Paintings of "Polish Kafka" Revealed in Israel

A Gestapo officer forced Jewish author and artist Bruno Schulz to paint fairy tale characters on the walls of a nursery in an occupied Polish village in 1941. A Nazi sergeant shot and killed Schulz a year later, and his colorful murals were forgotten for decades.

Israel's Holocaust museum presented Schulz's paintings on Friday, eight years after their discovery sparked a diplomatic row over their ownership.

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My father's family new Bruno Schulz quite well as they were assimilated Jews in Drohobycz. My late uncle Binyamin , himself an artist whose Polish name was also Bruno, used to talk a time he spent hiding with Schultz from a raid. Supposedly they both drew caricatures of some of the Nazis. Whether this is true or an attempt to hype his own work, who knows?

My grandfather, who opened a factory in the ghetto to keep Jews productive (ie making things for the Germans so they would not be killed) offered a position to Schultz. However, Schultz did not want to sully his hands with such work, as he had worked diligently to escape his family trade of cloth work.

Lest anyone think well of Schultz's one time patron, Felix Landau, don't. He wasn't just Gestapo; he was an Einsatzkommando squad leader. He also nearly beat my grandfather to death, when Landau's underlings raided the factory and found some children being sheltered in a surprise inspection. My father remembers it quite well, being a 9 year old hiding in the room next door.

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