Art, Love, and Laughter Come to Atlanta

Right now, a short drive from my home in Marietta, the art of a man I’ve come to think of as family is hanging on the walls of the Marcus Jewish Community Center. On Sunday, Nov. 8, his daughters will be standing beside it. I still can’t quite believe it.

It started in March 2024, when I walked into a small art studio on Berdichevsky Street in Tel Aviv expecting a museum visit. I walked out with two new cousins.

The studio belonged to Joseph Bau: artist, animator, poet, prankster, Holocaust survivor, and the man Israelis affectionately called their Walt Disney. His daughters, Clila and Hadasa Bau, took one look at my last name and burst out laughing. Their mother, Rebecca, was born a Tennenbaum. We must be long-lost cousins, they declared. Long-lost or not, the name stuck, and so did I. I’ve volunteered alongside them ever since, helping share their parents’ story with the world.

A wedding, a list, and a lifetime of joy

Many people first met Joseph and Rebecca without realizing it, in the secret wedding scene of Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List. Inside the Płaszów concentration camp, Joseph slipped into the women’s section in disguise to marry Rebecca, with, as he later remembered it, rings made from a silver spoon.

Joseph’s gift for lettering kept him alive in the camp, and he used it in secret to forge papers that helped others escape. Rebecca, a nurse, cared for fellow prisoners. As her daughters tell it, she arranged to have Joseph’s name placed on Schindler’s list in place of her own, something he didn’t learn until 50 years later.

After the war, the couple built a new life in Israel. Joseph became one of the country’s pioneering animators and graphic designers. According to his family, he also quietly forged documents for the Mossad, including work that supported the capture of Adolf Eichmann and the identity papers of legendary spy Eli Cohen. Through it all, he never stopped drawing, joking, and inventing. He believed joy itself is an act of resistance.

From the red carpet to the Marcus JCC

On Sept. 21, 2025, I joined Clila and Hadasa at the Los Angeles premiere of Paramount Pictures’ Bau, Artist at War at the Museum of Tolerance. Watching the sisters walk the red carpet, two women who have spent decades guarding their parents’ legacy, was one of the proudest moments of my life. The film, starring Emile Hirsch and Inbar Lavi, is now streaming on Amazon Video, Fandango at Home, and other platforms, and Joseph’s memoir has been republished as Bau: Artist at War.

Now Joseph’s art has come to my own community. The Joseph Bau Museum’s Traveling Art Exhibition is on view in the Katz Family Main Street Gallery at the MJCCA: more than 40 signed oil paintings, lithographs, and prints, many playing with the shapes and meanings of Hebrew letters, alongside storyboards tracing his life from prewar Kraków to Tel Aviv.

In early November, Clila and Hadasa will fly in from Tel Aviv to take part in the 35th Edition of the Book Festival of the MJCCA. On Sunday, Nov. 8, they will spend the day at the MJCCA for a free film screening, an author talk, a book signing, and personal tours of their father’s exhibition. When I first met these two remarkable women, I never imagined I’d one day welcome them to Atlanta. Please come meet them. (Details are in the box below.)

While they’re here, Clila and Hadasa will also visit local schools and speak with other groups. If your synagogue, church, school, or organization would like to host them, let us know at josephbaumuseum@gmail.com.

Help save a piece of Israel’s heritage

There is urgency behind all this joy. The building that houses Joseph Bau’s original studio has been sold, and the museum must find a new home. This is no ordinary museum. It is one of more than 180 heritage sites in Israel, ranked #1 of 309 things to do in Tel Aviv on Tripadvisor, and home to what may be the smallest movie theater in the world, where visitors watch Joseph’s animations beside the projectors he built by hand. Clila and Hadasa are raising funds now to plan the move and keep their father’s studio, art, and equipment together for the next generation.

Here’s how you can help:

• Give. Support the museum’s campaign at causematch.com/JosephBauMuseum.
• Visit on your next trip to Israel. The studio is at 9 Berdichevsky Street, just off Rothschild Boulevard. Visits are by reservation only; email josephbaumuseum@gmail.com.
• Tour it from home. Walk through the studio virtually at josephbau.org/3Dvista.
• Spread the word. Watch the film, read the memoir, bring a friend to the MJCCA, and tell everyone you know.

Joseph and Rebecca chose to create, to laugh, and to love in the darkest years imaginable. The least we can do is keep the lights on in the studio where that joy lives. So come to the MJCCA this fall and say shalom to Clila and Hadasa Bau. Tell them their cousin Lee sent you!



MORE INFORMATION

• All things Bau (film, book, museum, tours): linktr.ee/Josephbauhouse
• Atlanta book event with Clila and Hadasa Bau: atlantajcc.org/programs/hadasa-clila-bau-bau-artist-at-war
• Help save the museum: causematch.com/JosephBauMuseum
• Bring the exhibition to your synagogue, school, or community: josephbautravelingxhibition.my.canva.site/josephbau

Lee Tanenbaum is a Marietta-based writer and communications consultant who has volunteered with the Joseph Bau Museum since April 2024. Reach her at josephbaumuseum@gmail.com.