Deportación a la muerte

Date:  c. 1942

Medium: Linocut

Dimensions (cm.): 34.6 x 49.2

Alternate titles: El tren de la muerte

Published edition: Unknown. Méndez [1949?] gives number of impressions as 30 approx.

Contemporary publication: 

References: Exposición de Homenaje 454, Méndez INBA 145

Commentary:  Méndez’s extraordinary Deportación a la muerte is perhaps the earliest-known artistic image of the Holocaust by an artist outside the camps, and one of the first images of the Holocaust in any medium to be widely disseminated, as even photographs of deportations and concentration camps rarely appeared outside of German jurisdiction until after the war. 

Méndez had access to information about Auschwitz and other camps as early as the summer of 1942. Méndez would also have known about the situation through reports in leftist sources, and through direct reports from political refugees who arrived in Mexico from Europe during the War. These refugees were often in communication with those who stayed behind. 

Futuro, the journal of the Universidad Obrera published a monthly coumn, “Movimiento Obrero e Internacional,” which had a section on each country of Europe. The July 1942 issue reported that the Jews of Poland were being concentrated in ghettoes throughout the country. By the next issue, in August 1942, the column presented this detailed information: The terror is ferocious, especially against the Jews, 700,000 of whom, a fifth of the population of Poland, have already been physically destroyed. On the 17th of April the Nazis organized a bloodbath in the Warsaw Ghetto and inaugurated mobile toxic gas chambers where they can kill up to 100 persons at one time. These chambers are also used for political prisoners, especially in the terrible jail of Pawiak and the camp of Auschwitz. In the latter, a few weeks ago, 1,000 political prisoners were killed in an area where they were experimenting with a new toxic gas. Futuro (August 1942): p. 21.

Méndez’s print depicts the deportations of Jewish prisoners to a concentration camp, most likely intended to be Auschwitz, revealing the project of Nazi anti-Semitism and the extermination of the Jewish people. Méndez’s choice of subject matter, Jewish deportees rather than Communist prisoners, indicates his understanding of the news he was receiving and his sensitivity to current events. 

Silhouetted against the train by the light of their lanterns, German soldiers block the door with their rifles. The plume of smoke from the distant locomotive is eerily evocative of smoke from the crematoria chimneys. As art historian Ralph Shikes has observed, the print has a “Medieval flavor” and the outlines of the Jewish prisoners are as stiff and thick as the lines in stained glass.  Méndez suggests here that the Nazis were destroying an ancient culture, and in this image he portrayed people of Jewish shtetls of Eastern Europe, rather than assimilated Jews of European towns and cities. Curiously, the prisoners in the boxcar lit by lanterns also resemble traditionally clothed Mexican campesinos, and the scene is reminiscent of the Catholic theme of the Nativity.  

In April 1943, Deportation to Death appeared in El libro negro del terror nazi, as an illustration for the essay “El exterminio de los Judíos,” by Dr. Leon Weiss. (Deborah Caplow)

Cataloging note: Méndez [1949?] gives date as 1941.

Catalogue record number: 75