Yehuda Bacon
Jehuda Bacon , also written Yehuda Bacon or Jehuda Bakon (born July 28, 1929 in Moravská Ostrava (Mährisch Ostrau), Czechoslovakia ), is an Israeli artist. In 2013 he was awarded the Cross of Merit on ribbon for his services to German-Israeli reconciliation and Judeo-Christian dialogue .
Life
Until 1945
Yehuda Bacon was born into a Hasidic family. In autumn 1942 he and his family were deported from Ostrava to the Theresienstadt ghetto . Here he took part in the children's opera Brundibár . In December 1943 he was deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, where he was supposed to blind the International Committee of the Red Cross with other imprisoned children in the “ family camp ” . In fact, the "Birkenau Boys" were also used for transport work in the entire Auschwitz II-Birkenau complex. Instead of horses, they had to pull a cart. One day a member of the Sonderkommando allowed them to warm up in one of the gas chambers. In June 1944, Bacon saw his father go into the gas chambers. At this point in time, his mother and sister Hanna were deported to the Stutthof concentration camp , where they died a few weeks before the liberation.
On January 18, 1945, Bacon was sent on a death march that initially lasted three days and led to the Mauthausen concentration camp . In March 1945 Bacon had to go on another death march to the Gunskirchen concentration camp , a sub-camp of Mauthausen, which is located in the middle of the forest. He reports that there was no food, water or clothing for them there.
On May 5, 1945, Bacon was liberated in Gunskirchen. Before the SS guards left the camp, they poisoned the rest of the food. After the inmates fled to a village, many died there as a result of excessive food intake, which the body could not absorb. Bacon and his friend Wolfie Adler (who later became a rabbi in Israel and published a book about his experiences) left the camp and came across US soldiers who helped them and took them to a hospital in Steyr .
After Bacon had more or less recovered in the monastery run by Catholic nuns, he drove back to Prague. He hoped that his mother and sister were still alive and that he could see them there again. For the time being he lived in a children's home set up in the Štiřín Castle near Prague , which was run by the Czech pedagogue and humanist Přemysl Pitter . There he met the writer H. G. Adler . Through Pitter and Adler, he found a way to life after liberation - but without his family.
After emigrating to Israel
After the liberation, Bacon decided to become an artist - also to process and describe his experiences. As a survivor, he felt it was his responsibility to tell his story and thus teach future generations and make them aware of their responsibility to the present and the future. He was one of the first survivors of the Shoah to set foot on German soil again.
In 1946, Bacon emigrated to Palestine with the help of the Youth Aliyah . There he studied at the Bezalel Art Academy in Jerusalem , to which he was appointed professor of graphics and drawing in 1959, after several study trips that took him to Europe ( Paris and London ).
Bacon's drawings, which he made as a teenager shortly after the liberation from Auschwitz concentration camp, as well as his testimony were used as evidence in trials against Nazi criminals (including the Eichmann trial and the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials) as well as in trials against the Holocaust denier David Irving for the existence of the gas chambers in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp . In addition, his experiences and works of art have been published in books and exhibitions (including in Israel , Germany , the USA , and Great Britain ). His hope is that, among other things, future generations can learn from his testimonies.
Bacon's works can be seen in the Israel Museum Jerusalem , Yad Vashem , the US Congress in Washington, DC , in London, or in the apartments of Roosevelt , Rockefeller , Buber and Weizmann . Exhibitions also took him to Germany, the USA and Great Britain. He created an oeuvre that unfolds in an idiosyncratic web of tension. On the one hand, Bacon processed the experiences of his childhood and youth in the concentration camps in his works, on the other hand he sought the path of reconciliation through art. Bacon decided in favor of forgiveness and international understanding and was involved in the “Judeo-Christian dialogue” .
"Anyone who has been to hell knows that there is no alternative to the good."
"The problem of evil is in every human being, almost every human being: The danger of inhumanity ..."
Jehuda Bacon lives in Jerusalem with his wife Leah.
