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concentration camp in Yugoslavia. He managed
to escape and made his way to Budapest, where
he hid in the cellars of the Swiss Legation
until the arrival of the Red Army. In 1945 he
commenced his studies in Architecture at
the Budapest University of Technology and
Economics. In the next year he attempted to
immigrate to Palestine (Eretz-Israel) aboard the
“Knesset Israel”. The boat was intercepted by
British forces and the refugees were deported
to detention camps in Cyprus. There, he had his
first exhibition. In 1947 he received permission
to immigrate to Israel as part of a group. This
group later founded the Gaaton Kibbutz (1948).
He remained a Kibbutz member until his death.
Shmuel Katz was one of the most important
and well-known graphic artists, illustrators
and caricaturists in Israel. Throughout his life
he worked as an artist and a graphic editor of
daily and weekly newspapers and illustrated
hundreds of books. He has exhibited his
work not only in Israel but also abroad and
has been awarded many prizes. In 2013, the
Ein Harod Museum of Art in Israel organised
a retrospective exhibition of his work titled
“Shmuel Katz: Stylus Days”.
His artistic activity in the Detention Camps
Katz was the most prolific chronicler of the
“summer camps” in Cyprus, with his paintings
in colour, chalk and pencil, depicting the grind of
daily life there. Every corner of the tents, every
water tank and every piece of garbage could
attract his attention and was depictedmeticulously
and skilfully. Those paintings that depicted the
human figure were executed in a humorous and
light-hearted way, sometimes bordering on the
caricature. Katz generally demonstrates in his
work exceptional virtuosity and craftsmanship.
A watercolour displaying panoramically a field
of monotonous, khaki-coloured tents draws the
viewer’s attention. These tents replace in terms
the lacking figures, echoing the sorrow among the
detainees without directly depicting them. In the
background, one notices the inviting blue sea –
suggesting this to be a sea of freedom and hope.
Shraga Weil (1918-2009)
Painter, Sculptor, Graphic Artist
Shraga Weil was born in Czechoslovakia in 1918
to Jewish parents. In 1931, the family moved
to Bratislava and in 1937 he began studying
art in Prague. He spent World War Two in
Budapest, engaging in forging documents for
the resistance. He was imprisoned there between
the years 1943-44. In 1947 he tried to immigrate
to Palestine (Eretz-Israel) aboard the refugee
ship «Theodore Herzl», carrying 2,500 Jewish
refugees. Just opposite the shores of Haifa the ship
was intercepted by the British Navy and many of
its passengers were wounded. The refugees were
consequently transported in metal cages aboard
British battleships to the port of Famagusta and
from there on to the “winter camps” in Dhekelia-
Xylotymbou. In the Detention Camp, Shraga Weil
produced artworks that mainly depicted life in
the camps, and also taught the detained youth art.
Weil, alongside Grazovski and others, was one of
the initiators of the art exhibition which took place
first in the Cyprus camps in October 1947, then in
Tel Aviv (1948) and now, many years later, back in
Cyprus. He later immigrated to Israel and joined the
Ha’Ogen Kibbutz. During his life, he engaged in
many different art disciplines; illustration, collage,
book cover design, silk-screen printing, linocut,
oil painting and sculpture. In the 60s and 70s, he
also created some architectural designs, such as the
main entrance of the Knesset (Israeli Parliament),
and the doors at the Israeli President’s residence
in Jerusalem. His work has been exhibited both in
Israel and abroad, winning a number of prizes. In
2010, an exhibition of his work took place in Tel
Aviv.
His artistic activity in the Detention Camps
The work Weil created in Cyprus was influenced
largely by Czech art and Central European art in
general. This he combined with grotesque and
sharp humour, as well as with political awareness.
Using black ink and chalk or black and white
watercolours on paper, he gave his drawings a
most contrasting character. In his works presented
at the exhibition, one notices the attempt to assert
that life in the camps was a continuation of life in
the Nazi concentration camps and that their set-
up was meant to inflict even more injustice on
the Holocaust survivors. Especially notable is a
drawing where two children are planting a seed
in the garden beds around the black, tin barracks.
Here, notions of hope for freedom and the
continuity of life for the Jewish people - even in
captivity - are tangible. In another drawing, a small
child is depicted with a sorrowful look and an
adult face, short of stature, dressed in a coat many
sizes too big for him. He is standing confused
next to his backpack within the entanglement of
the frightening barbed wire fences that surround
him from all sides.
Naftali Bezem (b. 1924)
Artist & the Printmaking workshops organised
in the Detention Camps
Bezemwas born in the city ofAachen inGermany.
As a young boy he immigrated to Palestine (Eretz-
Israel) in 1939, without his family, as part of a
youth group, just two weeks before the outbreak
of World War Two. Both his parents stayed
behind and perished in Auschwitz in 1943. His
talent for art was manifested early in his life; he
completed art studies at the Bezalel Academy of
Arts and Design (est. 1906) in Jerusalem. While
there he met his future wife, Hannah. With her
he was sent in 1947 to the Detention Camps in
Cyprus, as an art teacher there. His achievements
in painting and drawing were exceptional, while
at the same time the range of subjects that he
dealt with shifted easily between the private and
the public, between the social and the political
and between the diaspora and the land the
Israeli. Bezem is an important artist, who made
significant contributions imaging the new born
Israeli State. He was one of the most prominent
artists of his generation. He lives in Tel Aviv
and still paints. His art revolves around notions
of Family, Holocaust remembrances, settling the
land of Israel and social aspects of life in Israel.
During his lifetime, he received prestigious
prizes. He has exhibited his work both in Israel
and abroad. One of his well-known works is the
cast aluminium bas relief mural
From Holocaust
to Rebirth
(1974) at the Yad Vashem - Jerusalem.
In December 2012, a retrospective exhibition
commemorating his work was inaugurated at the
Tel-Aviv Museum of Art.
The Summer Camp - Shmuel Katz - 1947 - watercolour on paper
