Part 6 (1/2)

Wednesday, January 5, 1944Today is my first day in the Sokolovna. I have encephalitis, or sleeping sickness, a kind of brain flu. I've been sick for ten days now and spent the whole time in sick bay. There are so many cases that one of the rooms in the Home had to be cleared to accommodate them. It was really awful there. The door wouldn't close, the windows were broken, the blinds ripped, the stove wouldn't heat, and there was a thick layer of dust everywhere. No one looked after us because it wasn't a real sick bay. It was just so that we could be isolated from the healthy children. I am so happy to be here now thick layer of dust everywhere. No one looked after us because it wasn't a real sick bay. It was just so that we could be isolated from the healthy children. I am so happy to be here now.The Sokolovna, which before the war had been the clubhouse of the Sokol (Czech for ”falcon”) Athletic ClubThursday, January 6, 1944The Sokolovna is a beautiful, modern building full of laboratories. The former gym is now the sick bay for all encephalitis cases. There are four rows of beds, with twenty patients in each row. Each row has its own doctor. One doctor and one nurse are on duty at night. There are five or six nurses during the day. When Pfeiffer, the head doctor, makes his rounds, he's joined by four other doctors and all the nurses.They wake us at six o'clock and take temperatures. At nine the doctor in charge makes his rounds, and at eleven the head doctor makes his. This afternoon Prof. Sittig, a nerve specialist, came to examine the new patients. We new arrivals are lying just outside the ward in a separate room with only nine beds.We are all in love with Dr. Herling, the physician a.s.signed to us, but it's hopeless because he's already married. He's so handsome and das.h.i.+ng. He has a very special smile, probably because he knows we all have a crush on him.During visiting hours today we were allowed out on the balcony and I spoke to Papa from the second floor.

The next day Helga pa.s.sed a little note to her father-let down from the terrace at the end of long thread. No visitors were allowed inside the Sokolovna, so there was always a crowd outside the building during visiting hours. Naturally, there was a loud muddle of voices, and it would have been impossible for Helga to shout everything she wanted to say to her father.

The note that Helga let down to her father on a thread from the terrace of the Sokolovna January 6, 1944Dear Papa,We're finally here. It's nice here and the main thing is: it's CLEAN CLEAN here. The girls who here. The girls who were already in the Sokolovna were so happy to see us-it's a miracle that they didn't hug us to death. We had to bathe and wash our hair. There was a concert in the evening. Someone played the violin and someone else an accordion. They played Dvoak's were already in the Sokolovna were so happy to see us-it's a miracle that they didn't hug us to death. We had to bathe and wash our hair. There was a concert in the evening. Someone played the violin and someone else an accordion. They played Dvoak's Humoresque, Poem Humoresque, Poem by Fib.i.+.c.h, a medley of songs from the operetta by Fib.i.+.c.h, a medley of songs from the operetta Gypsy Princess, Gypsy Princess, plus some Czech folk songs. They ended the concert with Gounod's plus some Czech folk songs. They ended the concert with Gounod's Ave Maria. Ave Maria.Nine o'clock is lights-out. My blanket is so heavy that I thought I'd end up flat as a pancake by morning.I'm lying next to Ruth Gutmann. She's a great girl from our room. I had already laid beside her in 17a [the sick bay at the Girls' Home] [the sick bay at the Girls' Home]. We've become fond of each other since that time. Please, write me, I'm a little afraid here. I'm reading a book in German now: The Jewish Millionaires. The Jewish Millionaires.When I look out the window I can see the Sudeten Barracks and a barbed wire fence. It looks as if I'm right at the border. Everything is covered with snow, and I can see forests and mountains in the distance. There's a guardhouse and a policeman stationed at the fence.

When Hana Lissau was discharged on January 10, Helga moved to the vacant bed beside Eva h.e.l.ler. Eva also came from Vienna and, like Helga, had been taken in 1938 to Czechoslovakia, where she lived with her aunt in Brno until her deportation. Her parents had fled to Palestine and, like Zajiek's parents, they had hoped to have their daughter follow later. But it hadn't worked out, and Eva remained with her aunt, who treated her like her own daughter.

