Category Archives: Terezin Writers

Sidney Taussig and Vedem, the Secret Magazine

Children in Terezin, Terezin Writers, , ,

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. 

 

 

 

Vera and Pavel Stransky: Messengers of the Terezin Ghetto

Children in Terezin, Stories of Terezin, Terezin Writers,

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. 

 

Vera Schiff: Chronicler of Love, Loss, and Resistance in Terezin

Children in Terezin, Terezin Writers,

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.

Further Reading

Bound for Theresienstadt: Love, Loss and Resistance in a Nazi Concentration Camp

Lost to the Shoah: Eight Lives

 

Teaching Helga’s Diary Through Her Paintings

Children in Terezin, Terezin Artists, Terezin Writers, ,

Helga Weiss was a young Terezin artist whose story has become known in the past few years with the publication of her diary. Helga’s diary and paintings give us valuable written and artistic testimony of the Holocaust through the eyes of a young girl. Helga’s paintings are an excellent resource for teaching students the Holocaust.

Here is a guide on how to introduce students to Helga’s world using a selection of her paintings. The paintings can be used before teaching Helga’s diary, or as a more general introduction to the Holocaust.

Selecting the Paintings

Helga created dozens of paintings that you can choose from. I recommend choosing from the selection of her paintings profiled on The Guardian. Here are some of the ones I suggest showing your students:

  • List of Possessions, January 1943
    Helga’s parents take an inventory of all their possessions to hand over to the Nazis.
  • Arrival in Terezin, 1942
    A group of Jewish prisoners walks into Terezin with their luggage as a guard watches them closely.
  • The Dormitory in the Barracks at Terezin, 1942
    A scene of the room Helga and her mother shared with 21 other women.
  • Summons to Join the Transport, 24 February 1942
    A girl sits up in her dark bunk as a flashlight shines on her. Helga wrote that the summons to join the transports often happened at night.
  • For Her 14th Birthday, November 1943
    A painting Helga made as a birthday gift for her best friend Francka. Sadly, Francka was murdered in Auschwitz before her 15th birthday.

Observe the Paintings

Show your students Helga’s paintings and tell them it depicts a scene from daily life in the Terezin ghetto during World War II. You can project the image in front of the class, or you could hand out copies of the paintings to your students. A large color image is best so students can see the color of the paints Helga used.

Give your students the chance to take a long look at each painting and to note the details. Encourage them to notice the colors, the shapes, what the people in the painting are doing, and the expressions on their faces. Ask them what they observe, and write down the observations on the classroom whiteboard. At this point, the class should just observe the details, not interpret or analyze anything.

Ask your students what questions they have about the painting. Give them a few minutes to write down as many questions as they can. Once the time is up, divide your class into small groups and instruct them to come up with some answers to their questions.

Analyze the Paintings

Now ask your students to think about the artist herself. How old is she, and why is she painting scenes of life in the Terezin ghetto? What was it like for her to live in the ghetto? Who is her audience, and why is she painting for them? Have the students write down their thoughts and ask for volunteers to share with the class.

After you hear your students’ input, introduce them to Helga Weiss, a twelve-year-old girl from Prague who was sent to Terezin with her parents in 1941. Tell them how she and her mother were separated from her father, and how she decided to send her father a painting to cheer him up. She painted a happy scene of two children building a snowman, but her father surprised her with his reaction. He wrote her a letter telling her “Draw what you see!”.

Ask your students to think about why her father wanted her to record life in the ghetto. Now have them look at the painting again and draw their attention to specific details. Emphasize that each detail is depicting something that the artist Helga actually observed in Terezin. Ask them to put themselves in the scene and to imagine it unfolding around them. How does it make them feel? How do they think Helga would have felt as she drew the scene?

This is one idea for presenting Helga’s paintings to your class in a meaningful way that can help them to feel more invested in her story. A big part of teaching the Holocaust effectively is presenting it in a way that students can engage with, and helping them feel a personal connection with someone who experienced it.

Helga Weiss: The Terezin Diary of a Young Girl

Children in Terezin, Resources for educators, Terezin Writers, ,

It is December 1941, and in her barrack, a twelve-year-old girl paints a cheerful picture of two children building a snowman. She hopes the lighthearted scene will lift her father’s spirits. For weeks they have been confined to this ghetto. Worst of all, this girl has been separated from her father. She misses him terribly, but the most she can do is smuggle the drawing to the men’s barracks. She is surprised by her father’s reaction. He doesn’t want her to paint pictures of happier times. Instead, he urges her, “Draw what you see!”

