Biographies of Jewish artists

About Felix Nussbaum Felix Nussbaum, while in a forced exile in Scandinavia, the German playwright Bertold Brecht complained that he, who decided to leave Germany after the Nazis came to power, is called emigrants. In exile, the emigrants found not a new homeland, but a pier to wait until the storm subsided. We are deported, refugees. " The fate of the Felix Nussbaum family from the German city of Osnabruk is the story of desperate attempts to find a refuge on a foreign land, the story of one of the many families that ended up in a whirlpool of despair, flights without hope on the refuge.

The father of the artist Philip Nussbaum, proud of his country, was a member of the organization of veterans of the First World War. After the change of power, he, the Jew, had to leave the organization. In his farewell speech, he said: "And if they call me back to banners again, I am always ready." At this time, his son, the artist Felix Nussbaum, as part of a group of German students - honorary scholarships of the Berlin Academy of Excessions in Rome.

In April, the Minister of Propaganda of Hitler Germany Goebbels spoke to the creative elite and gave them a lecture on the artistic doctrine of the Fuhrer. Felix realized that he, a Jew and the artist, has no place for this doctrine. He left Rome in early May and was almost immediately deprived of the stare. The picture has a great disaster, his intuitive vision of dramatic changes was reflected after Hitler came to power - the death of Europe and all Western civilization.

Parents of the artist Philip and Rachel left Osnabruk, like many other Jews - residents of the city. The elder brother of Eustus and his family remained to manage the prosperous family business in the trade in metal. After a short -term stay in Switzerland, parents went to the south, where they met with Felix in Rapallo, a fishing town of Italian Riviera. Sunlight and calm atmosphere of the place obscured the clouds of war.

Nussbaums spent the summer of the year together, and this was the last meeting of Felix with his parents. His high mood was reflected in joyful, carefree colors in the paintings of that period, such as, for example, the beach in Rapallo, in the year, Philip and Rachel Nussbaum could not stand nostalgia for Germany and decided to return to their homeland, despite the sharp objections of Felix.

He even rewrote the last line from his father’s farewell speech in his own way: “This was the only case when Felix did not agree with his father’s opinion, who always and financially supported his son. The paths dispersed. Felix and his friend Felka Platece decided not to return to Germany. In January, they arrived in Paris, from where they soon moved to the Belgian resort city of Ostenda.

A few months later, they moved to their friends to Brussels. In October, Felix and Felka got married. In the same year, on July 2, Yustus, the brother of Felix, was forced to emigrate, since in Znabruk all the enterprises belonging to the Jews were transferred into the hands of the Aryans.

Eustus and his wife and two -year -old daughter Marianna fled to Holland, where, together with several other emigrants forced emigrants, they were able to create a company to sell scrap metal. Meanwhile, the situation in Germany worsened. During the crystal night, the synagogue was burned in Osnabruk, Jewish houses were plundered, Jewish men were deported to the concentration of Dachau.

In May, Felix's parents decided to leave Germany and fled to Amsterdam to the eldest son of Eustus. A year, after the occupation of Belgium and Holland, Felix was arrested in his apartment and sent to the south of France, to the Saint-Siprien camp with other foreigners. Stay in the camp changed the artist’s worldview; He understood the true dimensions of the mortal danger of the Nazi regime for Jews and expressed his insight in the picture of the synagogue in the Saint-Siprien camp, this unique work symbolizes the artist’s awareness of their belonging to the Jewish people and the understanding that this is how others perceive him.

This was the first work of Nussbaum on a Jewish theme. In August, in desperation after three painful months spent in humiliating conditions Saint-Siprine, Felix filed a request for a return to Germany. Upon arrival at the checkpoint in Bordeaux, he decided to flee on a passenger train to Brussels, where his beloved wife remained. In Belgium, Felix Nussbaum was in an illegal position, having no means of existence.

His Belgians helped the artist, provided a studio for his use and bought artistic supplies. Without an official registration, in constant fear of arrest, Felix moved from his secret apartment to the studio and vice versa and drew without a break, thereby giving expression, fear and a sense of hopelessness that hung over him and his family. The fate of the once prosperous family Nussbaum was predetermined.

In August, the owner of the Metallomus Sales, the SUSTUS Nussbaum, his wife, daughter and parents were arrested in his house and sent to the Westerborn camp.In the same month they were deported to Aushwitz, where Felix died on August 9. His elder brother Yustus Nussbaum was deported from Westerbork to Auschwitz on September 3. Three days later, Gerthu and Marianne - the daughter -in -law and niece of Felix, were also burned in Aushwitz.

At the end of October, Eustus was deported to Stutthof, where he died from exhaustion two months later. This is the chronology of the destruction of one family, which, despite several years spent in the shelter, could not escape from the long claws of the Nazi beast. Europe has turned into a deadly trap. The motive of a hopeless position, the impasse is present in the picture of Felix Nussbaum, the vision of Europe - a refugee, a Jewish refugee who, in despair, clasped his head with his hands, does not find a shelter anywhere in the world.

In the foreground, the picture is a globe made in cold indifferent color. Behind him is a hopelessly open door to the room and symbols of extinction: a flooded tree and raven soaring over it. It seems that even then the artist foresaw the tragedy - no one from his family will be able to survive this hell. Felix lasted almost ten years, no matter what, but he was killed a month before Brussels' liberation.

The paintings of the Jewish artist Felix Nussbaum continue to tell his story, the history of his family and the entire Jewish people. The memorial complex of the history of the Holocaust.