The Displaced

Whether it is depicting historical events, an individual's struggle, or abstract thought, art is a medium in which one can express ideas and emotions that words may fall short of portraying. The use of colors, strokes, and metaphysical messages through artwork (whether that includes paintings, drawings, crafts, or music) display a message that people can receive, comprehend, and analyze without the need for a common language, cultural background, or historical context. Because of this unique feature of artwork and its use across a multitude of cultures and periods, we can recognize the plights of refugees from several different time periods in separate countries in a way that history books, journals, or research never can.

History, a discipline dictated by mostly facts, appears to be a purely black-and-white subject. However, through the use of art in analyzing many of the pivotal moments in history, one can transcend what is taught in textbooks and enter a battlefield, war zone, or time period. Instead of focusing on the victorious, the politics, and the controversies, the artwork of history represents the people. Art overtakes the basic historical facts by giving emotional, first-person accounts of war-stricken, impoverished, or crumbling countries that most history books are unable to fully capture. William Morris, a British textile designer and poet, wrote: "History has remembered the kings and warriors, because they destroyed; art has remembered the people, because they created,"  (Morris 1882).  Morris captured how art shows humanity laced within history. In the case of refugee groups and crises, as discussed in this project, the art represents the challenge, loss, hardship, and pain these displaced individuals experienced in their treacherous journeys away from their motherlands. The sense of terror that these refugees held during their times in hiding are so complex and layered that simple accounts in history textbooks would never be enough to fully express them. Artwork created by these refugees or those trapped in a conflict-ridden country displays these emotions and struggles in ways that no historian, researcher, or journalist could express in words. The use of artwork to analyze historical events can completely alter the perspective one takes on such events. Instead of focusing on the destroyers, the victorious, and the facts of the battle, art draws focus to the humans being directly harmed in these battles. The humanity of history shines directly through when analyzing the art from that time period rather than simply studying the simple facts.

To illustrate the importance of art in a historical setting, I will analyze artwork from refugee crises across the globe. I will focus on three major refugee groups in chronological order, starting Jewish refugees during the Holocaust (1933-1945), then focusing on Eritrean refugees (1991-2015), and finally the most prevalent refugee group today, the Syrian refugees (2011-2019).

Several factors influenced the mass emigration of the population of Jewish individuals in Germany and other western European countries. As of January 1933, there were approximately  523,000 Jews in Germany , one-third residing in the capital city of Berlin. In 1933, the National Socialist German Worker's Party, otherwise known as the Nazi Party, came into power under the leadership of Adolf Hitler. Throughout his leadership, Hitler passed numerous anti-Semitic laws, segregating and oppressing the large Jewish population in the country. In the face of this increasing legal and social violence, an initial wave of around  38,000 refugees fled Germany and Austria  and to other European countries. At the time, Hitler's political dominance had yet to expand, so they believed these countries to be safe in order to seek refuge. However, once Hitler's oppressive regime bled into neighboring western European countries in May of 1940, many of these initial refugees were caught.

As the Nazi Party and Hitler's hateful ideology expanded through Europe, emigration declined rapidly. Many were too fearful to escape, and the journey was much more treacherous than it had ever been before. It was one feat to escape Germany itself, but to escape through the surrounding countries under Nazi rule with a large family or group in tow was an entirely different beast to conquer. As the war progressed, many other countries including European countries and the United States, grew more reluctant and legally opposed to accepting such a large number of needy refugees. The decline in refugees did not last long; in 1938, there was a massive spike in Jewish emigration. This was mostly a result of increasing personal assaults on Jewish individuals, Germany's annexation of Austria, and the nationwide Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass) in November. As a part of the horrifying  Kristallnacht , Nazis torched synagogues, Jewish homes and schools, and murdered around 100 Jewish individuals. This sharp and rapid transition from oppression to explicit violence was the spark that fueled many fearful Jewish citizens to leave the country. This sudden flow of emigrants created a major refugee crisis. By 1939,  282,000 Jews had fled Germany while 202,000 remained . As of 1941, it was illegal for Jews to leave the country, and those who had not fled before then were mostly captured and trapped in concentration camps where many of them met a gruesome death.

During the initial wave of emigration at the start of Hitler and the Nazi Party's regime, most emigrants sought safety in neighboring countries like England, Belgium, France, and Switzerland. However, many of the refugees who sought shelter in these countries were later caught once the Nazi regime expanded. Apart from European emigration, many refugees went to Shanghai, Palestine, the United States, and South American countries like Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, and Brazil. These journeys were treacherous and expensive, and because many of these countries had their own involvement in conflict and war, many refugees faced opposition and refusal when trying to seek asylum in many of these countries.

