Alfred Kantor (1923–2003)

Alfred Kantor was born to a Jewish family in Prague, Czechoslovakia. His parents were Olga and Leo Lev Kantor, and he had half-siblings Hans Kantor and Mimi Binko. In 1941, he had completed the first year of a two-year commercial art course at the Rottner School of Advertising Art when he and the other Jews at the school were expelled. Soon afterwards, he was deported to the Terezín (Theresienstadt) concentration camp. There he made numerous paintings depicting daily life. He illustrated the fake new shops and fresh food set up in the "model ghetto" by the Nazis to mislead the International Red Cross. He was transferred to the death camp at Auschwitz where, despite the fact that art was totally prohibited. Kantor managed to obtain a watercolor set from a camp physician. In 1944, he was sent to help rebuild a German synthetic-fuel plant at the Schwarzheide concentration camp. He continued to draw and paint surreptitiously, while working grueling shifts. In April 1945, with the Allies approaching, Kantor and the 1,000 other prisoners were sent on a death march back to Terezín; he was one of only 175 who survived. After World War II ended, he went to a displaced persons camp in Deggendorf, Bavaria, where he assembled his rescued drawings and images he recreated from memory into a sketchbook and portfolio. He reached the USA in 1947 and was drafted into the Army. Following his discharge, he completed an art school degree and became a commercial artist in New York City. He married Ingeborg, a fellow survivor, with whom he had two children. In 1971, he published The Book of Alfred Kantor, containing 127 sketches and paintings he had made in the three concentration camps, depicting the everyday life as well as the horrors. A second edition was published in 1987.