Antique Image of the Day: Hanukkah, 1944

The Victoria & Albert Museum

The image, printed in black, on the front of this postcard depicts four concentration camp inmates behind a makeshift Hanukkah menorah. Within this sober image, the word Hanukkah (in Hebrew) and the year, “1944” are lettered.


This postcard was issued by the Jewish organization Agudat Jiszrael (Union of Israel) in Budapest in 1945. The image was designed by Felix Gluck in 1944. Gluck had fled his native Bavaria for Budapest in 1936 to escape the Nazis, but was imprisoned in Mauthausen--a forced labor camp in Austria, from 1944 to 1945. The card, now, not only chronicles the atrocities that Jewish people faced before and during the Second World War, but also their innate sense of hope and admirable dedication to their beliefs.