In the 1930s, about 60,000 Jews fled to Palestine under the  Haavara (Transfer) Agreement  which enabled Jewish emigration to Palestine. Shanghai admitted over 17,000 Jews from Germany, Austria, and Poland as several other European countries fell under Nazi rule and the possibilities for places for refugees to go dwindled. During the second half of 1941, the United States implemented incredibly strict limitations on immigration out of fear of national security. Switzerland took in about 19,000 Jewish refugees but also refused an equivalent number who were seeking asylum. No matter what country these refugees sought solace in, there was almost always some form of opposition at some point in the progression of the crisis as war broke out and more countries feared for their security or involvement in Nazi Germany.

In a particularly infamous incident, Jewish refugees aboard the St. Louis sailed from Hamburg, Germany to Havana, Cuba. 937 passengers, nearly all refugees, were on the ship in an attempt to flee to Cuba, unaware of the political climate brewing in anticipation of their arrival. Many Cuban citizens pleaded with the government to refuse admission of these refugees before the ship had even arrived, and as Cuba was currently in a struggle with an economic depression, the hostility towards refugees started to boil over. On May 27th, the St. Louis arrived in Havana, Cuba, but the government denied them entry into the country.

"Everybody was depressed. A few people [committed suicide]... The fear was that we would go back to Germany." -Gerda Blachmann Wilchfort (A passenger on the St. Louis)

In a last-ditch effort, the St. Louis traveled to Miami, Florida, where they begged President Roosevelt for admission into the country, to which they received no response. Immigration quotas and the Great Depression created incredible obstacles for any refugees trying to enter the United States at this time. The Great Depression left thousands of people unemployed and fearful of losing what little jobs they had left to foreigners, fueling xenophobia and antisemitism. With nowhere else to go, the St. Louis sailed back to Europe in June 1939.

Josef Herman was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1911 of a poor Jewish family. He attended school until he was 12-years-old when he shifted to becoming the apprentice of artists. After showing prowess in painting, young Herman was offered admission into the  Warsaw School of Art and Decoration in 1930 . After 18-months at the academy, he had his first solo exhibition in 1931 where he connected with and became involved with several political artists. In 1938, Herman left Warsaw and traveled to Brussels to spend time with painters. However, shortly after, his time in artistic paradise would come to a startling halt.

With the impending German invasion in 1940, Herman escaped to Glasglow, Scotland after traveling through Brussels and France. Luckily, he was far from Poland when the Nazi regime invaded and before they carried out cruel actions against Jews in this period. However, he later learned that his parents had been murdered in the Warsaw ghetto shortly after the German expansion.

"I felt oppressed in Poland under its fascist regime, both as liberal and as a Jew," - Josef Herman

Josef Herman used his artwork, often, to symbolize the terror and tragedies of the crisis occurring in Europe in response to the Nazi regime. The issue was one close to his heart after he learned of his parents passing as a result of the cruelty and oppression against Jewish individuals. He had to flee himself across the country, seeking refuge from conflict. Josef's strong identity as a Jewish emigrant stayed with him through the rest of his artistic career and life, and this identity remains prevalent in his artwork focusing on the refugee crisis. In his painting, Refugees (1941), Herman delicately represents the obstacles, both emotional and physical, many refugees had to face when seeking solace. He uses a combination of oppressive hues, abstract facial expressions, and daunting imagery to fully express the terrors faced by refugees in ways that words cannot quite capture.

The colors in this piece of work are somber, subdued, and bland. The somber tone of the painting attributes to an underlying fear and sadness surrounding the conflict-stricken land and people, while the subdued tones could represent a level of oppression that plagues the family depicted in the painting. The family wears frightened, anxious expressions that wordlessly captures the anxiety and fear that plagues these refugees who must travel across dangerous, Nazi-infiltrated countries with limited resources. The painting creates an atmosphere of panic and debilitating dread as if one is inside the painting themselves. The striking image of the black cat holding a bloody mouse in its mouth is a deliberate, obvious representation of an oppressive force lingering around every corner and waiting to strike. The painting depicts Hitler and his regime as blood-thirsty animals looking to eat whatever moves, insinuating the destructive, inhumane behavior and conditions during the Holocaust. Herman does not use any religious images in his painting, so the implications of this painting can be expertly applied to other refugee groups from other areas and time periods. This solidifies the idea that refugee crises, no matter the source, cause, or outcome, results in the same obstacles, terror, and horrific journey numerous refugees face in order to escape some sort of oppression, fear, or violence.

