Gertrud Kauders (1883 — 1942) was a talented Jewish-Czech artist who was murdered by the Nazis in the Majdanek concentration camp. Her family had pleaded with her to leave Czechoslovakia early on, but she refused. It would prove to be a fatal mistake. Kauders was almost lost to history until recently, when some 700 of her paintings and sketches (without frames) were discovered secreted in the walls of a Prague house. During the war, it belonged to a non-Jewish friend and fellow student of hers. Now the search is on to find a suitable venue in which to display her work.
Quote: “In 1939, the year that the Nazis invaded the Czech provinces of Bohemia and Moravia, Kauders asked her classmate, the Russian-born Natalie Jahudkova, to hide her life’s work. Since Jahudkova’s house was under construction, it was relatively easy to slip the paintings into the walls. The Nazis deported Kauders from Prague in 1942 to the nearby Theresienstadt concentration camp, and from there to the Majdanek concentration camp in Poland, where she was murdered.”
Sources: Wikipedia, The Jewish News of Northern California
Learn more about Gertrud Kauders. >>
Watch “Murdered Jewish Painter’s Work Found Hidden In Prague House” [4:47]. >>
See more examples of Gertrud Kauders’ artwork. >>
Read “Hidden for decades, hundreds of Holocaust-era paintings need a new home” >>
Photo: European Jewish Congress
Amazing Jews
In Celebration of the Jewish People
