Bearing witness: Roman Halter's memorial to the Holocaust through the medium of stained glass

My thesis centres on the stained glass artwork of the Polish Jewish Holocaust survivor Roman Halter. It analyses his contribution to post-Holocaust art within the framework of debates surrounding testimony and memorialisation. Chapter 1 focuses on Halter’s early life, as a Holocaust victim and survivor, and how this came to inform his art. It traces his artistic development, from his metalwork and architectural experience through to his choice of stained glass as a medium, and begins to situate Halter within wider stained glass art traditions. Chapter 2 examines a number of Halter’s stained glass memorial commissions and explores the layers of said and unsaid testimony within his artistic oeuvre. It also discusses contemporary debates around Holocaust memorialisation, and the development of a ‘social aesthetic’ appropriate to this subject matter. Chapter 3 focuses on Halter’s creation, at Yad LaYeled museum in Israel, of a stained glass memorial to the one and a half million children murdered in the Shoah. This is contextualised through a discussion of testimonial objects, post-memory and intergenerational remembrance. My thesis has drawn on an extensive body of primary research material contained within the Halter family’s archives, to which I have had privileged access, and on a wide range of interviews, field trips and secondary materials.