Girl in the Blue Coat

Use this activity to engage all types of learners, while requiring that they refer to and incorporate details from the text over the course of the activity.

ACTIVITY: “Blue and the Meaning of Colors in Occupied Amsterdam”

Blue has a special meaning in the context of the Jewish Holocaust. In 2021, Israeli artist Yishai Jusidman explored the relationship between blue and the Holocaust in his exhibit “Prussian Blue,” which featured dozens of paintings and photographs, all of which used the eponymous color. For Jusidman, “[Prussian blue] came to embody the Holocaust and became the lens through which he—and by extension viewers—could examine the horrors of the past.” The color Prussian blue was first created in Berlin at the turn of the 18th century, and it was the color of the uniforms worn by German soldiers until World War I. Here’s an additional layer of meaning: Jusidman discovered that the Nazis used a cyanide-based pesticide (called Zyklon B) that tainted the walls of the gas chambers with a blueish hue. You can read more about the exhibit “Prussian Blue” here at Medialine, and here in The Times of Israel.