Hungarian children, Traiskirschen Transit Camp, Austria - Ronald William Fordham Searle

Hungarian children, Traiskirschen Transit Camp, Austria

Pen and brown ink

Signed, numbered 3, inscribed

with title and dated 3 November 1959

Ronald William Fordham Searle, 1920 (Cambridge)-2012 (France)

From 1941, when the Japanese occupied Singapore, until 1945 Ronald Searle was imprisoned in the Changi prisoner of war camp and worked on the Ban Pong Burma railway.  This experience transformed his life, his outlook and his art. 

In 1960 Penguin Books published “Refugees 1960: A Report in Words and Drawings by Kaye Webb and Ronald Searle”.  

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees had invited the authors (Searle and his first wife) to produce this work in order to draw attention to the continuing plight of the many thousands of refugees still living in camps. 

This beautiful and moving drawing was reproduced on page 10 of the book.  The caption reads as follows:

“Among this group of Hungarian children three were born in the camp, and none of them can remember any other life than that of a refugee.  For two, escape is in view.  Maria (next to harmonium) and her sister Gabriela (third in the row) are among the last refugees to be accepted by the United States under a special scheme inaugurated three years ago.  

They will go with their father, Jeno Molnar, but their mother is still in Hungary.  The other children are still waiting, as they have been for the last three, four or five years, in the hope that one of the overseas countries will relax their strict immigration laws and make it possible for them to leave the gloomy, dilapidated barracks which is their present home.”

Price on application

This object is eligible for a Certificate of BADA Provenance