Herbert Sandberg

A member of the Communist Party, a Jew, and a German Resistance fighter, Sandberg spent 10 years in a Nazi prison and in Buchenwald concentration camp.

[1] He studied art in Breslau,[2] first at the Kunstgewerbeschule from 1925 to 1926 and then with Otto Mueller at the state Akademie für Kunst und Kunstgewerbe.

In 1970, he began teaching as a guest docent at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst Leipzig and was named a professor there in 1972.

From 1954–1990, Sandberg had a column called "'Der freche Zeichenstift ("The Cheeky Sketching Pencil") in Das Magazin, where he drew caricatures of the nationally and internationally known.

In 1988, speaking about the meaning of art in the concentration camp, Sandberg said, "Without the memory of their work (Hogarth's, Goya's, Kollwitz', Grosz' and Masereel's), I would not have had the strength to withstand the difficult imprisonment.

[6] The etching, done in 1964 and in the art collection of the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorial, is called "Das haben wir nicht gewusst" ("We didn't know") and depicts himself as a survivor, showing local residents the pile of bodies and ashes next to the crematorium.