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The Holocaust Exhibition

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Roman Halter

'Starvation was one of the methods used to murder the Jewish people. Those of us who held onto life and existed on a starvation ration found that our facial appearance changed greatly. The Nazis wished to show that the Jews looked physically different and therefore were different from the German master race.'

Roman Halter

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Roman Halter, Shlomo 1. A head and shoulders portrait of the artist's brother with his arms outstretched in a manner evoking the Crucifixion. The style of the painting reflects the geometric shapes of stained glass windows. Within the shapes around him are smaller figures, including a family embracing in the upper portion of the canvas. Around the edges of the canvas are blocks containing Hebrew text.

Shlomo 1, 1974-1977
oil, Imperial War Museum

Roman Halter, Transport. The style of this painting reflects the geometric shapes and patterns typical of stained glass windows. Within the painting, there are two main portraits showing a woman and a man facing the viewer but inclining their heads towards each other. In the lower-left corner, there are two smaller faces also facing the viewer. In the upper-right corner of the canvas, the faces of a mother and a child are visible. The child's face partially obscures the mother's downcast face.

Transport, 1974-1977
oil, Imperial War Museum

Roman Halter, Woman Wearing Mantilla. The style of this painting reflects the geometric shapes and patterns typical of stained glass windows. Embedded within the shapes of this painting is a portrait of the artist's mother with her eyes downcast, wearing a dark mantilla which flows across the canvas. Crowds of faces and figures, also with downturned eyes, can be seen within the delicate pattern of the veil.

Woman Wearing Mantilla, 1974-1977
oil, Imperial War Museum

Roman Halter, Starved Faces. The style of this painting reflects the geometric shapes and patterns typical of stained glass windows. Embedded in this painting is a portrait of a man staring forward with a deep gaze. The structure of his face and the background surrounding him is comprised of several smaller faces, many of which have downturned eyes. Several lines of Hebrew text are inscribed across the forehead of the main figure.

Starved Faces, 1974-1977
oil, Imperial War Museum

Born in Chodecz, Poland, the seventh and youngest in his family, Roman Halter was 12 when the Nazis invaded and arrived in his home town. He was forced with some of his family to move into the ghetto in the large industrial city of Lodz, where he survived by making himself useful as a metalworker. By 1942, his entire family was dead.

In 1944, he was sent via Auschwitz and Stutthof concentration camps for slave labour in Dresden, where he survived the Allied air raids in February 1945. In mid-March, the surviving slave labourers were marched south by the SS. Roman managed to escape from the death march on the third day and hid with a German couple until the Russians arrived in May 1945.

At the end of the war, he returned to Chodecz to find he was one of only four survivors of the town's 800 Jews. Roman eventually travelled to Britain and, in time, became an architect. It was not until 25 years later that he felt able to use his memories of those terrible times to make his paintings.

Related FAQS

The Concentration Camp System

Auschwitz-Birkenau

Links

Testimony of Roman Halter can be found at the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust

Survivor Testimony of Roman Halter at Imperial War Museum

Further reading

Roman Halter, Roman's Journey, Portobello Books, 2007

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Roman Halter, Shlomo 1. A head and shoulders portrait of the artist's brother with his arms outstretched in a manner evoking the Crucifixion. The style of the painting reflects the geometric shapes of stained glass windows. Within the shapes around him are smaller figures, including a family embracing in the upper portion of the canvas. Around the edges of the canvas are blocks containing Hebrew text.

Roman Halter

Shlomo 1
1974-1977
oil, Imperial War Museum

'My eldest half-brother, Shlomo, was hanged in 1940. This was a few months before we were sent to the Lodz ghetto. He was taken with other Jewish men from our town of Chodecz to work on the Berlin-Pozen highway. He was in charge of a group of men, and tried to get extra bread for them from outside the compound enclosure. He was caught. We received a letter telling us that Shlomo had been hanged and that his best friend was made to do the hanging. My father, holding the letter with trembling hands, his tears running down his face, read the letter out loud to us. "When he was hanged his feet touched the ground and he couldn't die. So the noose was removed and he stood and swayed. Then he fell". At the time of his death Shlomo was 31. In some of the paintings I saw later in life, where Christ is being taken down from the cross, I saw Shlomo. Although he must have had his hands tied behind his back before he was hanged.'

Roman Halter

Copyright artist

Roman Halter, Transport. The style of this painting reflects the geometric shapes and patterns typical of stained glass windows. Within the painting, there are two main portraits showing a woman and a man facing the viewer but inclining their heads towards each other. In the lower-left corner, there are two smaller faces also facing the viewer. In the upper-right corner of the canvas, the faces of a mother and a child are visible. The child's face partially obscures the mother's downcast face.

Roman Halter

Transport
1974-1977
oil, Imperial War Museum

'Jewish people were transported to extermination camps in goods wagons and cattle wagons. When I was sent from the Lodz ghetto to Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1944 we were locked in, 80 people per wagon. The train journey, which normally would have taken a few hours, took two and a half days. We travelled without water, food and with very little air. This was done intentionally. The purpose was to deliver us semi-dead at the end of our journey. The cattle wagons were dirty and the grime became ingrained into our skins. Tightly though we were packed we tried to make a bit more space for mothers with their young. I remember the face of one mother in particular with dirt ingrained in the grooves of her face as she held an angelic, pale looking young daughter. Before I painted this, I looked in the religious paintings in the National Gallery for the gentle young that reminded me of the face of that young girl from the wagon that I have carried all this time in my mind.'

Roman Halter

Copyright artist

Roman Halter, Woman Wearing Mantilla. The style of this painting reflects the geometric shapes and patterns typical of stained glass windows. Embedded within the shapes of this painting is a portrait of the artist's mother with her eyes downcast, wearing a dark mantilla which flows across the canvas. Crowds of faces and figures, also with downturned eyes, can be seen within the delicate pattern of the veil.

Roman Halter

Woman Wearing Mantilla
1974-1977
oil, Imperial War Museum

'On the Sabbath, sitting in the ladies' gallery in the synagogue, it was fashionable for Polish Jewish women to wear a Mantilla. My mother looked wonderful in it. The mantilla was itself covered by a fine veil. This fashion may have arrived in Poland with the Jews expelled from Spain in 1492.

Before producing this painting, I visited the National Gallery in London and came across Goya's portrait of Doña Isabel de Porcel. His painting reminded me of my mother's dignified look. My mother had a longer face. Each time I see the portrait of Doña Isabel de Porcel I imagine my mother sitting in the balcony and looking down on the men praying below.'

Roman Halter

Copyright artist

Roman Halter, Starved Faces. The style of this painting reflects the geometric shapes and patterns typical of stained glass windows. Embedded in this painting is a portrait of a man staring forward with a deep gaze. The structure of his face and the background surrounding him is comprised of several smaller faces, many of which have downturned eyes. Several lines of Hebrew text are inscribed across the forehead of the main figure.

Roman Halter

Starved Faces
1974-1977
oil, Imperial War Museum

'Starvation was one of the methods used to murder the Jewish people. Those of us who held onto life and existed on a starvation ration found that our facial appearance changed greatly. The Nazis wished to show that the Jews looked physically different and therefore were different from the German master race. Under normal circumstances we all read faces. In this painting I wanted to show that we, the starved, could no longer read each other's faces. They had all become haggard, ugly and distorted. We could only read the eyes, search there for a response. The eyes communicated friendship, courage, defiance, compassion and life. On the forehead of the main central face the words from the Yiddish song - Do not ever say that you are walking along the last road...'

Roman Halter

Copyright artist