Felix Nussbaum Finds God By Being Close To His Parents Poem by gershon hepner

FELIX NUSSBAUM FINDS GOD BY BEING CLOSE TO HIS PARENTS


Felix Nussbaum told a friend in 1925,
twenty years before the Nazis murdered him, what I
have versified below, to make his feelings come alive,
and make sure that, like his surviving paintings, they don't die:

"Since I'm not well educated, how can I deny
a God for whom I cannot search?
That is my rationale for thinking that I must rely
on those I don't leave in the lurch,
my parents. That is why I keep the festivals. I love
them both though they are out of view.
To me they're just like God, who is not somebody above,
but somebody who is below, like you."

Benjamin Ivry ("From Amid the Horror: Felix Nussbaum, Talent and Dignity Recognized, " Forward,9/3/10) writes about Felix Nussbaum, who was murdered in Auschwitz in 1944 at the aged of 39. The Felix Nussbaum house is a museum in Osnabrück which opened in 1998, having been designed by Daniel Libeskind. The collection is due to the great dedication of Augustes Moses-Nussbaum, Felix Nussbaum's cousin, who campaigned for the pictures that had remained in Brussels to be located and legally awarded to their rightful owners and for the bequest of more than 100 pictures to come to Osnabrück, the birthplace of Felix Nussbaum. Ivry writes: :

Nussbaum remained pious, as he informed the German-Jewish painter Ludwig-Meidner in a 1925 letter: "I am much to uneducated to deny God…I cannot search for God. I ca only believe in my parents, and for sake (perhaps because I am a stupid person) keep the festivals-out of love. Is this not then love? Whether the closeness between me and my parents is God-I don't know."

9/5/10, first quatrain added 3/13/12 #9580