Irene Awret, the daughter of a Jewish businessman in Germany, escaped the Nazis in 1939 but was arrested by the Gestapo in early 1943. Sketches she made while in jail were admired by the Gestapo Chief of Brussels, who had her put to work in a painter's workshop instead of being sent to Auschwitz. The works that she and her soon-to-be husband completed in the Gestapo camp - both official works and clandestine drawings and paintings of other inmates - are now held by various museums. A resident of Israel for many years after the war and a resident of Virginia since 1967, Awret continues to focus on her art, and she is also the author of two books, Days of Honey (1984) which won the Janusz Korczak competition, and her recent memoir, They'll Have to Catch Me First: An Artist's Coning of Age in the Third Reich (2004).