Stephen Roth was born into a Jewish family in Žilina, Austria-Hungary (now Slovakia) in 1911 and, as a young man, he drew sports cartoons, illustrations to accompany jokes and portraits for various publications. In order to avoid Nazi persecution, in 1938 he fled to Poland and Sweden, finally immigrating to England in 1939, the day before war was declared; settling in London, he contributed political cartoons to many magazines, including the Daily Mirror, Lilliput and Star, building a cult following, while collections of his wartime cartoons were published in three books during the early 1940s.
Cartoonist and illustrator Stephen Roth was born Štefan Roth into a Jewish family in Žilina, Austria-Hungary (now Slovakia) in 1911. In 1931 he moved to Prague where he drew sports cartoons, illustrations to jokes, and portraits, for various papers and magazines, signing his work ‘Pista’ (pronounced 'Pishta' from the Hungarian for Stephen). By 1935 he had become a political cartoonist on the anti-Nazi weekly Demokraticky Stred edited by Dr H. Ripka, later head of the Czechoslovak Propaganda Department in exile in London during the Second World War.
In order to avoid Nazi persecution, Roth left Prague in 1938, travelling to Poland and Sweden before arriving in England only days before war broke out in September 1939. In London, he contributed political cartoons to the Ministry of Information and to many magazines, including the Star, Lilliput, Daily Mirror, Central Press, Courier, Daily Mail and London Evening News. He also collaborated with underground and independent publications on the continent, such as the free Norwegian newspaper Norsk Tidend. Roth’s popular series 'Acid Drops' began to appear in the Sunday Pictorial in 1942 and reflected a crucial point in the war when it became possible to foresee a Nazi defeat. Roth’s recognisable style became very popular and he built a cult following, particularly in London. His success resulted in the publication of his first book of cartoons in 1942, My Patience is Exhausted, which contained a Foreword by the Czechoslovak premier in exile, Jan Masaryk. This was followed by Divided they Fall (1943) and Finale (1944), the latter containing the Hitler image 'To Be or Not to Be', now in the Ben Uri Collection. One of Roth’s most famous cartoons was ‘The Sword of Damocles’ (1940), which showed Hitler cringing in bed, with a sword suspended by a thread above his head as Churchill counted down towards D-day and the opening of a Second Front. In 1944, together with Pelc, Walter Trier, and Z.K., Roth (signing his work as ‘Stephen’), contributed drawings to a book of Adolf Hoffmeister's cartoons, entitled Jesters in Earnest, with a forward by cartoonist David Low. In 1961 Roth began contributing two series of portrait cartoons - 'The Face is Familiar' and 'Man in the City' - to the London Evening News.
Stephen Roth died in London, England on 4 February 1967. His works feature in UK public collections, including Ben Uri Collection; British Cartoon Archive, University of Kent; Churchill Archives Centre, University of Cambridge; and the Wiener Holocaust Library, University of London. In 2013, the Wiener Library organised an exhibition of Roth's anti-Nazi cartoons while Ben Uri featured his collection work in the on-line exhibition, New Acquisitions and Long-term Loans, Ben Uri Gallery (2020).
Stephen Roth in the Ben Uri collection
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Stephen Roth]
Publications related to [Stephen Roth] in the Ben Uri Library