Majdanek, by Zinowij Tolkaczew. Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1945.
Portfolio in a limited and numbered edition (600 copies) containing 28 paintings by Tolkaczew, created following his service as a Red Army soldier and participating in the liberation of Majdanek. Tolkaczew was a Russian artist who was drafted to the Red Army in 1941. In 1944 he was sent to the Ukrainian front, next to Majdanek. He was absolutely shocked by the sights that he saw and for one month he painted the horrors which he viewed in the liberated death camp. A member in the Soviet-Polish committee which investigated Nazi crimes supported his work and in November 1944 an exhibition of Tolkaczew paintings of Majdanek was held - a first exposure to the public from an artistic point of view of the atrocious scenes of the death camps. When the portfolio was published shortly afterwards, in February 1945, the Polish government sent copies to leaders of the Allies and to senior government and military figures. Retrospectively Tolkaczew said about this period of creation: " I did what I was obliged to do, I could not abstain from doing so. The heart commanded, the conscious demanded". The works are in the collections of Yad VaShem Museum in Jerusalem. [4], [8], [1] pp + 28 plates, 36X28 cm. Text in Polish, Russian, English and French. Good condition, except for some wear to edges of several leaves. Portfolio binding is falling apart.