All posts by tara.orah@gmail.com

Inge Auerbacher: A Voice for Justice and Reconciliation, Part 1

Children in Terezin, Terezin Writers

After the amazing coincidence that led me to Judy Diamant, I never expected I would get the chance to speak with another survivor of Terezin. It began with a surprise email from author and disabilities advocate Rachel Simon, my creative writing professor, mentor and friend. She had recently appeared in a documentary by a young filmmaker named Adrian Esposito, who has autism. She then posted the video on Facebook, and received a message from Inge Auerbacher, a woman who appeared in one of Adrian’s earlier films. To her amazement, she learned that Inge is a Terezin survivor who has published a number of books and travels the world to give lectures about her experiences in the camp and her life after Terezin. In her response to Inge, Professor Simon told her about my study of Terezin and my blog, and Inge was very interested and generously offered to speak with me.

Given that Inge lives in New York, and I am now living in Colorado, an in-person meeting wasn’t possible, but we scheduled a time to speak over the phone instead. By speaking with Inge and reading her powerful autobiography entitled I Am a Star: Child of the Holocaust, I learned about her family and the years they spent in Terezin.

Inge, age 4
Inge, age 4

Inge was born on December 31, 1934 in a village called Kippenheim, located in South-West Germany in the Black Forest region. Her family had lived in Germany for over two hundred years, and her father, Berthold, served in the German army during World War I. Disabled during the war, he was honored with an Iron Cross for his service and subsequently developed a successful textile business. He and his wife Regina and daughter lived in a comfortable home and had good relations with both their Jewish and Christian neighbors.

Everything changed when Inge was three years old. Though a young child, Inge still remembers how her grandfather and father were arrested and taken away to the concentration camp Dachau, along with all Jewish men over the age of sixteen. She remembers the windows of her home being smashed, and running to the backyard shed to hide from the raging mob. The synagogue was badly damaged in the Kristallnacht riots. After a few weeks, her grandfather and father returned home, but nothing would be the same. Inge’s father lost his business and sold his home in Kipperheim. The family moved to Jebenhausen, where Inge’s grandparents lived. Soon after the move, Inge’s grandfather died. He ended his life bitterly disappointed in the country he had once loved.

Inge with her parents and grandparents
Inge with her parents and grandparents

 

Inge started school at age six and was forced to attend a separate school from the Christian children. She needed to walk two miles and then take a train to reach the nearest Jewish school. She had to make this journey for six months, when transports began and she could no longer attend school. In 1942, when she was just seven years old, Inge, her parents and her grandmother were assigned on a transport east. Her father requested that his family be spared, given his status as a disabled veteran. His request was granted, but the Nazis refused to remove Inge’s grandmother from the transport.

Destroyed synagogue in Kippenheim
Destroyed synagogue in Kippenheim

In August 1942, Inge and her parents were assigned for another transport, despite her father’s veteran status. Their money was stolen, they were driven from their apartment and taken to Stuttgart, where they had to sleep on the bare floor of a large hall for two nights. Then they were taken to their final destination, Terezin.

References
Books by Inge (available on Amazon)
I Am a Star: Child of the Holocaust 
Beyond the Yellow Star to America
www.ingeauerbacher.com

 

 

Raja Englanderova and Willy Groag: Keepers of the Art

Children in Terezin, Terezin Artists, Terezin poets
Terezin motif collage by Margit Gerstmannova (1931-1944)
Terezin motif collage by Margit Gerstmannova
(1931-1944)

It seems such a shame that there is so little information available about the two people who preserved the poems and drawings of Friedl’s students. In Raja’s case things are more complicated because a famous play entitled I Never Saw Another Butterfly presents a fictionalized account of her Terezin experiences. Given the lack of information available about her, it becomes difficult to understand who Raja (pronounced Ry-ah) truly was.

We do know that she was a teenager, an older student of Friedl’s and had a leadership role in the one of the camp barracks known as “the Girls’ Home”. It appears Friedl trusted that Raja would do as much as she could to preserve the children’s drawings. Why else would Friedl have selected Raja for this task? Raja was somehow spared from the transports to Auschwitz and managed to safely hide the suitcases until the liberation of Terezin.

