Biographical Note

Ben Brown was born Ben Hurwitz in 1921 in the Bronx, New York. He attended the High School of Music and Art in New York and after graduation studied art at the University of Iowa before enlisting in the United States Army in 1942. In 1943, after basic training, he was shipped to North Africa and then to Italy a few months later. During his two years in the service, he kept a record of his experiences by sketching and painting whenever he had the chance.

Hurwitz changed his name to Brown after the war. He put aside his war sketches but continued to work in the arts as a painter, cartoonist and photographer. In 1995, just two years before his death, his son Joshua Brown convinced him to revisit his wartime drawings. A selection of his work, along with Brown's comments, can be found online on the History Matters website: http://historymatters.gmu.edu/text/s1.html.