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Posters from Ghetto Theresienstadt

 Collection
Identifier: AR 6585

Abstract

Photographs of 71 posters, painted by Eli Erich Leskley (formerly Lichtblau) in Theresienstadt, 1942-1945.

Dates

  • [after 1945]

Language of Materials

This collection is in German and English with some Czech.

Use Restrictions

There may be some restrictions on the use of the collection. For more information, contact:

Leo Baeck Institute, Center for Jewish History, 15 West 16th Street, New York, NY 10011

email: http://www.lbi.org/ask

The original posters are held by the Martyr’s Memorial and Museum of the Holocaust in Los Angeles.

Biographical Note

Eli Leskly was born as Erich Lichtblau in Hrusov (Hruschau), Czechoslovakia (then Austria-Hungary) in 1911. He trained as a commercial designer and eventually settled with his wife, Else, in the town of Pisek. In November 1942, they were deported to the Theresienstadt (Terezin) Ghetto, where he worked for the camp’s Technical Department as a painter. From 1942 to 1945 he also created clandestinely a pictorial ghetto-diary full of observed day-to-day scenes of ghetto life. Fearful of SS searches, he destroyed many of his paintings, especially the captions to the watercolors, but his wife Else managed to salvage many fragments, by hiding them. After Liberation in 1945, he put all the fragments of the pictures together and wrote new headlines. Erich and Else Lichtblau emigrated to Israel, where he changed his name in the 1960s to Eli Leskly, but it took until the late 1970s to organize the first public exhibition of his artwork from Theresienstadt, when he wrote explanatory notes for the pictures.

Extent

71 Folders

Related Material

See also the book by the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust, ’They shall be counted : the Theresienstadt ghetto art of Erich Lichtblau-Leskly’, Los Angeles, c2010 at the YIVO-Library, call number 000131423.

Title
Inventory of the Posters from Ghetto Theresienstadt, circa 1945 AR 6585
Status
Completed
Date
© 2009
Language of description
English
Script of description
Latin
Language of description note
The inventory is in English.

Repository Details

Part of the Leo Baeck Institute Repository

Contact:
15 West 16th Street
New York NY 10011 United States