During a visit to Jerusalem in 1992, Bara Zetter '91 BFA, '93 MA, came face to face in a friend's apartment with a 5-by-7-foot painting of Adolph Hitler as the bloody scythe-wielding angel of death hovering over a tangle of incomplete, androgynous bodies. Since then, the image has become the focus of Bara Zetter's life.

"It struck me that Hitler was painted in the classical style," Zetter recalls, "while the bodies below were much more German Expressionist. It was one of the most powerful things I have ever seen' "

But who painted it? What did he intend? How have viewers responded to his interpretation of the Holocaust? How have art historians assessed its significance? Zetter decided to put her career as an artist on hold and devote herself to some sleuthing in art history to answer those questions.

Little more was known about the painter than that he had signed the work "Aczel, 1946." Intrigued by the work, Zetter made it the subject of her master's thesis in art history.

Now, with the support of the art history department, and especially of her adviser, Prof. Victor H. Miesel, Zetter has founded the Aczel Testament Project and set out to create a video documentary of the artist and his work.

The facts Zetter has uncovered so far involve a Hungarian painter who, from all indication, was confined in Auschwitz during World War II. If that prisoner was the painter, his first name was Dezso and he was born in 1893. Historians, referring to the fine detail in the painting's corpses, suggest that Aczel may have had a job sorting bodies at the death camp.

With the liberation of the camp, Aczel, his body ravaged by tuberculosis, wandered south to Weiden, Germany. A couple who also were Holocaust survivors, Bernhardt and Charlotte Kluger, saw him on the street begging and bleeding from the nose and mouth, and took him in. Aware that his disease was in fatal stages, the Klugers moved him into a shack behind their house to protect the health of their 2-year-old. A maid provided by the government left food for Aczel outside his door.

Aczel asked the Klugers to furnish him with artist's supplies, so that he could repay their kindness by completing an oil painting for them. One day, the maid reported that the tray of food had been left untouched.

After officials removed the body, the Klugers thought they might find a canvas emblazoned with flowers, vases, and fruits, but instead there stretched a wall-sized painting depicting one survivor's interpretation of the Holocaust.

The Klugers moved to Boston in 1951, then to Miami, and the canvas went with them; they usually hung it in their bedroom. In 1979, Charlotte, who had remarried a man named Rajgrodzki, fell sick and her family prepared her belongings for sale.

An appraiser unsuccessfully tried to interest museums and Holocaust memorial societies in purchasing the painting. Finally, the family contacted a young Miami collector of Judaica named Reuven Prager. Prager bought it in the early '80's and soon afterwards moved to Jerusalem, where he offered to lend the work to the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial. (The center had earlier declined Charlotte Kluger's offer to donate the painting.)

"Officials at Yad Vashem told him it was 'too explicit for visiting dignitaries from Europe,'" Zetter says, "so Reuven took it home and covered it with a black silk curtain. But because he believes the painting needs to be seen, he has let individuals and groups view it in his private collection."

For 15 years, museums and memorial societies continued to reject the work. An art historian at Hebrew University told Zetter that the painting was controversial because "Its strength of impact lies within the conflictual imagery--that Aczel's presentation of Hitler as a beautiful figure, idealized, would be enough for some neo-Nazis to misuse or misunderstand the piece."

But recently the painting has emerged from its oblivion, thanks in the main to Zetter's and Prager's efforts. Newspapers near her hometown in Edison, New Jersey, have reported on her research, and an Israeli television station interviewed Zetter and Prager about the painting last year. A current representative of the Jerusalem memorial center has called the work "a great painting" and expressed interest in acquiring it.

Zetter hopes to convince the art world that "this painting could be to the Holocaust what Picasso's Guernica is to the Spanish Civil War." She and Prager organized a premiere for the painting in Jerusalem on Feb. 26.

She also wants it "to be known and questioned, as to why academia goes to great lengths to discuss 'masterpieces' from the French and Spanish civil wars, yet neglects to present works from the Holocaust, and those specifically created by survivors, except in the very specialized classes that discuss Jewish art and perhaps Holocaust literature/history."

Now, helped by the U-M Department of Art History, which set up a conduit through which she can receive funds, Zetter has taken her life savings and gone to Israel and Hungary in quest of more information about Aczel.

"While I don't intend to make this my life's work," she says, "I'm prepared to teach English abroad or to get any other job that will enable me to complete this project."

Tax-deductible contributions to the Aczel Testament Project may be sent to Jane Nye, Account 304291, U-M Department of the History of Art, 519 S. State Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1357