Felix Nussbaum had a great future ahead of him as an artist and he won a scholarship to study art in Rome with a small group of other artists. However, when there, they had a visit from Paul Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's minister of propaganda and public enlightenment, who informed them that they were to paint only scenes of Nazi propaganda. Realizing then that a Jew had no place in this Nazi doctrine he left Rome and subsequently had his scholarship removed.

During this time his parents had moved out of Germany to Switzerland and they traveled to Italy to see him for what would be the last time. Though he pleaded for them not to they missed Germany and decided to go back in 1935. By 1939 they fled the country again this time to Amsterdam to be with his brother Justus.

Felix himself went on the run first to Paris, then Belgium ending up in Brussels in 1937. Then in 1940 when the Nazis attacked he was branded by the authorities and 'enemy alien' and sent to a French detainment camp. A few weeks later, after the appalling treatment of the camp, he applied to return to Germany. At a checkpoint in Bordeaux he escaped by boarding a train to Brussels.

There he lived in hiding. He had no official papers so relied on friends who gave him shelter and art supplies to continue his work. In 1944 his parents and brother and his family were all sent to Auschwitz. He was arrested just before Brussels was liberated and also sent to Auschwitz, where he, and indeed all his family were murdered. He had survived for ten years on the run and died one month before the liberation of Brussels.

His art is anti-war, as with so many of the artists of this time, but deeply personal. One of his most famous works is Self Portrait with a Jewish Pass. It shows him with the star all Jews were forced to wear showing a pass to a Nazi guard. The guard is not in the picture, instead Felix looks out of the painting at you, and is showing you the pass as he waits for your judgement as if you are the guard. In this way he draws the viewer into his world: giving a small but powerful insight into life as a German Jew.

Works: Self Portrait With a Jewish Pass The Camp Synagogue at St Cyprian 1941 The Pearls (mourners) Masquerade The Wandering Jew

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