"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.

It's unusual to have a Holocaust exhibition in an art museum. But rather than focus on the poignant closing chapter of Friedl's life, the show -- organized by the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles and guest-curated by Friedl's biographer, Elena Makarova -- is a thorough survey of her works and career. The viewer is left in no doubt that Friedl was an artist of talent and a woman of courage.

Friedl was one of the first students of the Bauhaus, the Wiemar school of design that attracted artists across Europe before being dissolved by the Nazi authorities in 1933. The influence of her studies is clear to see in works such as a lithographed invitation to the first Bauhaus Evening in 1920 -- a bold design suggestive of both the early black-and-white works of Paul Klee and the geometric designs on paper of Wassily Kandinsky, both teachers at the school.

The artist also drew on traditional models, and among the most striking are her reworkings of the medieval Germanic devotional image, the Anna Selbdritt (a tripartite statue showing the infant Jesus on the lap of his mother Mary, who is embraced in turn by her mother Anna). Friedl returned to the theme repeatedly in 1921, creating a pastel study in glowing colors, a collage and a sculpture, now lost, that is presented here by a projected image that creates a 3-D effect. In each work, the three figures are shown Constructivist style, as cylindrical abstractions.

The range of items in these first galleries -- folkish textiles, modern set designs and a few sleek pieces of furniture -- might be found in any display charting the evolution of an artist's career.

But then two black-and-white photocollages (1930) snap visitors out of their artistic reverie and plunge them into Friedl's historical context. She called them "anti-capitalist" posters, and they present images of privilege and studies of deprivation, juxtaposing elegantly dressed women with a pieceworker at a sewing machine. During the 1930s, the rise to power of rightwing forces increasingly polarized artists and the intelligentsia, many of whom were drawn to communist ideology. Friedl was no exception.

In 1934, she was arrested for her participation in an antifascist movement. The experience produced her two most powerful and disturbing works, both titled "Interrogation" (1934-38). "Interrogation I" is painted in sickly tones of yellow, green and gray; the only vivid colors are the red of Friedl's neck and ears, exposed as she sits hunched before her interrogator, and the white of his bared teeth and the sheaf of papers under his hand. In the bottom left of the canvas, oversize hands move over a typewriter, perhaps tapping out a confession that the artist never made.

Friedl was released after serving a brief prison term, but her journey to Auschwitz had already begun. She emigrated first to Prague, in 1934, where she married her cousin, Pavel Brandeis. In 1938 Pavel was refused a passport, and the couple relocated to Hronov on the Polish border.

In Hronov, Friedl began teaching art to a group of displaced children, Jewish refugees. She didn't stop creating, though. Here she produced a series of luminous pastel landscapes, and she was to create works of great tranquil beauty until she died, her vision becoming ever more radiant even as the world around her grew increasingly dark.

In December 1942, Friedl and her charges were rounded up and deported to the newly established camp at Terezin. As implementation of the Final Solution was stepped up, the decision was made in 1943 to turn Terezin into a "model ghetto," the public face of Nazi treatment of the Jews. One consequence was that the cultural life of the camp was not completely suppressed. Lectures, art exhibitions and even theatrical productions were permitted -- one of which, the opera "Brundibar," staged with a cast of children, was filmed for propaganda purposes.

Friedl therefore had access to art materials, and she held clandestine classes (schooling was prohibited) in which she drew out the artistic talents of the children and helped them voice their fears and hopes. The final display rooms show not Friedl's work, but the works of her pupils.

An exponent of art-as-therapy, Friedl encouraged the children -- numbered inmates of a prison camp -- to produce self-portraits and to sign their works. But she also taught rigorous artistic techniques: There are accomplished pencil copies of figures from works such as Van Gogh's "Woman by the Table" and Raphael's "Madonna and Child." Another project involved form-and-color exercises inspired by Vermeer's "Man and Woman With Wine," the exhibit label next to each example here records its creator's name and life span: "Anita Spitzova (1933-44)"; "Gustav Zweig (1930-44)"; "Marie Muhlsteinova (1932-44)."

Some works sing with promise. The best of Friedl's students developed a style all their own: "Dream," by Helena Mandlova (1930-43), is a striking paper collage of mountains, clouds and stars against a red background; "Storm" by Rena Tentnerova (1933-44) sets a glowing nimbus of color against a black sky, torn across by a jag of green that may be lightning or may be a thrusting stalk but is unquestionably an image of life and vigor.

Red Cross observers visited Terezin in 1944, noting only "psychological pressure" on its inmates. After the inspectors' departure most of Terezin's children were sent to concentration camps. Friedl volunteered for transport.

"When it's already impossible to understand this life," she wrote in one of her final letters from Terezin, "only one thing remains, and this is love."

Auschwitz ended the life of an artist not yet at her peak and cut short those of many, many more. And yet, through art, Friedl Dicker-Brandeis and the children she taught left a legacy of love more powerful than the hatred that sought to destroy them.