Jerzy Adam Brandhuber

Jerzy Adam Brandhuber (born October 23, 1897 in Kraków , † June 19, 1981 in Oświęcim ) was a Polish painter and survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp .

Career

In 1924 he completed his painting studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow . There he was in the master classes of Mehoffer , Malczewski and Dębicki. He then worked in Jasło as a drawing teacher at the Stanisław Leszczyński High School.

He was arrested in 1942 for “helping Jews” and was sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp on January 14, 1943 .

Under the inmate number 87112 he was assigned to the work detail "clothing store", where he had to write the number that was used to identify the inmates. After an evacuation march / death march , he came to Sachsenhausen in October 1944 before he was transferred to the Heinkel-Werke Oranienburg sub - camp. After his liberation on May 3, 1945, he lived in Lübeck for another year and then returned to Krakow , where he created the cycle Vergierter Erde , which deals with his memories of the Auschwitz concentration camp. The valuable thing about these pictures is that they were made immediately after the Second World War.

At an exhibition of his works in Katowice in 1947 , he met the director of the Auschwitz Memorial and Museum , Tadeusz Wąsowicz , and was persuaded by him to work in the museum. He was first head of the artistic department, then he headed the documentation department and finally he was head of the camp history department. On May 20, 1952, he initiated the establishment of a scientific group to determine the “exact number of victims of Auschwitz”.

Due to the housing shortage in Oświęcim and in Poland in general, he was given a “service flat ”, i.e. H. a small room without a kitchen, in the memorial, which he lived in until his death.

In 1946 Jerzy Adam Brandhuber created Forgotten Earth, a cycle of drawings that deals with his memories of Auschwitz. The pictures show life in the camp more in a symbolic than a documentary way, so most people lack concrete faces. Towards the end of his life he mainly painted nudes, portraits and landscapes.

swell

• Biographical information in the exhibition Forgotten Earth - Auschwitz Pictures from the German Resistance Memorial Center
• Jerzy Adam Brandhuber: It was 1947
• Franciszek Piper: Evenings with the professor