Category Archives: Children in Terezin

The Little Known Diarist

Children in Terezin, Terezin Writers,

Hannelore Brenner’s book The Girls of Room 28 relates the experiences of ten women who survived Terezin. The book goes into detail about each of these women, and is a worthwhile read. For my blog, I decided to focus on two of the women whose stories resonated most strongly with me. The first woman is Helga Pollak, who kept a remarkable diary during her time at Terezin. Her complete diary has not been published in English, though segments of it are included in Brenner’s book.

Cover of Helga Pollak's published diary
Cover of Helga Pollak’s published diary

Helga Pollak was born in Vienna on May 28, 1930. Her father Otto was a disabled war veteran who owned a large concert café. When she was eight years old her parents divorced and Helga continued to live with her father. That same year, 1938, after the situation deteriorated for Jews in Austria, Helga’s parents sent her to Czechoslovakia.

Helga attended a German-speaking school in the city of Brno and had to live in a boardinghouse by herself. After Helga’s mother dropped her off in Brno, Helga watched her mother walk away and then went into a deserted room and sobbed. I could only imagine how terrifying and devastating this separation would be for a little girl. It is no wonder that Helga fell into a state of apathy and depression. Helga’s father ultimately arranged for her to stay with relatives in the town of Kyjov. She couldn’t speak Czech and had to repeat 2nd grade, but was much happier.

In 1939, Helga was supposed to travel to Great Britain as a child refugee, where she would join her mother, who had managed to emigrate there earlier. But after the German army invaded Poland and World War II began, the borders were closed, and Helga was trapped in Czechoslovakia. She would not see her mother again for nearly eight years.

Beginning in 1943, Helga recorded many of her experiences in a diary. Many Jews kept diaries during the war, but except for Anne Frank’s iconic diary, most are not well known. While Anne’s diary is exceptionally well-written, she is too often depicted as a symbol for the suffering of Jewish children during the Holocaust. That risks downplaying her individuality and the way she perceived what was happening to her, and I fear it may have resulted in other war diaries being ignored.

In the excerpts from Helga’s diary we see a sensitive girl who felt alienated from the girls in her barrack, and worried that they did not like her. We learn of her intense fears when her infant cousin Lea is seriously ill, and of her close relationship with her beloved father Otto. Helga also had moments of hope, of being deeply moved by the beauty of a sunset, for even Terezin’s walls could not block out the sky.

On October 23, 1944, Helga and some other girls from Room 28 were placed on a transport to Auschwitz. Helga survived the selection and vainly tried to search for her Lea, who she would never see again. She was sent from Auschwitz to different labor camps, and eventually returned to Terezin in late April 1945 where she was reunited with her father. The letter she wrote to him upon her return is deeply touching, as she so badly wanted to stay with him but could not because she was placed under quarantine.

Eventually she and her father were able to return to their surviving relatives in Kyjov, and the following year Helga went to England to join her mother. She completed high school and college, and later married a Prussian Jew who had fled to Bangkok to escape the Nazis. Helga and her husband lived in Thailand and Ethiopia until 1957, when they returned to Vienna with their children to be near Helga’s beloved father.

Though not published in its entirety, segments of her diary have been featured in the documentary films Terezin Diary and Voices of the Children and the main character of a play Ghetto Tears 1944: The Girls of Room 28 was based on Helga Pollak, the little known diarist of Terezin.

Further Reading
The Girls of Room 28: Friendship, Hope and Survival in Theresienstadt , by Hannelore Brenner

Inge Auerbacher: A Voice for Justice and Reconciliation, Part 5

Children in Terezin, Terezin Writers

After two years, Inge’s parents convinced the doctors to release Inge from the hospital. Because of her illness she was not allowed to attend school and had to enroll in a course of study for the homebound. Despite her schooling being disrupted so often, Inge was a highly committed student. At the age of fifteen she graduated from eighth grade and attended Bushwick High School in Brooklyn.

Determined to make up for the lost years of education, Inge delved into her studies and extracurricular activities. She excelled in her classes and was popular with the other students. Two achievements that Inge was most proud of was winning second prize in a city-wide science contest and first prize in an essay contest. She would continue to have many achievements in science and writing throughout her life.

Inge finished high school in three years and then entered Queens College as a Pre-Med student, but after six weeks she had to leave because of her worsening tuberculosis. She was prescribed an aggressive treatment regimen of all the medications available, which amounted to twenty-six pills and two injections every day. The treatment worked, though it would be a year before Inge could continue her studies and she still had to face the stigma of being a tuberculosis patient. Most painful of all, two boyfriends ended relationships with Inge when they learned about her history of tuberculosis.

Eventually Inge realized that pursuing medical school would be too physically demanding and instead majored in chemistry. After graduating from college, Inge had a long and successful career working as a chemist in various hospital laboratories.

Inge at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum with her doll Marlene, which she kept with her during her time at Terezin.
Inge at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum with her doll Marlene, which she kept with her during her time at Terezin.

For years Inge tried to forget what she had experienced as a child in Germany and Terezin, but in 1966 she decided it was time to confront her past and returned to Germany. She visited her mother’s hometown, and met some of the people she had known there. She also went to Kippenheim, where she found the Jewish cemetery neglected and the synagogue being used as a storage center for animal feed. In a very powerful scene, Inge returned to Terezin and recalled how it had been when she was imprisoned there.

At Terezin, Inge visited the cemetery and the crematorium, and she realized that she had an important responsibility to fight prejudice. To do so would be a way to honor all those innocent victims of the Nazis. And so Inge began to share her story through writing books and speaking to audiences all over the world.

