Joseph Bau (1920–2002)

# 247 on Schindler's List. Joseph Bau was born to a prosperous Jewish family in Krakow, Poland, and attended art college until World War II and the Nazi invasion of his country. He and his family were forced into the Krakow Ghetto and he survived partly by making forged documents to exchange for food. In 1941, he was sent to the Płaszów forced labor camp, where he met and secretly married Rebecca Tennenbaum. Their love story was dramatized in Steven Spielberg's 1993 film Schindler's List. Bau was later transferred to Gross-Rosen concentration camp and then to Schindler's munitions factory in Brinnlitz, Czechoslovakia. After the war, he completed his education at the University of Plastic Arts in Krakow and then emigrated with his wife and daughter to Israel. There he worked as a graphic artist at the Brandwein Institute in Haifa and for the Israeli government, before opening his own studio in Tel Aviv. He became well-known for creating graphic fonts and the title credits for almost all Israeli movies made in the 1960s and 1970s, as well as for his pioneering animated short films. He also wrote poetry.
In 1986, he published a picture-book based on Hebrew puns called Brit Milah (Circumcision). His wartime memoir, Dear God, Have You Ever Gone Hungry?, was first published in Hebrew and Polish in 1998.