A deep friends.h.i.+p developed between Helga and Eva h.e.l.ler. The two of them founded a ”commune,” shared their food and anything they got, and occasionally buried themselves in the books that were pa.s.sed around the Sokolovna: Quo Vadis, The Microbe Hunters Quo Vadis, The Microbe Hunters, and Pierrot Pierrot, Francis Kozik's biography of the French mime Caspar Debureau. Sometimes they did handicrafts with the help of a girl in a nearby bed, making little dolls out of rags, wire, and yarn. Helga gave her first creation to her father. ”In case you don't recognize it, he's supposed to be a sailor, and that's an accordion he's holding.” For her cousin Lea she put together a snowman, and for Trude a girl in winter clothing, in a dark blue dress with a m.u.f.f, a cap, and a scarf.

And so the days pa.s.sed with naps, chatting, reading, handicrafts, and visits by the doctors. The fears and anxieties that sometimes faded away during the day hit doubly hard at night: ”Every day the actress tells me what I did in my sleep; that she tucked me in like a little child and that I scream a lot. Today I was lying with my head on Eva's stomach, and she woke up because she couldn't breathe. What's the political news? Write and tell me. I would so love to see Mama even for just a little while.”

Illness still held Helga in its clutches. ”I have a real encephalitis head. I forget everything. I go to the bathroom and suddenly realize I don't know why I went there. It is so bad that when I write to you and put my pencil aside for a second, I fall asleep at once. I hope that I can come home in a week or two. I couldn't write to Maenka yesterday because my eyes hurt too much.”

January was drawing to a close, and there was still a blanket of snow when Helga was finally released. ”Left Marta at three-thirty to see Mimi,” Otto Pollak noted. ”A marvelous surprise when I got to House L 410-Helga came shooting out the door. She's been released from the Sokolovna. She wanted to surprise me by playing her little trick. When I visited her yesterday she said the doctors were figuring it would be two weeks yet before the infection was gone. With a cry of Tati! Tati! she hugged me and smothered me with kisses.” she hugged me and smothered me with kisses.”

February 20, 1944, was, as Otto Pollak recorded enthusiastically in his diary, ”the most beautiful winter day of the year. No fog, no clouds, an azure sky, cold, but with a wonderfully bright winter sun, and with freshly fallen snow thawing on Monte Terezino.”1 News from the front indicated that the Germans were suffering huge losses on a daily basis. At the start of the month, according to the News from the front indicated that the Germans were suffering huge losses on a daily basis. At the start of the month, according to the bonkes bonkes making the rounds of the ghetto, fifty-four hundred airplanes were involved in a maneuver in North Africa, and the roar could be heard all across the south of France. ”They were American and English planes,” Helga confided to her diary in code, reversing all the letters of the sentence. making the rounds of the ghetto, fifty-four hundred airplanes were involved in a maneuver in North Africa, and the roar could be heard all across the south of France. ”They were American and English planes,” Helga confided to her diary in code, reversing all the letters of the sentence.

In the meantime, a new girl, Miriam Rosenzweig, had moved into Room 28. She shared a bunk with Hanka Wertheimer. The two had become acquainted in the Dresden Barracks, where Hanka's grandmother and Miriam's mother shared a room. Hanka liked this blond girl who was, like herself, a member of the Zionist organization Tekhelet-Lavan. Their pleasure in spending time together quickly grew into a friends.h.i.+p that was deepened at the meetings of Hanka's little Zionist group, Dror, which Miriam also joined.

Miriam had long been familiar with Room 28. She had regularly attended Friedl d.i.c.ker-Brandeis's painting cla.s.ses there. And she also loved to join in the girls' other activities, because there was usually something interesting going on in Room 28. The latest rage was scouting.

By this time a group of girls had joined with the boys in Room 9 to form a scouting troop. Inspired by The Boys from Beavers' River The Boys from Beavers' River, a book by Jaroslav Foglar, they called themselves the Beavers. The Beavers were divided into teams: the Wolves, the Sharpshooters, the Foxes, and the Lions, each with its own flag and battle cry. ”With lionlike strength we pounce like the king of beasts. Forward, young Lions, forward, ahoy, ahoy!” was the cry of the Lions, the group that Helga had halfheartedly joined. ”At first I didn't want to join the scouts,” she noted, ”because I know how it always turns out when our girls do anything together with these guys. Many of them don't take the whole thing seriously-they just want to be around the boys. But then I reconsidered and joined the group, because I do love nature.”

When Helga heard that a couple of the girls intended to organize parties with the boys, though, she regretted her decision. ”Yuck! Dancing, body against body. The smell of sweat and makeup. I'm against it. This isn't allowed according to scouting rules.”

