A Jewish artist hid hundreds of her paintings in a house near Prague during the Holocaust. Now the works need a home.

(JTA) – Plans are under way to find a home for a huge trove of works by a nearly forgotten Jewish artist that was uncovered 78 years after her death in a Nazi concentration camp.

The works of Czech artist Gertrud Kauders (1883-1942) were found during the demolition of an old house near Prague in 2018, when 30 paintings tumbled onto the head of a worker. Hundreds more canvases were found in the walls and under floorboards of the home where the artist had stashed them to keep them out of Nazi hands.

Only this summer did the dimensions of the collection become clear, after photojournalist Amos Chapple and his colleague Dana Katharina Vaskova tracked down Jakub Sedlacek, the owner of the demolished house, on behalf of relatives of the artist living in New Zealand.