Reviving the Artist Who Fought Hitler: My Life with Arthur Szyk

The intertwining story of a noted anti-Nazi artist and the former rabbi who revived his reputation.

During World War II, the Polish-Jewish immigrant Arthur Szyk became America’s leading anti-Nazi artist. His art was so effective that Adolf Hitler reportedly put a bounty on his head while the US military declared him a “citizen-soldier” of the free world. Szyk steadfastly fought for the rescue of European Jewry during the Holocaust, creating artworks like De Profundis, which imagines Jesus sharing the suffering of countless lifeless Jews. His civil rights art challenged segregation and his illuminated Declaration of Independence resides in the Library of Congress. Szyk’s masterwork, an illustrated Passover Haggadah, is considered by many to be one of the most beautiful books ever produced by human hands.

Once world-famous, Arthur Szyk was all but forgotten after his death in 1951. Reviving the Artist Who Fought Hitler recounts Irvin Ungar's decades-long journey to restore Szyk to public consciousness, and become the principal collector, dealer, scholar, and promoter of Szyk’s art in the United States, Europe, and Israel. Richly illustrated and full of forgotten history, this memoir is an inspiring story of artistic passion and an invitation to commune with a heroic advocate for all humanity.

Irvin Ungar, an antiquarian bookseller and former pulpit rabbi, has devoted the past three decades to scholarship on Arthur Szyk. He is the author of Justice Illuminated: The Art of Arthur Szyk and the National Jewish Book Award–winning Arthur Szyk: Soldier in Art; coproducer of the documentary film, Soldier in Art: Arthur Szyk; and the creator and publisher of the luxury limited edition of The Szyk Haggadah.