Inge with all her books
Inge with all her books

Her books I Am a Star and Beyond the Yellow Star to America have won awards and have been translated into many languages. She has also appeared in several documentary films in which she shared her story. Inge has also received prestigious awards from the German government, such as the Federal Cross of Merit for her work in reconciliation.

I have summarized her story here, but of course Inge’s story is best told in her own words. I highly recommend I Am a Star and Beyond the Yellow Star to America to learn more about the story of Inge, a highly courageous woman who has dedicated her life to fighting prejudice and injustice.

Inge wearing Ellis Island Medal of Honor
Inge wearing Ellis Island Medal of Honor

Resources
Books by Inge Auerbacher (available on Amazon):

I Am a Star: Child of the Holocaust
Beyond the Yellow Star to America
Running Against the Wind
Finding Dr. Schatz: The Discovery of Streptomycin And a Life it Saved (Co-author Dr. Albert Schatz)
Highway To New York
Children of Terror (Co-author Bozenna Urbanowicz Gilbride)

www.ingeauerbacher.com

Inge Auerbacher: A Voice for Justice and Reconciliation, Part 4

Children in Terezin, Terezin Writers

After leaving Terezin, Inge and her parents returned to Jebenhausen, her grandparents’ village, in the hopes that they would find that her grandmother was still alive. They found strangers living in her house, and learned that the people on her transport were taken to a remote forest near Riga, Latvia and shot, after first being forced to dig their own mass grave. Many other relatives were also murdered by the Nazis. After learning this horrible news, Inge’s parents decided to leave Jebenhausen as soon as possible and moved to another town called Goeppingen, where Inge’s father began to rebuild his textile business. The people in the town treated Inge and her family well, though Inge felt that she had to conceal her Jewish identity with the children she befriended. Eventually her parents felt that they had no future in Germany, and in May 1946, the family boarded a ship to New York, along with other refugees.

The Auerbacher family lived with relatives as Inge’s parents struggled to find work and to learn English. Inge attended school for the last two months of the school year and had a difficult time adjusting to the language and culture. It was a very lonely time for her, since she had difficulty communicating with the other children and was unfamiliar with their games.

Inge and her mother in the children's hospital.
Inge and her mother in the children’s hospital.

To make matters worse, Inge was suffering from a severe cough that would not subside and unusual fatigue. Her mother, knowing that Inge had tested positive for tuberculosis while in Terezin, brought her to a doctor. Inge was then examined by a lung specialist and immediately admitted to the children’s hospital, where she was placed in the tuberculosis ward. She remained in the hospital for nearly two years, and very rarely was allowed to go home for a short visit. In the hospital, Inge’s English language skills developed greatly and she and the other children were taught many different subjects from visiting teachers. Inge worked hard to improve her English and struggled with math, and in the hospital she discovered an intense love of science, which she would later pursue as a career. She hoped to become a medical doctor, though the worsening of her tuberculosis would force her to revise her plan.

Inge Auerbacher: A Voice for Justice and Reconciliation, Part 2

Children in Terezin, Terezin Writers

Inge remembers the vast brick barracks of Terezin, which were surrounded by high walls, fences, barbed wire, and trenches filled with water, effectively cutting the inhabitants off from the rest of the world. The garrison town was supposed to have a capacity of 7,000, but as a concentration camp as many as 60,000 people were forced to live there in unbelievably crammed quarters. During the war, about 140,000 thousand people were sent to Terezin, more than half of whom were sent to death camps in the East. Though not a death camp, 35,000 prisoners died in Terezin from starvation and disease.

Inge's order for transport to Terezin
Inge’s order for transport to Terezin

Inge and her parents were sent to a cramped attic in one of the barracks. Later, they were moved to a section of Terezin reserved for disabled war veterans. The rooms were cramped, smelly and freezing in the winter, and for meals they had to assemble in long lines in the outdoor courtyard of the barracks. Breakfast was a sludgy, horrible tasting coffee, lunch consisted of watery soup, a potato and a few slices of turnip and dinner was more soup. Each week the family received a ration of bread, and struggled to make it last the week. Water was pumped from wells, many of them contaminated. Infestations of rats, fleas and bedbugs were widespread, disease was rampant, and epidemics broke out constantly. Inge was sick most of the time, beginning with the scarlet fever she contracted soon after arrival. She lay in the infirmary for four months, surviving many complications against all odds. After recovering from scarlet fever, Inge suffered from measles, mumps, a double ear infection and dysentery. She also suffered from head lice, and boils that erupted all over her body. When Inge was finally released, her hair was cut short and her scalp washed in disinfectant in an attempt to remove the lice. Her case was far from unusual, as most of the children were sick the majority of the time they were in Terezin.

Small Fortress at Terezin
Small Fortress at Terezin

Inge lived with her parents for most of her time in the camp, and since she was a German child in a population of primarily Czech Jews, there were few opportunities for learning or pursuing the arts. She often felt isolated from the Czech population, who tended to exclude the German Jews. Still, she did receive lessons from brave teachers who secretly taught children a variety of subjects from memory in attics or other places they could find some space. During our conversation, Inge reminded me that though art was created in Terezin, that does not mean that prisoners of Terezin were privileged. Some people tend to focus only on the art and theatrical productions and forget that the conditions in Terezin were as terrible as those in any ghetto, with starvation, disease and the constant fear of being transported East. Inge’s autobiography very clearly depicts the truly horrific conditions in Terezin, which we must not forget.

Prisoners at Terezin
Prisoners at Terezin

Further Reading:

Books by Inge Auerbacher (available on Amazon)
I Am a Star: Child of the Holocaust
Beyond the Yellow Star to America

www.ingeauerbacher.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.

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.

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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.

“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.