Nathan Rapoport Explained

Nathan Rapoport (1911–1987) was a Warsaw-born Jewish sculptor and painter, later a resident of Israel and then the United States.

Biography

Natan Yaakov Rapoport was born in Warsaw, Poland. In 1936, he won a scholarship to study in France and Italy. He fled to the Soviet Union when the Nazi Germans invaded Poland. The Soviets initially provided him with a studio, but then forced him to work as a manual laborer. When the war ended, he returned to Poland to study at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw and immigrated to Israel.^[1] In 1959, he moved to the United States. He lived in New York City until his death in 1987.

Monumental art

His sculptures in public places, with the year they were installed in, include:

• Monument to the Ghetto Heroes (1948), bronze, Warsaw, Poland
• Memorial to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (1976), bronze, at Yad Vashem, Jerusalem; a slightly modified replica of the Warsaw monument^[2]
  • The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, bronze
  • The Last March, bronze
• Monument to Mordechai Anielewicz (1951), at Kibbutz Yad Mordechai, Israel^[3]
• Monument to Six Million Jewish Martrys (1964), at the Horwitz-Wasserman Holocaust Memorial Plaza on Benjamin Franklin Parkway, Philadelphia, PA.
• Scroll of Fire (1971) in the Forest of the Martyrs near Jerusalem
• Liberation (Holocaust memorial) (1985), bronze, Liberty State Park, Jersey City, New Jersey
• Korczak's Last Walk at the Park Avenue Synagogue, New York, NY.
• Ghetto Square Monument at Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, Israel. https://www.yadvashem.org/articles/general/warsaw-memorial-personal-interpretation.html

Further reading

• Coen, Paolo, «L’artista reagisce in modo artistico. Questa è la sua arma». Riflessioni di valore introduttivo sul rapporto arte-Shoah, da Alexander Bogen e Nathan Rapoport a Richard Serra, in Vedere l'Altro, vedere la Shoah, with an appendix by Angelika Schallenberg, Soveria Mannelli, Rubbettino, 2012, pp. 6–68
• Gilbert, Martin. (1987), The Holocaust, New York, Random House, 1987, 317–324.
• Sohar, Zvi, Fighters Memorial, Monuments to the Fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, Sifriat Poalim, Workers' Book Guild, 1964.
• Yaffe, Richard, Nathan Rapoport Sculptures and Monuments, New York, Shengold Publishers, 1980.

External links

• • Rapaport's works in Central Jewish Library
    • POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews

Notes and References

1. Web site: Nathan Rapoport, Sculptor of works on Holocaust, dies . . 1987-06-06 . 2019-08-06.
2. Elsby, Liz. Rapoport's Memorial to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising – a Personal Interpretation. Yad Vashem website. accessed 19 Oct 2021.
3. https://mfa.gov.il/MFA/MFA-Archive/2001/Pages/Monuments%20in%20Israel%20Commemorating%20the%20Holocaust.aspx Monuments in Israel Commemorating the Holocaust