The artist Lea Grundig reached Palestine in November 1940 as a survivor of the shipwrecked SS Patria and thus as an illegal immigrant. The British Mandate government interned her in the Atlit detainee camp. After a short time the prisoners began to organize themselves. Everyone needed something and everyone could do something. Lea Grundig could draw and that's precisely what she did there. For example, she designed greeting cards for the community and helped produce the camp newspaper. As an artist she mainly captured scenes of everyday camp life, for example, in the watercolour Night in the Atlit Camp. She created about 100 artistic works during almost a year of internment. Many of these deal critically with fascism, such as the 18-part series Antifaschistische Fibel (Antifascist Primer).

In March 1941, Lea Grundig covered the walls of the camp laundry room with red blankets, attached her drawings to these with pins and opened her first exile exhibition. The works she exhibited were as varied as her “journey” there: “Landscapes and pictures of animals that were created in Bratislava hung there, the Greek islands as seen from the ship, and numerous drawings of the people here. A political committee had also already emerged [...]. [...] by the way, the British camp management had censored and stamped the drawings beforehand.” (Lea Grundig, Gesichte und Geschichte, 1984)