Posters from Ghetto Theresienstadt
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
- Bohušovice nad Ohří (Czech Republic)
- Census records
- Collaborationists
- Concentration camps
- Diseases
- Forced labor
- Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
- Hunger
- Internal security
- Jewish artists
- Loewenstein, Karl
- Mandler, Robert, 1896-1944
- Martyrs Memorial and Museum of the Holocaust
- Outhouses
- Photographs
- Physician and patient
- Posters
- Prisoners in art
- Scarcity
- Terezín (Ústecký kraj, Czech Republic)
- Theft
- Theresienstadt (Concentration camp)
- Zionists
- 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
