Part 1 (1/2)
The Girls of Room 28.
Friends.h.i.+p, Hope, and Survival in Theresienstadt.
by Hannelore Brenner-Wonschick & Han.
FOREWORD.
Anna Ha.n.u.sova-Flachova and Helga Pollak KinskyWith the end of the war, those of us girls of Room 28 who had survived were scattered throughout the world; only a few of us were in contact in the decades following the Holocaust. We did not know what had become of most of our friends.It took almost half a century for us to find one another again. In October 1991, after the Berlin Wall came down, a few of us met in Prague for the first time since we had lost touch. We came from everywhere-from Israel, the United States, Russia, England, Sweden, Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia.It was an unforgettable moment. Gathered together in the lobby of an international hotel, we laughed and wept and spun in circles of joy as bystanders looked on in amazement.We were all surprised to find that our feelings had stayed the same as they were back then in the Girls' Home in the Theresienstadt concentration camp. We felt like a family all over again and understood each other marvelously. Since that day we have been seeing one another regularly.Our great fortune at being together reminded us of all the girls and boys, caretakers, teachers, and doctors who did not survive, and we very much desired to rescue from oblivion those who had lost their lives in the German camps. That was the first impulse for this book.And then, in Prague, we became acquainted with Hannelore Brenner, and we were set to move ahead. We all agreed to meet at our favorite place, Spindlermuhle, in the Giant Mountains. This book is the result.
CHAPTER ONE.
Spindlermuhle, Czech Republic, Autumn 2000.
Every fall since the mid-1990s a group of extraordinary women gathers at Spindlermuhle, a little Czech resort just below the headwaters of the Elbe, in the Giant Mountains. For a few days, the atmosphere in this small town is filled with the sounds of their joyous reunion, with songs and laughter, but also with the sad memories of their childhood, more than half a century ago.
The women are in their seventies, and they come from all parts of the globe. The shared vacation, which arose spontaneously out of their pleasure at having found one another again after so many years, quickly developed a momentum of its own, attracting more partic.i.p.ants with each pa.s.sing year. Soon the reunions became a cherished tradition. And while the women enjoy their time together, their hearts are both saddened by the approaching farewells and hopeful as they contemplate future reunions.
This annual meeting has come to represent the high point of their year. With bracing breezes blowing through its forests and the sparkling Elbe River rus.h.i.+ng by, Spindlermuhle radiates enchantment. The women feel rejuvenated as they hike up the mountains or stroll along the rus.h.i.+ng stream. They bask in the happiness of being together. Their happiness is palpable to outsiders, who might well wonder what invisible tie binds them. The women themselves would offer a simple answer: ”We feel like sisters, like a family. We're happy when we are together.”
Indeed, the women are like sisters, bound by a special fate: Between 1942 and 1944, when they were twelve to fourteen years old, they lived in Room 28, Girls' Home, L 410, Theresienstadt, a fortress town near Prague. They were prisoners of the ghetto, a small group of the 75,666 Jews from the so-called Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia who, with the incursion of German troops into their country, lost their homes, their property, and their freedom.
In Room 28, their paths crossed with those of about fifty other girls. They spent their lives, day and night, together in the closest of quarters- thirty girls at any given time confined to approximately 325 square feet. They slept on narrow two-and three-bed wooden bunks, ate their meager rations together, and listened as their counselors read to them when evening fell. Once the lights were out, they would talk about their experiences and share their thoughts and dreams, their worries and their fears.
Time and again, some of the girls would suddenly be torn from their midst and forced to join one of the dreaded transports to the East. New girls would arrive in Room 28 and grow accustomed to this community that had been created by force. New friends.h.i.+ps formed, only to be torn asunder again by the next transports-the word itself a metaphor for the constant fear that dominated their daily lives. Under the increasing pressure of these threatening events, the girls would cling together all the more tightly. And then, in the fall of 1944, a devastating wave of transports carried off almost all the girls and boys, putting an end to the children's homes and to Room 28.
It was at that time that Eva Fischl wrote in the alb.u.m of her friend Flaka, as Anna Flach was lovingly nicknamed by her friends: ”When the day comes that you are back in Brno and you are eating a fish, remember that in Theresienstadt there was also a little fish. Your Eva Fischlova. Fiku.” And with a few pencil strokes she added a picture of a fish. Little Ruth Schachter, whom everyone called Zajiek (”Rabbit”), dedicated these words to her: ”Don't forget the girl who wrote this, and lovingly stuck by you. Your-;” and here she drew a mother rabbit with seven bunnies, followed by: ”Dear Flaka: Will you always remember who lay beside you? And was your good friend????????”