Judith Schwarzbart was in total agreement with her. Weren't there enough scouting activities-like not speaking for a day, or not eating all day, or not laughing, even when others did everything they could to make you laugh? What was all this to-do about boys? Some girls were now also suggesting ideas for future parties: a sketch, a game, something amusing. Had their comrades gone completely crazy?

Others saw the funny side of the matter. Handa and Fika used this opportunity to write what they called an ”ironic song.” It can be found in Handa's notebook: One day Gelbec [Honza Gelbkopf] came to us and said: ”I'm supposed to tell you that our scout troop will be meeting this afternoon.” He was hardly out the door when everyone began shouting, ”Hurrah! There'll be lots of boys there!” Lenka: ”Which blouse should I wear? This one's all wrinkled, and my best skirt has a big spot on it.” ”So what?” one of the girls said. ”Why are you always going on about your blouse!” ”Lenka, calm down. It's not important.” Lenka: ”But I've got to look good because my boyfriend will see me there.” Another girl: ”You're so silly. Gelbec isn't even your boyfriend anymore. So don't try that on us, and stop worrying about your outfit all the time.”The next day the stillness of Home 9 was broken by a deep sigh. ”Who would like to exchange 2 ounces of margarine for Ela? She jabbers so much I don't even like her anymore.” And one of the boys says, ”You don't think I'm crazy, do you? I can eat margarine. But what can I do with Ela?”Suddenly Chamiurgl's bald head comes into view. And he raises one finger and says menacingly, ”Gelbec, I'm warning you. You stick with Ela, or I'll make mincemeat of you.”

Although Judith and Helga both loved to laugh and were amused by such foolishness, they could not make heads or tails of the excitement this partners.h.i.+p with the boys in Home 9 was occasioning among their roommates. ”For all I care this scouting thing can fall apart. It's really just silly stuff with boys, and it has no deeper meaning at all,” Helga told her diary. ”Ma'agal full speed ahead would be better.” Or education. ”I've been unfaithful to you, haven't I?” reads her entry for February 24. ”But I really haven't had any time to write. I have so much to learn if I want to stay in group A. I was second in geography with a grade of 95, and in history I had a 100, and Hana Lissau and I are the best in the cla.s.s. We have a new teacher in Czech, a regular Xanthippe. She taught the eighth grade. Things are getting lost here. Tella is carrying out a search to find out why.”

Something quite shocking was happening in Room 28. Bread, margarine, sugar, and even buns and dumplings kept disappearing somewhere along the way from the children's kitchen to the Home. ”I'll never forget that moment,” little Frta, Marta Frohlich, recalls. ”I was a suspect! And then two more buns disappeared, and two girls would have to go without lunch. They searched everywhere and took my bunk apart, but didn't find anything. Then the counselors came up with a plan. Before our meal all the girls had to go down to the courtyard, and a counselor hid behind the curtain of our closet. The counselor who accompanied the girls getting the food placed the bucket in view of the hidden counselor. We were called in for our meal. And two buns were missing again. 'That just isn't possible!' I can still hear it today. And suddenly a girl pointed at me and said, 'She's blus.h.i.+ng. It's probably her.' I started to cry. It was horrible. It wasn't me, and it was such an awful feeling. It weighed on me for a long, long time, even after the war. The counselors insisted that the thief confess and admit what she had done. But no one stepped forward. Since two portions for our noon meal were missing again, there was an inspection. They searched everywhere now, in our blankets, which we always kept rolled up, and what do you know-two buns appeared! They were not in my things, but no one apologized to me. They probably thought it didn't matter if you make life difficult for such a stupid girl.”

The story about the pilfering cut Marta to the quick. Had it not been for Eva Eckstein, their new counselor, she would have had a hard time getting over it. But Eva kindly took her under her wing. She sensed that Marta was not held in high regard by Tella, and she didn't want to make her life any more difficult than it already was. She herself had reservations about Tella. ”I always had the feeling that whatever I did wasn't enough. She also pointed out to me that Eva Weiss did everything better than I did.”

Eva Eckstein was born in Louny on November 7, 1924. She arrived in Theresienstadt in February 1942 and began working on the cleaning crew. Then, during the hard winter of 194243, she was a.s.signed to a commando in the forests of Kivoklat. After Eichmann's visit to Theresienstadt in April 1943, tents were set up in Market Square as a place to a.s.semble crates for the army, and Eva was a.s.signed to this ”essential war production.” In the wake of the transports of December 1943 and with the help of her friend Kamilla Rosenbaum, she was transferred to work in Youth Welfare.

