In 1997, a middle-aged Milwaukee man named Burton Strnad was cleaning out his mother’s basement when he made a remarkable discovery. In a dusty, unmarked box he found a large red envelope bearing a Nazi swastika stamp. He felt a chill as he slowly opened the envelope.
Inside he found a letter from his father’s cousin Paul Strnad, a black and white photograph of Paul and his wife, and eight beautifully illustrated dress designs in vibrant watercolors.
The date on the letter was December 11, 1939, and it was addressed to Burton’s father, Alvin. In his letter, Paul explained that he was desperately trying to leave Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia with his wife, who was unnamed in the letter.
And Paul believed that their last chance for escape rested on the talent of his wife, a highly esteemed dressmaker and designer in Prague. Paul sent eight of his wife’s designs to Alvin and asked him to try to find a job for his wife. If his wife could land a job as a designer or seamstress, Paul hoped that they would finally be able to secure visas to the United States.
Burton’s father never mentioned the letter to him, and he didn’t know what had happened to Paul and his wife. Recognizing that he had uncovered a treasure, Burton donated
the letter and designs, along with the photo of Paul and his wife to the Jewish Museum Milwaukee. The museum displayed the vibrant drawings sketched by an
unnamed designer, which captivated countless visitors.
The museum staff also launched an ambitious project to uncover the identity of the woman who created these designs. Researchers from the museum scoured the Yad Vashem archives and finally discovered that her name was Hedwig Strnad.
They discovered that despite Alvin’s best efforts, securing visas for Paul and his
wife proved to be impossible.
Like so many Czech Jews, the couple was deported to Terezin, and later to the Warsaw Ghetto. It is certain they did not survive the war, and were most likely murdered in either the Warsaw Ghetto or the Treblinka death camp. Other than that, nothing else was known about them.
But during the course of their research, a museum intern managed to connect with one of the couple’s nieces who survived the Holocaust, Brigitte Rohaczek, who recalled a
few precious memories of her aunt. She remembered that her aunt was affectionately known as Hedy, had vibrant red hair, was always beautifully dressed, and enjoyed
smoking cigarettes. Brigitte also recalled that Hedy was kindhearted, always in a good mood, and had a wonderful sense of humor.
As these small details about Hedy emerged, the museum researchers and staff grew even more deeply invested in her story. And when a museum visitor suggested that they actually create Hedy’s designs, the staff decided to take action.
The museum’s executive director, Kathy Bernstein, approached the head of the costume department of the Milwaukee Repertory Theater, who agreed to help bring
Hedy’s innovative and elegant designs to life.
Creating Hedy’s outfits was not a simple task, given that all the theater’s costume shop had to work from were two-dimensional images which gave no indication of the fabrics
or patterns. The costume team conducted meticulous research into the clothing of the time period in order to interpret Hedy’s designs as authentically as possible.
Piece by piece, each article of clothing emerged. A tailored violet coat with matching hat and shoes. A fitted turquoise day dress, a black dress with a pink rose pattern, and an airy, flowing ball gown. And each outfit was paired with custom accessories such as gloves, scarves, and fascinators.
The team ensured that every detail was crafted with the utmost care, and even
created historically accurate labels that said “Hedy original”, which they sewed into
every dress and coat. All together, the process took about 3,000 hours and spanned
over 10 months.
At last, Hedy’s designs were complete, and they were later featured in a traveling exhibit called Stitching History From the Holocaust, which opened at the Jewish Museum Milwaukee in 2014. Since then, the exhibit has traveled to many places throughout the United States, including the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library (NCSML) in Cedar
Rapids, Iowa and the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Lower Manhattan.
The exhibit serves as a powerful tribute to Hedy Strnad, an incredibly talented designer who tragically never had the chance to bring her vision to life. And Hedy’s story forces us to acknowledge the countless people who died in the Holocaust whose unique talents and gifts the world never saw, whose cherished hopes and dreams were never realized.
In addition to countless artists and creatives, many rabbis and religious leaders were also sent to Terezin. One of these individuals was Regina Jonas, the first woman to be ordained a rabbi. Regina overcame many obstacles to receive her ordination, and dedicated her life to serving Jewish communities in Germany. Even after she was deported to Terezin,
Regina continued to serve, comfort, and inspire those around her. After the war Regina’s story was forgotten for decades, only to be miraculously rediscovered after the collapse of the Berlin wall.
Regina Jonas’s Early Life
Regina was born in Berlin in 1902, and was raised in Scheunenviertel, a poor
Jewish neighborhood. Her parents were Orthodox and ensured that Regina received
a Jewish education. Regina was a gifted and eager student, and by the time she
was in high school, her passion for Jewish studies and Hebrew was evident to her
teachers and fellow classmates.
Impressed by her intellect and intense love of Judaism, Regina’s rabbi
Dr. Max Weil encouraged her to enroll at the liberal Berlin Academy for the Science of Judaism in 1924 to continue her studies. This was one of the few Jewish seminaries
in Germany that admitted women at the time, and most of the female students
intended to become teachers.
But a career as a teacher of Jewish studies wasn’t enough for Regina. She was determined to be ordained as a rabbi, even though most people believed her dream was impossible.
Even though Regina gravitated towards Orthodox Judaism and was not a supporter
of the Reform movement, she chose to attend
a liberal seminary because it was the only one in Germany that might consider ordaining a woman rabbi. At the seminary, Regina gained the support of Dr. Eduard Barneth, who was willing to ordain her.
In 1930, as she neared the end of her studies, Regina wrote a thesis titled: “May a Woman Hold Rabbinic Office?”, in which she drew on her deep knowledge of the Talmud and other Jewish texts to make a compelling case in favor of women rabbis. Regina received praise for her thesis, and earned the respect of her professors.
But tragically, her supporter Dr. Barneth died suddenly and the man who succeeded him refused to let Regina sit for her rabbinate exam.
None of the other professors contested this decision, and Regina ultimately graduated as a religious teacher. For several years, Regina taught Jewish studies at different girls’ schools and by all accounts was an exceptional teacher.
But despite her successes, Regina was determined to achieve her dream of becoming a rabbi.
Ordination and Life as a Rabbi
After five years of tirelessly seeking ordination, Regina’s efforts finally paid off when Rabbi Max Dienemann, the leader of the Conference of Liberal Rabbis, agreed to ordain her. She received her ordination in a private ceremony conducted by Rabbi Dienemann in December 1935, at long last achieving her lifelong dream.
Regina’s ordination was truly groundbreaking, and she made history as the first woman to be ordained a rabbi.
Unsurprisingly, her ordination was highly controversial, and Regina struggled to
gain acceptance as a rabbi. Denied a congregation, she had to find other ways to serve
the Jewish community in Germany. Determined as always, Regina found work as a teacher and hospital chaplain, and was a regular speaker at several liberal congregations in Berlin.
Then, in the late 1930s, the Nazis began arresting rabbis, and Regina faced a
difficult decision. Should she flee Germany, or should she stay behind and
continue to minister to her community?
Though fully aware of the dangers, Regina refused to leave Germany, unwilling to leave her mother behind or abandon her beloved Jewish communities when they needed her the most. She traveled to Jewish congregations across Germany that had lost their rabbis and did everything she could to serve them, even leading special services for people forced to labor in Nazi factories.
Her work with the German Jewish community came to an end in November 1942, when Regina and her elderly mother were sent to the Terezin ghetto.
Regina Jonas: A Rabbi in Terezin
Even in Terezin, Regina continued to live a life of service and dedicated herself
to ministering to the Jewish community.
One of Regina’s fellow inmates was the famous Austrian psychiatrist Viktor Frankl,
who organized the “Department for Mental Hygiene” to provide mental health
services for those imprisoned in Terezin. Regina worked in this department, where
her role was to comfort and assist traumatized new prisoners as they struggled to cope with the terrible conditions of the ghetto. She acknowledged the hardships while
also assuring them that she was there to support them, both psychologically and spiritually.