Herman drew this photo of a distraught, abstract woman around 1945, following the  Warsaw Ghetto Uprising  in 1943. This event consisted of residents of a Jewish-ghetto in Nazi-occupied Poland revolting against Nazis. However, the Germans eventually demolished their efforts and captured several Jewish individuals as prisoners of war to be later shipped to concentration camps. This event was particularly striking as it ushered an age of revolution and rebellion from the oppressed populations in Europe, but sadly little substantial progress was made through these rebellions. These conditions struck Herman closely as his parents had been killed in this Warsaw ghetto after his escape to Scotland. His drawings of the aftermath of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, with their lack of color and depth, leave a sense of sinking dread with the horrific strokes and expressionism in his technique. The woman depicted in the image looks slightly inhuman, a substance caking her cheeks with grime coating the ground beneath her. It is an abstract representation of the horrific destruction of not only a city but a community of people. Several individuals lost their homes and members of their families as prisoners of war. The horror portrayed on the woman's face is enough to mutely represent the unendurable grief following the destruction. Again, the art depicted in these refugee crises is all about the people and their struggle, and Herman does an excellent job of executing this by focusing on the people at the center of his pieces of artwork, only using the environment to supplement the tone and conditions.

Emmanuel Levy is an excellent example of how those not directly involved in the conflict can provide an alternate perspective to refugee crises. Although Levy was born in Manchester in 1900, he was the son of Jewish-Russian immigrants; he held a strong conviction of his and his parents' faith. Levy studied in the Manchester School of Art, where he came into contact with L.S. Lowry. He later succeeded Lowry as the art master at the Manchester School of Art. Interestingly, unlike Josef Herman, Emmanuel Levy produced art during the Jewish-refugee crisis with predominantly Jewish symbols and explicit religious themes. This narrows the scope and application of art to one particular refugee group, but his unique perspective on the horrors of the Holocaust from a devout Jewish man offers an interesting scope on the humanity of these refugee crises that other artists do not necessarily capture the same way.

Levy utilizes religious symbolism and explicit themes to express a sense of rage and disdain for the Nazi regime's ideology and actions. His art offers a separate perspective on the fundamental reasons individuals are oppressed and shoved from their homelands, which is religion in the case of these Jewish refugee groups. Crucifixion offers a taste of Levy's hatred and anger towards the treatment and oppression of the Jewish community. In this painting he utilizes both Christian and Jewish imagery, replacing Jesus' place on the crucifix with an Orthodox Jew. Levy paints the man wearing a Jewish prayer shawl called a  Tallit . With the crude, bloody writing of "Jew" atop the cross, Levy seems to be expressing the hypocrisy of the actions of the Christian majority and the placement of Jewish individuals as the martyr for an oppressive group's view of a better future. By depicting Christ as an innocent Jewish man, Levy protests against the unspeakable cruelties and crimes underway in the rest of Europe. His art serves as a vessel to deliver a chilling image stuffed with a religious subtext that conveys the hypocrisy, rage, and oppression more so than Levy would ever be able to do through speaking or writing. By using his talent with painting and art, Levy managed to spread a message in support of the Jewish refugees as he strongly identified with them as a part of a larger religious community. He refused to allow the geographical barrier between them to disturb the fact that he was deeply disturbed and angry at the conditions many Jewish refugees and victims had to face during the rise of the Nazi Party.

Born in Osnabruck, Germany in 1904, Felix Nussbaum was born to a German patriot father who was involved in an organization of German World War I veterans. In the face of Hitler's rise to power, his father, Phillip Nussbaum, was forced to leave the organization and gave  the following words: 

"... for the last time, dear comrades in arms, I salute you as a loyal soldier... And if again I am called to the flag, I am ready and willing." -Phillip Nussbaum (Nussbaum's Father)

The quote is particularly striking when one realizes the way that Germany and its government turned its back on the loyal patriots like Phillip Nussbaum who would die to protect the country that would banish and attack the Jewish community without a second thought. The bitter irony is another layer of humanity tied into the entire refugee crisis and its particularly important in Felix Nussbaum's artwork, views, and expression. At the time of his father's depart from the organization, Nussbaum was in Rome under an extension of the Berlin Academy of Arts after being rewarded a prestigious scholarship to attend. In 1933, just as Hitler started to rise in power, Hitler's Minister of Propaganda visited Nussbaum's class and lectured on the importance of the new leader's artistic doctrine. There was to be no depiction of anything other than the  heroism of the Nazi Party and the superiority of the Aryan race . This lecture made Nussbaum highly uncomfortable as a Jewish man, and he understood he could never conform to the doctrine the German regime was attempting to impose on the young artists. He fled Rome, lost his scholarship, and settled in Rapallo, Italy.