Eva Eckstein was nineteen and more emotionally connected to the girls than Tella. She treated her wards with great kindness, especially Marta, whom she often took along when she visited her mother and two sisters. Marta had finally found someone who offered her trust and maternal affection, and who helped restore her self-confidence. Eva did her best to make life easier for the children. ”The time I spent in Room 28,” she would say half a century later, ”was the best part of my stay in Theresienstadt.”

By March the blue skies of February had long since yielded to Theresienstadt's typical gray weather and low-hanging clouds. Showers alternated with snow flurries, and no change seemed to be in sight. But life went steadily on. ”It seems almost incredible to me,” Helga wrote on March 18, 1944, ”that in only one month and twenty-eight days I will be fourteen. I was talking with Papa yesterday and I asked him what he would have given me on my birthday in peacetime. He said that if he had the money, he would give me a globe, a microscope, and lots of books. It made me so happy that he had guessed what I wanted.”

On April 3 she wrote: ”The finest time in Theresienstadt is when I can debate with Papa. I learn so much. Yesterday Papa read me a few paragraphs from Schopenhauer; he's in favor of everyone keeping a diary. It makes me so happy that I can write to a good friend who will never desert me if I don't want it. At first almost all the girls kept a diary. Now it's only two or three.”

By mid-April, Helga found that she had lost her appet.i.te and her stomach was aching-symptoms of jaundice. She was put back into sick bay. Her spirits plummeted. ”Any idiot can see that this weather just won't end,” she said during a visit to her father, who recorded her words in his own diary. ”The sun is moving away from the earth.”

Life in the ghetto seemed to be improving. ”a.s.sembly this evening at eight o'clock about the new mail regulations. Permission to write every six weeks. All packages allowed except for tea, coffee, tobacco, cigarettes, and money, which are forbidden. In the future packages will be pa.s.sed on in the presence of the receiver,” Otto Pollak noted on February 6. And one month later: ”Cancellation of the rule that we must greet anyone in uniform.”

March 6 to March 12 was spring-cleaning week. ”Our Invalids' Home won a prize,” Otto wrote. ”My share was two pounds of bread, half a tin of liverwurst, three ounces of margarine, and three ounces of sugar.” At six o'clock on the evening of March 11 he visited the coffeehouse: ”Orchestra concert, sixteen musicians, with Professor Carlo S. Taube. They played selections from Mozart's Magic Flute Magic Flute, Fantasia from Schubert's sketchbook, Kreisler's Praeludium and Allegro, a solo by Frohlich, Dvoak's Fourth, two Slavic dances.”

Change was in the air in Theresienstadt: ”There is to be a new central medical library with a large reading room,” Dr. Munk, the head of the health department, wrote on March 13, 1944, in a letter he sent to Jakob Edelstein on the a.s.sumption that Edelstein was in good health in Auschwitz-Birkenau. ”The building that adjoins the Infants' Home is being added onto it; on the block set aside for small children a toddlers' nursery is being built in the movie hall, and the wooden barracks have become the living quarters for working women. The park on Market Square is making great progress, and within a few weeks there will be a fountain in the middle of a large flower bed. According to the plans, a music pavilion to be located opposite the coffeehouse seems to be very promising.”2 The coffeehouse was one of the first additions meant to turn Theresienstadt into the Potemkin village that the n.a.z.is were about to build. Opened in December 1942, it marked the beginning of musical activities that were officially permitted and encouraged by the SS. At first it was Carlo S. Taube and the Lede Orchestra who usually played there along with the Weiss Jazz Quintet, which was directed by Fritz Weiss and featured musicians Pavel Libensky, Wolfi Lederer, Coco Schumann, and Franta Goldschmidt. As time went on, and as more musical instruments arrived in the ghetto and concerts were now performed on the explicit orders of the SS, additional ensembles were formed. In the winter of 194243, Karel Frohlich, Heini Taussig, Romouald Sussmann, and Freddy Mark formed a string quartet, which initially performed with the world-famous Viennese cellist Luzian Horwitz.

Once the second floor of the coffeehouse was opened for concerts, a group calling itself the Ghetto Swingers had great success with their first revue, t.i.tled ”Children Not Admitted.” This orchestra, whose members.h.i.+p constantly grew and changed, played in the style of an American swing band-even though jazz was forbidden within the Third Reich-and was instantly the most popular ensemble in Theresienstadt.

