The motivation that underlies the work of Paul Marcus is his desire to expose social injustice. Marcus addresses the Holocaust for reasons both personal and universal. His intense artistic reaction stems from a commitment to use his work to decry all crimes against humanity, and his personal urgency arises from the firsthand experiences of his grandparents, who suffered at the hands of the Nazis. In his explicit rendering of "Kristallnacht," Marcus combines the mediums of engraved wood and painting to create an expressive surface: the actual glass that is superimposed on the image heightens the violence of that horrifying incident in history, the immediacy of which is further dramatized by the protagonists' emphatic poses and central focus of the action. Tension is subtly reiterated through the reversed lettering on the glass, which separates the viewer from the scene.