Exhibitions and collections (selection)
Collections
- Yad Vashem , Jerusalem
- House of the Ghetto Fighters , Lochamej haGeta'ot
- Victoria and Albert Museum , London
- British Museum , London
- Imperial War Museum , London
- Magnes Museum, Berkeley
- Museum am Dom , Würzburg
Solo exhibitions
- Nora Gallery, Jerusalem (1954)
- Whippmann Gallery, Johannesburg (1955)
- Princeton University , Princeton (1973)
- Evangelical Education Center, Munich (1978)
- Portland City Hall , Portland, Oregon (1988)
- SOCA Gallery, Auckland (1995)
- Studio Osmo Visuri, Helsinki (1999)
- Gallery Spectrum , Frankfurt (2004)
- Willy Brandt House , Berlin (2004)
- Museum am Dom, Würzburg (2008)
- Czech Center, Prague (2011)
- Luragosaal am Domplatz, Passau (2015)
Two-person exhibitions
- Henny Handler, London (1987) with Naomi Blake
- Paulskirche , Frankfurt (1999) with Dan Richter-Levin (* 1926)
Group exhibitions
- Art Museum , Tel Aviv (1952) with Isidor Aschheim , Naftali Bezem , Nahum Gutman, Aviva Uri a. a.
- 45th Exposition de la Maison des Intellectuels, Paris (1962)
- National Museum of Modern Art , Tokyo (1962)
- Pratt Graphic Art Center, New York (1966)
- Art Galeria, Sao Paulo, (1967) with Mordechai Ardon, Moshe Castel, Jacob Pins, Anna Ticho, Yigael Tumarkin, et al
- Moderna Galerija Rijeka, Ljubljana (1968)
- Musée d'Art Moderne , Paris (1981)
- Imperial War Museum, London (2001)
- The Brooklyn Museum of Art , New York (2003)
- German Bundestag , Berlin (2015)
Publications
- Jehuda Bacon: With the curiosity of children. In: Hans Günther Adler , Hermann Langbein , Ella Lingens-Reiner (eds.): Auschwitz. Certificates and reports. 2., revised. Ed. Europäische Verlagsanstalt (EVA), Cologne / Frankfurt a. M. 1979, ISBN 3-434-00411-4 (first edition 1962).
- 6th edition, with a foreword to the edition history by Katharina Stengel (= series of publications. Vol. 1520). Federal Agency for Civic Education (BpB), Bonn 2014, ISBN 978-3-8389-0520-4 , pp. 123–126.
By and with Jehuda Bacon
- Manfred Köhnlein: The Sermon on the Mount . Stuttgart 2005, ISBN 3-17-018879-8 ; 2nd ed. 2011, ISBN 978-3-17-022140-6 (with drawings by J. Bacon).
- Manfred Köhnlein: parables of Jesus . Visions of a better world. Stuttgart 2008, ISBN 978-3-17-020569-7 (with drawings by J. Bacon).
- Manfred Köhnlein: Miracles of Jesus . Protest and hope stories. Stuttgart 2010, ISBN 978-3-17-020980-0 (with drawings by J. Bacon).
- Michael Koller, Jürgen Lenssen , Jens Oertel: Exhibition Jehuda Bacon. ... who wanders on with life. Exhibition in the Museum am Dom Würzburg from March 15 to May 12, 2008. Catalog ed .: Michael Koller, Wolfgang Schneider. Edited by the Art Department of the Diocese of Würzburg, Würzburg 2008, ISBN 978-3-9804672-8-5 .
- Rose Foreigner : The Dark Miracle. Text and image selection and ed. by Oliver Kohler. Presence Gallery, Hünstelden 2003, ISBN 978-3-87630-521-9 (drawings by J. Bacon).
- Jehuda Bacon, Manfred Lütz : “As long as we live, we have to choose.” Life after Auschwitz. Gütersloher Verlagshaus, Gütersloh 2016, ISBN 978-3-579-07089-6 ("Manfred Lütz in conversation with the Jewish concentration camp survivor and artist Jehuda Bacon. [...] Finding meaning in suffering: the moving legacy of an Auschwitz survivor") .
