FRANZ REISZ
Born
April 3, 1909 in Vienna, Austria; died March 1984 in New York
Background
Reisz, a Viennese
Jew, fled to Paris in 1938, the year of the Anschluß. There, he worked
as a commercial artist and book illustrator.
Arrest and Deportation to Auschwitz
Reisz was arrested in Paris in July 1941,
and then sent to internment camps Beaune-la-Rolande and Meslay-du-Maine from
September 1939 to May 1941. From mid-May 1941 to late June 1942, he was imprisoned at Pithiviers.
He filled several sketchbooks with details of daily life in the camps. June 27, 1942, he was deported to Auschwitz, where he was assigned
prisoner number 42447.
Work Assignments at Auschwitz
He worked in the
Schreibstuben (offices), where he
produced drawings for his friends and upon orders of the SS.
His profession was listed as draftsman.
Liberation and After
January 1945 with
the liquidation of Auschwitz, Reisz was evacuated first to Mauthausen and then
to Ebensee, where he was liberated. Shortly
thereafter, he convalesced at a hospital in France, where he completed numerous
watercolors and sketchbooks about his experiences at Auschwitz.
He then immigrated to the United States, where his wife had immigrated
before the war. Until his death in 1984, Reisz worked as an
illustrator in New York.
Bibliography:
Archives and
art collection of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in Oświęcim.
Goldmann,
Sybille and Myrah Adams Rösing. Kunst zum Überleben: Gezeichnet in
Milton, Sybil and Janet Blatter.
Art of the Holocaust. New York, 1981.
Stütz,
Marina, ed. Überleben und Widerstehen. Cologne, 1980.
Collections
Department of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC.