BEN SHAHN (1898-1969) THIS IS NAZI BRUTALITY. 1942. 38 1/4x28 1/4 inches, 97x72 cm. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington D. Condition B+: creases and abrasions along sharp vertical and horizontal folds; trimmed margins; minor staining in text. On May 27, 1942, Reinhard Heydrich (the Nazi official in charge of Czechoslovakia) was assassinated. In response, the Nazi regime ordered the destruction of the Czech village of Lidice because they suspected that some of its citizens were involved in the murder. The Nazis executed all of the men and 56 women in the town and sent the remaining women and children to concentration camps. They then leveled the village to the ground and struck its name from the official record. On June 11, 1942, the Germans announced that they had taken this action. "Shahn let the chilling and brazen announcement tell its own story of inhumanity by printing it as if it were a ticker tape. The hooded prisoner, cornered and chained, has no means of escape from the finality of the horrifying message. The small section of blue sky above is dark and ominous and adds to the atmosphere of doom" (Prescott p. 123). "Derived from Goya's The Prisoner, this ominous view . . . expresses both timeless human brutality and particular contemporary atrocities" (Paret p. 194). Shahn 144, Word & Image p. 91, Internationale Plakate 686, Takashimaya 233, IWM II p. 53.
