FRITTA

FRITTA (Friedrich Taussig; 1909–1944), Czech painter and graphic artist. In 1942 he was deported to the concentration camp at theresienstadt . Here, together with fellow artists leo haas , Otto Ungar, Friedrich Bloch (an Austrian painter), and later Karel Fleischmann, he formed a group of painters who assigned themselves the task of creating a pictorial record of the last days of men facing death. Fritta's contribution to this unique documentary was probably the largest. Their works were smuggled out of Theresienstadt over a two-year period. In July 1944 the Nazis discovered some of Fritta's works depicting shocking scenes of ghetto life. Fritta was imprisoned and deported to Auschwitz, where he died after undergoing torture. About 150 of his Theresienstadt drawings, buried in a tin case, were unearthed after the war, together with the works of other Theresienstadt artists. They are in the Jewish Museum in Prague.   -BIBLIOGRAPHY: Frýd, in: Terezin, published by the Council of Jewish Communities in Czech Lands (1965), 206–18; Haas, ibid., 156–62. (Avigdor Dagan)