Nathan Rapoport

Nathan Rapoport
Natan Rapoport with his wife Sima in his Warsaw studio (1937)
Born	(1911-11-07)November 7, 1911 Warsaw, Congress Poland
Died	June 4, 1987(1987-06-04) (aged 75) New York City, U.S.
Education	Academy of Fine Arts, Warsaw
Known for	Sculpture
Notable work	Monument to the Ghetto Heroes, Scroll of Fire

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.[1] 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.[2] 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;[3] a slightly modified replica of the Warsaw monument[4]
  • The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, bronze[3]
  • The Last March, bronze[3]
• 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

Gallery

• 
  Monument to the Ghetto Heroes (1948) in Warsaw, west side
• 
  Warsaw monument, east side
• 
  Menorah from the Warsaw monument
• 
  The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (1976), bronze, Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, Israel
• 
  The Last March (1976), bronze, part of the Yad Vashem memorial to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
• 
  Monument to Mordechai Anielewicz (1951) at Yad Mordechai, Israel
• 
  Kibbutz Negba, memorial to the participants in the 1948 battles
• 
  Scroll of Fire (1971), Forest of the Martyrs near Jerusalem

References

1. "Rapoport Natan". Wirtualny Sztetl. Polin Museum of Jewish History. Retrieved 2024-10-24.
2. "Nathan Rapoport, Sculptor of works on Holocaust, dies". The New York Times. 1987-06-06. Retrieved 2019-08-06.
3. Monuments in Israel Commemorating the Holocaust, Ministry of Foreign Affairs website, 3 June 2001, accessed 19 Oct 2021.
4. Elsby, Liz. Rapoport's Memorial to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising – a Personal Interpretation. Yad Vashem website. accessed 19 Oct 2021.

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

Media related to Natan Rapoport at Wikimedia Commons

• Official website
• Rapaport's works in Central Jewish Library
• "Nathan Rapoport". Information Center for Israeli Art. Israel Museum. Retrieved 1 February 2012.
• Nathan Rapoport collection at the Israel Museum. Retrieved February 2012.
• POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews