His art kept him alive. Her love kept him unbroken.

At once a tale of horror and beauty, Bau: Artist at War is one man’s memoir of a miracle: the bloom of love in the depths of a Nazi concentration camp. Along the way, Joseph Bau also shares his experience of other wartime traumas—the bombing of Kraków, the brutality of the ghetto, the harsh last days at Oskar Schindler’s factory—with surprising wit and irony, a tone enhanced by his brilliant black-and-white drawings. Above all, Bau’s story is a celebration of his wife, Rebecca. Married in secret, they had a mutual devotion that fueled their humor, resiliency, and ultimate triumph in the face of unspeakable evil.

Joseph Bau (1920–2002), a Polish-born Israeli painter and animator known as “Israel’s Walt Disney,” was a renowned artist, philosopher, inventor, comedian, author, poet, and Holocaust survivor who helped save hundreds of lives.


Assaf Cohen is an AudioFile Earphones Award–winning narrator. He has appeared in various plays, short films, and television shows. He grew up in Palo Alto and attended UC Berkeley where he earned a bachelor’s degree in integrative biology. He continued his classical training by earning a master of fine arts in acting from the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University under the instruction of legendary acting instructor William Esper.