Exhibition opening: November 26, 2025
On view until: March 22, 2026
Where: lobby of the Knights’ Hall
Exhibition curators: Aurélie Cousin, Vincent Briand, Tina Fortič Jakopič
The exhibition Surviving and Bearing Witness: Artistic Creation in Deportation is the result of a collaboration between the Museum of Resistance and Deportation in Besançon (MRDB) and the National Museum of Contemporary History of Slovenia (MNSZS). It opens a dialogue between works created during internment, transcending borders, languages, and national memories.
The exhibition presents art created under the almost impossible conditions of the Nazi concentration camps, where men and women drew, sculpted, sewed, and wrote amid constant peril, driven by an unyielding need for expression, dignity, and testimony. At the heart of the display stands Boris Kobe’s Concentration Camp Tarock, created in 1945 upon the liberation of the Allach camp, a work that reveals with striking precision the mechanisms of the camp system. Alongside it are presented works from the collection of the Museum of Resistance and Deportation in Besançon, which bear witness to the universal power of creativity in times of destruction. Eighty years after the end of the Second World War, the exhibition reminds us that art, even in the darkest of times, remains an act of resistance and a means of survival.
The exhibition was realised with the special support of the Institut français de Slovénie and the Institut français de Paris as part of the IF Incontournable call for projects, Her Excellency Fabienne Runyo, Ambassador of France to Slovenia, as well as His Excellency Philippe Étienne, Ambassador of France, Anne Vignot, Mayor of Besançon, and Alexandre Arnodo, Director of the Citadelle – World Heritage Site. Our sincere thanks also go to Ms Florence Lévy, former Ambassador of France to Slovenia, whose initiative and support made the project possible.
The museums would also like to express their special thanks to Mr Jurij Kobe (the son of the artist Boris Kobe) for his help and support in the preparation of the exhibition.
The exhibition was made possible thanks to the support of the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the City of Besançon.