From that day on, this young girl draws what she observes around her, scenes of daily life in the Terezin ghetto. By doing so, she chronicles the truth of Terezin. 

Early Life

The girl’s name is Helga Weiss, and she was born in Prague on November 10, 1929. Until recently, she lived in Prague with her parents Irena, a seamstress, and Otto, who worked at the state bank of Prague. After the Nazis came to power, Otto lost his job and the family struggled to make ends meet. Helga had to leave school and continue her studies privately with other Jewish children. The Jews of Prague lost more and more rights and then were deported from their homes.

Helga and her parents arrived in Terezin in December 1941. For most of the time, Helga lived apart from her parents, in a building designated the Girls’ Home. Helga kept a diary of life in the camp and created countless drawings and paintings of what she saw around her.

Life in Terezin

Helga’s paintings show remarkable artistic talent and are rich in detail. She painted her parents in their apartment in Prague taking an inventory of their possessions, which they had to hand over to the Nazis. She depicted the rows of bunks in the Girls’ Home, an opera performance in the ghetto, and a haunting image of a girl receiving her summons to join a transport. People often received a summons at night, and the girl sits in her bunk in the dark, awakened by a flashlight shining on her.

In her diary, she wrote about a performance organized by some of the girls in her barrack. Helga and the other girls sang together, performed a short play, and experienced a rare moment of beauty in the ghetto. With tears in her eyes and her mind filled with images of her home, Helga realized that for a fleeting moment they were free.

The Hardest Good-Bye

Helga witnessed the exponential growth of the camp population, the endless transports, and the Red Cross visit in the summer of 1944. After the visit, the terrifying transports east started again. Her friends were sent away and then in October 1944, Helga’s father was assigned to a transport.

One of the most tragic and haunting moments in the diary is when Helga and her father said good-bye. She hugged her father close, resting her head on his chest so she could hear his heart beating. Then as he walked away, Helga’s father turned and waved at her with a strange expression on his face. He tried to smile, but his mouth was trembling and all he could manage was a kind of grimace. Helga called out to him, but then she lost sight of him in the crowd.

Helga and her mother barely had time to grieve before they were assigned to a transport. Before they left, Helga gave her diary and her drawings to her uncle, who hid them behind a wall in one of the Terezin barracks.

The Transport East

Helga and her mother’s transport arrived in Auschwitz a few days later. At fifteen, Helga realized she should lie about her age during the selection. She insisted she was eighteen and survived the selection. After ten days in Auschwitz, Helga and her mother were sent to Freiberg, Germany to work in an airplane factory. They worked in the unheated factory for twelve-hour shifts, with very little to eat or drink, and had to endure endless roll calls and the abuse of the guards.

As the Allies drew near, Helga and her mother were sent by rail to the camp Mauthausen, which took sixteen days. They were crammed into the train cars and endured days without food or water. As the train inched forward, they heard ear-shattering explosions from air raids and saw trainloads of wounded soldiers. By the time they arrived at Mauthausen, Helga and the other women had become emaciated, almost beyond recognition.

The conditions at Mauthausen were terrible, with food shortages, filthy, overcrowded bunks, and diseases like typhus were rampant. Incredibly, Helga and her mother survived, and were liberated by the Allies on May 5th, 1945.

Helga’s Life After the War

The two women made their way back to Prague, and ultimately managed to get their apartment back. Tragically, Helga’s father Otto never came home. But Helga and her mother Irena were never able to find out the truth about what happened to him. Most of their other relatives and friends never returned from the camps either. Helga’s uncle survived, and after the war, he was able to recover her diary and paintings.

Despite their grief, Helga and her mother knew they had to go on and build a new life for themselves. Helga enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague and began a long, successful career as a professional artist. She married a musician with the Czech Radio Symphony Orchestra named Jírí Hošek. They had two children, and later, grandchildren. The artistic tradition continued into the next generations. Helga’s son and one of her granddaughters are professional cellists and another granddaughter is an artist.

The family remained in Prague, where Helga and her husband struggled as artists during the Communist era. For many years, Helga was unable to share her story. After the war, she found that no one wanted to know what had happened to the Jews of Prague.

Helga’s Diary

In the 1960s Helga published excerpts from her diary for the first time in a book about Terezin. Helga reflected that when she returned to her diary, she had so much more to express, more truths that she needed to share with the world. She ultimately began to expand on it and edit it for publication. Helga’s diary was published in English in 2013, under the title Helga’s Diary: A Young Girl’s Account of Life in a Concentration Camp.

Through her paintings and recently published diary, Helga has revealed the truth of Terezin to the world.

