Roman Halter • Life and Art through Stained Glass 1 | Page 47

fig. 2 fig. 3 Starved Faces 1974 Oil on canvas Imperial War Museum Shlomo 1 1974 Oil on canvas Imperial War Museum started in 1974 and completed in 1977. To make this acquisition, the museum needed to change its policy. It already had a large collection of Holocaust art but all of this work had been made at the time. Its role in the collection was not primarily artistic: it was there as direct witness. Roman’s work, however, had been made well after the Holocaust, looking back after a period of more than 30 years. The museum convened a small committee, with staff members and external consultants, who concluded unanimously that it was now time for the museum to examine through its collections the lasting legacy of conflict. So these seven works were the first to be acquired under these new terms. To accompany these paintings Roman produced a set of captions, spare in language. They are written from the point of view of an outsider, as if they are by a detached witness relating these events as if they had no impact upon him. The texts do not even hint at what emotions the writer was experiencing as he watched what was happening in front of him. Even then, as the events were unfolding, it seems that Roman was burying the impact of what he was seeing. It is as if he was there simply to take notes, to record. To allow himself to feel any psychological disturbance, to be traumatised by what he saw, would be the first step in allowing himself to lose his hope, to become a victim of the Holocaust himself and accordingly, to break his promise to his grandfather. This promise stayed with Roman as he saw fellow Jews losing all hope and desperately finding ways to hasten their own deaths. One of the captions, written to go alongside Man on the Electrified Barbed Wire (fig. 4), speaks about how he always held onto hope and contrasts this, without judgement, with those unable to do the same. It was if he knew that his youth was on his side. “It was different for men over 30. A man over 30 knew what life was like before the war and what the world was like then. He could understand that, whether the Germans were winning or losing, they were continuing fig. 4 Man on Electrified Barbed Wire 1974 Oil on canvas Imperial War Museum Roman Halter  41