The most powerful images that deal with Nazism and Holocaust themes are by Anselm Kiefer and Gottfried Helnwein.
The work of both artists are informed by the personal experience of growing up in post-war German speaking countries...
William Burroughs said that the American revolution begins in books and music,
and political operatives implement the changes after the fact.
To this maybe we can add art.
And Helnwein's art might have the capacity to instigate change by piercing the veil of political correctness
to recapture the primitive gesture inherent in art.

Jewish Journal, Los Angeles
Mitchell Waxman

Again and again, Helnwein painted children in brutal, violent settings. He has used Chris tian iconography to depict Nazi officers, and juxtaposed rampaging soldiers with Images of childhood innocence. Visceral reactions come with the territory: one Installation in Cologne was physically attacked by neo Nazis. And yet, he says, he does not set out to shock. "Shock is a useless effect," he says. "Somebody in shock is completely useless. I want to make somebody think".

The Sunday Time, UK, Gerry McCarthy

An extremely impressive work "Selection- Ninth November Night", made in 1988, consisted of a series of uniform, huge images of children's faces, stretching from Cologne's Ludwig Museum to its cathedral. The subtitle, (Ninth November Night), gave the clue to the event the work marked - the start of the Holocaust on Reichskristallnacht, November 9, 1938.
In presenting people with a series of entirely neutral, if rather beautiful, pictures of innocence and implicitly pointing out that just such innocents were sorted and selected for extermination, Helnwein was resurrecting an aspect of the past that most Germans and, perhaps even more so, Austrians, have preferred to forget.
It certainly annoyed someone to the extent that they came and vandalised it, symbolically cutting the throats of some of the images. Selection shares with Helnwein's more sensational work a desire to prod us into thought about our own attitudes and roles.
The real horror, as his work reiterates, is indifference and complacency.

The Irish Times, Aidan Dunne

The presentation in Israel was possible with the generous support of:
The Austrian Cultural Forum Tel Aviv
Trevision Visual Communication Group
Friedman-Benda Gallery, New York
The Israeli Opera

NINTH NOVEMBER NIGHT has been shown at

Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany, 1988
Musee'De L'Elysee Lausanne, Switzerland, 1990
Minoriten Church, Museum of Lower Austria, Krems, Austria 1991
City center of Heilbronn, Germany, 1992
Museum St. Ingbert, Albert Weisgerber Stiftung, Saarbrücken, Germany, 1993
Ludwig Institut, Schloss Oberhausen, Germany, 1995
Kulturbrauerei, Berlin, Germany, 1996
Museum of Fine Art, Otaru, Japan, 1996
The State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia, 1997
City of Kilkenny, Ireland, 2001
Museum of Tolerance/Simon Wiesenthal Center Los Angeles, 2003
Tel Aviv, Israel, 2010

THE ART OF HUMANITY by Jonathon Keats

Museum of Tolerance, Simon Wiesenthal Center, Los Angeles, 09. November 2003
Documentary "Ninth November Night" , Children and the Holocaust in the Art of Gottfried Helnwein

COMMEMORATING THE 68TH ANNIVERSARY OF KRISTALLNACHT AND RECOGNIZING THE ARTISTIC CONTRIBUTIONS OF GOTTFRIED HELNWEIN IN KEEPING THE MEMORY OF THE HOLOCAUST ALIVE.

JOURNAL OF THE CITY COUNCIL OF PHILADELPHIA.
Council of the City of Philadelphia
City Council Resolution
16. November 2006