Remembering the work of joseph bau exhibitions

A retrospective exhibition of the work of Joseph Bau, known as the “Disney of Israel,” is on display until April 16 at The Gallery of the Park Avenue Synagogue on Madison Avenue at 87th Street.

The artist, who was portrayed in Steven Spielberg’s iconic film “Schindler’s List,” was prolific: graphc artist, painter, animator, film maker, author, and poet.

Only after the atist’s death in 2002 was it revealed that Bau was the creator of documents used in several high-profile international covert operations. Hadasa Bau, the artist’s daughter, says he was “a man with many secrets,” working as a graphic artist for Israel’s secret service, the Mossad, for decades. Among the documentation he created were the papers used to extract Adolf Eichmann out of Argentina and the documents used by “our man in Damascus” Eli Cohen used to establish his identity as a Syrian businessman in the early 1960’s.

Bau is the author of seven books. His best known is “Dear God Have You Ever Gone Hungry,” a Holocaust memoir, the first such text to be published in Chinese, and available in English, Hebrew, Polish, Spanish, and soon in Dutch.

Among the paintings on display is Bau’s portrait of Oscar Schindler, the only live portrait sitting of the Holocaust hero. The painting was created in Bau’s Tel Aviv studio during one of Schindler’s several visits to Israel. Schindler had saved the wooden art case which Bau used throughout the war and returned it to him. The originals of Bau’s Holocaust paintings had been hidden in a secret bottom in the case along with irreplacable family photograhs. In addition to these works - which have hung in the gallery of the United Nations -- aremore than two dozen examples of Bau’s series on the Hebrew language, his classic advertising images, stricking contemporary paintings and iconic graphics.

Bau remained an essential optomist. Even in the depths of the Holocaust in the midst of a concentration camp, he found reason for hope. During their internment in Płaszów, Joseph Bau and Rebecca Tennenbaum met and fell in love. The wedding depicted in the Spielberg movie, which took place February 13, 1944, was that of the young couple. The life-long love that began in the horrors of the concentration camp last almost five decades, until Rebecca’s death in 1997.

The exhibit opening preceeded a lecture tour by Hadasa Bau. She is the co-director of the Joseph Bau Museum in Tel Aviv, where she works with her sister Clila and has spoken to Christian, Jewish, Buddhist and secular audiences throughout the world. During her current tour, Bau is speaking at The Seventh Day Adventist Hope Church on East 87th Street, Nyack Christian College, The Center for Jewish History on 16th Street, and several area high schools.