Max Plaček (1902–1944), Portrait of Bedřich Fritz Baum, Terezin Ghetto

Max Plaček (1902–1944), Portrait of Bedřich Fritz Baum (1889, Pilsen – 1944, Auschwitz-Birkenau), Terezin Ghetto, 1943

Pencil and colored pencil on paper

Collection of the Yad Vashem Art Museum, Jerusalem
Gift of Herman Weiss, courtesy of Dr. Stephen Barber, Canada

Max Plaček (1902, Kyjov, Moravia – 1944, Sachsenhausen), Prague, 1937

National Archives Czech Republic, Prague (P 2137/12)

Bedřich Fritz Baum (1889 – 1944), Pilsen

National Archives Czech Republic, Prague (B 789/3)

Bedřich Fritz Baum (1889 – 1944), Prague, 1939

National Archives Czech Republic, Prague (B 789/3)

Marie and Bedřich Fritz Baum

Bedřich Fritz Baum (1889 – 1944)

Bedřich Fritz Baum was born in Pilsen on 29 January 1889, to Therese Baumová (née Kraus) and Julius Baum. The youngest of four children, he suffered from disabilities resulting from polio. He married Marie (née Klein) in Pilsen in 1929, and the couple moved to Prague, where Fritz worked as a language teacher. In addition, he served as the head of the Eretz-Israel Office's students’ committee and gave lectures on modern literature and philosophy.
Marie died in Prague in 1942, and in July 1943, Baum was deported to the Terezin ghetto; his mother, brother and sisters had been deported there a year earlier. Apart from his sister Adele, who survived the war, his entire family was murdered.

In the ghetto, Baum gave lectures on Zionist topics. In October 1944, he was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where he was murdered.

The sitter commented:

“I have never seen myself as borrowing from life, only indebted to life. I have never asked what I receive from life, only what life receives from me.”

Max Plaček (1902 – 1944)

Born in Kyjov, Moravia. While studying law, Plaček began to work for an insurance company in Banská Bystrica and later in Prague, where he married Trude Pollak. Following the German occupation in 1939, he worked for the Prague Jewish community. In 1942, he was conscripted for forced labor for a short time on the farm of the widow of Reinhard Heydrich, governor of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, and in September he was transported to the Terezin ghetto. Over an eight-month period, he sketched over 500 humoristic portraits of leading public and cultural figures in the ghetto. He regularly noted the date, adding the sitter’s signature. In December 1943, he was transported to the "Family Camp" in Auschwitz-Birkenau, and in July 1944, deported to the Sachsenhausen camp, where he was murdered. His works were preserved by director of the ghetto's records and statistics unit Herman Weiss, who secretly collected documents and artwork in the Terezin ghetto.

Portrait of Bedřich Fritz Baum, 1943

by Max Plaček

Bedřich Fritz Baum (1889 – 1944)