About Yehuda Bacon
- Thomas Gonschior, Christa Spannbauer : Courage to live. The message of the survivors from Auschwitz. Europe, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-944305-57-8 .
Movie
- Courage to Live - The Message from the Auschwitz Survivors. 2013, authors: Christa Spannbauer and Thomas Gonschior.
Web links
- Yehuda Bacon website. In: yehudabacon.net
- Friends of the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design Jerusalem in Germany V. ( Memento from August 30, 2017 in the Internet Archive ). In: freundeskreis-bezalel.de (Yehuda and Leah Bacon Fellowship)
- Bacon, Yehuda. In: ghetto-theresienstadt.info. Theresienstadt 1941–1945 - A reference work
- I'm Jude Bacon on Vimeo
Online articles
- Hanna White: 1945: 'It was a miracle to leave Auschwitz'. In: (Interview with his daughter, BBC journalist Hanna White at the end of 1945)
- They raised their thumbs. In: Friday . February 4, 2005, accessed on October 10, 2016 ( Matthias Bertsch in conversation with Jehuda Bacon)
- A contemporary witness interview with the Israeli painter and Auschwitz survivor Jehuda Bacon: "My pictures saved me". In: haGalil onLine. September 5, 2004, accessed October 10, 2016
- How life becomes strength. Survivors of the Holocaust report ( Memento from February 10, 2013. In: 3sat . Scobel in the Internet Archive ). January 12, 2012, accessed on October 10, 2016 (with Jehuda Bacon. - "Holocaust survivors show that despite the horror experienced, it is possible to have a life-affirming attitude. Gert Scobel and his guests investigate the question of how it is People can succeed in preserving their dignity despite unspeakable degradation and unspeakable suffering. ")
- Shoah. A divine spark - also in Auschwitz? In: Deutschlandfunk . Series of broadcasts day after day. October 10, 2016, accessed on October 10, 2016 (full text: Manfred Lütz in conversation with Christiane Florin; audio: mp3; 21.7 MB; 23:08 min ; memento from October 11, 2016 in the Internet Archive ).
Online exhibitions
- From Our Art Museum. Yehuda Bacon ( Memento from September 30, 2012 in the Internet Archive ). In:yadvashem.org,accessed on October 10, 2016 (English; Jehuda Bacon in the exhibitions at the Yad Vashem Memorial, Jerusalem; with a drawing: In Memory of the Czech Transport to the Gas Chambers, 1945, Charcoal on paper[Im Gedenken to the transport in the Czech Republic to the gas chambers,1945, charcoal on paper]), accessed on October 10, 2016.
- Special exhibition “Virtues of Memory. Six Decades of Holocaust Survivor's Creativity ”. In: Yad Vashem (English)
- Art by Jude Bacon. (No longer available online.) In: praesenz-kunst-und-buch.de. Presence-Verlag , formerly in the original ; accessed on October 8, 2018 (presence gallery; mementos not relevant). ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )
- Search for the works of Yehuda Bacon. In: praesenz-verlag.com. Presence Medien & Verlag, accessed on October 8, 2018 .
- Profile of Jehuda Bacon ( Memento from March 5, 2012 in the Internet Archive ). In: Holocaust and Art. Pp. 78–83. In: reelingwrithing.com (English; PDF; 2.6 MB), accessed on October 10, 2016.
Individual evidence
- ^ German Embassy in Tel Aviv: Yehuda Bacon receives the Federal Cross of Merit ( Memento from March 2, 2013 in the Internet Archive ). In: tel-aviv.diplo.de. February 27, 2013, accessed October 10, 2016.
- ^ Exhibition in the Willy-Brandt-Haus: Jehuda Bacon - Das Antlitz. In: haGalil onLine . August 26, 2004, accessed October 10, 2016.
- ↑ From the publisher's report, quoted in n. DNB 1098321375 , accessed October 10, 2016.
- ^ Website for the film. In: mut-zum-leben-filmprojekt.org, accessed on October 10, 2016.
personal data | |
---|---|
SURNAME | Bacon, Yehuda |
BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Israeli artist |
DATE OF BIRTH | July 28, 1929 |
PLACE OF BIRTH | Ostrava |