Further Reading

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/feb/22/helga-weiss-diary-nazi-death-camp

https://forward.com/news/319106/70-years-after-terezin-this-survivor-is-still-drawing-what-she-sees/

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/9873580/Helga-Weiss-an-interview-with-a-holocaust-survivor.html

 

 

6 Essential Holocaust Teaching Resources for Middle School Students

Children in Terezin, Terezin Artists, Terezin Musicians, Terezin storytellers, Terezin Writers, , , , , ,

While there are plenty of Holocaust teaching resources for middle school
students, teaching the Holocaust to this age group is still very challenging.
How do you make the Holocaust relevant to them? And what are some
ways to guide them through this incredibly upsetting subject?

Here is a list of six resources that can help you teach middle schoolers about the Holocaust.

The Butterfly Project

This incredible project uses the arts to educate students about the dangers of intolerance. It makes the Holocaust accessible to children, and presents the subject matter in a way that is poignant but not overly graphic or frightening.

The way it works is as follows: schools order kits containing ceramic butterflies, painting supplies, and cards with biographies of children who died in the Holocaust. After learning more about the children, each student receives a butterfly to paint in memory of them. The school or a community center then install the butterflies as a permanent memorial to the children who died in the Holocaust. The hope is one day there will be 1.5 million butterflies on display around the world, one for each Jewish child the world lost.

Visit their website to learn more about The Butterfly Project or to order a kit.

Inge Auerbacher’s I Am a Star

I Am a Star: Child of the Holocaust tells the story of Inge Auerbacher, a young girl
who survived the war in Terezin. The book is a compelling way to bring the Holocaust to life for your middle school students. Inge is the author of several best selling
books, including I Am a Star, which details her childhood and her time in Terezin.
The book can be purchased on Amazon or through the publisher’s website.

I Am a Star is available in many languages and a 30th-anniversary edition was
recently released. The book was also adapted into an award-winning play, “The Star on
My Heart”, which premiered in Ohio in 2015. Her story has also been featured on Butterflies in the Ghetto.

Paper Clips

This documentary tells the story of a Holocaust memorial project started by teachers and middle school students in the small town of Whitwell, Tennessee.

As part of a Holocaust education project the students began collecting paper clips. Their goal was to acquire 1.5 million to represent each child lost in the Holocaust. The project took off and ultimately the entire community created a remarkable Holocaust memorial outside the school.

The Whitwell community built the memorial in an authentic cattle car from Germany. The result is a starkly beautiful memorial to the children of the Holocaust, and a
powerful message about tolerance and acceptance of others.

Brundibár

Composer Hans Krása and librettist Adolf Hoffmeister created the children’s opera in 1938. Incredibly, Krása was able to stage a production of the musical in Terezin.

The musical was later performed when the Red Cross visited Terezin and featured in a Nazi propaganda film. Tragically, Krása and most of the child performers were later sent to Auschwitz. Very few of them survived the war.

In more recent years, the children’s opera has become more popular. It is certainly a great play to bring to a middle school if possible. There are also videos of the production on YouTube that are worth viewing and discussing with your class. An audio CD of the opera called Hans Krasa: Brundibar is available as well.

Vedem

Vedem is a literary magazine produced by the teenage boys of barrack L417 in Terezin. Fourteen-year-old Petr Ginz established the magazine, and he published a new
issue almost every week. Petr created much of the content himself and the other
boys contributed to it as well.

The magazine featured pieces on daily life in Terezin, satirical essays, poems, and
short fiction, as well as artwork. Tragically, Petr and most of the other boys from barrack L417 died in Auschwitz.

Their legacy lives on in the writings and drawings they left behind. You can read more about Petr Ginz and Vedem here.

I have also created a free Vedem study guide for teachers. The guide is available to
all subscribers to Butterflies In the Ghetto.

Nesarim: Child Survivors of Terezin

This powerful book relates the experiences of 10 boys who were imprisoned in Terezin, in their own words. The book was written by Thelma Gruenbaum, whose husband Michael was in Terezin and whose story is also detailed in the memoir Somewhere There is Still a Sun. 

In Terezin, these young boys shared a room with 30 other boys and developed
an incredibly strong bond with one another. They called themselves the
Nesarim, which means “eagles” in Hebrew, and the surviving Nesarim remained
in contact with one another throughout the years. 

This book gives readers a sense of what life was like for children in Terezin and preserves the voices of these child survivors so that children of today and future generations can hear and remember their stories. 

These are just a handful of resources teachers can use to help their middle school students better understand the Holocaust. I’ve found these to be particularly powerful in bringing stories from the Holocaust to light.

