(Author: Jeff Fine, Vol. 67, No. 2, Rosh Hashanah 2012)
Those who saw them, commented the anonymous SA Jewish Board of Deputies representative, would “become conscious of the immense tragedy hidden behind every single item which tells of the biggest robbery ever committed in history. Visitors will see the blood dripping from silver candelabra. They will see eyes opened widely with horror; they will hear the cries of agony of death, with which the silver will be connected for them.”
The above-mentioned representative had just cleared from Customs Jewish artefacts stolen by the Nazis from synagogues and homes throughout Europe. The items were distributed after the war by the Jewish Cultural Reconstruction (JCR) programme to Jewish communities round the world.
This, too, is my response when I look at the precious articles left behind by the nameless victims of the Holocaust, killed solely because they were Jewish. As a Judaica valuator and collector, I have a keen interest in such items. This article features the stories about those that have come into my possession.
In November 2009, I gave a lecture on ‘Art and Artefacts of the Holocaust as a Learning Tool’ to a group of educators who were going on a two-week course at Yad Vashem the following month. Afterwards, I was invited to join them, and grabbed the opportunity with both hands. It would give me the opportunity to learn more about the Holocaust, information I could use in future lectures. I would also be able to visit some of my contacts in Jerusalem from whom I purchase Holocaust artefacts and antique Judaica.
Little did I realize how intense this two-week course would be, and that it would leave little or no time for collecting expeditions. We were only free on a few evenings, but after an intensive eight-hour day of lectures, were too tired to go exploring.
On the first Wednesday, we had an amazing lecture on Theresienstadt. This was the camp that was housed in an 18th Century fortress and turned into a model ghetto to deceive the outside world into believing that the rumours of European Jews being deported to death camps were false. To it were sent privileged Jews from Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Austria: prominent artists, writers, scientists, jurists, diplomats, musicians and scholars. In this ghetto, there were four concert orchestras, chamber groups and jazz ensembles. For the children, there were daily classes and sports activities; art teacher Friedl DickerBrandeis ran drawing classes for them.
Leo Haas
Among the artists was the Czechoslovakian Leo Haas, a portrait painter and lithographer who arrived on 30 December, 1942, and was employed in the Drawing Office of the Technical Department under fellow Czech artist, Bedrich Fritta. Other well-known artists were Karel Fleishmann, Otto Ungar, and Felix Bloch. Haas drew portraits of his colleagues and taught painting to the children, for which he received a little food. In secret, he made drawings documenting ghetto life – people searching for food, waiting to be transported, the transfer of internees from one place to another, the buildings, portraits of inmates, sketches of the elderly, the sick, the dying and the dead. His friend Fritta drew a book as a birthday gift for his son Thomas showing him what a normal birthday would be like had they not been in the ghetto, with a party, cakes, presents, and a clown, with parks, trees, flowers and birds – all things Thomas could not see in the ghetto. We were shown the book Tommy, which was published by Yad Vashem in Hebrew in 1999, in both adult and children’s versions.
Haas, Fritta and Ungar would often meet in the evening to work on their drawings and managed to smuggle out some of their work through an art dealer, Leo Strauss. The latter used his ‘Aryan’ family and close connections with the ghetto’s Czech police in the hope that this might rouse public opinion. It was seen by the Danish Red Cross, who asked to visit the ghetto. A carefully planned propaganda visit was prepared – buildings were painted, shops were filled with food and Jews were deported to empty the streets. Several days before the visit, the artists were warned by a co-worker in the technical department (a member of the Council of Elders), that they would be called in for interrogation. Fritta buried his pictures in the ground inside a metal box, Ungar hid his paintings in a depression in a wall and Haas hid his works in an attic. Immediately after the Red Cross had left, the Nazis began to search through the tools of the people in the technical department, searching for pictures. Ungar, Fritta, Haas and Bloch were arrested in July 1944, accused of distributing atrocity propaganda to outside countries and, along with Strauss who had been imprisoned several days earlier, interrogated by Adolf Eichmann. Their families were also arrested, including three-year old Thomas. In October they were sent to Auschwitz, where Haas was forced to produce portraits for the ‘Angel of Death’, Josef Mengele.
