterward, when one looks closely at the arms, he notices the number. I used painting to transmit a certain metaphor. I leave it everyone to find something of their own in it." He chose to focus on painting the Holocaust out of a distant hope for the future. "We're in jail," he said. "If they, in the Holocaust, went through what they went through, we can also get through this." Advertisement 'Tremendous shock' Another prisoner, who declined to be interviewed, told exhibition visitors: "We experienced a tremendous shock when we learned about the Holocaust in jail. We roamed around the ward confused by what we saw. The works on display here today were created after quite a shakeup." The Prisons Service arranged for the unusual encounter between inmates and students and teachers at the David Yellin Teachers College in Jerusalem to introduce Holocaust studies to the prisoners, many of whom are Arab or another minority with no previous connection to the topic. Prisons Service officials said that one of their goals was to try and teach the students how to transmit the Holocaust and its significance to a group that feels no connection to the subject. Over the last two years, as part of the Victory of the Spirit project, 1,000 prisoners were sent to visit Yad Vashem and Kibbutz Lohamei Hagetaot. Passersby would have a hard time guessing that the visitors were inmates: during the visit to Kibbutz Lohamei Hagetaot, the prisoners did not wear their uniforms and ate in the restaurant. The special conditions were intended to enable the prisoners to have a relative sense of freedom, to make the experience easier on them. The director of the college, Dr. Anna Russo, was impressed by the paintings and how they helped the prisoners broaden their horizons. "Painting is a tool, but the paintings are much more than a tool. The people who drew the paintings certainly experienced things that will continue to be with them." The director of Hadarim Prison, Athman Rifat, discussed the change witnessed in the prisoners: "We immediately found that the prisoners' behavior changed. In the jail, there are Jewish prisoners, immigrants from the CIS, Arabs and other minority group members, and we started to feel there was more harmony among them. Their behavior toward the staff also improved." Nazim Sabithi, the Prisons Service's central district commander, said he learned for the first time about the Holocaust at the age of 14, when he went with friends from to visit Kibbutz Lohamei Hagetaot. "The exposure to the subject affected and still affects my life as a member of the Druze community, a member of minority group living in Israel," he said. "On more than one occasion, I have said that when you don't know the Jewish people's past, it's hard for a member of a minority group to connect with the state." The Prisons Service recently decided that dangerous prisoners, who are not allowed to go on trips, would also study the Holocaust. "We exposed them to details and lectures. I know the prisoners talked about it at home also and used their leaves to visit Lohamei Hagetaot with their families," says Sabithi. He says the lessons derived from Holocaust education do not relate to the prisoners alone: "It's important for us, as staff, to remember and not to forget that the prisoners who are in our charge, are first and foremost human beings." Bookmark to del.icio.us   WHO knows? The WHO says Israel lets Gazans die in 'avoidable tragedies'. Friendly faces Google, Facebook and Yahoo heads will attend a J'lem technology summit.

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