Entrance tickets to the coffeehouse Upon closer inspection, the coffeehouse did not offer what its name promised; it was anything but a warm, pleasant spot to enjoy swing music and a selection of delicious cakes and good coffee. First, you had to have an entrance pa.s.s, which you might be issued once or at most twice a year, and which designated the date and duration of your visit. ”Authorization for a visit to the coffeehouse from noon to 2:00 P.M. P.M., ground floor,” it might read. You could spend a maximum of two hours there over a cup of ersatz coffee. ”But,” as Thomas Mandl, who at age sixteen was a talented enough violinist to be a member of the coffee-house orchestra, said, ”the good thing was that this cup of ersatz coffee was sweetened with a teaspoon of real sugar. And as a musician in the coffeehouse I was permitted one cup of coffee per s.h.i.+ft. Usually I saved up my coffee rations from three s.h.i.+fts and then on my fourth s.h.i.+ft had them give me a cup with four teaspoons of sugar. And that, of course, was an incredible way to fight off hunger.”

Visitors, however, had to make do with just one cup of ersatz coffee and one teaspoon of sugar-definitely not enough to combat the agony of hunger. At best they managed to forget it for a while, thanks to lovely music by Lehar, Waldteufel, Bela Keler, Johann Strauss, or, when Busoni's brilliant pupil Carlo S. Taube was directing, challenging arrangements by Ravel and Saint-Saens.

The coffeehouse was reserved for adults and was essentially off-limits to the girls of Room 28. But the music often found its way up to them, for it came from Q 418 on ”Neue Ga.s.se,” as it was now called, a building that stood kitty-corner to the Girls' Home. From their windows the girls could watch people coming and going, although they could not observe what was happening inside.

But other unusual changes in the ghetto were not hidden from view. ”The barricades are being taken down on Arische Stra.s.se, the barbed wire fence is being removed from the main square,” Otto Pollak noted on April 1. And two days later: ”Daylight saving time begins tomorrow. Evening curfew has been extended until nine o'clock.”

Sometime during the night of April 11, one of the writers for Vedem Vedem sneaked into the ”brain of the Theresienstadt rumor mill.” Using the pseudonym Syndikus, he reported his discoveries as follows: ”The first thing I learned was that our Father [Karl Rahm] intends to issue an order, the gist of which is that all work squads will be forced to send their youngest personnel to do so-called maintenance work. To a.s.sure the rapid reconstruction of our town, it was our Father's wish that specialists of all kinds should partic.i.p.ate to the fullest extent. For this purpose Father Bedich had the gymnasium, which had been turned into a hospital, cleared to have it converted into a synagogue, theater, and future cinema. According to the latest news, which I obtained just a few hours before writing this, an open-air cafe is to be established on the roof of the gymnasium. He had the barbed wire fence on the square removed and the square transformed into a park, where he had a music pavilion erected to give the inhabitants of Terezin an opportunity for entertainment and refreshment during their lunch hour and in the evening after work.” sneaked into the ”brain of the Theresienstadt rumor mill.” Using the pseudonym Syndikus, he reported his discoveries as follows: ”The first thing I learned was that our Father [Karl Rahm] intends to issue an order, the gist of which is that all work squads will be forced to send their youngest personnel to do so-called maintenance work. To a.s.sure the rapid reconstruction of our town, it was our Father's wish that specialists of all kinds should partic.i.p.ate to the fullest extent. For this purpose Father Bedich had the gymnasium, which had been turned into a hospital, cleared to have it converted into a synagogue, theater, and future cinema. According to the latest news, which I obtained just a few hours before writing this, an open-air cafe is to be established on the roof of the gymnasium. He had the barbed wire fence on the square removed and the square transformed into a park, where he had a music pavilion erected to give the inhabitants of Terezin an opportunity for entertainment and refreshment during their lunch hour and in the evening after work.”3 Sure enough, between noon and one o'clock on April 13, a bright and sunny day, the town orchestra began to play for the first time under the alternating direction of Carlo S. Taube, Peter Deutsch, and Karel Anerl. It was scheduled to play on Market Square daily, if the weather was good, between eight and nine in the evening, an innovation that gave Syndikus cause for further speculation: ”It is said that a restaurant is also going to be built beside the garden on the town square. The bill of fare has not yet been decided. Our town council has also ordered a fleet of hackney cabs for our international spa. The working people of Theresienstadt will also be provided for. There is to be a trolley line laid to make it easier for them to get to and from work.”