Haas was then sent to Sachsenhausen, where he was put to work in the forgery commando, counterfeiting English 5, 10, 20 and 50-pound notes. I have managed to acquire one of each value as well as different signatory examples.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row] From Sachsenhausen, Haas was sent to Ebensee before being liberated at Mauthausen. Fortunately his wife, Erna, had survived as had Frida Ungar and her daughter, but most of his friends and family had perished. Ungar had died during the Death March to Buchenwald, Bloch had been beaten to death in Theresienstadt, Fritta had died in Auschwitz and his wife in Theresienstadt. However, little Thomas Fritta had survived, although was in very poor health; the Haases adopted him and settled in Prague. Haas returned to Theresienstadt, where he found his entire art collection. He also found many works produced by Fritta, including the manuscript of Tommy. These had been buried in pottery containers made by the adjoining pottery class. After his wife’s death, Haas moved to East Berlin, where he worked as the editor of a caricature journal called Eulenspiegel and designed movie sets for the DEFA Company andfor East German television. He exhibited his works in Israel, East Germany, France, Italy,Austria, China and the United States. Five of Haas’s sketches had been on offer at a Sotheby’s auction in Tel Aviv, held 12 October 1995. I knew about this because as a collector, Irely for much of my information on old auction catalogues, and being as pedantic as I am, had bought all the back auction catalogues which Istudy and use for research and identification purposes. At that time, I had not been interested in these because I had not yet started collecting Holocaust art, nor had my interest been particularly roused by the above lecture. I had arranged that evening to visit one of my dealer friends. On the way to his apartment in Mea Shearim we discussed the course at Yad Vashem, his family and mine. When we arrived, I met his parents. His father, now very ill and wheelchair-bound, had been, as his son now was,one of the foremost Judaica dealers in Israel. I was searching through the Judaica on offer when he said to himself, “Holocaust, wait”, and left the room, reappearing with a large, grubby, tattered brown envelope. “I once had to buy this along with a Judaica collection in Europe. Maybe you could use it?” He removed a piece of paper from this envelope and handed it to me to me to peruse, asking if it could be of use in my teaching about the Holocaust through my Art and Artefacts collection. My hands trembled as I gazed upon the sketch The Roll Call done by Leo Haas in Mauthausen concentration camp. Could I use it? What a question! My friend’s mother entered at this point. Whenshe saw the sketch she said to me, “I am a survivor from Warsaw Ghetto.” She left to return shortly afterwards clutching a flat manila file. “This was from my friend”. Inside the file were seven pencils ketches on small scraps of paper protected by tissue paper. At my request, she proceeded to tell me the story of her friend and the sketches. As a young girl she had lived with her parents in a flatin Warsaw. Next door lived her best friend; they attended the same school and played together every day. In 1938, things began to change. She was no longer allowed to go to school with her friend, nor was she allowed to play with her anymore: She was a Jew! She could not understand this. Before, they had just been two Polish schoolgirls who were friends. Next, the family had to move from their flat into the Warsaw Ghetto. Her old flat overlooked the entrance to the ghetto, their new home. Standing near the gate, she could see her old flat and sometimes catch a glimpse of her old friend. The ghetto became smaller and smaller and more and more cramped. Soon she could no longer see her old flat. She did not elaborate on what happened to her during her confinement in the Warsaw Ghetto and afterwards, only saying that when she was finally liberated, she made her way to New York. Because they were Belzer Chassidim, she said, they were taken care of. One day in the market in Brooklyn, she felt a tap on her shoulder. She turned around and looked into the face of her old friend. They embraced and cried, and then they went hand in hand to find a place to sit and talk. Her friend stayed near the market, so they made their way to her home. They spoke for hours about the good old days before the war. The time of the ghetto was not discussed at all. Then her friend got up and went to a cupboard under the steps, returning with a flat file. “This is for you. I drew pictures of what I could see from my flat. I now know why I kept it. You must