Willy Groag was a chemist, teacher and leader of a Zionist youth organization called Maccabee Hatza’ir and at Terezin was appointed to manage the Girls’ Home along with Raja and some others. He did what he could to improve the barrack, though there was little that could be done in the ghetto. At night he would make rounds to check that everyone was in bed and no one was missing, and would tell stories to children who were unable to sleep.
When liberation came, Willy was one of the few men in the camp who was strong enough to work. He was appointed Director of Children and Youth, and worked tirelessly to reunite children with their parents. Often it was an impossible task since many of the children were orphaned.

In August 1945, several months after liberation, Raja approached him and revealed Friedl’s suitcases, which she had succeeded in hiding to the end of the war. She turned the suitcases over to him, and he returned the suitcases to the Prague Jewish community. At the time, the community leaders did not express much interest in them, and they languished in storage for over ten years, when some members of the community discovered them. Since then they have been exhibited worldwide, even to this day. For the most part, they are kept safely in Prague, at the Jewish Museum and the Pinkas synagogue and have been published in a number of books and volumes.

Though little is known of Willy and Raja, together they brought the poems and drawings of the children of Terezin to the world. These small works of art are all that remain of so many of the children of Terezin, their only legacy, preserved thanks to the efforts of Willy and Raja.

“Terezin motif” from Krizkova, Marie R., Kotouc, Kurt J. & Ornest, Zdenek. We Are Children Just the Same: Vedem, the Secret Magazine of the Boys of Terezin. The Jewish Publication Society, 1995. Print. Used with permission.

Friedl Dicker-Brandeis: Extraordinary Artist and Devoted Teacher

Terezin Artists

Frederika Dicker-Brandeis, better known by her nickname Friedl, was an artist and teacher who saved many of her students’ drawings and poems. Born in Austria, she studied at the prestigious Weimar Bauhaus art school and was a student of famous artists such as Paul Klee. She also taught at the Bauhaus, and later worked as an artist and textile designer in various cities including Berlin and Prague. A letter she wrote to a friend in 1940 gives us insight into her philosophy of creativity and teaching. She wrote that when she was a young art student her desire was to protect her future students from unpleasant experiences and uncertainty but that as an adult her view changed. By 1940 she expressed the view that it was most important to inspire creativity in others, to help them develop that creativity, and to encourage them to always pursue that creativity no matter what obstacles they might face.

In December 1942, at the age of 42, Friedl and her husband Pavel Brandeis were transported to Terezin. Despite the terrible conditions in the ghetto, Friedl held fast to her determination to inspire creativity in others. She arranged art classes for children, and was strongly convinced that through art the children could express and better understand their emotions and better cope with their experience of living in the ghetto. As described by Chaim Potok in the introduction to I Never Saw Another Butterfly, Friedl used many techniques in her classes such as breathing exercises, the study of texture and color, and an emphasis on close observation of the environment. She would sometimes tell stories and have the children draw objects that she mentioned twice. After each class, she would instruct one student to collect the drawings and store them in her room, a tiny closet-sized space in one of the camp barracks which she decorated by draping blue sheets on the walls and hanging paintings of flowers.

Just what kind of person was Friedl Dicker-Brandeis? What was her personality like, and how did she relate to others? Various sources agree that she was highly intelligent, energetic, charismatic and talented in a number of arenas, including teaching and many art forms. She was very knowledgeable and insightful about children’s intellectual and psychological development and believed that art could be used as a form of therapy before art therapy was an established field. She also was kind-hearted and related incredibly well to children, and those who survived the camp stated that she made a profound impact on their lives, that her classes allowed them to experience a taste of freedom and to find solace through imagination and the pursuit of creativity. Friedl was also described as incredibly generous and self-giving, and never accepted any form of compensation for her classes or lectures. I was especially moved to learn that she rarely painted or drew while in Terezin because materials were scarce and she saved them for the children.

In 1944, as the transports increased, Friedl hid the children’s drawings in suitcases, which she entrusted to one of her art students. Her husband was placed on one of the last transports to Auschwitz in October 1944, and Friedl volunteered to be included in the transport. Tragically Friedl died in Auschwitz, but her husband survived the camp.

But the suitcases Friedl hid away survived, thanks to a young Terezin artist, a girl named Raja Englanderova.

