This dual decoding is what Celnikier's great art invites us to. The visual experience leads to mental meditation, aesthetic pleasure to the memory of pain.

It is this delicate balance that makes his art humanly bearable. It is his pictorial talent that restores the permanence of humanity within the infernal abyss.

In a preface he wrote for a Parisian exhibition of Celnikier's work in 1969, art historian Waldemar George penned some profoundly moving words: “I ask the visitors to the Galerie Granoff exhibition to reflect before certain paintings, especially before the Apocalypse of Prague. Indeed, Isaac Celnikier is not an artist like other artists. His work is an act of faith. For those who defend painting and its permanence, it represents immense hope.”

Indeed, Isaac Celnikier is not an artist like others. These major works now belong to the heritage of humanity. The witness has fulfilled his role.

There is nothing more to say on the subject, except to express the hope that the artist may have the strength, health, and energy to accomplish a few more steps along his path, already marked by remarkable milestones. But nothing can be final in the life of a painter who is wholly committed to his art because he can only be a painter.

Celnikier is also a remarkable engraver and draftsman, who has captured with astonishing precision, in the freshness of his lines, the daily chronicles of life in Auschwitz. His engravings on the Holocaust form a unique and unprecedented documentary journal.

The painter Celnikier is not merely a great mythologist of history. Alongside his cosmic vision of events, he brings a sharp, perceptive eye to the surrounding space. These include the landscapes of Jerusalem or the South of France, as well as extraordinary portraits of women, through which he expresses his sensual attachment to life.

Contrary to what my analysis might suggest, I do not differentiate between "major" and "minor" subjects in Celnikier's work. His self-portraits or portraits of women reflect the artist's profound openness to the world. They testify to the spontaneity and generosity of his vital instinct. Celnikier would not be who he is if he were not in love with his models, if he did not simply and sublimely confess to the temptation of the flesh.

Thus, through the conduit of the senses and love, life penetrates the very substance of his work and reincarnates in the serenity of hope. Without a doubt, Celnikier’s true greatness lies in this cry of profound humanity. Because he knows how to be a man, deeply and simply, the witness Celnikier, when stirred by the tremor of memory, becomes entirely a prophet.

Yes, Celnikier is not a painter like others. This painter of drama and horror has managed to preserve the measure of humanity in the depths of despair. And it is for this reason that, beyond outrage and inevitable anecdotes, the Holocaust found in Celnikier its most lucid and positive witness: a humanist of hope.

Before a painting like Kaddish, one cannot help but reverse the prayer for the dead and recite it as a hymn of eternal hope.

This is the human beauty of the Holocaust’s testimony: in such cases, memory is captivated by the art of painting.

Truth is the virtue of greatness.