Jozef Wittlin, Holocaust servivor “Ghetto Songs. From the Depths” ((Shirei HaGeto. Mimaamakim)4 woodcuts by Sigmund Menkes, 1946, in Hebrew.Tel-Aviv, 38 pp., soft cover, 15.3 x 9.5 cm.Condition: stains and cracks to cover; light brown paper, minimal foxing inside;Lower half of rear side of frontispiece stuck by paperZygmunt Joseph Menkes (German), Sigmund Joseph Menkes (French)Polish painter of Jewish origin, born in 1896 in Lvov, died in 1986 in Riverdale, New York. Member of the École de Paris group in the 1920s and 1930s. From the beginning of 1935 he lived and worked in the United States; he was a representative of the Expressionistic Colorism movement.Jozef Wittlin (1896–1976) was a Polish novelist, poet and translator.After graduating from a classical gimnazjum in Lwów, Wittlin joined the volunteer military formation of the Polish Legion in August 1914. His unit was however soon disbanded due to the refusal of the Poles to take the oath for the Austrian government. Subsequently he went to Vienna, where he passed the Matura and began studying philosophy. With his friend Joseph Roth he again joined the Austrian army in 1916, and after some military training was drafted into the infantry. Shortly before being sent to the Italian front he fell ill with scarlet fever and was thus prevented from direct participation in the fighting. His military service took place far away from the front and included among other things working as a translator in prisoner-of-war camps with Italian soldiers.In 1922 he moved to Lodz and 1927 to Warsaw. In 1924 he married Halina Handelsmann. At this time he undertook extensive travels through Europe which significantly influenced his work. At the outbreak of World War II he was living in Paris, from where he was evacuated in May 1940 to Biarritz. With the help of Hermann Kesten, he and his family succeeded in escaping in January 1941 from Nice through Spain and Portugal to New York, where he remained after the war.