Have you used any of these in your teaching, and what have you found to be helpful? Please let me know in the comments below.

Coming Soon: More Resources for Holocaust Educators

Children in Terezin, Terezin Ghetto Museum, Terezin Writers, Tour of Terezin, , , ,

After two years of sharing the stories of Terezin artists, I came to realize that I could do more to support our amazing teachers and Holocaust educators. While still continuing to document Terezin artists, I am also working on developing lesson plans and teaching tips that feature their stories.

Entrance to the Terezin Ghetto Museum.

If you are a teacher or Holocaust educator, stay tuned for blog updates and check out my Resources for Educators section, where I highlight valuable resources for teaching children and young adults about the Holocaust. I also hope you will sign up for my mailing list to receive even more resources and inspiration for educators.

Let us join together in teaching our students about the Holocaust, and promoting the message of empathy and tolerance.

Children’s Stories and Poems: Terezin 1942-1944

Children in Terezin, Terezin Artists, Terezin poets, Terezin Writers

Recently, I had the good fortune to read and examine one of the original 2000 English copies of the book Children’s Drawings and Poems: Terezin 1942-1944. Two friends who work in Special Collections at the University of Colorado generously gave me a tour of the archives after hours and located a sole book on Terezin in the collection. I returned to Special Collections a few weeks later to review the book in more depth. This hardcover book with its slightly worn dust jacket featured a child’s collage of a solitary humanoid figure. It was published in 1959, an English translation with an initial print run of only 2000 copies. A sticker on the inside cover read “Gift of Professor U.K. Goldsmith, 1973.” I wrote down the name, curious about the person who donated this book.

I own a later edition of this book, which features drawings and poetry from children who were in Terezin. Most of these drawings and poems are owned by the State Jewish Museum in Prague, and they were selected from more than 4,000 drawings and poems in the museum’s archives. Many of these works of art were created from any materials the children could find, such as scraps of paper, office forms, wrapping paper…This original edition featured reproductions that were far clearer and more vivid than the later editions. The paper felt heavy and opaque with beautifully vivid illustrations. Yet for me, two of the most poignant drawings were simple pencil lines depicting the outline of a child’s hand and sketches of butterflies. The hand was drawn by a boy named Frantisek Brozan and the butterflies by Eva Bulova. Almost nothing is known about them, but they were among the thousands of children who were sent to Auschwitz and murdered. There was a section in the back that featured biographical information on the authors and artists, but for most all that is known is what is gleaned from camp records: date and place of birth, date of transport to Terezin, whether they survived or died. In later editions, this section is still included, but all these years later no more biographical information has been discovered. Most of these young creators have been all but lost to history. That was the thought that stayed with me as I closed the book, leaving the two ribbon bookmarks at the page containing the poem “The Butterfly”, the one that captivated me from the start.

A memorial in Prague, illuminated by candles. May we never forget.
A memorial in Prague, illuminated by candles. May we never forget.

Later, after the visit, I researched the professor who donated this book. His name was Ulrich K. Goldsmith, and he was born to a Jewish family in Freiburg, Germany in 1910. He fled the country in 1932, passing through England and Canada before settling in the United States, where he received a PhD in literature from the University of California at Berkley. In 1957 he arrived at the University of Colorado, Boulder where he was the chair of the Department of Germanic languages and literature and co-founded the Comparative Literature department. He was known as a remarkable humanist and scholar of Stefan George and Rainer Maria Rilke. After his death in 2000, the university established a memorial prize in his name. Little else seems to be recorded about him, though surely his former students and colleagues have memories of him. Unfortunately, I don’t know how he acquired one of the original English translations of Children’s Drawings and Poems, or how he came to know the story of Terezin. If Professor Goldsmith were alive today and I had the chance to speak with him I would have asked him about these stories. Most likely, I will never know, but I will always be grateful to him for leaving this remarkable book with the library so that future generations may know the story of Terezin.

Petr Ginz: A Prodigy Behind Walls

Children in Terezin, Terezin Artists, Terezin poets, Terezin Writers, , , , ,
Petr and Eva Ginz with their parents before the war.
Petr and Eva Ginz with their parents before the war.

The life of Petr Ginz, an artist, writer, Esperantist, magazine editor and scholar, dramatically
illustrates the creativity and talent of so many
children who died in the Holocaust.

Petr was born on February 1, 1928 in Prague to Otto and Miriam Ginz. His father was a manager in a
textile company, and both his parents were
passionate about Esperanto. In fact, his parents met at an Esperantist convention and taught the language to Petr and his younger sister, Eva. The children were from an interfaith background; Otto was Jewish and Miriam was Christian.

