Bidspirit auction | ”Arbeit Macht Frei” – Drawings

”Arbeit Macht Frei” – Drawings of the Horrors of the Holocaust by František Reichentál – Limited Edition - Arbeit Macht Frei – ”Work Sets You Free” – Illustrations by František Reichentál – Bratislava, 1946 – Limited edition of 5,000 copies. Published by the Central Union of Slovakian Jews. English and Slovak. Rare. Sixteen illustrations documenting harrowing scenes from the ghettos and death camps, by the Jewish-Slovak artist František Reichentál (born 1895). The album was published about a year after the liberation, in Reichentál’s distinctive Expressionist style. The title “Arbeit macht frei” – “Work Sets You Free” – is taken from the infamous sign the Nazis placed above the entrance gate to Auschwitz. The booklet contains 16 harsh illustrations – briefly captioned – depicting the horrors suffered by the Jews during the Holocaust: deportation, concentration camps, starvation, death, and humiliation. Reichentál was among the first to depict the grim scene of Jews crammed into the death trains, as well as the suffocating moments inside the gas chambers. Reichentál exhibited extensively in Germany and Eastern Europe until 1939, when German forces occupied Slovakia and began the mass deportation of the local Jewish population. He managed to evade Nazi persecution, but many members of his family perished in the camps. After the war, he returned to Czechoslovakia, and eventually emigrated to the United States in 1950, where he continued to create and exhibit his work until his death in 1971. [4] pages, [16] plates, [4] pages, 35 cm. Bound with string. A handsome copy in very good condition.