At first glance, Anna Flach's little alb.u.m isn't much different from the kind that many girls keep at that age. Here, too, one finds aphorisms like this one from Goethe: ”Relish your good moods, for they are rare.” And dedications from friends and relatives: ”All the best for your future. Your Aunt Ella in Vienna. July 23, 1940.” And a steady stream of pictures and sketches: colorful flowers, a squirrel, a girl peeking through a keyhole, a puppy, an idyllic village street. Only gradually does it dawn on us that this little book, with its crumbling yellowed pages, tells a totally different story from that of most other alb.u.ms that survive solely for nostalgia's sake, like my own. It is obvious that other powers kept this book alive. In it are the living memoirs of the murdered girls from Room 28 and the sorrow of their unfulfilled hopes and dreams. In Flaka's imagination these youngsters live on as they were then-lovable, talented, full of fantasy, some calm and thoughtful, others athletic and vivacious. Flaka and her friends keep asking themselves: What would have become of them? Of Lenka, who wrote such wonderful poems? Of Fika, who came up with witty sketches and loved the stage? Of Helena, with her talent for drawing and painting? Of Maria, with her beautiful voice? Of Muka, Olile, Zdenka, Pavla, Hana, Poppinka, and sweet little Zajiek, who was so helpless and in need of protection?
The past lives on. ”You can't forget it,” says Judith Schwarzbart. ”You live with it every day without talking about it, or even giving it a conscious thought. But then all at once something happens. It can come unexpectedly, out of the blue. A remark, a bit of food, a day of remembrance, anything-and suddenly it's all there again. But only just parts of it, never everything at once.”
The past comes especially alive when these friends gather, and even more so when they celebrate together. As their annual reunion usually takes place around Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, and coincides with several of their birthdays as well, there's plenty of reason to celebrate. Flowers and candles adorn the festively set table, there are little speeches and toasts, and gifts are exchanged. Later in the evening the lively conversation is increasingly drowned out by song. And finally all of them sing the songs of their childhood in the Theresienstadt ghetto- Czech folk songs, Zionist anthems, songs from the children's opera Brundibar Brundibar.
A unique atmosphere fills the room at such moments-a blend of gaiety and gravity, of love and friends.h.i.+p, and of grat.i.tude as well. We are thankful, they seem to be saying, that we have our families, that we are mothers and grandmothers, that after all we have gone through, many of our wishes have come true. Their joy is enhanced by the fact that with the end of the Communist era, they are finally able to come together with their relatives and friends in their beloved Czech homeland.
Yet it is at just such moments that the women are aware of how many of their childhood friends cannot share their good fortune. For in their hearts and thoughts these friends are still present. They belong to them just as their own childhood belongs to them.
Anna Flach's alb.u.m is no mere memento; it is a mission. She sees it as her personal responsibility to keep alive the memory of the murdered girls of Room 28. Whenever she leafs through the pages-and apparently she does so quite often-she sees these girls in her mind's eye, hears their voices, gazes into their sad eyes. Don't forget me Don't forget me, they seem to call to her from the past. Do you remember how we swore to be faithful to one another forever? Do you remember how we swore to be faithful to one another forever?
”On one of the first Sundays after the war we shall wait for each other under the Bell Tower in the Old Town Square in Prague.” This is what Flaka and her comrades had promised one another when they had to say goodbye in Theresienstadt. They reinforced their promise with words that resonated like an incantation and a secret pa.s.sword.
You believe me, I believe you.
You know what I know.Whatever may happen, you won't betray me, I won't betray you.
They were a community sworn to loyalty and friends.h.i.+p, with its own motto, emblem, hymn, and flag. The flag displays two clasped hands set in a circle. The emblem, which they called the ma'agal ma'agal (the Hebrew word for ”circle”), was a symbol of perfection and of the ideals they strove to live by. But what united them above all was their desire for Germany's defeat and their hope that the war would finally end. (the Hebrew word for ”circle”), was a symbol of perfection and of the ideals they strove to live by. But what united them above all was their desire for Germany's defeat and their hope that the war would finally end.
