From Dachau

22nd October 1942: Took two new heads (clown in Home Guard, and Jew from Dachau) to Redfern. They were liked very much.

Painted from imagination, "as a meditation" after reading of the treatment of Jews described in Leon Feuchtwanger‘s book 'The Devil In France'. Writing to Sydney Schiff, the writer and collector, RE offered to lend him this picture (then titled Head of a Jew) which Schiff, who was Jewish, found so "searing" he had to keep it facing the wall. Discussion with visitors to R.E.-Discovered suggests that the title, with its dark overtones, may have been attached later, since Dachau would not have rung any bells in 1942, before knowledge of the concentration-camps was widespread. Acknowledgments to Christine Clearkin for clarifying the detail of the above information from her thesis on Eurich.

From a note in the catalogue to the exhibition RE-Discovered 2003