"Arbeit macht frei (Work brings freedom)" were the words famously written above the gates of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, where Austrian-born artist Friedl Dicker-Brandeis was murdered in a gas chamber on Oct. 9, 1944. Friedl's life, however, had been devoted to a different, truer precept: that art brought freedom and could liberate the human soul from fear.
A Bauhaus-trained designer, Friedl spent the last two years of her life teaching art to children in the Jewish ghetto of Terezin, a holding camp for those destined for Auschwitz. More than 15,000 children passed through this "waiting room for hell," and only 100 survived. Thanks to Friedl, however, their brief lives left a legacy in the form of artworks and poems produced under her tutelage.
More than 5,000 works survived, hidden by Friedl in a suitcase when she herself was sent to Auschwitz. A selection of them are now on display, together with the artist's own works, in the exhibition "Friedl and the Children of Terezin," at the Tokyo Fuji Art Museum.