Today, more than half a century later, the girls of Room 28 are among the very few who still remember the girls who did not survive.
”We always bring them to mind,” Ela Weissberger (nee Stein) says on one of our walks in Spindlermuhle. ”Every time I speak to an audience in America I ask them to join me for a moment in remembering these girls, and all the children of Theresienstadt. Because no one knows these children apart from us, the few who survived. We have them in our thoughts and our hearts, and we see them before us: their faces, their eyes, their personalities, and everything that we experienced with them. That's why we are eager for this book to be published. And we hope that someday we will come together and dedicate the book to younger generations and to future generations, and send them on their way with our wishes for a better life. We hope that they may see that we did our best to pa.s.s on our memories and the love that comes with these memories: the love that the adults-our counselors and teachers, the artists, and so many others-gave us in those black days. I believe that a great many children today could use the kind of love we knew back then.”
I got to know Ela Weissberger in America in 1996. She was the first eyewitness I sought out in my attempt to learn more about Brundibar Brundibar, the children's opera that was performed in Theresienstadt fifty-five times in 1943 and 1944. An old friend, Frank Harders-Wuthenow, had piqued my interest. A member of the artistic staff of the Bielefeld Opera in Germany, he had discovered Brundibar Brundibar in Prague and brought it to the stage in 1992. in Prague and brought it to the stage in 1992.1 From the moment he told me about the opera, questions about its history and the fate of the children who had performed in it never left my mind. And one day, as I held a From the moment he told me about the opera, questions about its history and the fate of the children who had performed in it never left my mind. And one day, as I held a Brundibar Brundibar program in my hand, I settled on a plan: I would produce a radio doc.u.mentary on the history of program in my hand, I settled on a plan: I would produce a radio doc.u.mentary on the history of Brundibar Brundibar. Luckily, the special features division of Radio Free Berlin accepted my proposal, and soon afterward I set out to investigate the story.2 In the Theresienstadt performances of Brundibar Brundibar, Ela had played the cat, one of the lead roles in this lovely children's opera, originally composed in Prague just before the outbreak of World War II. The creators of Brundibar Brundibar, the Czech composer Hans Krasa and his friend, the artist and writer Adolf Hoffmeister, could not possibly have imagined that their work would premiere a few years later in a concentration camp, with an ensemble of young Jewish prisoners. Nor could they have imagined what their work would come to mean to these children and to all ghetto inmates: a symbol of hope and resistance, of faith that good would triumph over evil.
No one living in Prague in 1938 could have fathomed what Hans Krasa, a prisoner in the ghetto from 1942 to 1944, was forced to witness with his own eyes: how his opera, along with other art and culture in Theresienstadt, was exploited by the n.a.z.is in their pernicious propaganda operations. Who could ever have imagined that such a thing was possible? That one day the history of a children's opera would also be the story of an infamous deception and of the cruel murder of Jewish children?
My conversation with Ela revealed something surprising. When I raised the topic of Brundibar Brundibar, her eyes sparkled. The very word seemed to prompt a veritable stream of consciousness-a phenomenon I would encounter over and over in my research. Quite evidently, Brundibar Brundibar is a magic word that enlivens heart and soul, and conjures images of bygone times. They were nightmarish, yet is a magic word that enlivens heart and soul, and conjures images of bygone times. They were nightmarish, yet Brundibar Brundibar imbued them with visions of a more humane, cultured, and hopeful world. imbued them with visions of a more humane, cultured, and hopeful world.
The hours with Ela pa.s.sed too quickly, and I left with a strong sense that I had heard only the beginning of a gripping and important story. But how was I to proceed? How could I find out more? As if she had read my mind, Ela said: ”I'll be going to Prague again in September. I'll be seeing my old friends there. If you like, you can join us.”
Before long, I was able to meet Ela's friends from Room 28 in Prague-an encounter that led to many others in their homes in Brno, Vienna, Israel, and England. I learned about their childhoods, their experiences in Theresienstadt, and the period after they were transported to the East, to Auschwitz, where so many vanished from their midst. The abyss of horror into which these young people gazed on their journey through h.e.l.l, the cataclysm that tore at their souls-never before had I experienced the tragedy of the Holocaust so directly and starkly as during those meetings. My sense of time seemed to have been suspended, the lines that normally separate today from yesterday suddenly appeared random and irrelevant, and I was all too painfully aware of the truth that we never leave the past behind. ”If we had stayed in Room 28 until the end of the war, I think many things would have turned out differently.” I clearly remember Judith Schwarzbart's words: ”We would be happier people today. But most of us had to leave on the transports. And what happened then was so terrible that you just want to forget it.”
