István Farkas (painter)

István Farkas (October 20, 1887 in Budapest; died in the July 1944 in the concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau) was a Hungarian painter, publisher and victim of the Holocaust.

In November 1925 Farkas moved again to Paris, where he became part of the art scene at the Café de la Rotonde in the Montparnasse quarter.

As the sole heir of his father’s company, Farkas was forced to take over the family publishing house in Budapest after József Wolfner’s death in 1932.

Many of his friends and colleagues, including his French co-editor François Gachot, with whom he published books about József Rippl-Rónai, Tivadar Kosztka Csontváry and Béni Ferenczy pleaded with him to leave Hungary immediately.

Farkas expressed his resignation in a letter smuggled out of the Auschwitz-bound train during a stopover at Kecskemét: "When human dignity is so humiliated, it is not worth living anymore."

After the war the Russian occupation authorities confiscated his personal property, including his apartment in the Aradi utca and his mansion in Szigliget and nationalized his publishing house.

In 1997 Farkas’ portrait of Dezső Szomory was featured on the cover of the first edition of Nobel Prize winner Imre Kertész’ novel Valaki más.