After leaving Germany with the first wave of emigrants at the rise of the Nazi Party, Nussbaum's parents expressed a nostalgia for their homeland and returned in 1935. Nussbaum begged them to stay, and  rewrote his father's previous words: 

“... and if again I am called to the flag, I will desert to a far away place for sure.”

Despite his parents' departure, Felix Nussbaum stayed away from Germany with his wife Felka Platek, another artist. They resided in Brussels, Belgium for several years, while his parents were again forced to flee from Germany in 1939 after Osnabruck synagogues were burned to the ground during Kristallnacht. Belgium was occupied by Nazis as of May 1940, and Felix and his wife were arrested in their apartment and shipped to the Saint Cyprien camp in southern France. It was here that Nussbaum fully realized and embodied the reality of being a Jew under the Nazis' rule. After three months in the camp, Nussbaum returned to Germany where he reunited with his wife and created a hideout for several years. On July 20, 1944, Felix and Felka were arrested from their hideout and sent to  Auschwitz where he was murdered on August 20 , meeting the same fate his parents met at the beginning of the year. Nussbaum's story, incredibly saddening and disturbing, represents the plight of the average Jewish individual fleeing for their lives from a horrible repressive regime, desperately attempting to protect whatever family they have left and preserve their dignity.

All of Nussbaum's works share a tone of despair, fear, and desperation common in all forms and examples of refugee artwork. Like the previous artists, Nussbaum captures a horrifying reality through images worth millions of words alone. Nussbaum created The Great Disaster (1939) after the mass destruction following Germany's execution of Kristallnacht, which forced his parents to flee their homeland in 1939. The bleak colors, horrifying expressions, and abstract representation of individuals and the surrounding town express the desolation, perhaps the last straw for many prospective Jewish refugees, that terrorized people in the streets in their own hometown. Nussbaum also captures this idea in his painting The Refugee (1939) depicting his own despair in the face of the crushing reality that he may never be able to return home or reunite with his family. Nussbaum's paintings are striking, because they capture the conflict, both internal and external, refugees must face and overcome in order to fight for their own survival. This artwork tethers Nussbaum and his family's struggles to reality and to humanity. Nussbaum also shows this with his painting Camp Synagogue (1941). Even with a faithful religion, refugees cannot seek solace in their faith, or if they may it is to a lesser extent as their faith is the prime reason of their oppression and persecution. Like Nussbaum, many other Jewish refugees faltered with or lost their faith in Judaism all together, and in the face of such brutal tyranny and oppression, no one can blame those who think to abandon faith.

Eritrea is a small country on the Red Sea with a population of 5.3 million people. Of this population, more than 480,000 have been forcibly displaced. President  Isaias Afwerki  has been in power since 1991, and there have never been national presidential elections. For the past 25 years, Eritrea has been subjected to a totalitarian government with no elections, no constitutions, and no independent press. Eritrea restricts religious expression as well as implements a mandatory, indefinite period of national service for citizens 18-years-old or older. This military service subjects individuals to  72-hour work weeks , arbitrary punishment, rape if female, and inadequate food rations. It calls for 6 months of military training followed by 12 months of active military service.  Most Eritrean refugees cite  this indefinite servitude and the abuse the participants endure as being their first reason for fleeing from their homeland. In September 2001, the Eritrean government closed all independent newspapers and arrested any editors and journalists associated with them. None of these arrested individuals saw a trial and remained in solitary detention indefinitely. As of 2002, Eritrea banned the practice of all religions save for Sunni Islam, Eritrean Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Evangelical (Lutheran). Those who ignored this restriction would be jailed, tortured, and possibly killed.

According to the  Human Rights Council,  "Eritreans continue to be subjected to indefinite national service, arbitrary detention, torture, enforced disappearances, reprisals for the alleged conduct of family members, discrimination on religious and ethnic grounds, sexual and gender-based violence, and killings"  (HRC 19).  Citizens can be punished for questioning authority, attempting to avoid national service , leave the country, practicing a religion different from those endorsed by the government, or simply offending someone in a position of power. The UN of Human Rights determines the treatment of these Eritreans to be  crimes against humanity . Enslavement, imprisonment, torture, persecution, rape, and murder exist within a campaign hoping to instill fear in and control the Eritrean civilian population.