During her time in the ghetto, Regina also delivered sermons and lectures, in which
she often highlighted influential Jewish women. Many of her sermons encouraged
other Terezin inmates to always strive to find meaning in their lives, in spite of the
terrible circumstances they had to endure.
Given that Viktor Frankl later wrote a famous book on this very subject called Man’s Search for Meaning, it seems likely that Regina’s sermons impacted him as well. Sadly, Frankl never mentioned Regina in any of his writings, so it’s impossible to know for sure.
But some documents Regina herself wrote did survive the war, including a powerful letter in which she described her belief that God called the Jewish people to be a
“blessed nation.” She believed it was her responsibility as a daughter of Israel to bring blessings, kindness, and goodness into the world, no matter what situation she
found herself in. And above all, she strove to always be humble before God and to
love and serve others. She signed her note with the simple but powerful words,
“Rabbi Regina Jonas, formerly of Berlin.”
Soon after writing this letter, on October 12, 1944, Regina and her mother were sent on a transport to Auschwitz. There is no record of them in Auschwitz, and it’s believed that Regina and her mother were killed in the gas chambers on the same day they arrived.
To the very end, Rabbi Regina Jonas stayed true to her unwavering commitment to serve God and the Jewish people even in the worst of times.
The Legacy of Rabbi Regina Jonas
For many years, the name of Rabbi Regina Jonas was forgotten. None of her surviving male colleagues, among them Viktor Frankl and Rabbi Leo Baeck, even mentioned her after the war.
Then, in 1991, Katerina von Kellenbach, a professor of Religious Studies, traveled to Berlin to conduct academic research. In the General Archive of German Jews, she discovered a dusty old box filled with papers – papers that belonged to Rabbi Regina Jonas.
Katerina carefully sorted through the papers and discovered Regina’s thesis, ordination certificate, and a photo of Regina dressed in her rabbinic robes. There were newspaper clippings that profiled Regina and the challenges she faced, and dozens of thank you notes from people she had served.
There was also a note written by a friend of Regina’s, explaining she had entrusted all her precious documents to him on the day she was deported from Terezin. Somehow, these documents had made their way to an archive in Berlin, only to be forgotten there during the years of Communist rule.
Deeply moved and astonished by Regina’s story, Katerina published an article about her in 1994, which circulated widely. Interest in Rabbi Regina Jonas soared, and over the years her story has been told in a biography, a children’s book, and a documentary.
Her memory is also honored and preserved at Yad Vashem, the Jewish Museum in Berlin, and Terezin, where there is a memorial plaque dedicated to her life and legacy. Also at Terezin is a small collection of Regina’s papers, including a list of the lectures she delivered there.
And in recent years, a large group of rabbis designated October 18th as her yahrzeit,
the anniversary of her death. Now, on that day, people all over the world recite the Mourner’s Kaddish in her memory. It’s a fitting and powerful tribute to Rabbi
Regina Jonas, who overcame countless obstacles and dedicated herself to serving
the Jewish community, bringing comfort and hope in the darkest times.
One of the countless remarkable stories of creative life in Terezin concerns a secret literary magazine called Vedem. Founded in 1942 by 14-year-old Petr Ginz, the magazine documented life in Terezin through the stories, poems, and artwork of the boys who lived in Barrack L417, also known as Home One. But no one outside of Terezin would have known of Vedem if it weren’t for a courageous young boy named Zdenek (Sidney)Taussig.
Sidney Taussig’s Early Life
Many of the writings and drawings Sidney saved are featured in the book We are Children Just the Same: Vedem, the Secret Magazine By the Boys of Terezin
Sidney Taussig was born and raised in Prague, and as a child was known as Zdenek. His grandparents were observant Jews, though the family lived on the outskirts of Prague, some
distance away from the city’s Jewish community. Because of this, Sidney went to a public school and most of his friends were Christian. Sidney’s early childhood memories were happy ones, and he felt fully accepted by his non-Jewish friends.
Everything changed when the Nazis seized control of Czechoslovakia in 1939 and began to pass anti-Jewish laws. Sidney started experiencing severe discrimination and began to feel very suspicious of non-Jews. Due to these laws, Sidney’s
father lost his contracting business, and Sidney, who dreamed of being an engineer, was forced to leave his gymnasium, a school that prepared students for university.
Then in 1941, Sidney, along with his sister, parents, and
grandparents, was transported to Terezin.
Life in Terezin
Upon arrival at Terezin, Sidney, his parents, and sister were sent to live in a cramped room with nine other people, and all four were assigned jobs in the camp.
Sidney’s mother was a nurse in the infirmary, his father secured a position as a blacksmith, and his sister worked in the fields. Sidney’s uncle trained horses for the SS men, and he found Sidney a job driving horses.
Each morning, Sidney harnessed his horses and went to work harvesting potatoes and other crops. He would drive a wagon through the fields, which women and girls piled high with potatoes, and then delivered them to the ghetto kitchens.
Even though it was against the rules, Sidney regularly smuggled a few potatoes to trade for other food items that he shared with his family, including an occasional piece of meat. He knew the consequences would be fatal if he were caught, but Sidney’s hunger was so great he was willing to take the risk.
Disease and hunger ran rampant in Terezin, and thousands of people died from old age, starvation, and infectious diseases, including Sidney’s grandmother and aunt. As the death toll mounted, Sidney was assigned the horrific task of transporting the bodies of those who died. Other prisoners piled the bodies of the dead onto a wagon, which Sidney drove to the cemetery outside the ghetto walls or to the crematorium.
It’s impossible to fathom the emotional toll this took on Sidney, but incredibly,
he managed to find the inner strength to endure in Terezin.
The Boys of Home One and the Secret Literary Magazine
Sidney drew much of his strength and resilience from his friendships with other boys in Barrack L417, or Home One, where he lived for most of his time in Terezin. The boys formed close bonds with one another, participated in soccer games, and attended secret classes after work.
And together, the boys defied the Nazis by founding a secret magazine called Vedem, where they documented what life in Terezin was really like through their essays, poetry, and drawings. The boys in Home One and their teacher, Valtr Eisinger, guarded their secret closely. They knew if the Nazis ever found out about Vedem, they would all be sent on the next transport east.
Although the boys received great encouragement from their teacher, the driving force behind the magazine was Petr Ginz, Vedem’s 14-year-old editor-in-chief.
Petr managed to secure an abandoned typewriter which the boys used to type up their work. Soon the ink ran out, and there were no more ribbons, so the boys created the rest of the issues by hand.
Every week the boys would compile their latest writing and drawings into a new issue, which was often around ten pages in length. Then on Friday evenings, they would sit in their bunks and the boys who contributed articles and poems would read their work out loud. Often they’d discuss the articles together, but since the magazine had to remain
a secret, no one outside Home One ever saw it.
They continued to release a new issue every week for nearly two years, and found
that expressing their experiences through art helped them to cope with the grim reality of their situation. On top of this, the shared camaraderie of this experience no doubt strengthened the bond between the boys in Home One.
But tragically, these bonds were frequently broken, as more and more boys were sent away on transports. And in October 1944, Petr was sent to Auschwitz on one of the
last transports from Terezin, where he was murdered in the gas chambers at the age of 16.
The few boys who were left behind stopped writing, and did not release any more issues of the secret magazine. In the end, all of the boys in Home One were sent to Auschwitz, and very few of them returned.
In his testimony, Sidney explained that he owed his life to his father. Sidney was
also assigned to a transport but was spared because his father spoke to Commandant Rahm, the Nazi in charge of Terezin. Sidney’s father managed to set up a review with
Rahm, and during this meeting Sidney said he was the son of a blacksmith and boldly claimed he was a blacksmith, too. In the end, Rahm removed Sidney from the
transport because his father was an excellent blacksmith and his skills were in high demand.
But the transports kept leaving until all the boys were gone – everyone except Sidney. Home One was shut down, and Sidney went to stay with his father.
