Tolkachov created portraits of state officials, Ukrainian writers, numerous posters, satirical drawings, and illustrations for Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, the works of Sholem Aleichem, and others. He also created lithographs on anti-fascist themes. One recurring subject in his work was “Lenin and the Komsomol.” Tolkachov’s lettering was used in the inscription “Lenin” on the mausoleum in Moscow.
During World War II, Tolkachov served as a frontline artist. He participated in the liberation of the Majdanek concentration camp in 1944 and Auschwitz in 1945. He was assigned to the commission investigating crimes at Auschwitz. Deeply affected by what he witnessed, he began making sketches while still in the camps. He was among the first artists to depict the horrors of Nazi death camps and the Holocaust. In the immediate aftermath of liberation, he created works such as Majdanek, Auschwitz, and Flowers of Auschwitz. In the USSR, his Auschwitz drawings were published only in 1965. Tolkachov’s memoirs, recounting his time in the Majdanek and Auschwitz-Birkenau camps, were published by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, complemented with unique archival photographs.
Tolkachov’s works were exhibited in Warsaw, Rzeszów, Katowice, Kraków, Łódź, and Lublin. In Warsaw, works from the series Majdanek and Flowers of Auschwitz were issued on behalf of the Polish government and distributed to the leaders of the anti-Hitler coalition, government ministers of Allied powers, and military commanders.
After the war, Tolkachov was persecuted for “cosmopolitanism.” His works were labeled “Zionist-religious,” and his art deemed “deeply corrupt.” The artist himself was stigmatized as “the embodiment of rootless cosmopolitanism and bourgeois nationalism.”
Despite these challenges, Zinovii Tolkachov continued to work passionately, healing wounds through his art.