Terezin, 1945
Watercolor and pencil on paper
22 x 30 cm
Gift of Mr. Jaroslav Šubrt in memory of his late wife Mrs. Inge Šubrt
Alfred Neumann was born in Vienna and raised in Brno. Enlisted in the Austro-Hungarian Army and served in World War I. In 1922, he returned to Vienna, where he studied architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts. In 1925 he moved to Paris where he worked under the architect August Perret. In 1936 he returned to Brno and later moved to Prague. In 1943 he was arrested in Prague, and in February 1945 he was deported to the Terezin Ghetto. After the liberation, Neumann returned to Brno and in 1949 immigrated to Israel. He was appointed Assistant Professor and later Dean of the Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning at the Technion. In 1965, he moved to Québec City, Canada, to teach at Laval University. He died there, of disease, a few years later.
On 7 May 1945, one day before the entry of the Red Army to Terezin and two days after the departure of the German commandant Rahm from the ghetto, Neumann paints a view of his living quarters. This peaceful quotidian landscape reveals his longing to return to a serene normative life.