Before he left L417 for good, Sidney gathered all the issues of Vedem and smuggled them out of the barrack. That night, he tucked the issues into a metal box, which he secretly buried behind the ghetto’s blacksmith shop. Sidney knew he needed to save these issues, because their pages were a record of what really happened in Terezin. They
also memorialized all the incredibly gifted boys of Home One, Sidney’s friends, who were now lost to him forever.
As the end of the war drew near, survivors of Auschwitz and other extermination
camps arrived in Terezin, ragged and starving. Even after three years in Terezin, Sidney was shocked when he saw how emaciated and ill they were. One of Sidney’s jobs was
to transport rotten potato peels by wagon for composting, and the starving prisoners would devour every last potato peel.
By the spring of 1945, Sidney and his father often spotted American planes flying above the camp. They gazed up at the planes and sensed that liberation was near, but didn’t know if they would survive to see it.
Then, in early May, the sound of gunshots rang outside the camp walls, and inside Terezin word spread that the Russian army was nearby. The Germans fled, and soon after, Sidney and another boy were tending to the horses when they heard more shooting. They went to investigate and saw dozens of Russian tanks parked outside the walls.
The Russians liberated Terezin on May 8th, 1945, but the surviving residents were forced to quarantine in the ghetto due to a severe typhoid epidemic. Sidney had access to horses the Germans left behind and his father decided they should leave immediately. That night, they tethered a pair of horses to a wagon, and together with Sidney’s mother, sister, and a few friends, made their escape from Terezin. Before they left, Sidney unearthed the metal box containing the issues of Vedem and loaded it onto the wagon next to their few belongings.
The family traveled by horse and wagon all night, until they arrived back in Prague early the next morning. As they rode through the streets of Prague to their old home,
people recognized them and word spread that the Taussig family had returned. At the age of 16, Sidney was finally home after four years of captivity in Terezin.
Sidney Taussig’s Life After Terezin
When Sidney’s family entered their old home, they found it empty and realized the Nazis had stolen all their possessions. Like so many other Holocaust survivors, they had
to rebuild their lives from nothing.
That fall, Sidney returned to the very same gymnasium he had been forced to leave in 1941. Since he had been able to attend classes in Terezin, he was at the same level as
his classmates, and even outperformed many of them in math and science. After
his graduation, Sidney’s uncle in New York managed to secure U.S. visas for him and his sister.
Sidney was grateful for the opportunity to leave Europe, but he felt torn over what to do with the magazines he’d rescued from Terezin. Since the issues were written in Czech, Sidney felt it was right to leave them in Czechoslovakia. In the end, he brought them to a Jewish orphanage in Prague and gave them to a woman named Mrs. Laup, whose son had also been in Home One.
After Sidney emigrated to America, he lost track of the magazine for many years. He settled in the Yorkville section of Manhattan and focused on building a life for himself, working various odd jobs and attending college classes at night. In his free time, he enjoyed playing soccer and met a young American woman named Marion at one of these games.
They married less than a year later, when Sidney was 23 and Marion was 18.
When the Korean War broke out, Sidney enlisted in the Air Force, where he trained as a radar technician. After the war, he worked as a technician and attended Brooklyn Polytech at night, where he obtained an engineering degree. Over the years, he held engineering jobs in several companies and later went into management at the electronics company General Instruments. With his business success, Sidney and Marion were able to buy a house on Long Island, where they settled with their children Michelle, Ron, and Debra.
Although Sidney regarded Marion as his best friend and had a close relationship with his children, he found it very difficult to talk about his Terezin experiences for many years. He was determined not to burden his children, but as they grew older, they began to ask him about his war experiences. And so Sidney began to speak of the years he spent in Terezin, and found that over time it became easier for him to discuss.
When sharing his experiences, Sidney imparted a powerful lesson to his children. He told them that no matter what hardships they faced in life, they needed to persevere. “You have to be a survivor. You have to survive. If you do the best you possibly can, you’re surviving.”
Years after leaving Prague, Sidney learned that the issues of Vedem were returned to the museum at Terezin for safekeeping, and some were featured in a digital exhibit. Another Terezin survivor, George Brady, had some issues of the magazine translated into English. Many of these translated stories, essays, and poems, as well as many drawings
were published in a book called We are Children Just the Same : Vedem, the Secret Magazine By the Boys of Terezin.
The story of the boys who created Vedem continues to inspire people around the world. In 2019, at the age of 89, Sidney attended a performance by the Keystone State Boychoir that paid tribute to the young writers and artists who contributed to Vedem.
At the age of 91, Sidney recites a poem he wrote as a young boy in Terezin.
And in 2021, The Last Boy in the Second Republic of SHKID, a play based on Sidney’s wartime experience, premiered at the Theatre at St. Clement’s in New York City. Today, Sidney lives in Florida and continues to share the story of the boys of Vedem with younger generations.
Thanks to Sidney’s heroic actions, the legacy of the boys who created Vedem lives on, and serves as a powerful tribute to the human creative spirit that can rise above the most unimaginable circumstances.
Though there are many accounts of the incredibly gifted artists, musicians, and writers of Terezin, there are few existing accounts of individuals with disabilities in the ghetto.
The Nazis brutally persecuted people with disabilities, and having any kind of disability could be a potential death sentence. And if someone was Jewish and had a disability,
their chance of survival was extremely low. Yet, in spite of these impossible odds,
there were gifted people with disabilities who left an indelible mark on the world, even while imprisoned in a Nazi ghetto. And two of these individuals were Hans Neumeyer, a pianist, composer, and music teacher and his older sister Irma, who had a gift for writing poetry.
Irma and Hans Neumeyer: Life Before Terezin
Almost nothing is known of Irma, or what her relationship with her brother was like. It’s known that she was an intelligent and thoughtful person, with a gift for writing poetry, as this manuscript reveals.
A page from the manuscript of a poem Irma wrote in Terezin. Her signature appears on the top left side of the page. Used with permission of Tim Locke.
We know much more about Hans, who was born in Munich on September 13,1887 to a Jewish family. His father owned a men’s clothing store, and provided a comfortable life for his wife and children. As a child, Hans showed a strong aptitude for music. While still very young, he also developed an eye condition that caused him to slowly lose his vision. By the time Hans was 14, he was completely blind, but this didn’t hold him back from pursuing his music studies.
Hans later studied at the Academy of Music in Munich, graduating in 1909, and soon after co-authored a textbook on harmonics. He then taught at Hellerau, an esteemed eurythmics center, where he met his future wife Vera Ephraim, one of the students.
In 1915, Hans set up his own music school with fellow musician Valeria Cratina, which they ran for the next ten years. He married Vera in 1920, and the couple settled in the artistic quarter of the city of Dachau. They had two children, Ruth and Raimund, who they baptized as Protestants. Vera’s father was Jewish and her mother was Lutheran, and she was raised in her mother’s faith. Vera herself was very dedicated to the Lutheran faith and wanted her children baptized as well.
The Neumeyer family on holiday in the Alps. Used with permission of Tim Locke.
But when the Nazis came to power, neither Vera nor her children were spared from Nazi persecution. Ruth and Raimund were barred from attending school, from parks, swimming pools, and movie theaters. Then, on November 8, 1938 officials from the town hall knocked on the door and ordered Vera and the children to leave before dawn or else go to prison. Faced with the choice of leaving home or going to prison, they went to stay with one of Vera’s eurythmics students in Munich, where Hans joined them. But this was only
a temporary solution and the family had to move frequently.
At this stage, Hans’ sister Irma was living in a nursing home in Munich, since she was in frail health and had also lost her eyesight. Despite this, she would occasionally visit the family at their home. It’s unclear whether she continued to have contact with her brother and his family after they were forced to leave their home.
In May 1939, Ruth and Raimund were sent to England on a Kindertransport, where
they remained for the rest of the war. Hans and Vera intended to follow them, as Hans had secured a permit to go to a home for blind people in Leatherhead, just south of London. Tragically, Hans and Vera were never able to get out of Germany. The exact reason
is uncertain, but it seems likely that they were unable to get the permits to leave Germany.