take it to prove what happened”. My friend’s mother wiped away her tears and asked me, “Could you use these drawings to teach with, so no one would ever forget what really happened?” When his mother left to take care of her husband, her son gave me a mezuzah parchment in a strange holder. It was made of a tin of sorts, the writing still visible, and was revealed to be the top of a Canadian sardine can. It came from a Displaced Persons camp, he told me. Could it have belonged to his mother? I did not ask and he did not enlighten me. Further research indicated that the Allies and the Rabbis that helped in the DP camps brought religious items for the survivors – books, Tefillin, Talleisim and mezuzah parchments. When the survivors received the latter, there were no holders, so medical tubing was used to hold the parchment and tin lids were shaped into holders. When I eventually arrived back at the hotel, it was so late, I had to wake the guard to let me into the reception, and my whole group was fast asleep. I hardly slept for the rest of those few early morning hours, so much was I looking forward to sharing this amazing story and show the three precious artefacts I had acquired. In 2007, the Sotheby’s receptionist contacted me to say that they had been offered ‘A Holocaust Doll’ for their next auction, but had told the would-be seller, a Mrs Müller, that they did not deal with Holocaust items. Would I be interested? I promptly phoned Mrs Müller and then, armed with her address, set off south to buy a ‘Doll’. The drive was long but distance has never been a problem to a collector and after several wrong turns I arrived at her town house and was shown into the sitting room. There, in a framed glass box, stood ‘The Ghetto Doll’. It had a handpainted wooden carved head, hands and feet, with a body of stuffed coyer, used for stuffing mattresses. The doll’s clothes were handmade and could have been made by any of our grannies or bobbas. Mrs Müller and her younger brother were born in Munich, a few years after the war. She married and moved to South Africa. Her brother remained in Germany and bought the doll at a Munich auction. The story was that this doll was one of many found in an orphanage when alterations were being done. They had belonged to little Jewish girls who had been sent to the orphanage during the Shoah. The story of Janusz Korczak and his orphans – how the children set off for their destined place of extermination neatly dressed in their best clothes, each carrying a blue knapsack and a favourite book or toy with Korczak at their head – is well-known. Extermination was the fate of all the Jewish children in the orphanages in areas under Nazi control. Most had to leave their toys behind. I paid what I felt this doll was worth to Mrs Müller, knowing full well that I could not lose this sale, as the doll was worth so much to me, as a Jew, than it could ever be to a German who had bought it on auction knowing full well the fate of the child who had played with it previously. One day when the new Johannesburg Holocaust Centre comes to fruition, the theme is intended to focus on the one and a half million Jewish children murdered Al Kiddush Hashem. It is hoped that this Ghetto Doll, a mute survivor of the martyred children, will be part of the exhibit. I have worked for a number of years with my friend Gwynne Robins [who, as Gwynne Schrire, is a frequent contributor to Jewish Affairs] in the storeroom with items from Cape Town’s old Jewish Museum not needed by the new South African Jewish Museum. Whatever we could has now been put on display in new cabinets in the Cape Town Jewish Centre offices across road from the new museum. One day, Gwynne told me that a woman had contacted the Cape Jewish Chronicle in connection with selling a painting of a rabbi. She had fallen on hard times and was living with her young daughter in a car on the street. She was not Jewish but owned this painting, acquired by her father circa. 1975 at a liquidation auction at a house in Houghton, Johannesburg. On moving to Cape Town from Johannesburg, she had brought the painting with her as her parents no longer wanted it and hung it in her flat. Now jobless and homeless, she wanted to sell it to buy food. The image of the work was scanned and sent to me. Yad Vashem then identified it as having been painted by Adolf (Ari) Adler, and gave her a value. The auctioneer who was helping her to sell the painting promised me that if I bought it, he would, after deducting his handling fee, pay her rent for as many months as possible. Adler was born in Satu-Mare, Rumania in 1917 and started painting as a child. In 1942, he was sent to a labour camp in the Ukraine, but managed to escape