It was during these interviews that I realized that I had to do everything in my power to pa.s.s on the torch of memory. This book draws primarily on the experiences of ten of the fifteen surviving girls from Room 28, who took part in our annual September meetings: Anna Flach, Helga Pollak, Ela Stein, Judith Schwarzbart, Eva Landa, Marta Frohlich, Hanka Wertheimer, Handa Pollak, Eva Winkler, and Vera Nath. Two former counselors, Eva Weiss, from England, and Eva Eckstein, from Sweden, happily joined these gatherings with ”their girls” when their health permitted. Three of the girls-Eva Stern, Marianne Deutsch, and Eva Kohn-opted not to partic.i.p.ate in the annual reunion in Spindlermuhle. But Eva Stern and Marianne Deutsch welcomed me into their homes. Eva h.e.l.ler and Marianne Rosenzweig, both of whom live in America, would have liked to come to Spindlermuhle, but were unable to do so.
I consider myself extremely fortunate to have become part of this circle of friends and to have witnessed their happiness at being together. It has taught me a remarkable lesson: In recalling periods marked by the deepest of horrors, memory can be merciful, and happy recollections can be extracted and sheltered within our hearts, providing strength during times of adversity. Moreover, it is even possible to share and pa.s.s on this healing energy, provided that, like the girls of Room 28, we base our lives, against all odds, on the principle of love.
The finale of the children's opera Brundibar. Brundibar. This still is from the infamous n.a.z.i propaganda film about Theresienstadt directed by Kurt Gerron (1944), This still is from the infamous n.a.z.i propaganda film about Theresienstadt directed by Kurt Gerron (1944), unofficially dubbed The Fuhrer Gives the Jews a City. The Fuhrer Gives the Jews a City.
”When I think of those truly evil years of the war and the Holocaust, one bright, s.h.i.+ning point of light always emerges in my memory-our Children's Home in the ghetto, our Room 28,” recalls Eva Landa. ”I was in Theresienstadt for eighteen months. That isn't long in the life of an adult, but in the life of a twelve-year-old, it is practically an eternity.
”I came to Theresienstadt in 1942, when I was eleven. By the time I left the ghetto on a transport to Auschwitz in December 1943, I felt almost grown up. Parting from Theresienstadt was very hard for me. I left behind my friends and the community we had fas.h.i.+oned with so much care. However, I took with me the memories of our striving for a better and more just world. I did my best to be brave and not to betray our ideals.
”Our little community helped me to overcome many hards.h.i.+ps. Sadly, only fifteen girls from Room 28 were fortunate enough to survive. In the Theresienstadt Hymn,' we all sang: 'If you wish, you will succeed, hand in hand we'll be as one, on the ghetto ruins we'll all laugh one day'. These prophecies never came true. No one could laugh on those ruins. But we who survived remember our childhood in Room 28 of the children's home at Theresienstadt with a gentle smile.”
”How did we handle it?” Judith Schwarzbart wonders. ”How did we manage to get along and help one another-about thirty girls at that difficult age between twelve and fourteen? Why did we voluntarily attend to our studies? How did we keep our room clean and our hair washed under such trying circ.u.mstances? I now realize that our counselor Tella pulled off a miracle, as did the other counselors.”
”They were like second mothers to us,” Flaka says. ”Room 28 was a little island that protected us and made it easier for us to bear the loss of our homes-and in many cases, the separation from one or both parents.”
