World War II: Anti-Nazi Drawings Made in Germany by Jewish Illustrator Leon Schleifer

World War II: Anti-Nazi Drawings Made in Germany by Jewish Illustrator Leon Schleifer

181 illustrations and 57 description sheets of scenes from Germany, dating from 1929 to 1934, by Leon Schleifer, an Austrian-born Jew who pseudonymously satirized Hitler and his followers as they rose to power.

"These are the sketches and drawings with which I got out of Germany in 1934. They were done from scenes I witnessed myself, and from accounts by reliable witnesses. They show things that were going on in Germany while Hitler was sending his Storm Troopers, 'the conquerors of the streets,' beating and stomping and shooting men to death, and after he came to power, some of the pictures I brought out in sketch form, afraid to finish them." - Leon Schleifer (William Sharp), October 21, 1941 issue of PM (Newspaper).

Leon Schleifer (William Sharp) (1900-1961) was born in Lemberg, Austria (now part of Ukraine). He studied fine art in Austria and Poland before finishing his studies at the University in Berlin in 1918. After serving briefly in the German army at the end of World War I, he stayed on in Berlin and worked as a book illustrator, painter, etcher, and lithographer. In the late 1920s, as Adolph Hitler’s National Socialist Party grew, Sharp, under various pseudonyms, drew political cartoons satirizing the party and its leader in the anti-Nazi press.

The quality of his satire caught the anger of Nazi leadership. “Goebbels (Reich Minister of Propaganda of Nazi Germany) is one of the most vindictive men I know of. He threatened me with concentration camp for anti-Nazi drawings I did under an assumed name,” said Schleifer (Sharp).

In 1934, after his identity was learned by the Nazis, he and his wife Ruth fled Germany to the United States. The Schleifers settled into New York, living on 108th street in Queens. Schleifer changed his name to William Sharp. Sharp got his first job in America with the Hearst newspapers syndicate, sketching the 1934 trial of Bruno Richard Hauptmann, accused of kidnapping and murdering Charles Lindbergh's infant son. He would go on to work for Life, The New York Post, The Daily Mirror, PM and The New York Times Magazine and had a career as a book illustrator.

In 1940, PM, a daily New York newspaper, publicized drawings from the sketchbook he smuggled out of Nazi Germany. They featured dozens of his illustrations depicting Hitler, Hermann Goering, Heinrich Himmler, Goebbels, Dietrich Eckart, Nazi atrocities, the German court system, Hitler Youth and censorship.

This collection includes comments and information on several dozen of the illustrations that Sharp relayed to PM. On a biting illustration of the corpulent German political and military leader Hermann Goering, Sharp said, "No matter how funny you found fat Hermann Goering and his uniforms, you didn't laugh out loud, anyhow. I completed this sketch in Germany in 1933 - a risky thing to do with the Nazis in the saddle and Goering president of the Reichstag. That whip in his hand isn't just for show: Goering is one of the cruelest men in Germany. It was he who decreed that the medieval axe should be used for death sentence. He was a big help to Hitler."

Source: Harold Shachner and Mrs. William Sharp Collections, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection