Yehuda Bacon

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Yehuda Bacon 2008

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.

In Yad Vashem: Reproduction of a picture by Jehuda Bacon

Exhibitions and collections (selection)

Collections

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

Group exhibitions

Publications

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

Movie

  • Courage to Live - The Message from the Auschwitz Survivors. 2013, authors: Christa Spannbauer and Thomas Gonschior.

Web links

Online articles

Online exhibitions

Individual evidence

  1. ^ 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.
  2. ^ Exhibition in the Willy-Brandt-Haus: Jehuda Bacon - Das Antlitz. In: haGalil onLine . August 26, 2004, accessed October 10, 2016.
  3. ↑ From the publisher's report, quoted in n. DNB 1098321375 , accessed October 10, 2016.
  4. ^ 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