Peter Kien

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Peter Kien (born Varnsdorf, Czech Republic, 1 January 1919, died Auschwitz, October 1944) was a Jewish artist and poet active at the Theresienstadt concentration camp.^[1]^[2] He died at the age of twenty-five.

1 His education
2 His works
3 References
4 External links

[edit] His education

"Kein gained his basic education in Varnsdorf and in 1929 he started studies at a state realschule. For the state economic crisis reason the family moved to Brno, where he continued studying at a German realschule. He finished his studies by examination for school-leaving certificate in 1936. One year later, he obtained admissions to the Prague Academy of Fine Art of Willy Nowak. After the Third Reich army invasion, the Nowak's Academy was dissolved and Kien attended private Officina Pragensis".^[3]

[edit] His works

Between his arrival to Terezin in 1941 and his deportation to Auschwitz, Kien was officially the director of the Technical Drawing Office of the Jewish Self Administration. Using stolen paper, he sketched many depictions of living conditions in the Terezin ghetto. These works are among the most important works documenting that Terezin, was, in fact, a concentration camp rather than the model Jewish settlement the Nazis led outsiders to believe it to be. His works accurately reflect that its inhabitants were confined in inhuman conditions and treated severely. Kien also wrote the libretto to Viktor Ullmann's Der Kaiser von Atlantis, a one-act chamber opera that was composed in and rehearsed in Terezin between 1943 and 1944 but never performed there.

Kien was sent to Auschwitz in the final transport in October 1944, and died from disease soon after his arrival.