Self-Portrait with Jewish Identity Card

German-born painter Felix Nussbaum was raised in an upper-middle-class family, allowing him to pursue an extensive arts education. With the rise of fascism in the 1930s, Nussbaum and his wife, Polish artist Felka Platek, were forced to move to Belgium. In 1940, Nussbaum was arrested and interned in France, and although he escaped and was able to live in hiding for several years, he and his wife were later betrayed and turned over to Belgian authorities. The couple was deported to Auschwitz in 1944; neither survived. Nussbaum was remarkably prolific during the final years of his life. Many of his works were destroyed during the war, but he was able to hide more than one hundred paintings with friends. Today, in the city of his birth, Osnabrück, the Felix Nussbaum Museum houses many of his surviving works.