A forgotten archive of art school applications tells the stories of young Jews fleeing the Nazis

A new trove of research, based on rediscovered applications to Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, brings the lives of dozens of young Jews into focus as they sought safe haven in the 1930s and ’40s. From left: Applicants Alice Fall, Helmut Paskusz, Susanne Fall and Marie Ellinger. (Jerusalem Municipality Archive/Younes and Soraya Nazarian Library and Digital Archive at Bezalel/Yad Vashem via CNN Newsource)

For weeks, months and even years before World War II broke out in September 1939, many Jewish people in Germany and beyond became increasingly fearful for their lives and frantically sought out ways to flee.

Now, more than 80 years after the end of the war, an incredible trove of documents from a prestigious art school has been unearthed, containing photographs, detailed letters and samples of artworks from nearly 100 applicants who hoped to escape Nazism.

Acceptance to the Bezalel art school (now Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design), first established in 1906, sometimes gave Jews fleeing Nazism the possibility of entering Palestine, immigration to which was tightly controlled under the British Mandate.

Only a fraction of those who applied were accepted, and among those even fewer were able to undertake the journey.

The documents were discovered on the shelves of the municipal archives of Jerusalem in 2022 by staff from Bezalel’s archive who were researching the institution’s history. What they found amazed them: Dozens of detailed applications dating back to the 1930s which had never been digitized or even researched.

They reached out to Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem, in the hope of preserving evidence of what, for many, turned out to be a last-ditch attempt to find a safe haven.

Yad Vashem’s researchers set about researching the applicants, comparing details in the file with information in their extensive databases.

“It’s very, very special to find such a huge collection that hasn’t been touched or researched before,” said Orit Noiman, head of Yad Vashem’s “Gathering the Fragments” initiative, which collects, preserves and catalogues Holocaust-era artifacts from personal collections. While some of those were found to have survived, “most of the applicants we’ve looked at up until now were killed,” she explained in a video call.

Applications came from across Europe, including Amsterdam, Berlin, Vienna, Prague and Łódź. Most date from the 1930s, although several were made during and even after the war.

It’s unclear how the files came to be in the archives, located in Jerusalem’s city hall, but Noiman believes they may have been accidentally left behind when Bezalel moved premises in 1990.

Noiman believes the submitted portfolios indicate that while some aspiring artists applied, many did so not out of a lifelong desire to pursue a career in art, but their desperate hope of fleeing the Nazis.

“They might have known how to paint or make something with their hands, but they weren’t really artists. It’s clear they wanted to try and find a way out,” she said.

A fuller picture is drawn from another element in the paperwork: a slew of correspondence between Bezalel’s then director Josef Budko, the Jewish Agency and other organizations that hoped to facilitate a large-scale rescue of persecuted Jews.

“There are letters from Budko which show they tried to find ways to help these young people,” said Noiman.

Lital Spivak and Neta Eran-Cohen were the two Bezalel researchers who made the discovery.

“We were both astonished and deeply moved,” Spivak, now an art historian working on a PhD at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem that incorporates the research, told CNN in an email. She detailed correspondence showing Budko attempting to obtain immigration certificates as well as financial support for accepted candidates – which in many cases proved successful.

Spivak said the archive featured 88 personal files, but that around 40 further individuals were mentioned in Budko’s correspondence. A total of 49 candidates were accepted, she said, but only 27 succeeded in traveling to Jerusalem to study at Bezalel.

“Others emigrated elsewhere, some never received their acceptance letters due to wartime disruptions, and others were unable to leave Europe and were later murdered,” she said.

Professor Adi Stern, the current president of Bezalel and the son of a Holocaust survivor, said the revelation touched him on a personal level. “Even if this enterprise only saved the lives of a few dozen people, they eventually grew to hundreds and even thousands of families, so it’s very meaningful.”

Based on the newly shared research, below are some of the applicants’ stories.

Alice and Susanne Fall

Alisa Stern always knew her aunt Alice had been an artist. Her mother, Susanne, would talk about her older sister and hung some of her pictures in their family home in Israel.