Further Reading
New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/10/arts/design/10SALA.html?_r=0
Jewish Women’s Archive: http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/dicker-brandeis-friedl
Elena Makarova: Friedl, Dicker-Brandeis, Vienna 1898- Auschwitz 19 (Paperback), Publisher: Tallfellow Press; 1st ed edition (December 31, 1999)

A Child Survivor of Terezin, Part 3

Children in Terezin

Mrs. Diamant explained that this highly compassionate woman named Bertha Wolf was in charge of caring for the girls in House L410. Bertha did all she could to keep some degree of normalcy for the girls in the home, and her lessons in particular helped to structure their days. Judy remembers how Bertha spent many hours teaching them subjects such as German and Hebrew, and Jewish studies, and her presence was comforting and reassuring.

Bertha and Judy both survived the war in Terezin. Judy’s aunt Lily was murdered in Auschwitz in the fall of 1944. Though her hair was filled with lice and a quarantine was set soon after the camp was liberated, Judy along with her grandmother’s friend Milena managed to leave the camp before the quarantine. Milena accompanied Judy to a convent where she received a harsh treatment that burned and blistered her forehead and scalp, though it was effective in treating her head lice. After leaving the convent, Judy and Milena returned to Ostrava, where they were reunited with Judy’s stepfather. Judy did not remain in her hometown for long, as she was sent to boarding school in England, and as a young woman she took a job in Kenya. She met her husband at that company, a man whose family had fled Russia for Egypt some years before. Her daughter Sarah was born in South Africa and her daughter Naomi was born in England. The family lived in Kenya, South Africa, England and Italy and it wasn’t until both her daughters earned their PhDs and relocated to the United States did Judy move to New York. Judy has no nostalgia for her hometown of Ostrava; once she left she had no desire to return there. And though she has had a very fulfilling and rich adult life, Judy told me that survivor’s guilt is very real, and that it affects her to this day. Why was I chosen to survive? Why was my beautiful Aunt Lily chosen to die? These haunting questions still cross her mind at times, even after all these years.

At the same time, she retains a great affection for her special teacher Bertha Wolf. The two women remained in contact for many years until Bertha died, and Judy generously provided a picture of Bertha for me to copy and post on the blog. Here is a picture of Bertha Wolf, whose kindness and dedication to her girls provided some comfort and stability, even in Terezin.

Picture of Bertha Wolf
Picture of Bertha Wolf

A Child Survivor of Terezin, Part 2

Children in Terezin

Mrs. Diamant began by asking me about my project and how I came to learn of Terezin. Then she began to tell me about her background and story. Judy Diamant was born in the Moravian village of Ostrava, in what was then Czechoslovakia in 1932. Her parents divorced before she was born and her mother later married a Czech Christian man. This action likely saved Judy’s life, because her stepfather’s “Aryan” status conferred a certain degree of protection on her and her mother. But because she was Jewish, Judy’s mother, who suffered from tuberculosis, was forbidden from going to a sanatorium and getting the treatment that was available at the time. The disease progressed, and her mother ultimately died from tuberculosis in 1943. A year later, her stepfather’s Aryan status no longer could protect her, and at age twelve Judy was put on a train to Terezin.

Soon after arriving, Judy and the other new arrivals were told they would need to shower. By this point in the war stories of death camps and gas chambers had reached Judy’s hometown, and when she heard the word “shower”, Judy trembled in fear and began crying uncontrollably. A woman who was a stranger spoke softly to her and tried to comfort her, assuring her that only water poured from these showerheads. The woman stayed by Judy’s side as they walked to the communal showers. Though not a new arrival and not required to shower at that time, the woman also undressed and stepped beneath the cold drops of water, to assure Judy that there was nothing to fear. Judy never learned the woman’s name or who she was, but she never forgot this woman’s act of kindness.

Illness was rampant in Terezin, in particular the typhus outbreaks, and Judy was ill much of the time. Despite her illnesses, certain memories remain vivid: the boiled potatoes and lumps of cooked barley that made up most of the rations, the disease, her young Aunt Lily being sent away on one of the last transports to Auschwitz, how the camp was cleaned up and renovated, stores and cafes constructed as part of the deception on the Red Cross. Despite these terrible memories, there is also the memory of one very devoted and compassionate woman. Her name was Bertha Wolf, and as you will see, she had a profound impact on Judy’s life.

070

A Child Survivor of Terezin

Children in Terezin

As mentioned before, less than 200 children survived Terezin. By an amazing coincidence, I met one of these children. I don’t know what prompted me to mention my blog in the career advising seminar. After all, I hadn’t really developed the blog yet, had only drafted a few posts and was trying my best to get permissions to reprint the Terezin poems. Yet, I felt compelled to speak about my project and though my heart raced, I mustered up the courage to mention the blog. Then, to my utter shock, one of the women in my class, a research librarian at a Jewish seminary, spoke up.

