Article by Benjamin Balint & Léa Veinstein

Benjamin Balint is known to readers for his remarkable book Kafka’s Last Trial (W. W. Norton, 2018), a pioneering account of the legal saga that unfolded in Israel over Franz Kafka’s manuscripts. Continuing his exploration of great Jewish artists, their lively presence in our contemporary world, and the question of their collective “legacy,” Benjamin Balint has published an astonishing book on Bruno Schulz, at the crossroads of biography, cultural history, and literary narrative. In Bruno Shultz: An Artist, a Murder, and the Hijacking of History, we discover the fascinating posterity of part of his work: notably the frescoes painted in the children’s bedrooms of a Nazi officer, rediscovered, then “saved” by Israeli agents and exhibited at Yad Vashem. But who was Bruno Shultz? An interview with Benjamin Balint.