Hans Neumeyer, circa 1937. Used with permission of Tim Locke.
Irma Kuhn and Hans Neumeyer: Deportation to Terezin
In June 1942, Hans was deported to Terezin, where he was sent to live in a special barracks for people with disabilities. Irma was also deported to Terezin from the Munich nursing home in 1942. On July 13th, 1942, Vera was deported, either to Auschwitz or to the Warsaw ghetto, where she died.
Conditions in Terezin were horrific, with many thousands of people crammed together in a confined space, meager food rations, and rampant hunger and disease. But many people who survived Terezin remembered that conditions were especially terrible for elderly men and women and those with disabilities.
Since Hans was 55 and Irma was 68 years old and both were completely blind, their chance of long-term survival in Terezin was poor.
Yet Hans managed to survive in the camp far longer than anyone would have suspected, largely due to his musical gifts and resourcefulness. One day, Hans heard someone whistling Bach fugues and soon learned that this person was 17-year old Hans Ries, who was tasked with bringing food to sick and disabled inmates. Ries soon became a student of Hans, who gave him music lessons in exchange for soup and bread.
Hans began to take on more music students, including a 16-year old violinist named Thomas Mandl. Hans’ students called him “The Professor”, and those who
survived remembered him as a man of sharp intelligence and quick wit, who
always listened attentively to his students. While Hans had an easy smile, he possessed mental strength and toughness as well. Thomas Mandl remembered the calm and refined way Hans would eat his soup ration, despite the intense hunger he and the other
Terezin inmates lived with every day. And Hans never turned away a student who
couldn’t provide a bread or soup ration.
Hans taught his students a wide variety of topics, including harmony, intonation, rhythm, and counterpoint. One of his most successful students was Thomas, who
practiced diligently each night on the violin he’d brought into the ghetto. Hans
would listen to him play and offer suggestions for improvement. They often
discussed other topics as well, like politics and cultural events that were happening
in the ghetto.
The lessons continued until late 1943, when Hans contracted tuberculosis and was sent to a section of the ghetto infirmary for tuberculosis patients. Thomas and his other students continued to visit him when they could, and even from his sickbed Hans urged them to stay strong and not to lose hope.
His sister Irma passed away in 1943, soon before Hans became ill. Little is known of Irma’s time in Terezin, but we know that she somehow managed to find her brother in the ghetto and reconnect with him. And during her time in Terezin, Irma composed a
deeply impassioned and intricate poem, which she dictated to another inmate.
Page from the manuscript of Irma’s poem, with a hand-drawn Star of David. Used with permission of Tim Locke.
The poem was dedicated to her brother Hans, and Irma presumably found
someone to deliver it to him. The poem’s imagery draws on Jewish symbolism
and tradition, and even expresses a hope for redemption, like in these powerful lines:
“I hear the sounds of the spheres
I hear the harp’s song
And I am adorned with the star
Within which Judea triumphs.
It leads us once from home
And will lead us back once more.
To our hearth, our table, our camp
It is our highest happiness.
And peace, peace, peace, will spread in the room
Peace signifies this dream
It is peace that the Lord has given us
In omnipotence, grace, goodness,
protected, shielded, guided
He who never in his life
Was deprived of freedom
Does not know the greatest evil
He does not know the power of freedom.
Most gracious Father of all, you have heard our plea
Those who are humiliated like us,
Only you can lift them up
Come then, sisters, brothers
In ghettos near and far
Hear the great news
The day of the Lord is near.”
Words and text copyright Tim Locke, 12.8.2022, translation by Lauren Leiderman. Used with permission of Tim Locke.
One can’t help but wonder if Irma wrote the poem for her brother intending him to set it to music. As he was teaching music in Theresienstadt, it seems likely that he would have wanted to compose as well. He could have dictated the music to one of his music students to write down.
It’s hard to imagine the depth of emotions that must have rushed through Hans when he received his sister’s poem. Sadly, his feelings about the poem remain unknown, as Hans died from tuberculosis in the spring of 1944.
The Legacy of Hans Neumeyer and Irma Kuhn
Little of Hans’s work survives, other than a string duo and string trio, a Christmas song written in December 1939 for his son Raimund, and two recorder duets written for his daughter Ruth in Easter 1940. Ruth and her brother remained in England after the war, and both eventually married and had families of their own.
Many years later, in 2005, Ruth recounted her family’s story to the Imperial War Museum in London. Ruth’s son Tim also commemorates Hans, Irma, and the rest of their family on a blog called The Ephraims and the Neumeyers.
Thanks to the tireless efforts of Hans’ and Irma’s surviving family, their legacy lives on, an incredible testament to their determination, resilience, and creative brilliance that the Nazis could never extinguish.
There are many stories from Terezin about the remarkable educators and youth leaders who dedicated themselves to helping children in the camp. One of these individuals was a woman named Irma Lauscher (Lauscherova in Czech), a teacher who secured a
most precious gift for the children of Terezin.
Irma Lauscher’s Life Before Terezin
Irma was born in the Czech town of Heřmanův Městec in 1904, and moved to Prague with her family as a young teenager. After completing secondary school she attended Charles University in Prague, where she studied education, psychology, German and
French, ultimately graduating with a teaching degree. Irma then began working as a teacher and also joined a local Jewish youth movement called Techelet Lavan.
In 1932, Irma married Jiří Lauscher, who was also a member of Techelet Lavan. Both Irma and Jiří were staunch Zionists who longed to emigrate to the territory then known as Mandatory Palestine. However, not wanting to leave Irma’s widowed mother behind, they delayed their plans and remained in Prague. Their daughter Míchaela was born in 1936, and soon after Irma returned to teaching at an organization called the Jewish Religious Community (JRC).
She also taught at a Jewish school in Prague until the Nazis closed the school in 1942. Even after the Nazis forbade Jewish children to go to school, Irma continued to teach small groups of children in secret, usually in the apartments of local Jewish families. Some of Irma’s former students remembered her as a strict teacher with high standards, though also very fair, committed, and quick to assist her students. These qualities made her a highly respected teacher and would later prove invaluable to the children she taught at Terezin.
A Teacher in Terezin
Irma, Jiří, and Míchaela arrived in Terezin in December 1942, where Irma resumed her work as a teacher. In early 1943, Irma and some other prisoners formed a council of educators, who were determined to provide an education for children in Terezin. Irma began holding secret classes in which she taught children about Jewish history and traditions. One of these traditions was the holiday of Tu B’Shevat, also known as the “New Year of the Trees”. In modern times, many Jewish communities commemorate the holiday by planting trees.
Determined to uphold this tradition, even in Terezin, Irma took matters into her own hands. She took an immense risk and bribed one of the camp’s Czech guards to smuggle a small sapling into Terezin. The guard managed to secure a sapling from a silver maple tree, tucked it in his boot, and safely delivered it to Irma.
Soon after, when no Nazi soliders were around, Irma and her young students gathered in front of a large building in the center of town and planted the tiny sapling. Once planted, the children watered the tree with their own rations. At the end of the ceremony, a rabbi said a special blessing over the children and the tree, praying that they would one day be free to plant trees in Czechoslovakia, the land of Israel, and all over the world.
As the weeks passed, the children continued to nurture the tree using their own precious water rations. Against all odds, the fragile young tree survived the war, but tragically most of the children who planted and cared for the tree were deported and died in the gas chambers of Auschwitz.
Life After Liberation
By a miracle, Irma, Jiří, and Míchaela were all spared from the transports and remained in Terezin until the camp was liberated in May 1945. After liberation, they returned to Prague and began to rebuild their lives. Irma and her daughter both spent time in a sanatorium, and Irma decided not to return to school due to ongoing health problems. Instead, she found work as a private teacher, while Jiří obtained a job at the Israeli Embassy in Prague.
Life in post-war Czechoslovakia became increasingly difficult for Irma and her family after the Communist takeover in 1948. The Communist government continued to spread
anti-Semitic propaganda, which was one of the main reasons why Irma, Jiří, and
Míchaela attempted to flee the country several times. On their final attempt in 1953, the entire family was arrested and sent to prison.