“My mother was in Terezin,” she said, to my complete astonishment. I had only met a few Holocaust survivors before, but never anyone who had been in Terezin. And to think that the mother of one of my classmates had been there…my classmate offered to put me in contact with her mother so I could learn more about her experience. Her mother graciously agreed to meet with me, and a couple of weeks later I found myself riding the subway far uptown to an unfamiliar part of the city to meet Mrs. Diamant. As I rode uptown I worried that I would accidently say the wrong thing, since I could never truly understand the experience of a concentration camp survivor. I was also nervous that Mrs. Diamant might become upset when talking about her experience and I hoped I would know how to react. And I was also concerned about how she would react when I revealed I was a convert to Judaism, since the other survivors had reacted with bewilderment or skepticism when they learned that fact. I had been asked “Why would you ever want to be Jewish?”, and “Do you really understand what you are getting yourself into?”

But my worries began to subside as soon as I arrived at Mrs. Diamant’s apartment. She had warm blue eyes and a friendly personality that put me at ease immediately. In her soft British accent, Mrs. Diamant welcomed me to her home and led me down the hall to her living room, where we sat in lounge chairs in a room with Jewish-themed art, paintings depicting African villages and a silver mezuzah adorning the doorway. Then this unlikely pair, the Irish-American convert to Judaism and the child survivor of Terezin, began to share stories with one another.

The Small Fortress

Tour of Terezin

A paved pathway leads to the reddish stone wall surrounding the prison, and you are confronted with a large arched entranceway that is painted with thick white and black stripes. Beyond the entrance is a gravel main courtyard with rows and rows of barracks. Inside the barracks are long hallways and bare prison cells, some with rows of wooden bunks for numerous occupants and others for solitary prisoners. Stepping into one of the solitary confinement cells was deeply disturbing. You find yourself in a tiny square shaped room with stone floor, walls, and a ceiling which rises high above you. High up on the wall is a long narrow window, too high for a person to see out of, except perhaps a patch of blue sky and light on sunny days. On the day I visited there was nothing visible from the window but dim gray light and clouds and within the cell was a sense of crushing bleakness. It seemed to me that this was a place that was meant to break human spirits and take away all hope. The feeling lingered with me as we wandered through the courtyard, in and out of barracks, and explored a tunnel that stretched for many meters beneath the grounds of the Small Fortress. And especially when I saw the words Arbeit Macht Frei painted above a prison gateway. The Nazis no doubt knew exactly what this place could do to a human spirit.

By the time I left the Small Fortress, the rain was pounding the buildings, roads and earth heavily and the dark gray sky reflected my mood on leaving the Small Fortress. I soon caught a bus back to Prague, and though I had been at Terezin for less than a day, its impact on me was profound. Above all, the voices of the artists echoed in my mind and wouldn’t let me go. At that time I did not yet know that sharing their stories would become a kind of mission for me. And I never dreamed that nearly four years later I would meet one of the few children who survived Terezin.

On the Road to the Small Fortress

Tour of Terezin

The Ghetto Museum is located in the main section of the town, known as the Big Fortress. After leaving the museum I took a walk around the town’s main square and down the side streets, lined with old buildings and barracks, most of them a tan color with reddish roofs. It was raining by this point, and few people were around. The people that I did see were mainly inhabitants of the town. Strange as it seemed to me, people do live in Terezin today. I wondered how they managed to go about their daily lives when the memories of those who were imprisoned here were so strong. Do they ever think about what happened here? Or do they go about their daily lives without reflecting on the history at all, with everyday struggles taking priority?

The other portion of town is called the Small Fortress, which was historically a jail for political prisoners. In 1940, the jail was taken over by the SS and was operated by Nazis for the remainder of the war. To get to the gates of the Small Fortress, you have to exit the main part of the complex, cross a bridge over the rushing river Ohre, and walk through vast Jewish and Christian cemeteries with unmarked gravestones. During World War II, the cemetery quickly filled up, and most of the 32, 500 prisoners who died in Terezin were not given a proper burial, but were sent to the crematorium at the far edge of the Big Fortress. On certain days, the crematorium can be viewed by the public, though it was closed when  I visited.

