Micah and Shoshana Hamarri, who built the aperion, with Tamar Siegel of Ann Arbor and Reuven Prager. Ms. Siegel also worked on the aperion. 11111•111•11111111MMINI 38 ■ mml the artist was tormented by the faces of the dead, of for- mer friend and acquain- tances. After the war, Aczel went to Hamburg, Germany. He had contracted TB and was homeless. In October 1945, Aczel was lying in the gutter, blood pouring from his nose, when he saw a young couple he had known from Auschwitz. He called out to them, beg- ging them to take him home. He did not want to die alone on the street. The couple — their last name probably was either Rajgrodzki or Kruger — agreed to take in Aczel. But because of his disease, and because they had a 3-year- old son, they wouldn't take Aczel into their house. In- stead, they offered him shel- ter in a shack in the back yard. Aczel lived in this make- shift home for six months un- til his death. The closest he came to human contact was the meals left outside his door each day by the family maid. His one constant compan- i nn WAS his art eauinment. The huge canvas, the brush- es and oil paints were a gift from his hosts. Aczel pro- mised to make them a pre- sent, to thank them for taking him in. The couple ex- pected a picture of a flower. When Aczel died, he left behind the canvas with this note: "Thank you for your hospitality. God bless you." The painting was large enough to fill an entire wall. Among the strangest fea- tures of the work was a thick, deep red color covering the scythe. Today, it is cracked and dark, believed to be the artist's own blood. In 1949, the Rajgrodzki, or Kruger, family moved to Boston. They took the paint- ing with them, transporting it as though it were a rug. They later settled on Merid- ian Avenue in Miami, Fla., where for 31 years the paint- ing hung above their bed. After the husband died, the wife — her first name was Charlotte — remarried. In 1979, her health began to fail. When a man came to ap- praise the family furniture, he noticed the Aczel paint- ing. Would she be willing to s ell_it. he asked. He had a buyer in mind. R euven Prager was hardly the typical art connoisseur. He was a Miami native, in his early 20s, the son of a businessman. His in- terest was strictly Judaica. Reuven had put the word out that he was looking for unusual Jewish art. So he was happy to speak with the appraiser and eager see the Aczel piece. But he never could have anticipated what he was about to experience. "I knew as soon as I saw it that I had seen the Holocaust painting," he says. "It is the most horrendous, awesome thing to come out of the Holo- caust. It sucks the air out of you." When he made aliyah, Mr. Prager took the painting with him. He offered it to a Holocaust memorial center in Jerusalem, but officials there told him, "We can't hang that. Visiting digni- taries from Europe come here. They won't want to see this." So Mr. Prager kept the painting in his home, under a black-silk curtain to help