Yiddish. Sh. Dyamant “A Yid tsvishn poyerim” (A Jew among peasants), 1st ed., 1948, Lodz, Litho cover by Henryk Hechtkopf
A Yid tsvishn poyerim: pyese Zydzi wsrod chlopow
Yidish bukh, Lodz, 1948., 64 pages, Lithographed cover by Henryk Hechtkopf, signed in the plate
Soft cover, 21.5 x 15 cm.. Pages yellow and brittle; chipping in the wrappers; spine damaged
Henryk Hechtkopf (1910 – 2004) was born to a Jewish family in Warsaw in 1910, the younger child of two. His father was a merchant, and his mother a midwife. Hechtkopf studied in the Hebrew Gymnasium "Chanoch" and then in Warsaw University. After obtaining his law degree, Hechtkopf became the first Jewish jurist to article at the Polish Supreme Court.
From early on, his artistic talent was evident. At the age of 23, his work was consistently selected to appear in the exhibitions of the "Jewish Society for Promotion of Art." Hechtkopf was also a filmmaker. He was involved in the making of several films before the outbreak of World War II, including Poland's first animated film.
While Hechtkopf's work was always very strongly informed by his Jewish background, drawing on religious symbolism and Jewish life in the Shtetl, his experiences during World War II were to have a profound impact on his work. At the beginning of the war, he retreated with the Polish army east into the Soviet Union, where he was captured and sent to work in a series of forced labor camps. After the war, he returned to Poland to find that his whole family had been massacred in the Holocaust. Hechtkopf 's drawings in the weeks following his return to Warsaw portrayed the ruins of the ghetto and the city which surrounded it. Twenty-four of these works were purchased by the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Israel. Yehudit Shendar, the art curator of Yad Vashem has commented on the strong impact that Hechtkopf's work has on the viewer, as a first-hand account of destruction and despair. Hechtkopf designed in 1949 the first Polish stamp commemorating the Holocaust, and won first prize in an international competition for posters on the theme of Holocaust and heroism.
After the war, Hechtkopf was offered a position as a judge in Warsaw, but decided instead to move to Åódź, which was then the center of artistic life in Poland. In Åódź, he met his wife Alicja Zielinska. She has a sister Teresa Materne (Zielinska), who lives in Åódź (Poland) to this day. When his wife died on 15 September 1989, Hechtkopf keep good contact with the wife's sister.
He helped establish the Jewish artist's society in Åódź, which he headed from 1946 to 1950. He also taught film at the Åódź film school, where Roman Polanski numbered among his students. Before leaving Poland for Israel in 1957, Hechtkopf directed together with Jan Batory, Poland's first post-war non-documentary successful film, "Forbidden Melodies" (1956).
Upon his arrival in Israel, Hechtkopf settled in Bat Yam, where he remained for the rest of his life, working as a painter and as an illustrator of books. While he employed different styles and techniques, his strong sensitivity and particular identity are evident in all his work. His wife died in 1989. Hechtkopf died in July 2004, at the age of 94. While they left behind no heirs, Hechtkopf claimed that his paintings were his children.