B. is a Holocaust survivor, who is now a US citizen. She was the second wife of Art Babbitt, an animator, and resides in Santa Cruz, California. B. and her mother Johanna were among the 27 Czechoslovak Jews to survive for two years at the Auschwitz concentration camp. In 1942 B. was a 19-year-old art student in Prague  when she first went together with her mother to the concentration camp Theresienstadt. In September 1943 both were moved to Auschwitz.

At Auschwitz, B. painted colorful Disney murals of 'Snow White' in the children's home  and watercolor portraits for Dr. Josef Mengele. She also painted medical procedures for Mengele. Six of the original watercolors had been purchased by the Auschwitz Museum in 1963 from an Auschwitz survivor, and the seventh was acquired in 1977. The museum refused to give them back to B.

The children's home was something which Freddy Hirsch managed to get from the SS. In that children's home Hirsch and all the other pedagogues tried to give the children a feeling of some normality. Of not lying, of not stealing, of being honest citizens, of trying to be clean. This was something which saved not only quite a few of the children, but also quite a few of the pedagogues. 

A petition has been recently created to help B. regain her pictures. In collaboration with Rafael Medoff , director of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, and comic book industry legend Neal Adams B.'s efforts were championed.

B.'s story has been captured in a comic-book, the text of which was written by Medoff. The story tells how she arrived with her mother at Auschwitz in September 1943, depicts how she painted in the children’s barracks, and how she had come to the attention of Mengele in February 1944 who asked her to paint portraits of children for his studies. B. cut a deal with Mengele that spared also her mother's life in exchange for her paintings. The final pages of the story move from the liberation by Allied troops in 1945 at the Ravensbrück camp, to her life in the United States, where she worked for 17 years as an assistant animator for many Hollywood studios.

Literatur über / Writings concerning B.: 
Dina Babbitt's Quest

Letzte Änderung / Last update: 06.09.2008 

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