Józef Sandel (; ; 29 September 1894,

Kolomea Kolomyia (, ), formerly known as Kolomea, is a city A city is a human settlement of a substantial size. The term "city" has different meanings around the world and in some places the settlement can be very small. Even where the term is lim ...

– 1 December 1962,

Warsaw Warsaw, officially the Capital City of Warsaw, is the capital and List of cities and towns in Poland, largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the Vistula, River Vistula in east-central Poland. Its population is officially estimated at ...

)Elis, Binyamin (1965). "Sandel, Yosef." ''Leksikon fun der nayer yiddisher literatur''. New York: Congress for Jewish Culture. vol. 6, columns 300-301. was a Polish art historian and critic, an art dealer and collector, and an advocate on behalf of Jewish artists in postwar

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It extends from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Sudetes and Carpathian Mountains in the south, bordered by Lithuania and Russia to the northeast, Belarus and Ukrai ...

Biography

Sandel was born in Kolomea (

Kolomyia Kolomyia (, ), formerly known as Kolomea, is a city located on the Prut, Prut River in Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast in the west of Ukraine. It serves as the administrative centre of Kolomyia Raion, hosting the administration of Kolomyia urban hromada ...

, Ukraine), then in Galicia, in the

Austro-Hungarian Empire Austria-Hungary, also referred to as the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Dual Monarchy or the Habsburg Monarchy, was a multi-national constitutional monarchy in Central Europe between 1867 and 1918. A military and diplomatic alliance, it consist ...

. The son of a cap maker, he attended the Baron Hirsch school and then gymnasium. Around 1920, he moved to

Dresden Dresden (; ; Upper Saxon German, Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; , ) is the capital city of the States of Germany, German state of Saxony and its second most populous city after Leipzig. It is the List of cities in Germany by population, 12th most p ...

, Germany, where, in 1925, he co-published a short-lived German-language literary and art magazine, ''Mob: Zeitschrift der Jungen'' (Mob: Journal of youths). He subsequently lived in France, Switzerland, and Austria, before returning to Dresden. From 1929 to 1933, he operated an art gallery in

, called ''Galerie junge Kunst'' (Gallery of young art).Piątkowska, Renata (2008).
Jewish Society for the Encouragement of Fine Arts / Di yidishe gezelshaft tsu farshpreytn kunst: An Attempt at the Continuation of Jewish Artistic Life in Postwar Poland, 1946-1949
" In: Elvira Grözinger and Magdalena Ruta (Eds.), ''Under the Red Banner: Yiddish Culture in the Communist Countries in the Postwar Era''. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag. p. 77-96; here p. 78-79. After the rise of the

National Socialist Nazism (), formally named National Socialism (NS; , ), is the far-right totalitarian socio-political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Germany. During Hitler's rise to power, it was frequen ...

regime in Germany, he moved to

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(then in

Yugoslavia , common_name = Yugoslavia , life_span = 1918–19921941–1945: World War II in Yugoslavia#Axis invasion and dismemberment of Yugoslavia, Axis occupation , p1 = Kingdom of SerbiaSerbia , flag_p ...

), where he opened another gallery and mounted exhibitions, in 1933-1934. In 1935, he moved to Poland; he spent time in

Vilna Vilnius ( , ) is the capital of and List of cities in Lithuania#Cities, largest city in Lithuania and the List of cities in the Baltic states by population, most-populous city in the Baltic states. The city's estimated January 2025 population w ...

(Vilnius) and Warsaw, and published articles on art in Yiddish-language periodicals, including ''

Literarishe Bleter The ''Literarishe Bleter'' () was a Yiddish weekly literary and cultural periodical published in Warsaw from 1924 to 1939. History Background and creation In the aftermath of the Russian Revolution of 1905, the Russian Empire's restrictions on ...

''. At the outbreak of the Second World War he fled to the Soviet Union, and survived the war in

Kazakhstan Kazakhstan, officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a landlocked country primarily in Central Asia, with a European Kazakhstan, small portion in Eastern Europe. It borders Russia to the Kazakhstan–Russia border, north and west, China to th ...

