Gallery Exhibition: Joseph Bau - Artist, Counterfeiter and Mossad Agent

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Levis JCC

Joseph Bau

Featured Special Guest: Eli Bartov will be retelling Bau’s incredible story as a multimedia presentation. Bartov, is a retired IDF and lectures on the Jewish influence on Far East and Israeli intelligence.

Exhibition runs through February 8

Over 40 pieces of Joseph Bau's art including oil paintings, prints and lithographs will be on display for the first time in Florida.

While living in the Krakow Ghetto, Joesph Bau kept his family alive by forging papers for food. He was one of the Jews saved by Oskar Schinder. In 1950 him and his family moved to Israel penniless, where he then led a double life as animator while he secretly worked with the Mossad. Born in Poland in 1920, Joseph Bau, education was interrupted by WWII, when he was taken to a concentration camp. During his internment, Bau never lost his spark of humanity and hope. He fell in love with another inmate, Rebecca, whom he married in the camp despite the prohibition by Germans. This unique wedding is featured in Spielberg’s film “Schindler’s List”.

The art saved his life. His access to pens and inks allowed him to forge documents and identity papers for people who managed to escape the camps. In this way, he saved hundreds of people. After several concentration camps transfers, he ended up in the Schindler’s camp where he stayed till the end of the war. After the war and graduating from the University of Plastic Arts in Krakow, Bau emmigrated to Israel with his wife and three-year-old daughter. In Israel he was recruited by the secret service. In 1956 Bau opened his own studio in Tel-Aviv and enriched its walls with his paintings, graphic art as well as the animation equipment which he built himself. His works have been shown in the USA, Canada, Poland and Spain. Since his death in 2002, his two daughters, have converted his studio into a museum. The studio has been under threat of closing.