Chaïm Kaliski

Chaïm Kaliski (25 December 1929 – 12 September 2015), also known as Jim Kaliski or Jim d'Etterbeek, was a Belgian artist and comics author. Born into a modest Polish-Jewish family in Etterbeek, Brussels, he was deeply marked by the Holocaust, having lived through the Nazi occupation of Belgium as a hidden Jewish child. From the age of 60, he created an extraordinary self-taught graphic chronicle of that experience, producing more than 6,000 drawings and pages over eighteen years. He was the brother of playwright René Kalisky and the uncle of actor Jonathan Zaccaï.

Biography Early years Haïm-Charles Kaliski was born on 25 December 1929 in Etterbeek. He came from a modest Polish-Jewish family: his father Avram (Abraham) was a leather-goods maker and his mother, Fradla Wach (born 15 November 1901 in Warsaw), was a seamstress and illiterate. Sarah Kaliski (1941–2010), who became a painter; and Ida Kaliski (born 1933), who nearly became an opera singer. He grew up in Cureghem, a neighbourhood of Anderlecht, near Brussels-Midi station. Kaliski was forced to interrupt his schooling and lived through the relentless persecution of Brussels Jews during the German Occupation, evading controls and denunciations. The street where he lived, rue Docteur De Meersman, was spared during the roundup of Brussels Jews on 3 September 1942. His father Abraham was arrested on 12 February 1944. from which he would never return. Chaïm Kaliski, "Jim", had to provide for his family and worked in the leather trade. The brutal disappearance of his father and the extermination of the Jews left him deeply traumatised. According to curator Virginie Michel: "Probably affected by an autistic disorder, he received a disability pension which allowed him to devote himself to his story, which he would revisit throughout his entire life." combining pen-and-ink drawing with watercolour painting and using India ink for his writing. His journey as a Jewish child hidden in Brussels during the war forms the backbone of his entire body of work. and in exhibitions devoted to outsider art curated by Erwin Dejasse.

The work, meticulously preserved, required extensive cataloguing, sorting and digitisation before publication. It was the comics authors and publishers William Henne and Xavier Löwenthal of La Cinquième Couche who undertook this task, assembling the material into a series of four volumes with the pages presented in chronological order. contains 336 pages created between 1989 and 1999, with an introduction by Joël Kotek and Didier Pasamonik. This first Memorbuch features a recurring character in the form of the informer Jacques Mousso, known as "Fat Jacques", whose true identity was Icek Glogowski, responsible for hundreds of deportations. The song Seule ce soir as performed by Léo Marjane, expressing grief and despair, runs as a refrain through his pages.

The second volume, Dossin, antichambre de la mort, focuses on the Dossin barracks — comparable to the Drancy internment camp in France — and was published in August 2025. Its introduction was written by Laurence Schram, a doctor of the Université libre de Bruxelles and lead researcher at the Kazerne Dossin museum. He also worked in oil painting.

The 2017 Paris exhibition revealed Kaliski's little-known drawings, which, according to Daniel Couvreur, culture editor of the Brussels daily Le Soir, are filled with "tragic poetry". The exhibition catalogue was published by the Geneva imprint Atrabile. The same curator presented Off-Comics, a distinctive history of the comics medium, at the Dr. Guislain Museum in Ghent in 2024, including works by Jim Kaliski.

In 2026, the retrospective exhibition Chaïm Kaliski. Jim d'Etterbeek was held at the Musée d'Art et d'Histoire du Judaïsme in Paris. According to Didier Pasamonik: "Chaïm Kaliski did not write History: he drew it, line after line, as one engraves a memory so that it may never be erased."

Exhibitions Solo exhibitions Chaïm Kaliski. Jim d'Etterbeek, curated by Virginie Michel, A monographic exhibition bringing together 120 drawings, photographs and archival documents.

Group exhibitions Sarah et ses frères, les Kaliski, une famille d'artistes témoins de l'Histoire, Jewish Museum of Belgium, Brussels, October 2007 – 24 February 2008. (2017), Mémorial de la Shoah, Paris, 19 January 2017 – 7 January 2018 (extended from 30 October 2017). Curated by Didier Pasamonik and Joël Kotek, specialist in antisemitism. The exhibition subsequently transferred to the Kazerne Dossin Memorial, Museum and Documentation Centre in Mechelen, Belgium, 17 September 2018 – 22 April 2019. PsycArt, Dr. Guislain Museum, Ghent, 24 July – 12 September 2021. Art brut et bande dessinée, curated by Erwin Dejasse, Collection de l'Art Brut, Lausanne, 16 September 2022 – 26 February 2023. Off-Comics, curated by Erwin Dejasse, Dr. Guislain Museum, Ghent, 2 March – 23 June 2024. Aussi loin qu'ici, Volet 2, curated by Alix Hubermont and Tatiana Veress, Art et Marges Museum, Brussels, 13 November 2025 – 29 March 2026.

Publications Graphic novels Jim d'Etterbeek – Bruxelles, les années noires, La Cinquième Couche, Brussels, 1 June 2024. . Dossin – Antichambre de la mort, ink and coloured pencil on thick paper, black leather cover, notebook of 46 pages, 22.2 × 16 cm, c. 1980, LaM – Lille Métropole Museum of Modern, Contemporary and Outsider Art. Rue Gray Etterbeek juin 1944, ink on Canson-type paper, 27 × 36 cm, 1993, LaM. Bruxelles place Rogier octobre 1941, ink on Canson-type paper, 27 × 36 cm, 1994, LaM.