After their release, Irma and her husband returned to their previous jobs, and Irma also wrote articles for the Gazette of Jewish Religious Communities. In the 1960s, they began working with a German volunteer organization called AktionSühnezeichen (Action Reconciliation for Peace) to educate young people about the Holocaust and the Terezin ghetto. As part of their work, they returned to Terezin many times over the years in spite of the trauma their whole family endured there.
Irma and the Terezin Children’s Tree
During these trips to Terezin, Irma would return to visit her tree, which thrived and over the years grew into a towering silver maple tree, nearly 60 feet in height. A teacher to the very end, Irma dedicated the rest of her life to educating young people about Terezin, until she passed away in June 1985 at the age of 81.
As for the Children’s Tree, it survived until 2003, when it was destroyed in a flood. But the tree lives on, for over the years, the tree produced many saplings which were planted in Israel and in the United States. Young silver maples took root in Jerusalem, San Francisco, Chicago, Philadelphia, and most recently, outside the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City. Several Terezin survivors and descendents of survivors attended the ceremony in New York City, including Holocaust survivor Fred Terna, who helped to water the tree as a child in Terezin.
Although the original Children’s Tree is no longer standing, its descendants grow tall in many different cities, where they stand as living memorials to the children of Terezin.
Soon after discovering the remarkable story of Inge Katz and Schmuel Berger, who met and fell in love in Terezin, I learned about another incredible Terezin love story. It’s the story of a young couple, Pavel Stransky and Vera Stadler, who met and fell in love during one of the darkest times in human history.
Pavel Stransky and Vera Stadler’s Life Before the War
As Pavel relates in his account, As Messengers for the Victims, he met Vera during the summer of 1938, when both of their families vacationed in a small town in eastern Bohemia. 16-year-old Vera, a pretty, dark-haired girl, caught Pavel’s eye, and he invited her to go to a dance with him. As the months progressed, their relationship
blossomed, and by 1941, they were engaged
to be married.
The young couple struggled to retain hope for the future in the face of tremendous odds, including Nazi persecution and the tragic suicide of Pavel’s father. Drawing strength from the love he and Vera shared, Pavel underwent a teacher training course and accepted a job teaching Czech at the one remaining Jewish elementary school in Prague.
But Pavel never had the chance to start his teaching job. On December 1, 1941 he was transported to Terezin along with one thousand other young men. Not long after, Vera and her family arrived in Terezin on another transport.
A Terezin Ghetto Love Story
Upon their arrival, Vera and Pavel were assigned to barracks and given jobs in the camp. Pavel worked in a food warehouse as a porter while Vera was responsible for distributing meager food rations to the residents of Terezin.
After two incredibly difficult years in Terezin, Pavel was assigned to a transport in the winter of 1943. In despair at the thought of being separated, and not knowing where the transport was heading, Pavel and Vera decided to get married. This would allow Vera to join him on the journey to the unknown.
Vera and Pavel married the night before the transport, under a makeshift cloth chuppah held up by four men. No wine was available for the ceremony, so the couple drank from a bowl filled with a bitter coffee substitute. There were no rings to exchange and no glass to step on, and they never even received a marriage contract.
The newly married couple spent their wedding night in a vast room with Vera’s mother and 2,500 other prisoners, sitting on their suitcases and holding hands as the hours passed. The next morning, the young couple was crammed into a cattle car with other prisoners, where they were forced to remain for days without food or water.
Auschwitz and the Czech Family Camp
Days later, the transport arrived at Auschwitz, where Pavel, Vera and thousands of
other exhausted and starving prisoners staggered from the cattle cars onto a
ramp illuminated by blazing spotlights. SS guards shouted at the prisoners and beat them as they forced the men away from the women and children. They grouped the new arrivals into rows of five and marched them from the ramp. No selection took place, and
no prisoners were sent to the gas chambers that night.
Pavel and the other men arrived at a large washroom, where they were forced to remove all their valuables and clothing. Then other prisoners shaved their bodies,
tattooed numbers on their left forearms, and then forced them to stand under freezing cold showers. Driven from the showers, Pavel and the other men had to wait outside in the icy air for hours, until other prisoners delivered threadbare uniforms and wooden shoes.
The treatment that Pavel and the other people on his transport received was different from what most new arrivals at Auschwitz experienced. Their heads were left unshaved,
and everyone on the transport – men, women, and children – were sent to one camp and housed in separate men’s and women’s blocks. This camp was known as the “Czech Family Camp”, and it was another Nazi hoax concocted to fool the Red Cross into thinking that
the prisoners were treated relatively well.
To keep the hoax going, the Nazis kept this camp filled with relatively healthy prisoners, most of whom arrived on transports from Terezin. Every six months, the Nazis
sent surviving prisoners to the gas chambers and replaced them with prisoners
from another transport.
Soon after arriving in the camp, Pavel was put to work carrying heavy rocks for use in the construction of a road, while Vera had to transport barrels of soup to the workers. In
an incredible act of love, Vera often risked her own life to smuggle extra rations of soup to Pavel so he could keep up his strength.
After a few days of this bone-breaking work, something remarkable happened due to the efforts of Fredy Hirsch, a gifted athlete and youth leader who also arrived in Auschwitz in September 1943. Determined to help the children in any way he could, Fredy
fearlessly approached Doctor Mengele and asked for permission to create a children’s block in the camp. Mengele agreed and put Fredy in charge of the children’s block.
Since Pavel had taken a teacher training course in Prague, he was assigned to be one of the coordinators of the children’s block. In this hell on earth, Pavel, Fredy, and several others did everything possible to improve the lives of these condemned children, to shield them from the horrors of camp life, and to provide them with fleeting moments of happiness.
They taught them songs and lessons from memory, organized art and poetry competitions, and helped them create skits and dances. Tragically, the devotion of Pavel and the other coordinators could not save these children, and almost all of them were murdered in the gas chambers of Auschwitz.
Years after the war ended, Pavel remained haunted by the loss of these children, and could never stop wondering who they would have grown up to be, what gifts and contributions they would have made to the world.
Liberation and Life After Terezin
By June 1944, the Nazis were on the losing side of the war, and they made a desperate push to manufacture more weapons. They sent transports of healthier prisoners, including Pavel, to work in a factory at the Schwarzheide concentration camp. Vera was also chosen to work, and placed on a different transport to another factory.
At Schwarzheide, Pavel and the other prisoners were forced to work long hours clearing away the debris of Allied air raids. The conditions were unbearable, with meager rations, no hygiene options, and nothing to wear but ragged clothing, even in the bitter winter.
Then, in April 1945, all surviving prisoners at Schwarzheide were forced on a terrifying 19 day death march through the German countryside, back towards Terezin. Finally, on May 7th, 1945, the SS abruptly stopped the march and fled. There Pavel stood with his surviving companions, starving, ragged, and weighing just 70 pounds, but a free man at last.
Within days, Pavel returned to Prague with just one mission: to find his beloved Vera once again. As the months passed, Pavel gradually recovered his health and continued to search tirelessly for news of his wife, but learned nothing. Still, he refused to give into despair, and continued to hold out hope.
Then, two months later, the doorbell of the apartment where he was staying rang. Pavel opened the door, and was overwhelmed with emotion as he gazed at Vera standing right in front of him, looking as beautiful as ever.
Filled with indescribable joy at being reunited, they married a second time, this time under a real chuppah, with wine for the ceremony. They were never again separated in more than 50 years of marriage, during which time they raised four children and six grandchildren.
Pavel later wrote a book about their experiences during the war, and traveled to schools throughout Europe and the United States sharing their story with younger generations. He considered himself and Vera to be messengers for the victims of the Holocaust and after Vera’s death, Pavel continued his mission in her memory. In 2015 Pavel himself passed away, rejoining his beloved Vera once again.