From a young age, Petr’s intelligence, curiosity and passion for knowledge was evident. He wrote his first novel at age 8 and wrote 5 novels in all before he was deported to Terezin. A skilled artist, Petr also illustrated the novels himself. He was interested in a wide variety of subjects, including literature, art, science, history and geography, was an avid reader and also recorded his experiences in a diary. Petr’s enthusiasm for the arts and learning did not diminish after he was transported to Terezin at age 14, in October 1942. He continued his studies and borrowed countless books from the makeshift Terezin library, and wrote short novels.

He also made a major contribution to the cultural life of Terezin when he
established a literary magazine called Vedem (We lead), which he published weekly.
Petr wrote many of the pieces himself, and other boys from his barrack contributed work as well. The magazine featured pieces on daily life in Terezin, satirical essays, short fiction, poetry and artwork.

A close bond developed between the boys of Petr’s barrack, L417. They called their barrack the Republic of Shkid, and created a flag and national anthem. Their creativity
and imagination in such circumstances were remarkable, as was the amount of work
they produced for Vedem, much of which survives today.

Petr often wrote very matter-of-factly about the events he experienced and life in Terezin, and even managed to insert some humor. He did write some poignant pieces as well, most notably a poem in which he described how he much he missed Prague, though he knew it did not miss him. He described how he could not return because he was living like a caged animal but would always long for Prague, his “fairy-tale in stone.”

Tragically, he would never see Prague again. Petr was assigned to one of the last transports to leave Terezin, in September 1944. His sister Eva, who adored him, wrote about the day Petr was taken away in her own diary. After Petr boarded the train, Eva spotted him at one of the windows and managed to hand some bread to him before the guards chased her away. In her diary Eva poignantly expressed her fears about what happened to her brother and how she hoped against hope that he was still alive.

It was only after the the war that Eva learned the terrible truth, that at age 16 Petr
was murdered in the gas chambers of Auschwitz, along with thousands of others. A
prodigy was lost that day, and we will never know how many other gifted, talented
young people were killed with him that same day. All that remains today are the writings and drawings Petr left behind, which his sister Eva preserved and shared with the
world after the war. These works are the legacy of an incredibly gifted, creative, and
sensitive young man who held onto his dreams and his humanity to the very end.

Picture of the Ginz Family 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.

Further Reading

We Are Children Just the Same: Vedem, the Secret Magazine by the Boys of Terezin (by Marie Krizkova, Kurt Jiri Kotouc and Zdenek Ornest)

The Diary of Petr Ginz (edited by Chava Pressburger)

Pavel Weiner: Boy Chronicler of Terezin, Part 2

Children in Terezin, Terezin Writers, ,

In spring of 1945, as the Allies made progress on their liberation of Europe, Pavel’s mood lifted and he could again hope that freedom would come at last. Pavel wrote that freedom was such a beautiful concept for him and that he would be willing to risk his life for it. By late April, air raids occurred daily as the Allies approached the Czech border. The prisoners in Terezin were distraught by the arrival of emaciated survivors from Nazi death camps. In a deeply moving scene, Pavel took his bread ration and handed it to his mother, Valy, saying, “Give it to my father when he arrives.”

Pavel’s last entry was April 22, 1945 and in it he described a chaotic day in Terezin. Hundreds of people ran away with as many stolen goods as they could carry, a quarantine was placed on part of the camp and many inmates were fighting with each other. Then the good news arrived that the Red Cross was now taking care of them. Hope arose that freedom was drawing near. Soon after, Terezin was liberated and Pavel returned to Prague with his mother. They searched for Ludvik and Handa, and Pavel learned that his father and brother did not survive. We do not learn his thoughts from this time, as Pavel no longer kept a diary after he left Terezin.

In 1948, Pavel and his mother moved to Canada, and Pavel later moved to New York City, where he married and had a successful career as a chemical engineer. He had one child, a daughter named Karen. In 1979, Pavel discovered that his mother had kept his diary for all those years and he made the decision to edit the diary and translate it into English. It took Karen a long time before she could bring herself to read the diary, afraid of what she would find. After reading his diary and accompanying her father to Terezin, Karen believed that her father’s story should be shared. She began assisting her father with editing the translations. Sadly, Pavel did not live to see his diary published, but Karen persevered and the diary was published in 2012, ensuring that her father’s experiences would be shared with others.

Further Reading
A Boy in Terezin: The Private Diary of Pavel Weiner, April 1944-April 1945
By Pavel and Karen Weiner