Thomas Geve
The Boy Who Drew Auschwitz
1/n
In June 1943, 13-year-old Thomas Geve and his mother were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Separated upon arrival, he was left to fend for himself in the men’s camp of Auschwitz I.

2/n During 22 harsh months in Auschwitz, Gross-Rosen, and Buchenwald, Thomas experienced the worst of Nazi cruelty—but he never gave up the will to live.
Geve, the pseu­do­nym of Sim­cha Cohn, was born in Ger­many in 1929.

3/n After he is deport­ed to Auschwitz as a 13-year-old boy, his life becomes a series of assaults by hunger, dis­ease, cru­el­ty, and ter­ror. Even as a child he remarks upon the Ger­mans’ obses­sion with keep­ing detailed records and impos­ing order by irra­tional hatred.

4/n Geve had begun draw­ing on scraps of paper in Auschwitz, but these pic­tures were lost. He resumed his project with col­ored pen­cils and with a set of water­col­ors, the gift of an Amer­i­can sol­dier. Pho­tographs and maps pro­vide an accu­rate con­text for the events

5/n depict­ed. These indeli­ble scenes from Geve’s mem­o­ry are not sophis­ti­cat­ed in tech­nique, yet this very sim­plic­i­ty evokes the courage of a sen­si­tive child. In one pic­ture, Geve draws dif­fer­ent foods and metic­u­lous­ly records the num­ber of grams pris­on­ers

6/n were allot­ted of each item. In anoth­er, he draws and labels the arm­bands dis­tin­guish­ing dif­fer­ent cat­e­gories of pris­on­ers, includ­ing Jews, Roma, and polit­i­cal dis­si­dents, each assigned a dif­fer­ent role in the Nazis’ hier­ar­chy of hatred.

7/7 From the monot­o­ny of work details to the sadism of pub­lic exe­cu­tions, Geve was com­mit­ted to pre­serv­ing the truth in his art, and to ensur­ing that no one’s life end­ed in oblivion.