Theresienstadt was well on its way to being turned into a sham show-piece, very much in the style of the village of facades that Prince Grigory Aleksandrovich Potemkin had quickly a.s.sembled to deceive Catherine the Great on her 1787 trip to inspect the south of Russia and observe the prosperity of the Crimea. Great swindles need just a little paint and a few false labels. The ba.n.a.l premise of this n.a.z.i propaganda campaign in Theresienstadt-it's not the contents but the packaging that count-had as its sole purpose deceiving the world as to the true goals of the n.a.z.i regime.

And so as of April 15, the daily decrees were now published, nicely ill.u.s.trated, as Communications from the Jewish Self-Administration Communications from the Jewish Self-Administration. The camp high command was renamed the SS Service Office, and the commandant became the head of the SS Service Office. The Jewish elder was transformed into the mayor, and the ghetto court was now the community court. The guards posted outside the barracks were no longer ghetto guards but community guards. And there were no longer any deportation trains leaving Theresienstadt, but workers' deployment transports. After all, Theresienstadt was not a concentration camp or a transit camp or a ghetto, but a Jewish settlement area-the ”town that the Fuhrer gave the Jews.”

There was even a contest-”Who Can Come Up with the Best Name?”-that was announced in the Communications from the Jewish Self-Administration Communications from the Jewish Self-Administration for April 23. ”The following streets and squares are to be renamed: Rampart III, the lane around the former sheep barn behind Haupt Stra.s.se 2, the lane behind the building at Wall Stra.s.se 8 ... There are eight prizes in all: first prize, two tins of sardines in oil and a loaf of bread.” for April 23. ”The following streets and squares are to be renamed: Rampart III, the lane around the former sheep barn behind Haupt Stra.s.se 2, the lane behind the building at Wall Stra.s.se 8 ... There are eight prizes in all: first prize, two tins of sardines in oil and a loaf of bread.”

The opening of the community center at the Sokolovna, on 3 West Ga.s.se, was celebrated on April 30, 1944, in the presence of the Council of Elders, the heads of all camp departments, and work brigades appointed by the town's administration. As the chronicler of the town's musical events, Viktor Ullmann, wrote, ”To the delight of music lovers there was an ensemble composed of Messrs. Taussig, Kling, Sussmann, Mark, and Paul Kohn, joined by Karel Anerl for the performance of a Brahms s.e.xtet, which deserves special praise for its precision, clarity, beauty of tone, and unity of style.”4 ”Beautification” was the new slogan that turned all of Theresienstadt upside down and marked the implementation of a critical new phase that began with the introduction of camp commandant Karl Rahm, who arrived on February 8, 1944, as the replacement for Anton Burger. Born in Austria and trained as an auto mechanic, Rahm had been a member of the n.a.z.i Party since 1934, had worked closely with Eichmann in the Central Office for Jewish Emigration in Vienna and Prague, and was very well prepared for his a.s.signment, which Adolf Eichmann summed up succinctly at his trial in Israel as one of turning the ghetto of Theresienstadt into ”a billboard for the outside world. He [Himmler] evidently wanted to have some evidence on hand, so that when special delegations from abroad addressed him on the issue of the murder of Jews and so forth, he could say, 'That's not true; go have a look at Theresienstadt.' ”5 While the ghetto was undergoing these strange changes, the prisoners in it were increasingly gripped by mistrust, fear, and sadness. Where had their friends gone? Where were they now? How were they doing-Pavla, Zdenka, Olile, Poppinka, Holubika, Milka, Helena, Irena, Eva Weiss, and Eva Landa? Those were the questions the girls in Room 28 kept asking over and over. No postcards had arrived, no signs of life that might have eased their fears. ”Eva, why did you leave?” Lenka Lindt wrote on a slip of paper on March 26, 1944. She missed her friend Eva Landa very much.

Watched over by their guards, the prisoners prepare for the visit of the Red Cross Delegation. Drawing by Alfred Kantor Eva, Eva, why did you leave?

Why have you left an open wound behind?

Why did you leave For a land so far away?Lenka, are you angry with me?

What could I have done?

I had to go away I could not defeat the Germans.I'm not angry with you, Eva. I do understand.