Friedl Dicker-Brandeis

Frederika "Friedl" Dicker-Brandeis (30 July 1898 Vienna – 9 October 1944 Auschwitz-Birkenau), was an Austrian artist and educator murdered by the Nazis in the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp .

Frederika Dicker was born in Vienna on 30 July 1898. She married Pavel Brandeis in 1936 and used the double-barrelled surname after that. Dicker-Brandeis was a student of Johannes Itten at his private school in Vienna, and later followed Itten to study and teach at the Weimar Bauhaus. She was involved in the textile design, printmaking, bookbinding, and typography workshops there from 1919-1923. After leaving the Bauhaus, she worked as an artist and textile designer in Berlin, Prague, and Hronov.

Dicker-Brandeis and her husband were deported to the Terezín "model ghetto" in December 1942. During her time at Terezín, she gave art lessons and lectures. She helped to organize secret education classes for the children of Terezín. She saw drawing and art as a way for the children to understand their emotions and their environment. In this capacity she was giving art therapy.

At Terezin she persisted in pursuing her goal — "to rouse the desire towards creative work."

In September 1944, Brandeis was transported to Auschwitz; Dicker-Brandeis volunteered for the next transport to join him. But before she was taken away, she gave to Raja Engländerova, the chief tutor of Girls' Home L 410, two suitcases with 4,500 drawings to whom she also taught Hana Brady.

F. Dicker-Brandeis died in Birkenau on 9 October 1944. Her husband Pavel, survived.

After the war, Willy Groag, the director of the Girl's home L 410 brought the suitcases with children's drawings to the Jewish Community in Prague. From the nearly 660 authors of the drawings, 550 were killed in the Holocaust. The drawings are now in the Jewish Museum in Prague's collection, with some on display in the Pinkas Synagogue in Prague.

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