Documentation of Persecuted Jewish Artists

As part of its goal to rescue forgotten voices and cultural contributions of Holocaust victims, JDCRP is retrieving and listing information about the lives of Jewish visual artists persecuted during the Nazi era. Many of them made a significant contribution to artistic milieus throughout Europe during careers forcibly abbreviated through persecution, flight, and deportation. Numerous Jewish artists perished in the Holocaust, while the lives and art of those who survived was ineluctably changed by their traumatic experiences. In the tumultuous circumstances of persecution and war, catalogs of their works were rarely created. Many of the objects disappeared, were stolen, or destroyed. Often it is the records of Nazi looting that provide the only existing information on their works.

The Jewish Digital Cultural Recovery Project Foundation has launched a project to document the life and artistic works of these persecuted Jewish artists, creating a virtual reconstruction of a once vibrant artistic culture. The project centralizes and collects information from numerous countries, building on existing databases and compiling information from multiple sources, including archives, bibliographies, oral history, and museums. The “Documentation of Persecuted Jewish Artists” reconstructs the lives of these artists, thereby countering the attempt by the Nazis and their collaborators to obliterate their memory and artistic legacy.

The thriving cultural world of European art attracted numerous Jewish artists who crisscrossed the continent to study and work, enriching the scene themselves. This compilation enables for the first time a significantly broader understanding of the importance of Jewish contributions to European nineteenth- and early twentieth-century visual arts.

At a later stage, the JDCRP Foundation will promote research on various other branches of the arts, to recapture the biographies and legacies of additional Jewish artists, reintegrating their contributions both into Jewish and European cultural history of the period.

Support from the David Berg Foundation for the initial research and development of the list is gratefully acknowledged, as is support for a second phase of enhancement and expansion of the list from the German Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media (BKM) and the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (Claims Conference), sponsored by the Foundation “Remembrance, Responsibility and Future (EVZ) and supported by the German Federal Ministry of Finance (BMF). Please note that the following registry Documenting Persecuted Jewish Artists’ is an ongoing research project. We are appreciative of suggestions made regarding adjustments to entries, as well as additional information not yet on the list. 

Research on the project has been carried out by the following research staff:

Ariela Braunschweig, Dr. Sigalit Meidler-Waks

Inquiries, corrections, and suggestions may be sent to: info@jdcrp.org.

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last updated May 2025