us-005578-irn520001-irn521640
type: RecordSet
archival history: The drawing was acquired by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2002.
biographical history: Leo Haas was born on April 15, 1901, in Opava, Czechoslovakia, Austro-Hungary (now Czech Republic), formerly Troppau, an ethnic German region in Silesia. Leo was the oldest of four children in a Jewish family. He received art training while a youth. In 1919, Haas moved to Karlsruhe, Germany, to attend the Art Academy. He supported himself by working as a musician in local bars and by selling paintings. In 1922, he moved to Berlin where he studied with Emil Orlik and Wilhelm Jäckel. He absorbed the bold, dramatic styles of the Expressionist and Modernist movements flourishing in the city. He closely studied the work of graphic artists such as Goya and Toulouse-Lautrec in his 1923 travels in France. In 1925, he moved to Vienna, Austria, and established himself as a portraitist and newspaper caricaturist. In 1926, Haas returned to Opava, where he continued his career as painter and graphic artist, and set up a lithography studio. He also designed sets for a local theater troupe. Haas married Sophie Hermann in 1929. He was active in the Communist Party and several artist’s cooperatives. In the fall of 1938, Nazi Germany annexed the Sudetenland border of Czechoslovakia, which included Opava. Antisemitism surged after the takeover. Haas’s work was denounced as degenerate. After the Kristallnacht pogrom on early November, he and his wife moved to Ostrava to live with her parents. In March 1939, Germany annexed the provinces of Bohemia and Moravia. German allies took over other regions and Czechoslovakia ceased to exist. There were widespread arrests of Jews, Communists, and prominent community members. In June, Jews were barred from most economic activity and property was confiscated. That September, Germany invaded Poland, the start of the Second World War. Haas was arrested for being a Communist and sent to Nisko labor camp near Lublin in German occupied Poland, where he drove supply wagons. He made portraits of SS camp personnel, in exchange for extra food and art suppl…
physical characteristics and technical requirements: Drawing in black ink and wash on torn, wrinkled watercolor paper of male prisoners walking around an inmate hanged from a wooden scaffold. The circling rows of closely arranged prisoners extends so far in the distance that they can not be seen clearly. In the foreground is a row of men in left profile, bald, with grim, gaunt faces, wearing striped uniform pants, jackets with patches, sandals, and holding their caps in their left hands. A uniformed guard, smiling and smoking, hands on hips, stands near the swinging body. In the distance is a line of barracks, a stone wall with a tall guard tower, and a line of trees under a gray sky. Signed by the artist in the top right. back, center, pencil and blue pencil : Ostrov(?) 6 / 46 (crossed out) / 43.5 x 28cm / 10 bottom, red marker : Abschreckung (Mauthausen) 1945
conditions of access: No restrictions on access
conditions of use: No restrictions on use
date: approximately 1945 February
has or had holder: us-005578
has or had identifier: 1
has or had some members with language: deu
has or had subject: 570
has record set type: Item
identifier: irn521640
is or was included in: us-005578-irn520001
record resource extent: overall: Height: 18.875 inches (47.943 cm) | Width: 12.500 inches (31.75 cm)
results or resulted from: 1
scope and content: Ink and wash drawing by Leo Haas of Mauthausen concentration camp inmates being marched past a hanging. Haas, a Czech Jewish artist, was arrested in 1939 in Ostrava in German occupied Czechoslovakia for being a Communist. He was deported to Nisko labor camp in German occupied Poland, returned in April 1940, and assigned to forced labor. In August 1942, he was arrested for smuggling and, with his family, sent to Theresienstadt ghetto-labor camp. He and a few other artists secretly documented the horrendous conditions of camp life. In summer 1944, they were accused of smuggling their 'gruesome' work out of the camp and jailed and tortured in the Small Fortress. In October, Haas and Bedrich Fritta were deported to Auschwitz, where Fritta soon died. A month later, Haas was sent to Sachsenhausen to work in the counterfeiting unit. In February 1945, he was transported to Mauthausen and then Ebensee where he was liberated on May 6 by US troops.
title: Deterrence, Mauthausen, 1945 Leo Haas drawing of concentration camp inmates witnessing a hanging