As I walked to the Small Fortress, cold rain began to fall and the streets were deserted. The utter desolation of the place chilled me, and its impact on me is perhaps best represented by a photograph that I took during the walk to the Small Fortress. A lone figure walks through the rain, crosses the wet stone pathway that cuts through the cemetery, with rows of graves stretching out endlessly. A plain cross can be seen far ahead, as can black trees whose bare branches seem to claw at the gray sky. And in the distance is a grayish stone wall, the barrier which once enclosed people inside the Small Fortress of Terezin.

071

“I Am a Jew and Will be a Jew Forever”

Children in Terezin, Terezin poets, Tour of Terezin

Figuring out how to get to Terezin was the first challenge. It involved navigating the Prague metro and a largely deserted bus depot on a chilly gray January morning. The next order of business was to find out the correct bus, and I made my way to the battered trailer that served as the ticket office.  After buying the tickets, I went to search for the bus. There weren’t very many passengers, and the bus was about half full. That came as a surprise to me. I had expected that there would be many people visiting Terezin, but that wasn’t the case.

On the hour-long bus ride, we drove out of the busy city and passed through lush farmland and sparsely populated areas. It wasn’t long before the bus arrived at the town of Terezin, and dropped us off in the center of town in front of a large tan and cream-colored building.

Steps led up to a dark brown door, and above the door was the Hebrew word yizchor (remember). Square memorial plaques were fixed on either side of the door, one with a Star of David engraved on it. A white sign out front read Terezin Memorial Ghetto Museum in several languages.

I climbed the steps and went inside. There were very few people inside, and I was accompanied by quiet and emptiness as I paid my admission and went into a large, expansive room which exhibited photographs and poetry of the children who were imprisoned there.

The wooden floorboards creaked as I entered, and I stopped short when I saw the name beneath the photograph of a dark-haired young boy. Franta Bass. I remembered his name from several poems, remembered that he had been murdered as a young teen at Auschwitz, but had no idea that any photograph of him remained. I stared at the serious face for the first time, and I felt emotion well up inside me, tightening my throat as I recalled his poem, “I Am a Jew”.

When I first read that poem, I was deeply moved. No matter how horribly Jews were treated, Franta was determined to always be proud of his people. He swore that he would always be faithful to the Jewish people no matter what happened, that despite the brutality he endured, he would live on.

I stared at the image of the young boy who wrote those powerful words, the boy who was murdered by the Nazis, and I silently mourned the unspeakable loss of him and of millions of other children. After a time, I exited the room, knowing he would live on in my memory.

 

An Unlikely Chronicler

Uncategorized

At first glance I may seem an unlikely person to spread the word about Terezin. I converted to Judaism in college after many years of study, and as far as I know, I have no Jewish ancestry. In college and graduate school I studied literature and psychology, not Jewish studies, and my research on Terezin has been entirely self-conducted.

I also have a strong creative drive and for years have been writing fiction and poetry and creating visual art. The fact that so many creative geniuses were imprisoned in Terezin, the fact that the children and young people bravely continued to create art, poems, and even a literary magazine called Vedem resonated strongly with me from the start. I don’t exactly remember how I first learned of Terezin. It may have been the reference to the butterfly poem in the documentary Paper Clips, about a school in Tennessee that built an incredible Holocaust memorial. I began to research Terezin and learned that many creative works were produced there, including poems and artwork, a children’s opera, symphonies and plays.

Much of the children’s poetry and artwork was hidden away in suitcases by a talented artist and extraordinary educator named Friedl Dicker-Brandeis. The suitcases were eventually discovered and the poems were published in anthologies and the artwork put on display in exhibits worldwide. Very little is known about the identity of the young people who produced these poems, generally nothing more than a name, a birthdate and hometown, and the time and place of death. Less than 200 of the 15,000 children survived the war, most of them were deported to Auschwitz and murdered on arrival.

After reading a number of books on the topic, I found myself wanting to visit Terezin to get a sense of the ghetto for myself. I bought a travel guide on the Czech Republic, though it would be several years before I had the opportunity to visit. When I finally did visit, I was inspired to write a young adult novel which was set in part at Terezin. Initially, I believed this novel would provide a way for me to spread the word about Terezin. After realizing how incredibly difficult it is to get a book published, I knew I had to find another way to share this story with others, and eventually this blog was born.