Sources available online now cover all published volumes—including the biblical (through 332 BCE) and early modern to contemporary periods (1500–2005). Sign up here for free access and updates.
The Mutilated
Yankl Adler
1942–1943
Image
Please login or register for free access to Posen Library
The painter Yankl (also Jankel) Adler was born in Tuszyn (now in Poland) into a Hasidic family. He studied engraving in Łódź in 1913 and received further training in Germany. He later moved back to Łódź and helped to launch the Yung-yidish cultural movement, championing the themes and stylistic features of German expressionism. In 1920, he moved back to Germany, aligning himself with the left-wing avantgarde. His pictures from the Weimar period include no Jewish references. He lived in France from 1933 to 1940 and then fought with the Polish Free Army before being evacuated to Scotland in 1941. He eventually moved to London. He returned to painting Jewish themes in the 1940s, and his work frequently registers the suffering of European Jewry during the Nazi years.
An expression of grief and an elegy to the death and destruction that war brings, this painting dates to the start of World War II, when Feibusch anticipated the coming devastation, drawing on his own…
The identity of the sitter for Portrait of Court Jew with Ring is unknown. It is possible that the man in the picture is Jost Liebmann (also known as Juda Berlin), a Court Jew and jeweler in Berlin…
“You come from Poland, Monsieur David . . . ?”
“Davidovich.”
Lévy, his host, looking with desperation at the traveling salesman, supplied the name. Still sweating from fear, Lévy was now sweating for…