But after offering a bribe to a guard, whom he was to pay more than 20 years later, Goldreich escaped and then eluded a nationwide manhunt. Disguised as a priest, he survived a number of close shaves to make it to Swaziland, and thence to Israel, where he settled and made a life as an artist.
Arthur Goldreich was born in 1929 in Pietersburg, South Africa. Aged 11 he wrote an excoriating letter to the then South African Prime Minister, Jan Smuts, complaining about his school’s decision to teach German rather than Hebrew. He had been particularly offended by the college’s decision to make use of Hitler Youth magazines to help their students’ progress in the language. Goldreich was victorious: German (and the magazines) were removed from the syllabus by order of the government.
After the Second World War Goldreich moved to Palestine, taking part in the insurgency against the British and later in the war that accompanied Israel’s creation, before returning to the country of his birth.
“The reason I went to Israel was the Holocaust and the struggle against British colonialism,” he later said. “But the Nats [apartheid National Party] winning the election [in South Africa] left me no doubt about what I had to do.” His abstract pictures earned him, in 1955, the accolade of Best Young Painter in South Africa.
He went on to become head of the design department at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem. He also evolved into an outspoken critic of Israel, whose foundation he had fought for, comparing its treatment of Palestinians to apartheid in South Africa and claiming that successive “Zionist” governments had become more interested in territory than in peace. He spoke before his death of “the abhorrent racism in Israeli society”.
Arthur Goldreich is survived by four sons.