Henryk Hechtkopf

Henryk Hechtkopf was born in 1910 in Warsaw

Hechtkopf was born in Warsaw in 1910 to a Jewish family. His father was a merchant and his mother was a midwife.

He attended the Hebrew Gymnasium Chanoch and then earned a law degree at Warsaw University. He became the first Jewish jurist to appear at the Polish Supreme Court. His art was shown in exhibitions of the Jewish Society for Promotion of Art, and he worked on films, including Poland's first animated film.

When World War II began, he retreated east with the Polish army into the Soviet Union, where he was held in forced labor camps. After the war he learned that his whole family had been killed in the Holocaust. He drew the ruins of Warsaw and its ghetto, and Yad Vashem bought 24 of these works.

He turned down a post as a judge and moved to Łódź, where he met his wife and headed a Jewish artists' society. He taught film at the Łódź Film School and codirected the film Forbidden Melodies with Jan Batory. In 1949 he designed a Polish stamp on the Holocaust.

In 1957 he moved to Israel and settled in Bat Yam, where he lived for the rest of his life. He worked as a painter and book illustrator and held many exhibitions. His wife died in 1989, and he died in 2004.