Yehuda Bacon

Yehuda Bacon is an Israeli artist and Holocaust survivor whose drawings depict what he saw in the Nazi camps.

born 1929Drawings of the Nazi campsTestimony at the Eichmann trialTeaching art at Bezalel

Born: 28 July 1929, Moravská Ostrava
Occupation: painter, university teacher, illustrator, printmaker
Education: New Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts, Central School of Art and Design, Beaux-Arts de Paris

Yehuda Bacon was born in 1929 in Moravská Ostrava

Yehuda Bacon was born on July 28, 1929, in Ostrava, Czechoslovakia, to a Jewish family. His father owned a leather factory. During the Holocaust he was deported to Theresienstadt, where he studied with artists and took part in the children's opera Brundibár.

In 1943 he was sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where boys like him were used for transport work in the camp. His father was murdered there, and his mother and sister died in Stutthof. After death marches to Mauthausen and Gunskirchen, he was freed on May 5, 1945.

After recovering, he lived in a children's home near Prague run by educator Přemysl Pitter, where writer H.G. Adler also worked. In 1946 he immigrated to Israel and settled in Jerusalem. He studied at Bezalel, then in London and Paris.

In 1959 he began teaching graphic art and drawing at Bezalel. His drawings served as evidence in trials of Nazi criminals, and he testified at the Eichmann trial in 1961. His work is held by Yad Vashem, the Israel Museum and museums in London.

He received the Mordecai Ish Shalom Lifetime Achievement Award in 2010 and a German Order of Merit cross in 2012. He lives in the Katamon neighborhood of Jerusalem.