Miniature book of sketches made by camp prisoners for Dr. Arthur Kessler

Arthur Kessler (1903-2000) was born on 11 October 1903 in Gewitsch, Moravia (Jevíčko, Czech Republic) to David (1866-1945) and Anna (née Gottfried, 1875-1947) Kessler. He had three brothers: Joseph (b. 1902), Julius, and Leo. The family moved to Czernowitz (Chernivtsi, Ukraine) in 1913 where David worked as a theology professor and rabbi. During World War I the family moved back to Gewitsch, but returned after the war to what was now part of Romania. Arthur studied medicine and graduated from the University of Vienna in 1929. He served as a doctor in the Romanian army from 1930-1933. He married Chaia Schulsinger on 6 May 1937 in Czernowitz. Their first child, Vera, was born in 1940. After the Russians occupied Czernowitz in June 1940, Arthur became the manager of the hospital. After the Germans reestablished Romanian rule in the city in July 1941, Arthur was arrested as a Communist/Soviet agent and imprisoned from December 30, 1941 to February 7, 1942. He was released after paying a bribe. In September of that year, Arthur was rounded up and deported to the Vapniarka concentration camp in Transnistria, where he was both a prisoner and headed up a 30-person medical department. In late 1942, he treated the prisoners who had gone on a hunger strike because of reactions that they had to eating a toxic fodder pea (lathyrism). Arthur and other prisoners were transferred out of Vapniarka and sent to the ghetto in Olgopol on 1 May 1943. A year later he escaped, returned to Romania, and reunited with his wife Chaia and their daughter, Vera. Chaia and Vera were blond and passed as Aryans. They had survived by going to Bucharest and moving from one place to another. The Kessler family went to Palestine in 1944 where Arthur published several articles on lathyrism and became the director of the Allergy Department of the Zamenhof Clinic in Tel Aviv. His son David was born in 1948. Arthur continued give lectures and publish articles, and was considered a leader in the field of lathyrism. He also continued to treat the victims of Vapniarka who survived and immigrated to Israel without compensation. Arthur’s parents survived the war in Czernowitz. All three of his brothers survived the Holocaust. Joseph immigrated to Peru after the war, Julius immigrated to the United States after the war, and Leo died in Bucharest.

The sketch book was donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2019 by David Kessler, the son of Dr. Arthur Kessler.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of David Kessler