Adolf Behrman

Abraham Adolf Behrman (; also spelled Bermann; July 13, 1876 – August 1943) was a painter of interwar Poland best known for his outdoor paintings of Jewish shtetl life as well as landscapes and group portraits. He spent most of his life in Łódź and was murdered during the liquidation of the Białystok Ghetto in the Holocaust.

Biography Behrman's place of birth is uncertain. He was born either in the town of Tukkum near Mitawa, or in Riga (sources vary), the son of Róża and Markus Behrman, who arrived in Łódź sometime before the end of the century. From 1924 to 1927, Behrman traveled to Palestine, Egypt and later Morocco. His landscapes originating from that period have become the most known part of his work. Behrman's palette became brighter in that period with the introduction of impressionist tones. In the 1930s, he returned to Poland and went to Kazimierz Dolny for the first time. There, he created one of his most important works, Interior of the Synagogue in Kazimierz Dolny.

Behrman was a painter of scenes from daily life of the Polish Jews and views of Jewish quarters. His 1914 painting The Jewish Bride was used for the cover of the book The Stories Our Parents Found Too Painful to Tell, originally a memoir written in Yiddish titled The Annihilation of Bialystok Jewry, by Rafael Rajzner and Henry R. Lew.

His last major exhibit took place in 1935 in Łódź. After the Nazi German and Soviet invasion of Poland, Behrman escaped to Białystok in the Russian zone of occupation. He was murdered in 1943 by the Nazis in the Białystok Ghetto around the time of the perilous Białystok Ghetto Uprising. Many of Behrman's paintings were destroyed in World War II. Some of his paintings can be found at the Historical Museum of Kraków and at the Łódź Museum.