two years later. He made his way to Israel in 1963 and lived in Rishon Le Zion till his death in 1996. An exhibition of his works was held at the Yad Vashem Museum in January 1986. This painting represents the Jewish artists who survived the Shoah, and continued to paint, either what they saw during this dark period or the Jewish Eastern European past they remembered, of scholarship and tradition that was destroyed along with the communities and their scholars. The painting, which is oil on canvas, now graces the wall in the entrance to my house. I contact the former owner sometimes when I am in Cape Town. She is now happily settled with her daughter in an apartment and is working. On 29 October 2006, my very good friend Adam Goldsmith, one of South Africa’s experts on Russian silver, phoned me from Shangri La House in Killarney. The house and its contents were being auctioned off. In the art section, he had seen a portrait called ‘Galician Rabbi’ and thought I needed to see and bid for it. I hastened to the house and made my way through the throngs of people to the back garden where the auctioneer was selling the lots. When the portrait come up for sale, the merest glimpse was enough to convince me that I just had to have it for my collection. There was a lot of interest and the bidding was brisk, but eventually it was knocked down to me. Why had I been so possessed to buy this painting? The portrait was life size and superbly wrought; the artist had captured in the Rabbi’s eyes, a look of pure saintliness. I judge how good a portrait artist is from the way he portrays the eyes and hands of the sitter, and this artist had been greatly accomplished in that regard. That much I knew. What I did not know was who he was, nor who the rabbi he had painted had been. The Galician Rabbi was soon hanging on the wall in my lounge where he could conduct Talmudic debates with the other three rabbis hanging there, two facing left and two facing right. All that was left to do was to find out who he was so that an official introduction could be made. The artist’s signature looked like Ben Purukawa and was dated 1935. The letters are different to how we would write them today. As yet, I have not been able to identify this artist who I am sure is Eastern European and know is very good. The sitter came next. I looked through books in my library, in the Encyclopaedia Judaica and through books in the Kollel Bookshop. I asked the Rosh Beis Din Dayan Kurtstag. No luck! Someone suggested my painting was of the Gere Rebbe. They were similar but he was not my man. The years went by, lots more art came and went, but he was still the unknown Galician Rabbi, and it worried me. In 2011, Shwekey fever hit Johannesburg. I had never heard of this entertainer, but he was due to perform in two concerts at Monte Casino. My friends Stan and Ingrid Seeff invited me to lunch on the Shabbat before the concert with Shwekey, his wife and their musical director Yochi. The latter, a Judaica collector, had heard of my collection and passion for Holocaust art and artefacts, so we arranged for him to visit my house. In the course of that visit, Yochi photographed the Galician Rabbi and promised to send me whatever information he could find on it after his return to New York. He was true to his word. Soon after, the information arrived along with a picture of the Rabbi. The Galician Rabbi now had a name: Rabbi Yeshaye (Shaya) Halberstam of Tchchoiv (Czchow), 1864-1944. He was the youngest of seven sons of Rabbi Chaim of Sanz, the Divrei Chaim. My Galician Rabbi had been murdered by the Nazis Al Kiddush Hashem somewhere in Europe.
The Brown Envelope
The Ghetto Doll
What was the story?
The woman who lived in a car
The Galician Rabbi
Unto every person there is a name
Bestowed upon him by Hashem
And given him by his father and mother
Unto every person there is a name
Accorded him by his stature
And the manner of his smile
And given him by his style of dress…
Unto every person there is a name
Bestowed on him by the sea And
given him by his death.
Now my Rabbi, too, had a name and a Holocaust victim has an identity and is remembered. I now understood why I had felt such a strong need to purchase this portrait five years earlier for my Holocaust art collection. Maybe one day I will find information about the artist as well as where Rabbi Shaya perished; then my research on this piece of art will be complete
Jeff Fine is a Judaica valuator and collector of many years standing. In addition to lecturing widely on aspects of Judaica and the Holocaust, he has curated exhibitions in Johannesburg and Cape Town, working closely with the SA Jewish Board of Deputies in researching and documenting their collections.