But it was only in 2022, after the discovery of the trove of documents and eight decades after Alice Fall perished in the Łódź Ghetto, that Stern discovered she had applied to Bezalel from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia.

Unexpectedly, the archives also included an application from Alisa’s mother.

The sisters applied jointly from their hometown of Moravská Ostrava, signing their forms on July 14, 1939. Susanne’s application included paintings of two dogs, but she suspects they were done by Alice.

“My mother couldn’t paint,” she told CNN. “Yad Vashem told me there’s no way the files got mixed up so probably it was a way to help my mother be accepted.”

Both sisters were rejected. In 1941, Alice was deported with her husband to Łódź.

In 1943, Susanne and their mother were deported to Theresienstadt where they remained until the end of the war. She made it to Palestine in 1947, according to her daughter, who said that learning of the applications was “shocking.”

“Thinking about what the situation would have been had they been accepted is shocking — everything would have been different,” she said.

Eva Israel

Eva Israel applied from her home Vienna in August 1938 when she was 17 years old. With no funds to afford the postage, she sent her application with a friend who was emigrating to Palestine.

Bezalel sent her an acceptance on October 25, 1938, just weeks before Kristallnacht. The Jewish Agency agreed to cover the fees imposed by the British authorities and a certificate of entry was sent out in early 1939.

But the story did not end happily there, as she was forced to leave the Austrian capital and return to her family home in Hungary. Budko wrote urgently to the British consul asking that the permit be forwarded to Budapest. It arrived on March 16, just two weeks before it was due to expire.

In the nick of time, she managed to board a boat and arrived in Haifa on March 29. Although she enrolled at Bezalel, she didn’t stay long as she had no funds and was not able to contact her family.

Israel’s application folder contained documents and letters but no images or artwork as these were likely returned to her once she started at the school, according to Yad Vashem.

Helmut Paskusz

The medical student and artist Helmut Paskusz applied at the end of July 1939. Originally from Brno, Czechoslovakia, he had spent time working as a newspaper caricaturist and illustrator and wanted to study applied graphics. His portfolio included designs for cigarette and sunglasses advertisements.

He was rejected on August 31, 1939, the day before war broke out. Budko mentioned Paskusz by name in a letter to the Jewish Agency, saying he was sorry he’d been unable to help him. Spivak said this was “highly unusual,” and added: “I believe something was imposed on Budko from above — most likely a budgetary limitation that prevented him from granting an immigration certificate.”

According to Yad Vashem, Paskusz was transported from Brno to Terezin in April 1942 and on to Warsaw later that month. Nearly everyone from that transport perished, according to the center. Paskusz’s fate is further confirmed in its archives by a Page of Testimony lodged by a former girlfriend who said he was “murdered” in April 1942.

Marie Ellinger

Marie Ellinger was 18 when she applied in the summer of 1939 from Prague. She included a handwritten letter in which she outlined her education, explaining that she had studied sewing and drawing and done some work as a fashion illustrator.

The teenager attached photos of herself and some of her designs but was rejected, because the school did not have courses related to tailoring.

Yad Vashem’s research shows Ellinger was moved from Prague to Theresienstadt on one of the first transports of the city’s Jews. A month later, she was transported to Riga where she was murdered.

Samuel Zimmerman

The archives also included applications from prospective teachers like Samuel Zimmerman. Born in Poland in the early 1880s, he applied in May 1939 from Vienna.

Zimmerman was an experienced sculptor, and his application included numerous photos of his art. He was rejected because there were no available positions to teach sculpture at the school.

His brother lodged a Page of Testimony for him in 1955 in which he said he was “killed by the Nazis” while en route to Israel. Yad Vashem researchers have seen “external data” suggesting he died in the Kladova Transport, which according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum was a transport of refugees heading for Palestine that was intercepted by the Nazis.

Zahava Rosen

Zahava Rosen was one of several survivors who sought entry to Bezalel, and included a detailed essay about her wartime experiences.

In her writings, she described being sent with her older sister to a labour camp at Kraków airport in 1942 and said her parents were murdered the following year. “In a single day, five members of my family were gone,” she wrote. She applied after the war, in 1947, and went on to study weaving and embroidery.

Lianne Kolirin, CNN