BeGey HaHarigah [In the Valley of Slaughter], Drawings by Leah Grundig. Tel Aviv: "Haaretz" Press, 1944.
Album of drawings depicting the horrors of the Holocaust.
Leah Grundig (1906-1977), Dresden-born artist, member of the German Communist Party, married to the German painter Hans Grundig. The two were interned in concentration camps on account of their Communist political views, but Leah managed to escape Europe and reach the shores of Palestine in 1940 on board the illegal immigrant ship SS Pacific. The series "In the Valley of Slaughter" – among her best-known works – was created in 1942-43. In her words, "It was as if the task had been imposed on me. I was driven to portray this. I was obligated to cry out on behalf of those whose voices had been strangled." Grundig was also known for the political cartoons she sketched for the newspaper of the Communist Party of Palestine, as well as for her landscapes, and for works inspired by her experience of life on a kibbutz. In the late 1940s, once she had discovered that her husband Hans had survived the war and the death camps, she left Israel and returned to Germany, leaving a significant number of works behind.
[1] f., [9] plates (printed on both sides), [1] f., 34X25 cm. Good condition. Stains, mostly to binding. Book in its original binding, entirely bound in new, additional binding. Wear to edges of original binding.
Literature: "Von Dresden nach Tel Aviv: Lea Grundig: 1933-1948." Exhibition catalogue, The Yigal Pressler Private Museum, Tel Aviv. Editor: Gideon Ofrat. Tel Aviv, 2014. Hebrew and German.