Obj. ID: 33190
Modern Jewish Art  Ephraim Lilien, Memorial Dedicated to the Martyrs of the Kishinev Pogrom, 1903

The following description was written by the researcher Alec Mishory.

Ephraim Mose Lilien personified the massacred victims by a figure of an old, white beard Jewish martyr. His body is wrapped with a large-sized praying shawl. The old Jew is burned on a stake. A nude angel with huge wings hovers in mid-air behind him. Lilien's illustration endows the Kishinev catastrophe with a minimal aspect of hope and consolation: the martyr receives the angel's blessing as it gently kisses his forehead. Legs of the angel, in a diagonal pose, cross the vertical image of the martyr and may suggest the form of the Russian Orthodox cross, with its traditionally diagonal, vertical arm. 

The visual memorial for the tragic event further emphasizes the aspect of martyrdom by the thorny branches that frame the illustration. They are conventional visual emblems of Jesus' Crown of Thorns, a reference to his suffering. Lilien's art is full of Christian symbols in the service of Jewish and Zionist subject matter.