On an autumn evening in 1944, a young man and woman meet behind the
Hamburg Barracks in the Terezin ghetto to take an evening walk, as is their
custom. Somehow, despite the terrible conditions of the ghetto, they
found each other, and their friendship quickly blossomed into love. Even
here love can thrive, in spite of tremendous odds and the constant threat
of transports to the unknown.
For many months they’ve been spared, but now the young man’s luck has run out and he’ll be leaving on a transport in the morning. Sensing he has nothing to lose, the young man leads his beloved to a walled garden, where wild roses beckon to them from beyond the wrought iron gate. The garden
is forbidden to them, but the young man climbs over the gate and searches the prickly branches until he finds a perfect pink rose. He presents the rose to the woman he loves, along with a picture of himself as a final gift to remember him by.
In just a couple more days, Schmuel Berger boards a transport to the East, and neither he nor Inge Katz know if they’ll ever see each other again. They both knew the risks of falling in love in Terezin, knew that they were on borrowed time, and still they made the courageous choice to love one another.
Ironically, if it hadn’t been for the war, they would have probably never met. Inge was born and raised in Bremen, Germany, the daughter of a successful businessman, while Schmuel grew up on a farm in a small Czech town. It was only after they were sent to Terezin that their paths crossed.
Inge and Schmuel’s love story is the focus of the book Roses in a Forbidden Garden:
A Holocaust Love Story, a compelling and powerful memoir written by
their granddaughter, Elise Garibaldi. The book details Inge’s early life,
including her family’s suffering at the hands of the Nazis, her time in Terezin,
and her experiences after the war.
Inge’s Life Before Terezin
Inge Katz, a strikingly pretty girl with dark hair and vivid green eyes, grew up in a close-knit and loving family consisting of her charming, handsome father, elegant mother, and Oma Rosa, her gentle, devout grandmother. From the time she was a young child, she had
a special bond with Ruthie Cohen, her cousin and best friend. Inge was more on the
quiet and reserved side, while Ruthie was outgoing and confident, and always looked out for Inge.
Under the Nazis, both girls experienced increasing persecution, and were eventually banned from attending school. A Christian woman offered them apprenticeships in her dress shop, and they eagerly accepted this opportunity. As their skills grew, Ruthie and Inge dreamed of opening their own dress shop one day, even as life became increasingly difficult.
During Kristallnacht, the Nazis broke into Inge’s home, smashing everything in sight, and jailing Inge’s father, Carl, for several weeks. Soon after, the family was forced to move into a cramped house in a dilapidated section of town.
They coped with the situation as best as they could, despite their tight living conditions and food shortages. But things changed forever in November 1941, when Inge, Ruthie, and their families were assigned to a transport East.
At the last moment, the Nazis removed Inge’s family from the transport, but Inge was heartbroken that she would be separated from Ruthie. She accompanied Ruthie and her family to the train, where she hugged Ruthie tightly and reassured her they would meet again soon. Choked with emotion, Inge waved to her cousin as the train took off, the wind blowing Ruthie’s long brown hair over her face. Inge stayed on the platform for a long time after the train departed, wondering if she would ever see Ruthie again.
Despite missing her cousin terribly, Inge, like the rest of her family, continued following her daily routine and tried to maintain a positive outlook. As the winter of 1942 dragged on, Inge often worried about Ruthie, and hoped she was safe and warm wherever she was. They’d never been apart for so long, and Inge just wanted to be reunited with her cousin and best friend.
The Transport to Terezin
Then in June 1942, right after her eighteenth birthday, Inge’s family received a summons to report for the next transport. Inge boarded a train to the unknown wearing her new skirt suit of soft brown wool, a birthday gift from her parents.
The train left them at an isolated station called Bauschowitz, and everyone on
the transport was forced to walk for two hours in the hot July sun until they arrived at Terezin. They were led to a large building to register and assigned to barracks. Their block leader, also a Jewish prisoner, took a liking to Inge and allowed her and her family to stay in a small room at the top floor of the building.
Inge’s family was grateful to be together, but that didn’t spare them from the unspeakably awful conditions in the camp. Dozens of people shared a single filthy outhouse, and they only had cold water from a pump to wash with. Their meals mostly consisted of watery soup with rotten vegetables, small loaves of bread, and “coffee” which was actually
a tasteless brown liquid made from grain.
Still, Inge’s grandmother insisted that the family pray together each night, and urged them not to turn their backs on God. Despite everything, Inge remained grateful that she, her parents, and her grandmother were together.
But Inge soon suffered two terrible losses. Immediately after arriving, Inge began searching for Ruthie, only to learn that no other transports from Bremen had ever arrived in Terezin. The news dashed Inge’s hopes that she would be reunited with her cousin.
And just two weeks after their arrival at Terezin, Inge’s grandmother passed away suddenly, leaving another gaping void in the lives of Inge and her parents. Despite their grief, they continued to pray together at night, knowing that’s what Oma Rosa would have wanted. Inge also attended religious services in the ghetto, determined to hold fast to her faith.
Few younger people attended these services, but during Yom Kippur prayers, Inge spotted two young men. One of the men was tall, blond, and extremely handsome, and impressed Inge with his reverence as he prayed. When he glanced up and met Inge’s eyes, she shyly looked away. But for many weeks that followed, she found herself hoping to meet him again.
Little did Inge realize that the young man was also taken by her, and was determined to find a way to meet her. It took him four months, but eventually he discovered that Inge worked in the records office and appeared outside the building one day. Speaking in Czech-accented German, he told Inge his name was Schmuel Berger and invited her to go for a walk with him after work.
The next afternoon, they walked through the streets of Terezin, getting to know each other. When Inge discovered that Schmuel worked in the bakery, she balked. Since food was so scarce in the camp, many young women threw themselves at men who worked in
the bakery or kitchens. For this reason, Inge worried it would damage her reputation to be seen with Schmuel. But Schmuel reassured Inge that she never had to worry when she was with him.
They continued to walk together in the evenings, and as the weeks went by Inge realized her mood was lifting, and even found herself beginning to enjoy life again.
On Inge’s nineteenth birthday, Schmuel presented her with two special gifts – a small cake and a tiny flowerpot with a single bright marigold in it. He’d secured the flower at a tremendous risk to himself, and Inge became choked with emotion when she held it in her hands. Even though keeping a plant was forbidden, Inge held onto that flower for many weeks.
As the months passed, their connection deepened, their love continued to grow, and Inge found herself dreaming of their future together. Then, in late September 1944,
Schmuel arrived for their walk deeply shaken, and told Inge he was assigned to the next transport. They tried to remain strong but were both devastated by the news, knowing it meant they would probably never see each other again.
The night before the transport left, they walked together one last time, and
Schmuel presented Inge with a perfect pink rose from the walled garden.
Inge’s world was shattered after Schmuel left, and she spent countless evenings thinking of him and fearing what he might be going through. Still, Inge held fast to the dim hope that one day they would be reunited.
Liberation and the Long Journey Home
Inge continued to hope after Terezin was liberated by the Russians in May 1945, and after she and her parents returned to Bremen to start rebuilding their lives.
But as months went by with no word from Schmuel, Inge’s parents began to worry about her, feeling she needed to move on instead of holding out hope for someone who would probably never return. Even so, Inge continued to search tirelessly to uncover information about Schmuel, but with no luck.
Then one day, in late summer 1945, Inge received a letter, written in handwriting that looked familiar, though she couldn’t quite place it. Her heart leaped when she opened the envelope and found a note from Schmuel, saying that he was on his way back to her. Scarcely able to believe it, Inge read his letter over and over until she was finally convinced it was real.
Inge on her wedding day. Photo courtesy of Elise Garibaldi.
But as weeks and then months passed with no sign of
him, Inge began to fear he would never arrive. Then on New Year’s Day, 1946, Inge spotted Schmuel walking hesitantly up to the front door of her family’s apartment building and hurried to greet him. Both of them were overcome with a mix of joy and apprehension, wondering if their feelings for each other would still be the same.
