Portfolio

Shraga Weil was born on September 24, 1918, in Nitra, Czechoslovakia. He attended the National School of Arts in Prague. Shraga was Hungarian and settled in Budapest. The Hungarian government had radical fascist elements and had been a German ally since the 1930s when Hungary enacted antisemitic measures based upon the Nuremberg racial laws. Jews lost their citizenship and were barred from many professions. World War II began when Germany invaded Poland in September 1939. After Germany as forced to retreat from the Soviet Union in 1943, Hungary sought a separate peace with the Allies. In March 1944, Germany occupied Hungary. Sraga was active with the underground, and assisted in forging documents. The war ended when Germany surrendered on May 7, 1945. In 1947, Sraga reached Palestine on an illegal immigrant ship. He became a member of Kibbutz HaOgen. He went to Paris in 1953 to expand his skills at the Academy of Arts. He had a successful career as a book designer and illustrator. Beginning in the 1960s, he obtained commissions to create architectural designs. He was especially well known for his works featuring biblical and Jewish folklore themes. Among his realized projects were entrance doors for the Israeli Knesset and the President's residence, ceramic walls for the main synagogue in Tel Aviv, and painted fabric ceiling panels for the Israeli Lounge in the Kennedy Center in Washington DC. Weil, age 92, died in 2009.

The portfolio of prints was donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2005 by Sheldon Kaplan on behalf of his wife Hannah Kaplan.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Sheldon Kaplan

Funding Note: The cataloging of this artifact has been supported by a grant from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.