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They'll
Have to Catch Me First
An
Artist's Coming of Age in the Third Reich
Irene Awret
The life-saving power of art
Berlin 1939. A few months after Kristallnacht, eighteen-year
old Irene Spicker tries to flee to Belgium but ends up in a Nazi
prison. Freed after a few weeks, she tries again—this time,
in the dark of night, she successfully crosses the frontier.
The Germans invaded Belgium, and Irene was forced into hiding.
Constantly on the move, she worked as a farmhand, at one point
using false identity papers. Arrested by the Gestapo, she sat
in a cellar prison cell destined for transport to Auschwitz.
To calm her fears, she made a small detailed drawing of her hand
which was to save her life. Incarcerated in the concentration
camp in Mechlen, she was assigned to paint signs, posters and
numbers for her co-prisoners to wear around their necks. This
is Irene Awret's story of her first twenty-five years, from coming
of age in a middle-class Jewish family to Mechlen where she met
the young sculptor Azriel Awret, to liberation and freedom once
more.
Irene Awret
and
her husband Azriel were founders of the Safad Artist Colony in
Israel. A painter and ceramist, she has had numerous shows in
Israel and the United States. She and her husband now live in
Falls Church, Virginia.
For publicity information call our marketing
department at 608-263-0734 or e-mail uwiscpress@uwpress.wisc.edu
Illustration
from the book
The
Train Is Coming! Watercolor. Irene Awret. (Ghetto Fighters' House
Museum, Israel)
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May
2004
384 pp. 10 photos, 25 illus. 6
x 9
ISBN 0-299-18830-2 Cloth $26.95t
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Copublished
with Dryad Press
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