But soon after Schmuel entered the apartment, he spotted the picture he had given Inge the night before he left Terezin. At that moment Schmuel knew Inge hadn’t forgotten him, and had been waiting for him all this time. And when he smiled at Inge and asked her to go for a walk, Inge knew he had been thinking of her and only her during the many months of suffering he’d endured in the Nazi concentration camps.
Together, arm in arm, they exited the apartment and walked through the streets of Bremen, free and together at last.
Schmuel and Inge’s story is a remarkable and inspiring tale of love and hope
that flourished in the most unimaginable of places, a Nazi ghetto and concentration camp.
Even though World War II was one of the darkest times in human history, it’s crucial
to remember the human side of the story, that many people still held onto their humanity, and continued to love and dream and hope for a better world. Through their remarkable story, Inge and Schmuel teach us the powerful lesson that pure love can endure in the face of insurmountable odds, and is capable of radiating hope and light in even the darkest times.
Inge and Schmuel with their daughters Hanna and Ruthie. Photo courtesy of Elise Garibaldi.
On a cold November morning in 1942, a twelve-year old boy exits a train with his mother and sister and forms a line with hundreds of other men, women, and children of all ages. They’re forced to march down the main street of the town and across a small bridge, up to a vast red brick wall with an arched gateway. It’s the young boy’s first glimpse of Terezin, and yet he’s not afraid. In a way, he’s glad to have left Prague behind him, the place where the Nazis took his father away forever, where Jewish children are banned from parks, schools, and cinemas, forced to wear yellow stars, and assaulted just for being Jewish. Even playing sports is forbidden, and it’s been over a year since he played soccer, his favorite sport. Life in Prague has become unbearable, so maybe life in Terezin won’t be so bad.
The young boy’s name is Michael Gruenbaum, and his story is the subject of a
deeply moving, compelling, and powerful memoir, Somewhere There is Still a Sun. Most of the book chronicles the three years that Michael, his mother Margaret, and his
sister Marietta were forced to live in the Terezin ghetto and concentration camp.
They arrived at the camp on November 20, 1942, along with thousands of other Jews
from Prague. This was almost a year after Michael’s father Karl, a prominent lawyer in Prague, was arrested and executed by the Nazis. Exhausted from months of grief, sadness, and ever-increasing restrictions, Michael felt a strange sense of relief to be leaving Prague.
Michael as a young boy.
Upon arriving at Terezin, Michael was sent to live in barrack L417, one of the designated Children’s Homes. He lived in Room Seven, with about forty other boys and Franta Maier, their madrich, or youth counselor. Franta was in his early twenties, but already displayed remarkable qualities of
leadership and compassion, and his dedication to the boys under his care was truly extraordinary. In addition to keeping the boys on a structured daily schedule, supervising their undercover education, and ensuring they kept themselves and their room clean, Franta fostered a strong sense of community among the boys and provided them with the care and
emotional support they so badly needed.
The relationships Michael had with the other boys and with Franta is one of the most powerful aspects of Somewhere There is Still a Sun. The boys in Michael’s room called themselves the Nesharim, the Hebrew word for eagles, and they even had a special cheer. Michael struggled to adjust to life in Terezin, and initially found it challenging to fit in with the Nesharim. In time, he truly became part of the Nesharim family and developed close friendships with the other boys and with Franta.
Michael and Franta Maier.
But they lived a truly precarious existence in Terezin, where the threat of transports to the East was always present. One day Michael would be playing soccer and tending the gardens with the other Nesharim, and then the next day some of his friends would be sent away on a transport. The book so vividly illustrates the friendships Michael developed with the Nesharim, and that makes it all the more upsetting to read about Michael’s friends
getting sent away on transports.
Another extraordinary part of the book is the way that Michael, Margaret, and Marietta were miraculously spared from the transports multiple times. This was in large part due to his mother’s determination to do everything in her power to save her children.
The family was placed on transports several times, but Michael’s mother managed to get them removed from each of these transports. In the end, it was Margaret’s heroic persistence, her unparalleled talent for making teddy bears, and a remarkable stroke of luck that saved them.
I’ve read many accounts of life in Terezin, but Somewhere There is Still a Sun stands out for the way it depicts everyday life in Terezin in such vivid and poignant detail. It painted such a clear picture in my mind of what it was truly like to be a child living in Terezin, from the daily routines, to the close relationships the children fostered, to the incredibly important role Franta and the other counselors and teachers played in the lives of these children.
Michael with the other surviving Nesharim at a reunion in Terezin.
Michael’s memoir has the power to help readers begin to understand the realities of life in Terezin and the impact that the ghetto had on the children who were forced to live there. It also gives us a powerful insight into heroic individuals like Franta Maier, who devoted themselves to helping the children there.
This is one of the most powerful lessons in Somewhere There is Still a Sun, that human kindness can endure in the darkest of circumstances and bring the light of hope to others.
The other lesson that stands out to me the most is the incredible resilience of the human spirit to endure and even triumph after surviving the most unspeakably terrifying
and horrific circumstances. We can see this resilience in the letter that Margaret wrote to some relatives who lived abroad, just a few days after she and her children were liberated from Terezin.
The final paragraph of her letter reads:
“We do not know yet how the future will shape up for us. None of our old friends are alive anymore. We do not know where we are going to live. Nothing! But somewhere in the world there is still a sun, mountains, the ocean, books, small clean apartments, and perhaps the rebuilding of a new life.”
Michael and his mother at his MIT graduation, 1953.
Michael, Margaret, and Marietta returned to Prague and worked incredibly hard to build a new life for themselves. But just three years later, Margaret realized that the
Communists were planning to take over the government and managed to flee the country with her children. They had to live in Cuba for two years to await their quota
number before finally being allowed into the United States, and soon after, Michael started his undergraduate studies at MIT.
And just eight years after being liberated from Terezin, Michael graduated from MIT with a civil engineering degree. On his graduation day, Michael posed in his cap and gown for a picture with his mother, who is beaming with pride. This photo is deeply moving, and is a powerful example of what rebuilding a new life really means.
After reading Somewhere There is Still a Sun, I’m filled with a deep sense of gratitude to Michael for sharing his story with the world, and I truly believe that anyone who reads his memoir will feel the same.
Few people knew about Gertrud Kauders until 2018, when workers in the process of demolishing an old house in Prague made a remarkable discovery.
It seemed to be a routine construction job, until one of the workers began tearing down a wall and nearly 30 paintings tumbled out. A collection of Impressionist portraits, landscapes, still lifes. Someone had removed the canvases from their frames and stashed them in the wall of this house.
As the demolition continued, more hidden canvases emerged from the walls and from underneath the floorboards. Eventually, the workers unearthed close to 700 paintings, all in perfect condition after many years.
And all of these canvases bore the signature of an artist from Prague named Gertrud Kauders.
The Life of Gertrud Kauders
Gertrud Kauders was born in Prague in 1883, into a middle-class German-speaking Jewish family. A talented artist, Gertrud studied under the well-known Czech artist Otakar Nejedlý at Prague’s Academy of Fine Arts. As a student, Gertrud had the opportunity to spend her summers in France and Italy. There she spent hours painting the iconic cities and landscapes she saw. She developed her own distinctive style, which bore resemblances to Impressionism, with softly defined forms and vibrant, yet muted tones.
When the Nazis came to power in Germany and turned their attention on Czechoslovakia, most of Gertrud’s family managed to escape the country. Although they begged her to come with them, she didn’t believe the Nazis would target her, as a native German speaker. And so she stayed behind.
But the Nazis quickly began to persecute the country’s Jews, and Gertrud realized that she didn’t have much time left. And so she and her close friend Natalie Jahudkova, who’d studied with her at the Academy of Fine Arts, devised a plan to save her artwork from the Nazis.
Gertrud removed all her canvases from their frames and smuggled them to Natalie’s house in the Prague suburb of Zbraslav. The two women then managed to hide the canvases in the walls and floorboards of the home, without anyone else knowing about it. And there they remained for nearly 80 years.
