Peter Malkin was an artist, who used, for his most famous works, an unusual canvas. He sketched out the original drawings on the pages of a guide book to South America.
He carried the guide book as a ruse. He wasn鈥檛 really a tourist. He was a secret agent. He was part of the Israeli team that went to Buenos Aires in 1960 to capture Adolf Eichmann, who had been the logistical mastermind of the Holocaust.
Malkin was born in Germany. When he was a child, his parents moved to Palestine to escape the growing antisemitism in their own country. His older sister stayed behind. She and her two young children perished, as did many other of Malkin鈥檚 relatives.
One of the sketches from the guide book shows a woman and a young child. It is titled 鈥淔ear.鈥 Malik鈥檚 caption was: 鈥淭he last words a mother says are words a child is used to. I love you, and the answer, Mother I don鈥檛 want to take a shower now. I can take one later.鈥
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Malkin produced 60 silk screen prints from the drawings in the guide book. Thirteen of them are on display at the St. 不良研究所导航网址 Kaplan Feldman Holocaust Museum.
Some of the drawings are from observation. He drew the young couple who lived across the street from the safe house in which the Israeli agents held Eichmann for 10 days until they could sneak him out of the country. He drew a cat that hung around the safe house. But others are more internal. He drew a rather neutral, unassuming Hitler. His accompanying note read: 鈥淚 sketched the innocent Adolf Hitler because a leader reflects the people, and the world was too naive.鈥
Imagine producing art under that kind of intense pressure. The Argentine government was looking for him. He was holed up in a hideaway with his comrades and his prisoner, the man who had engineered the murder of his sister and millions of others.
Malkin made small talk. He asked Eichmann what he thought of Benito Mussolini. He wasn鈥檛 a fuhrer, Eichmann said. He was a general without much imagination. Malkin mentioned that when his nephew was murdered in the camps, he was the same age as Eichmann鈥檚 youngest son. 鈥淗e was Jewish, wasn鈥檛 he?鈥 Eichmann said.
Malkin drew a sketch of Eichmann. He drew it on a page over the map of Argentina.
鈥淚 drew him as a Spartan,鈥 Malkin later wrote. 鈥淚 didn鈥檛 touch the colors in the palette. He appears as an ordinary man with whom I spent 10 days in a room in Buenos Aires. Yet for millions of people, his image is indelibly connected to the evil of the Final Solution.鈥
Any time you visit a Holocuast museum, it鈥檚 a gut-check. I remember the piles of shoes at the Holocaust museum in Washington, D.C. I remember talking with Leo Wolf when the museum here in St. 不良研究所导航网址 opened. He showed me a black and white photograph of skeletal men in striped uniforms walking down a road. He pointed to one of the stick figures. That鈥檚 me, he said.
Wolf died in 2016. His story can be seen on video at the St. 不良研究所导航网址 museum.
The survivors are fading away. Of course, that is the point of the museums, to keep alive the memory of what happened. Before there were museums, there was Eichmann鈥檚 trial in Israel.
Myron Freedman, the executive director of the museum here, said the trial was important because of the testimony of the survivors. The Nuremberg trials had been about documents and personnel records. Eichmann鈥檚 trial was driven by personal stories. It made the horror more real.
But that trial was 63 years ago.
A few months ago, the presidents of Harvard, MIT and the University of Pennsylvania were called to testify to Congress about protests on their campuses. They were asked if advocating for the genocide of the Jewish people violated the codes of conduct at their respective universities.
The three highly educated women acted as if it were a trick question. It depends on context, was their consensus.
Earlier this month, Darryl Cooper appeared on Tucker Carlson鈥檚 podcast. Carlson introduced him as 鈥渢he most important popular historian working in the U.S. today.鈥 Cooper argued, as apparently he often does, that Winston Churchill was more villainous than Adolf Hitler, and that yes, Jewish people died in work camps, but it was not systematic killing. Because of the war, the Germans were short of food themselves and medical care in the camps was not very good. Hence, a lot of deaths. Tragic, but not murderous.
Elon Musk tweeted that the show was 鈥渧ery interesting鈥 and 鈥渨orth watching.鈥
Except for Cooper, none of these people can be described as fringe characters. The presidents of the three great universities were pillars of the left. Carlson was a prime-time speaker at the Republican convention, and is often mentioned as a potential heir to the MAGA movement in a post-Trump world. This past week, Carlson campaigned with J.D. Vance. Musk has 200 million followers on X.
None of these people seems to grasp the enormity of the Holocaust.
Admittedly, the current atmosphere is clouded by the war in Gaza. Palestinian civilians, women and children, are being killed. It is not antisemitic to advocate for the Palestinians. But shouldn鈥檛 those advocates admit that a lion鈥檚 share of the blame falls on the leaders of Hamas? Those leaders started the war and ordered the intentional killing of Israeli civilians. Now those leaders are either safe in Qatar or in the tunnels of Gaza while their civilian followers are left on the streets to die under Israeli bombardment.
Far too indiscriminate of a bombardment, I would argue. Also, I am suspicious of the motives of the Israeli prime minister.
But that is politics and ought to be a matter of debate. The Holocaust exists on a different plane.
To understand the mindset of the Israelis, you have to understand the Holocaust 鈥 and maybe to understand ourselves or what we could be.
Rabbi Susan Talve of the Central Reform Congregation once told me that her parents used to insist that if the unthinkable happened in Germany, which was the most cultured society in the world, it could happen anywhere.
Malkin鈥檚 silk-screens will be on display at the St. 不良研究所导航网址 Kaplan Feldman Holocaust Museum, 36 Millstone Campus Drive, until next June.