, where he taught German in a middle school. After the war, he returned to Poland and settled in

, in 1946. There he became the leader of the ; Yiddish: Yidishe gezelshaft tsu farshpreytn kunst), or ZTKSP, a revival of an organization that had been active in Poland before the war. The Society provided material assistance to Jewish artists, helped to promote their work, and fostered art education for Jewish youth. It mounted some 98 exhibitions in Warsaw, and four exhibitions that were presented throughout Poland – two devoted to the work of individual artists, Rafael Mandelzweig, in 1946, and Lea Grundig, in 1949; and two, in 1948, in honor of the fifth anniversary of the

Warsaw Ghetto Uprising The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was the 1943 act of Jewish resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto in German-occupied Poland during World War II to oppose Nazi Germany's final effort to transport the remaining ghetto population to the gas chambers of the ...

, featuring works of Jewish artists who were killed in the

Holocaust The Holocaust (), known in Hebrew language, Hebrew as the (), was the genocide of History of the Jews in Europe, European Jews during World War II. From 1941 to 1945, Nazi Germany and Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy ...

. After the dissolution of the ZTKSP, in September 1949, the art works that Sandel and his colleagues had assembled were integrated into the collections of the

Jewish Historical Institute The Jewish Historical Institute ( or ''ŻIH''; ), also known as the Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute, is a public cultural and research institution in Warsaw, Poland, chiefly dealing with the history of Jews in Poland and Jewish cul ...

, Warsaw. From 1950 to 1953 the institute operated a Gallery of Jewish Art, with Sandel serving as director. Sandel subsequently devoted himself to the writing of several art historical works concerning Jewish artists in Poland. Among his works, all written in Yiddish, is a two-volume biographical reference work on Jewish artists who perished during the

Holocaust in Poland The Holocaust saw the ghettoization, robbery, deportation and mass murder of Jews, alongside other groups under similar racial pretexts in occupied Poland by the Nazi Germany. Over three million Polish Jews were murdered, primarily at the ...

, ''Umgekumene yidishe kinstler in Poylen'' (''Jewish artists in Poland who perished'', Warsaw, 1957).

Personal life

Sandel married Ernestyna Podhorizer (1903-1984), who was also originally from Galicia and worked for a time as the secretary of the ZTKSP. Sandel-Podhorizer was born in Dembits (

Dębica Dębica (; ''Dembitz'') is a town in southeastern Poland with 44,692 inhabitants as of December 2021. It is the capital of Dębica County. Since 1999 it has been situated in the Podkarpackie Voivodeship; it had previously been in the Tarnów Voiv ...

), and before the war had been a biology teacher in Lemberg (

Lviv Lviv ( or ; ; ; see #Names and symbols, below for other names) is the largest city in western Ukraine, as well as the List of cities in Ukraine, fifth-largest city in Ukraine, with a population of It serves as the administrative centre of ...

); she was later a curator at the museum of the Jewish Historical Institute, and also worked at the Biology Institute in Warsaw.Elis, Binyamin (1965). "Sandel-Podhorizer, Erna (Ester)." ''Leksikon fun der nayer yiddisher literatur''. New York: Congress for Jewish Culture. vol. 6, columns 301-302.

References

External links

* Jewish Historical Institute:
Józef Sandel – biographical timeline
''.
Józef Sandel Papers
(digitized), in RG 31 Germany (Vilna Archives) Collection, at the

YIVO Institute for Jewish Research YIVO (, , short for ) is an organization that preserves, studies, and teaches the cultural history of Jewish life throughout Eastern Europe, Germany, and Russia as well as orthography, lexicography, and other studies related to Yiddish. Establi ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sandel, Jozef 1894 births 1962 deaths People from Kolomyia Jewish art collectors Jews from Galicia (Eastern Europe) Polish art historians Yiddish-language writers