Consciousness, Literature and the Arts
Archive
Volume 13 Number 3, December 2012
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FELIX NUSSBAUM: SELF-PORTRAIT WITH JEWISH IDENTITY CARD, 1943.
If it weren’t for the identity card marked JUIF-JOOD
he holds up with his left hand and the Magen David
with a capital J inside on the right breast of his coat
he might have come across as someone who could be
played by Peter Lorre; the collar of his coat pulled up
about his ears, his grey-green fedora and his furtive eye,
their alert fearfulness. His nose is straight, ending
in a pointed tip. His lips sit relatively low. They are
closed. Is there a hint of a smile? Safe for another day?
His face is gaunt and he hasn’t shaved for a day or so,
but his hair, what can be seen under the fedora, is neat,
trimmed and short. Beyond the cement wall behind him,
a tree, its branches cut (for fire?), reaches to where it was chopped.
One of its lower braches, white with blooms, was pardoned
and though the there are dense dark clouds in the sky
there’s a clearing of blue. That he would die the following year
in Auschwitz, aged 39, was to be expected. “Even if I perish,”
he said, “do not let my pictures die, show them to the public.”