Der Hölle entronnen

A biography of the only survivor of the Theresienstadt artists. When the Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia, Haas was living in Ostrava; he was prohibited from pursuing his artistic career, and suffered from other anti-Jewish measures. He was deported to Nisko, returned to Ostrava, and in September 1942 was deported with his wife to Theresienstadt. After some months of hard physical labor, he was assigned to the artists of the Technical Department. Officially, they prepared drawings required by the authorities, but after hours they drew realistic pictures of the miseries of ghetto life, which they smuggled to the outside world. In October 1944 they were caught and deported to Auschwitz. After about a month, however, Haas was transferred to Sachsenhausen to work on the SS project of counterfeiting banknotes of Allied countries. With the approach of the Soviet army, the group and their machines were evacuated to Mauthausen, from there to Schlier and then to Ebensee, where they were liberated. After the war, Haas became a political cartoonist in Prague and East Berlin. He published and exhibited paintings based on the sketches he had made in the camps through which he had passed. Many of these are included here.