Joseph Bau

Joseph Bau was born in 1920 in Kraków

Bau was born in 1920 in Kraków to a middle-class, non-religious Jewish family. He went to a non-Jewish primary school and later to a Jewish high school because of Poland's race laws. He then trained as a graphic artist in Kraków, until World War II cut his studies short.

He was held in the Kraków Ghetto and from late 1942 in the Płaszów camp, where the Germans made him draw signs, maps and plans. In secret he forged papers for people escaping the camp and made a tiny illustrated book of his poems. There he met Rebecca Tennenbaum, and they married in secret in the women's barracks.

Rebecca put his name on Schindler's list in place of her own. After Gross-Rosen he reached Schindler's camp at Brünnlitz and stayed there until his release in 1945. After the war he found Rebecca, finished his art degree in Kraków and worked as an illustrator and caricaturist for Polish papers.

In 1950 he moved to Israel with his wife and daughter Hadassah. He worked as a graphic artist in Haifa and for the government, made his own animated films, and was recruited to the Mossad, where he used his forgery skills.

Rebecca died in 1997, and his memoir came out in 1998. He was nominated for the Israel Prize that year. Bau died in Tel Aviv in 2002, and his studio there became a museum of his work.