However, what is perhaps the most difficult part of this crisis, is that it largely goes unnoticed by the rest of the world. While Syrians flee a well-documented war and their plights are covered by multitude media sources,  Eritrean abuses go mostly unacknowledged  due to the secrecy of the oppressive government.

An estimated 5,000 Eritreans fled the country each month since the start of the crisis. About 250,000 refugees have settled in Sudan and Ethiopia in refugee camps and neighborhoods.  80%  of the world's refugees are hosted in developing countries, mostly in Africa. Because of the lacking supplies and resources at these camps, many Eritreans take the extra journey towards Europe, typically Italy. Before refugees even reach the Libyan shore, they first make the approximately 2,065 mile journey across the northern stretch of Africa. Starting from Eritrea, refugees can stop in  Khartoum, Sudan or Ethiopian camps . In Khartoum, the Sudan capital, many refugees organize and prepare for their trips across the Saharan in order to reach the ports in Libya. Camps in Ethiopia, including one called  Adi-Harush  housing nearly 40,000 Eritrean refugees. From these camps, most of the grueling journey through the Saharan held few to no camps set for refugees until they hit Tripoli, Libya. Here, Eritreans would pay the smugglers to transport them across the Mediterranean.

Many took the treacherous journey through the Sahara Desert and the war-torn Libya to get to the coast just south of the Italian peninsula. Here, they boarded rickety, unreliable vessels to complete the perilous journey across the Mediterranean Sea. Libyan smugglers could charge refugees  $750 to $3,500  a piece for a position on the boat that will take them across the sea. In the first half of 2017,  2,692 migrants  were declared dead on the voyage to Italy. Often boats full of sick and fearful refugees were stuck on the water for days until they were given permission from the smugglers to embark on their journey. For most, crossing the sea is the final step in a journey through war-zones, bleak deserts, and the danger of smugglers, kidnapping, and torture.

The number of Eritreans seeking asylum in Europe  quadrupled  from 2011 to 46,000 in 2016. Eritreans have been accepted by EU governments since 1980s, but more recent European debates over migration attempt to push the government the other way. In the U.K. in 2016, new legislation cut Eritrean asylum seekers accepted to  29%  from the previous year's 77% acceptance rate. In 2018, there was a total of  139,300  Eritrean refugees from land and sea entering Europe. 65,400 of these refugees went to Spain, 23,400 to Italy, and 50,500 to Greece. Although Eritreans are flooding from their homeland in high numbers, the number of refugees in Europe has decreased from 2015, when over one million Eritreans arrived on boats to European shores.

① Artists in Motion (JRS Campaign)

Mebrahtu is an arts teacher from Eritrea living in an Ethiopian refugee camp Mai Aini. He uses art to raise awareness in the camp and prevent others from tragedy, mainly through teaching young Eritreans how to express their journeys and struggles through painting. These artists range from 13 to 45 years of age, and Mebrahtu has collected and cultivated these culturally rich paintings to convey the truth behind being forced from one's own homeland. The art in the project takes the viewer on the journey of displacement throughout multiple themes, including love, painful separation, passages, waiting in limbo, dangers across the desert and sea, matter of life and death, and mercy that welcomes.

All of the paintings by Mebrahtu and his students share common themes of raising awareness of undermined aspects and difficulties faced by refugees, as well as themes of love, pain, frustration, and desolation through their artistic expression. Eritreans of all ages, from as old as 45 to as young as 13-years old, show their personal witness accounts and memories of the terrifying escape from Eritrea, and how people they are close with and interact with everyday go through the struggles on a daily basis. While history, statistics, and reports may often leave outsiders disconnected and unaffected by the true conditions in Eritrea and other countries struck with a refugee crisis, artwork from the hands of these refugees never fails to accentuate the humanity laden in the struggles of these refugees.

Michael Adonai was born in Asmara, Eritrea in 1962. From early childhood, Adonai was interested in art and painting, particularly because of the influence of his brother Berhane Adonai who was ten years older than Michael and already a well-known artists and educator. Michael grew up in the difficult time of Eritrea's liberty struggle against Ethiopia (1961-1991), which forced him and his family to relocate south in 1957. Here, Adonai encountered and joined the  Eritrean People’s Liberation front (EPLF) , one of the two armed liberation movements operating in Eritrea. After training for six months, he was selected to study with the  Division of Art in Fah.  His involvement and education in art was often interrupted by war, with Michael occasionally wondering why he was being trained in the arts while others were called to the front line. Adonai was eventually called to fight in 1979, which left a lasting impression on him and his paintings. His art began to focus on the topic of war, and by extension, the refugees affected by war. Through his art, Adonai gave refugees a voice.

The center piece of Michael Adonai's first solo-showcase, I Did Not Choose to be a Refugee, this painting is a prime example of Adonai humanizing the Eritrean refugee crisis, pulling the terrifying truths from the pages of newspapers and bringing them into the hearts of viewers. This piece and his entire solo exhibition pays  tribute to the Lampedusa boat tragedy . On October 3, 2013 a boat carrying refugees across the Mediterranean from Syria sank off the shore of Italian island of Lampedusa. Some reports showing over five hundred people were aboard the boat that fateful day, and once the  boat caught fire , refugees struggled to flee into the water for their lives. The final death toll came to a striking  360 , with even more still considered missing.

In Adonai's exhibit, he reflected upon this despicable, preventable tragedy and depicted the refugee crises as what it was: a burden shoved on the shoulders of unsuspecting families and children who did not deserve the cruelty they endure. In this painting, Adonai highlights the frustration of this burden. The fetuses represent every single refugee. They are normal children in the womb, nothing more than an individual with endless amounts of potential and passion. As they are born, they are free of any terrors and repression. They are not born refugees, they do not choose to be refugees, and it is not who they are. The woman in the painting is drowning, the blues enveloping her and the fetus while the boat near the surface is ablaze, casting a golden glow on the child near the top. It is a cruel representation of fate, that these children are sometimes destined to such a horrifying destiny unwillingly and unknowingly.

Adonai depicts another group of stricken refugees in his painting The Plight of Senafe.  Senafe  is a market town located in southern Eritrea where during the crisis, most homes were looted, farms destroyed, livestock slaughtered, and water controlled to the point where many struggled for survival. Crimes against humanity described all across Eritrea plagued Senafe on a daily basis. Here, positioned soldiers would attack the town and  rape women, leaving many of them to die . Adonai represents the ever-present fear, dread, and terror that sinks into Senafe residents' bones. With the convoluted and abstract silhouettes in the background, Adonai represents the countless numbers of Eritreans who are plagued by the conditions forcing them out of the country. The women at the bottom cover their mouths, a form of restriction of speech and expression present in Eritrean government. People are discolored, twisted, and deformed, possibly an artistic representation of the painful and inescapable realities of their life in Senafe, with little opportunity or solace in the thought of fleeing.

Before the outbreak of a long and brutal war, Syria was an economically fast-growing country with industries focused in agriculture, oil, and tourism with blossoming, and rich cultural diversity. What disrupted this? In  March 2011 , the government violently lashed out and suppressed a number of peaceful protests. These initial demonstrations were in response to the arrests of  15 children for painting anti-government graffiti  on the walls of their school. Citizens of the city, Daraa, expressed outrage at the mistreatment of the children, only to be brutally disrupted by Syrian forces. In reaction to the government's violent reactions, the protesters gathered more support and spread Syrian government opposition. The focus shifted from the teenagers in captivity to an overall rebellion against the regime of President Bashar Assad. This led to Syrian government unleashing fire-power on these citizens. Within the first two months of increasing violence, the first refugee camp opened in Turkey.

From these protests and demonstrations, Syria crawled closer to the edge of a civil war. In 2012,  poorly organized opposition groups had formed rebel brigades . These opposition groups seized cities from the government in rebellion. Military violence grew increasingly violet, shown in the incident of the  Battle of Homs.  Homs had been a key battleground in the uprising against Bashar al-Assad, and it was dubbed the "capital of the revolution" once protests began in 2011. Anti-government protests erupted in Homs, starting in mid-March to April where many were killed. In May 2011, the Syrian government sent tanks to the city and in attempt to stop the unrest, and protesters in Homs took up arms to defend themselves. In February 2012, the Syrian military launched an operation designed to crush the resistance in Homs, leaving an estimated  700 people dead. 

The  Council called for International Commission of Inquiry on Syria  described the violence in Syria to be    "widespread, systematic and gross human rights violations" , some of these amounting to crimes against humanity. As of August 2012, an estimated  17,000 civilians  had been killed since the uprising against the Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. Syria was offically in a full-blown civil war.

More than  6 million refugees were internally displaced  in Syria, unable to leave the country due to a number of factors like lack of resources, family ties, or religious affiliation. Syria's internal displacement crisis is the  largest in the world.  These internally displaced refugees are the most vulnerable people in the entire crisis as they have yet to find solace in another country. They are still trapped in the government of Syria and remain citizens. Around  one million  Syrian refugees have made the perilous journey to Europe, with nearly  500,000  seeking asylum in Germany, smaller numbers fleeing to Sweden and Austria. Turkey, however, hosts the largest refugee population in the world with an estimated two million according to the  World Bank . This massive influx of refugees introduced and forced massive changes in Turkey's society, economy, and government operations. While the  Turkish civilians are unhappy  with this massive influx of foreigners, there is little expectation that the Syrian refugees will return to their war-devastated home in the near future. In Lebanon, the number of Syrians has increased by nearly  25 percent  since 2011, and public institutions struggled to cope with the increased demand for services. Lebanese health, education, water, and waste collection services are  overstretched and overused  with no capacity to meet the increasing needs of refugees.

The United States, however, has had a more recently closed-off approach to the influx of Syrian refugees. In the last few years of  President Barack Obama's administration , the U.S. settled thousands of refugees. This changed drastically after President Donald Trump took office and placed a  refugee ban  that blocked the influx of any refugees from the Summer of 2017 due to xenophobic scrutiny facing Syrian refugees in the country. The refugee ban ended within 120 days but was quickly replaced with a  pause of refugee admissions  on numerous countries including Syria.

For almost every country receiving Syrian refugees, xenophobia plays a pivotal role in the backlash against these refugees. The fear of foreigners is deeply rooted in many societies like Turkey and the United States. This fear can stem from the belief that refugees will steal jobs, resources, or the intolerance of foreigners of different races or religious beliefs. Fear causes a deep-rooted hatred against refugees, and many citizens of these assisting countries may fight against the country's attempts to help, at times leading a country closing its borders to these refugees that need help. Countries like the United States and Germany are the ones with the most capacity to take on these massive influxes of Syrian refugees, but the xenophobic tendencies of the population and government cut the refugees off from these resources.

Over the past 30 years, Reza Deghati and photographer Ali Bin Thalith put together photographs in a Paris refugee exhibit with the help of the UNHCR. In this exhibit, Deghati also included photographs taken by Syrian children living in a refugee camp in Iraq. Deghati's purpose in this photography exhibition was to capture the everyday realities in a refugee camp with a certain degree of intimacy that historical or statistical accounts of the refugee crisis cannot express. He began the project in  December 2013  when he selected 20 children in the camp to take photos. While this art-form is different than those previously examined in the examination of refugee groups, this more modern refugee crisis and its implications can be expressed through artistic photography while still transcending language barriers.

The children involved in the project took several photos reflecting their daily lives and difficulties in refugee camps. While they were currently out of the war zone in Syria, these children still faced tremendous trials: food security, home sickness, poor resources, and sometimes even separation from their families. This photograph was taken by  Amama Husein, 13 years old,  when the photography workshop was launched. Amama captured the sorrowful existence these children faced in the run-down refugee camps. The face-down pose of the child poised in the center of a bleak, cloudy town filled with nothing but tents and dirt represents the fact that the refugee struggle does not end with leaving one's country. These difficulties follow refugees, and especially children, throughout their lives.

During one of Iraq's harsh winters at the Kawergosk camp,  12-year-old Maya Rostam  took this photo of her frozen shoes. According to Reza, Maya was not one of the original children selected to participate in the photography project, but she consistently attended his lessons on photography at the camp. Noticing this, Reza offered Maya a camera of her own and asked her to take photos. In response to her being late to another one of his workshops, Maya showed Reza this photo of her frozen shoes. She had to wait for them to thaw before she could put them on and attend the class, and the symbolic power of these frozen shoes insinuated a meaning far deeper than an excuse for tardiness. Even though these children have escaped the immediate perils of the continuing Civil War in Syria, they still face everyday challenges in lacking simple necessities such as shoes, food, drinking water, and clothes. The frozen shoes in the photograph are a microcosm of the indefinite suffering of these children and other refugees in camps who are stripped of any other options or directions to turn due to the conflict driving them from their homes.

Helen Zughaib was born in Beirut, Lebanon to a State Department civil servant. Her family fled Lebanon in  1975  due to the Lebanese Civil War, and she moved to the Paris where she attended high school. Later, she moved to the United States to study art at  Syracuse University  in New York. Here, she earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) from the College of Visual and Performing Arts. She now lives in Washington, DC where she works full time as an artist. Her work often centers on cultural identity, the plight of refugees, and displacement in the Middle East.  She states on her website, 

"I feel that my background in the Middle East allows me to approach the experiences I have in America, in a unique way, remaining an observer of both the Arab and American cultures. I believe that the arts are one of the most important tools we have to help shape and foster dialogue and positive ideas between the Middle East and the United States," -Helen Zughaib

Helen Zughaib's art is slightly different than the traditional paintings shown with Eritrean and Jewish Refugees. Instead of utilizing a somber tone with darkened colors to show a suffocating atmosphere of despair, Zughaib uses bright, contrasting colors with many shapes moving to exhibit a more life-like representation of refugees and their journey.

Rather than a single artist, Stepping Stones: A Refugee Family’s Journey is a children's book written by Margriet Ruurs and illustrated by Nizar Ali Badr. Badr was born in Latakia, Syria in 1964. He has always been inspired to sculpt and paint, and he especially used the crisis of the Syrian Civil War to inspire many of his artworks. Most notably, Badr uses stones and pebbles to create his works of art and all of the illustrations in the book Stepping Stones. He chose to sculpt his pieces from stones from  Mount Zaphon  located approximately 30 miles from his hometown. He holds a deeply rooted respect and connection to the stones, and view them as witnesses to the sadness and burden of people from the land. The stones are the medium in which he tells the stories of the displaced, and they are culturally rich in that these stones were there to experience the ongoing crisis in Syria.  He claimed, 

"Only those who form part of the land of the poor shall feel their sadness," -Nizar Ali Badr

One day, Margriet Ruurs was browsing Facebook and came across a striking image. It touched her deeply, the passion hidden in a simple formation of pebbles grabbing her attention. Through research, she discovered the work was one of Nizar Ali Badr's many works, and she went to his website and discovered he was Syrian. As a children's author, Ruurs felt inspired to create a work with Badr's art. She took a leap of faith and sent Badr a message on Facebook, and when she received no response, she had a contact in Pakistan reach out the artist, to which she received a response. After communicating through a translator, discussing details, and signing contracts, Stepping Stones: A Refugee Family's Journey was underway. In releasing the book, Ruurs hoped to increase awareness of the plight of Syrian refugees, and refugees across the world. Nizar Ali Badr's artwork, with Margriet Ruurs' writing, works to form a cohesive, emotional story that brings a humanity aspect to the refugee crises across the globe-- not only in Syria.

While Germany, Syria, and Eritrea are very different countries with diverse cultures, all have experienced incredibly large refugee crises that have altered the course of their history. These crises have been and are influencing these countries' cultures, relationships, economics, and trajectory as a whole. Any country is susceptible to internal or external conflicts that may cause a huge displacement crisis that dislocates thousands-- if not millions-- of people. It is important to understand the universal properties of refugee conflicts, as whether a country is flooding with incoming refugees or is in conflict and housing thousands who flee, every country can and will be involved with these crises in the future.

Paintings, photography, music, sculptures, and all forms of art can transcend a language and distance barrier that seems to tear a rift through the world, preventing people from multiple nations from connecting on a deeper level. Refugees and their stories are lost through the factual depictions of history books and news stories. Artwork, no matter the form, tells the stories of refugees from the refugees themselves and from their perspectives. Without it, the world may never truly know the humanity behind these crises, and how emotions like fear, turmoil, and hope accumulate into the complicated conflict and issue of refugee displacement. That is what these refugee conflicts really are. They are not only an issue of the conflict they are fleeing from. It is a humanity issue as these people face terrible adversity, are tortured, or even killed in their efforts for basic freedoms and safety.

For many years, people have used art as a form of therapy for traumatized refugees, especially for young, isolated children. In their work,  Broken Spirits : The Treatment of Traumatized Asylum Seekers, Refugees and War and Torture Victims,  Boris Drozdek and John P. Wilson (2004)  write, "the general objective of art therapy for refugees and asylum seekers is to activate [feelings of trauma and conflict] and to reduce stress, rebuild trust, and lessen a sense of isolation". Art may offer a temporary distraction from current stressful situations and traumas, or may act as a harmless medium in which refugees can express their anger, fear, and turmoil in a healthy and cathartic manner.  One article  identified five major benefits and developments from use of art therapy with recovering refugees, including giving voice, rebuilding trust, sharing stories, and discovering a new identity  (Akthar & Lovell, 2018) .

Whether refugees contribute to the rich collection of artwork through history as a therapeutic solution or to raise awareness of a largely ignored conflict and peril, these pieces of artwork are crucial to fully understanding every refugee crisis in its entirety.