ארנולד דגני

Arnold Daghani (born Arnold Korn, aka as Dagani) (1909-1985), painter, born in Suceava, in the historical region of Bukovina, Romania (then part of Austria-Hungary). In the 1930s he moved to Bucharest and studied economics. After the annexation of northern Bukovina by the Soviet Union in June 1940, he moved with his wife to Czernowitz (Chernivtsi) in the Soviet area. However, in the summer of 1941 after the start of the war against the Soviet Union, the area was captured by Romania and in 1942 Daghani and his wife were deported to Transnistria, but were caught by the SS when trying to escape and sent to a forced labor camp near Mikhailovka in the Nazi occupied Ukraine. In the camp he secretly kept a diary with paintings of evefry day life in the camp. They managed to escape to the Romanian occupied Transnistria, wher they were again arrested and detained in the Bershad ghetto. He was released in December 1943 and returned to Bucharest.

Groapa este in livada de vişini (“The grave is in the cherry orchard”), his camp diary, was published in 1947. It was translated into English and in German. The German edition published in 1960 served as evidence in the Federal Republic Germany for a number of investigations of Nazi crimes in forced labor camps.

After the establishment of the Communist regime in Romania, he refused to create in the Socialist Realism style advocated by the regime and to join the state artists’ association. He continued to draw secretly scenes of every day life.

Daghani immigrated to Isreal in 1958, but was not permitted to bring with him many of his drawings. He consequently lived in Israel, Switzerland, southern France and in 1977 he settled in Hove, near Brighton, in southern England. Many of his works are part of The Arnold Daghani Collection at the University of Sussex in United Kingdom.