Sadly, Gertrud was arrested by the Nazis in May 1942 and sent to Terezin soon after hiding away her paintings. If she had been able to stay in Terezin, she would have undoubtedly found a way to continue her art despite the terrible conditions there. But tragically, Gertrud never had the chance.
She was only in Terezin a couple of weeks before she was transported to a death camp in Poland called Majdanek. There she was murdered shortly after arrival, sometime around May 17, 1942.
The Rediscovery of Gertrud Kauders’ Paintings
Natalie Jahudkova kept the paintings hidden in her home and kept this secret for the rest of her life. She died in 1977, and left the house to a woman she’d unofficially adopted in the 1920s. In 2018, this woman’s grandson, Jakub Sedlacek, decided to tear down the abandoned and broken-down house. It was during this demolition that Gertrud’s paintings resurfaced.
After seeing reports of the find in the media, Gertrud’s niece Miriam Kauders managed to locate the paintings. While they don’t have a permanent home yet, both Jakub and Miriam intend to donate most of the collection to a museum in Prague. And some of the portraits will be returned to Miriam and the surviving members of the Kauders family. They will serve as a memorial to Gertrud, the talented artist whose name is just now being rediscovered.
To view photos of some of Gertrud’s remarkable paintings, you can find them here. Hopefully the day will come soon when her paintings are displayed to the world once again.
When it comes to Holocaust education, one of the tragic realities is that the millions of lives lost are so often reduced to statistics. The problem with this is it becomes so easy to overlook the fact that each of these numbers represents a human being with a story, a life extinguished by the Nazis.
This issue is one that Vera Schiff continues to grapple with to this day. And that’s one of the reasons why Vera, an author and Holocaust survivor from Prague, has a mission to share the stories of the people behind the numbers, so that future generations may know them and remember.
Here is Vera’s story.
Vera Schiff’s Early Life
Vera Schiff was born in Prague on May 17, 1926, and grew up in a loving home with her parents Elsie and Siegfried Katz, and her sister Eva, who was 18 months older. Her family was proud of their Jewish heritage and observed the traditions, but also had many Christian friends.
Vera’s father was a lawyer who worked for the Finance Ministry. He provided well for his family, and they lived in a beautiful apartment in the upscale Letna district of Prague. Elsie and Siegfried were loving and nurturing parents who wanted the very best for their daughters. Both Vera and Eva excelled in school, and after school they studied French, piano, and art appreciation with a governess.
Then in March 1939 Vera’s life changed forever. The Nazis had annexed the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia in 1938, and they occupied the rest of the country on March 15, 1939. The Nazis then began their systematic persecution of the country’s Jewish population. They soon fired Vera’s father from his job without any pension or severance, and froze his bank accounts. Her family hid many of their valuables, knowing that the Nazis would seize them. The Nazis ordered Jewish families to hand in their jewelry, appliances and other valuables, which were stored in synagogues the Nazis appropriated.
Deportation to Terezin
After living under the brutal Nazi rule in Prague for three years, Vera and her family received a deportation order in May 1942. On a sunny, spring day they bundled up a few belongings and walked to the designated building in central Prague. They sat in a crammed hall with 5,000 other people for three days. During that time, the Nazis took away all their identity cards and papers, and ordered them to hand over the keys to their apartments. Then they boarded a train, which took them to a town called Bohušovice.
The Nazis forced them to exit the train with their belongings and ordered them to march two miles to the gates of Terezin. Vera remembers that the Nazis barked orders at them to move faster during the entire journey. The Nazis stole some of the prisoners’ belongings and herded them into a barrack.
Three days later, Vera and her family were scheduled to be deported again. They were spared due to the intervention of a Gentile friend, Mr. Bleha. He instructed them to talk to his friend Dr. Tarjan, who would help them. Vera slipped through the crowds, found the doctor, and gave him her family’s identity numbers. The doctor told her to go back to her family and lie low.
On the day of the scheduled transport, Vera’s family learned that they were no longer included in it. Instead, Vera, Eva, and their mother were sent to live in the women’s barracks. There, they slept on hard, lice-infested bunks crammed with other women. Vera was assigned to work in the hospital, and Eva was sent to work in the gardens.
In the following video below, Vera discusses her life in Terezin.
In Terezin, rations were extremely meager, and disease was rampant due to the overcrowding, lack of sanitation, and filth of the camp. Vera’s grandmother died shortly after arriving in Terezin, and then her sister Eva became ill.
Desperate to save her, the family tried to get contraband medication and gave her their rations, but Eva died from her illness. Then Vera’s father became ill and died, and her mother’s health also began to fail when she contracted tuberculosis.
Meeting Arthur Schiff
One day when Vera was bringing soup to her mother, she met a young man named Arthur Schiff, a former Czech soldier and Nazi resistor. Despite the squalid conditions of the camp, Arthur looked neat and clean, and he greeted her with a smile.
The two struck up a conversation, and got to know one another as Arthur accompanied her back to her mother. Vera later learned that Arthur belonged to an organized resistance movement composed of former Czech army officials. He participated in many different activities to resist the Nazis, such as forging new identities for Czech Jews and smuggling medications into Terezin.
After they parted, Vera assumed she’d never see him again. After all, this was Terezin, where people died or disappeared every day. But a few days later, Arthur showed up at the hospital where Vera worked, and they soon became inseparable.
In 1944, Arthur asked Vera to marry him. He had heard rumors that if they were married they could be deported together. Vera refused his proposal several times, feeling that her first responsibility was to care for her mother. She hoped she would be able to keep her mother alive until the end of the war and then bring her to a sanatorium. But despite her best efforts, Vera’s mother died from tuberculosis in August 1944, leaving Vera without family.
Later that year, Vera agreed to marry Arthur. They married in the camp on March 6, 1945, and the Chief Rabbi of Denmark officiated the wedding. The couple stood under a chuppah made of sticks and a torn blanket, and since there was no wine, they sipped from a cup of black coffee. Arthur even managed to arrange for a Danish violinist named Hambro to attend and serenade the newlyweds. Even though they were now married, they still had to live apart.
Life After Terezin
The couple survived the war in Terezin, which was liberated by the Russian army on May 8, 1945. Arthur and Vera separated for a time after the war. Vera returned to Prague in the summer of 1945, and lived with her father’s former co-worker. A few weeks later, she was able to reclaim her family’s apartment. But the memories of her lost parents and sister haunted Vera, and she moved to a small room near the university. She also tirelessly worked to find other members of her extended family. Tragically, Vera eventually learned that all her relatives had died in the Holocaust, and she was the only survivor.
Soon after returning to Prague, Vera enrolled in the university, hoping to resume her dream of becoming a doctor. But she struggled with poor health after being in Terezin, which made attending school difficult. Vera later reunited with Arthur, and the couple emigrated to Israel in 1949 with their young son David.
Vera took a job working with newborns in the Rambam hospital, and Arthur started a career as a pharmacist. They later lived in a kibbutz, where their second son Michael was born. Eventually, they moved to a town called Nahariya. Vera has many good memories of their time there. During the years in Nahariya, Vera worked in an outpatient clinic while earning her degree in medical technology.
In 1961, Arthur’s health began to suffer and they moved to Toronto, where his family lived. Both Arthur and Vera continued to work in the medical field until Vera retired in 1991. She then decided it was time to document her memories and experiences in Terezin, and teach younger generations about the horrors of the Holocaust.
She began visiting schools across Canada and wrote five books documenting her experiences. Vera also had a powerful desire to share the stories of people she knew in Terezin. She wanted the world to know the stories of the people behind the numbers, the ones who lived and died in Terezin.
Vera continued this work after Arthur passed away in 2001, and earned an honorary doctorate from the University of New Brunswick, Saint John. Now, 94, Vera continues to live in Toronto and still tirelessly promotes Holocaust education.
Above all, Vera wants people to remember that those who died in the Holocaust are more than victims, that we need to know about their acts of defiance, their courage, and their struggles to maintain their humanity in the face of the some of the most inhumane circumstances the world has ever known.
