Julo Levin

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Lifestyle

German-Jewish expressionist painter and art teacher who compiled an historic collection of children's artworks. In June 1933, Levin was arrested for political reasons, motivated by his proximity and sympathy with left-wing opposition figures and the KPD. Levin worked as an art teacher in 1935 at the Jewish elementary school Dusseldorf on the Kasernenstraße and he collected significant drawings created by his Jewish students. This collection was hidden by Mieke Monjau, the wife of the painter Franz Monjau (1903-1945, murdered in the Ohrdruf Forced Labor Camp of the Buchenwald concentration camp), during the Nazi era and thus preserved for posterity. Titled "Chased, Murdered", these Jewish children's drawings were exhibited around the globe. The collection is located in the Stadtmuseum Düsseldorf. Levin moved to Berlin in 1939, where he also taught drawing. From 1942 he worked in the Berlin freight yard, where he saw the freight trains transporting Jews continuously to the east. He was a cleaner of the freight cars that returned from the extermination camps. On 17 May 1943 Levin was also deported to Auschwitz and murdered. Link to Wikipedia biography (German)