The adults who were responsible for caring for the children did everything they could to create a refuge for them. ”We wanted to make a home for our youngsters, a place where they were taken seriously, where they were allowed to be young, where they weren't constantly confronted with the major issues of the day,” Fredy Hirsch, the legendary Zionist youth leader, wrote in mid-1943, one year after the children's homes were established. ”We wanted to give them a reasonably lovely place to call home in the midst of misery piled upon misery.”3 No one could have predicted what lay ahead for the prisoners in Theresienstadt. They could only hope that they would survive until the war was over, and in the meantime try to prepare for that day, both physically and mentally. ”Over the last year and a half we have seen traditionally inviolable notions of human society reevaluated in a way that many of us do not understand,” Fredy wrote. ”In this world we built Children's Homes. The attempt had to be made to rescue children from the devaluation of what is good.” And he concluded with these words: ”I believe that someday these children will look back fondly on the home that we tried to provide for them in Theresienstadt. How terrible it would be if Theresienstadt were to represent an irrevocable spiritual and physical defeat for our youth.”4 It is horrifying to contemplate that the lives of most of the children of Theresienstadt ended in the gas chambers of Auschwitz; still, it is comforting to know that Fredy Hirsch's hopes found fulfillment in the lives of those children who survived.
”It was truly a privilege to live in the Girls' Home, L 410,” Marianne Rosenzweig writes. ”I consider the time I spent in Room 28 the best time in Theresienstadt. Although we were young, and although hunger, cold, and fear defined our lives, we remained honest and decent and always had high moral values. And we developed very deep friends.h.i.+ps of the sort that would have scarcely been possible under normal circ.u.mstances.”
”I believe that Room 28 made me a tolerant person capable of forming friends.h.i.+ps with a wide range of people,” says Handa Pollak. ”We lived in a little room with about thirty children, and we all came from very different backgrounds. Some were spoiled, some were quarrelsome, some egotistic, some good, and some less so-but that's how life is. Everyone has a different character. And we learned to get along, to listen to one another. We learned to live together-because there was no other choice.”
Flaka's alb.u.m contains the following words, which were written in farewell by Margit Muhlstein, a social worker in the Girls' Home. They would become Flaka's guiding principle in all her actions: ”Our years in Theresienstadt will have been for nothing if we ever oppress so much as a single person in our own lives.”
It seems as though there was no other place in those days where education was taken more seriously and where pedagogical ideas and goals were put into practice with more determination than in Theresienstadt. Part of the reason was, of course, the unique situation that had forcibly confined almost the entire Jewish population of a nation, including its intellectual elite (artists, teachers, scientists, Zionist activists). The key to this educational success was the combined effort of adults who valued the children's well-being over their own lives. Among them were Fredy Hirsch, Walter Eisinger, Rudi Freudenfeld, Ilse Weber, Kamilla Rosenbaum, Ella Pollak, and the Viennese artist and art instructor Friedl d.i.c.ker-Brandeis, from whose cla.s.ses at Theresienstadt more than three thousand children's drawings were saved.
”There is a certain irony of fate,” writes historian Livia Rothkirchen, ”in the fact that the coerced society of Theresienstadt struck the final chord in a life shared by three ethnic elements-the Czech, German, and Jewish communities-that had influenced and enriched one another on Bohemian soil for several centuries and that had played a significant role in the development of the culture of European thought. ... Wrenched from the nouris.h.i.+ng soil of their homelands and placed in the most difficult circ.u.mstances, Czech and German Jews, generally thought to be a.s.similated and incapable of defending themselves against the n.a.z.is, found their way back to their own human and spiritual values in Theresienstadt, of all places.”5 What remains are the works of those who contributed to the unique cultural milieu of Theresienstadt, to striking this last chord in so resounding a fas.h.i.+on that even today, some sixty years later, its echo can still be heard in the works of musicians and composers such as Viktor Ullmann, Gideon Klein, Hans Krasa, Pavel Haas, Rafael Schachter, and Karel Anerl; in the works of artists such as Otto Ungar, Leo Haas, Bedich Fritta, Peter Kien, Karel Fleischmann, and Alfred Kantor; in the cabaret songs and poems of Karel venk, Leo Strauss, and Walter Lindenbaum. And it is captured in unforgettable performances-of Giuseppe Verdi's Requiem Requiem and of Hans Krasa's children's opera, and of Hans Krasa's children's opera, Brundibar- Brundibar-which embody the essence of the culture of Theresienstadt.
Those who were children at the time could not possibly have fathomed the almost superhuman determination needed to create this cultural environment. Still, many of them would surely have grasped the meaning of Viktor Ullmann's words: ”I must emphasize that in no sense did we sit weeping by the rivers of Babylon, but, instead, our will to create culture matched our will to live.” But to understand what extraordinary powers these adults had to summon to realize these outstanding achievements while gazing into the abyss-this was most certainly beyond the realm of a child's comprehension.