Felix Nussbaum

Felix Nussbaum (1904-1944) was a German-Jewish painter of New Realism and victim of the Shoah. Nussbaum was born in Osnabrück, Germany, as the son of Rahel and Philipp Nussbaum. His father encouraged his son’s artwork passionately. During a scholarship in Rome in 1933 he witnessed Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda visiting and explaining that artists needed to promote heroism and the Aryan race. He realized the depth of the evil forces at hand. His partner, artist Felka Platek, was with him. They fled to Brussels where they experienced much turmoil but had productive years. In July 1944, two months before the liberation of Brussels, the Germans found them in their hiding place. Both died in Auschwitz on 9 August, 1944.