Tag Archives: Children in Terezin

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. 

 

 

 

Irma Lauscher and the Terezin Children’s Tree

Children in Terezin, Terezin teachers, ,

There are many stories from Terezin about the remarkable educators and youth leaders who dedicated themselves to helping children in the camp. One of these individuals was a woman named Irma Lauscher (Lauscherova in Czech), a teacher who secured a
most precious gift for the children of Terezin.

Irma Lauscher’s Life Before Terezin

Irma was born in the Czech town of Heřmanův Městec in 1904, and moved to Prague with her family as a young teenager. After completing secondary school she attended Charles University in Prague, where she studied education, psychology, German and
French, ultimately graduating with a teaching degree. Irma then began working as a teacher and also joined a local Jewish youth movement called Techelet Lavan.

In 1932, Irma married Jiří Lauscher, who was also a member of Techelet Lavan. Both Irma and Jiří were staunch Zionists who longed to emigrate to the territory then known as Mandatory Palestine. However, not wanting to leave Irma’s widowed mother behind, they delayed their plans and remained in Prague. Their daughter Míchaela was born in 1936, and soon after Irma returned to teaching at an organization called the Jewish Religious Community (JRC). 

She also taught at a Jewish school in Prague until the Nazis closed the school in 1942. Even after the Nazis forbade Jewish children to go to school, Irma continued to teach small groups of children in secret, usually in the apartments of local Jewish families. Some of Irma’s former students remembered her as a strict teacher with high standards, though also very fair, committed, and quick to assist her students. These qualities made her a highly respected teacher and would later prove invaluable to the children she taught at Terezin. 

A Teacher in Terezin

Irma, Jiří, and Míchaela arrived in Terezin in December 1942, where Irma resumed her work as a teacher. In early 1943, Irma and some other prisoners formed a council of educators, who were determined to provide an education for children in Terezin. Irma began holding secret classes in which she taught children about Jewish history and traditions. One of these traditions was the holiday of Tu B’Shevat, also known as the “New Year of the Trees”. In modern times, many Jewish communities commemorate the holiday by planting trees.

Determined to uphold this tradition, even in Terezin, Irma took matters into her own hands. She took an immense risk and bribed one of the camp’s Czech guards to smuggle a small sapling into Terezin. The guard managed to secure a sapling from a silver maple tree, tucked it in his boot, and safely delivered it to Irma.

Soon after, when no Nazi soliders were around, Irma and her young students gathered in front of a large building in the center of town and planted the tiny sapling. Once planted, the children watered the tree with their own rations. At the end of the ceremony, a rabbi said a special blessing over the children and the tree, praying that they would one day be free to plant trees in Czechoslovakia, the land of Israel, and all over the world. 

As the weeks passed, the children continued to nurture the tree using their own precious water rations. Against all odds, the fragile young tree survived the war, but tragically most of the children who planted and cared for the tree were deported and died in the gas chambers of Auschwitz. 

Life After Liberation

By a miracle, Irma, Jiří, and Míchaela were all spared from the transports and remained in Terezin until the camp was liberated in May 1945. After liberation, they returned to Prague and began to rebuild their lives. Irma and her daughter both spent time in a sanatorium, and Irma decided not to return to school due to ongoing health problems. Instead, she found work as a private teacher, while Jiří obtained a job at the Israeli Embassy in Prague.

Life in post-war Czechoslovakia became increasingly difficult for Irma and her family after the Communist takeover in 1948. The Communist government continued to spread
anti-Semitic propaganda, which was one of the main reasons why Irma, Jiří, and
Míchaela attempted to flee the country several times. On their final attempt in 1953, the entire family was arrested and sent to prison. 

After their release, Irma and her husband returned to their previous jobs, and Irma also wrote articles for the Gazette of Jewish Religious Communities. In the 1960s, they began working with a German volunteer organization called AktionSühnezeichen (Action Reconciliation for Peace) to educate young people about the Holocaust and the Terezin ghetto. As part of their work, they returned to Terezin many times over the years in spite of the trauma their whole family endured there.

Irma and the Terezin Children’s Tree

During these trips to Terezin, Irma would return to visit her tree, which thrived and over the years grew into a towering silver maple tree, nearly 60 feet in height. A teacher to the very end, Irma dedicated the rest of her life to educating young people about Terezin, until she passed away in June 1985 at the age of 81. 

As for the Children’s Tree, it survived until 2003, when it was destroyed in a flood. But the tree lives on, for over the years, the tree produced many saplings which were planted in Israel and in the United States. Young silver maples took root in Jerusalem, San Francisco, Chicago, Philadelphia, and most recently, outside the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City. Several Terezin survivors and descendents of survivors attended the ceremony in New York City, including Holocaust survivor Fred Terna, who helped to water the tree as a child in Terezin.

Although the original Children’s Tree is no longer standing, its descendants grow tall in many different cities, where they stand as living memorials to the children of Terezin. 

 

Somewhere There is Still a Sun: The Story of Michael Gruenbaum

Children in Terezin, ,

On a cold November morning in 1942, a twelve-year old boy exits a train with his mother and sister and forms a line with hundreds of other men, women, and children of all ages. They’re forced to march down the main street of the town and across a small bridge, up to a vast red brick wall with an arched gateway. It’s the young boy’s first glimpse of Terezin, and yet he’s not afraid. In a way, he’s glad to have left Prague behind him, the place where the Nazis took his father away forever, where Jewish children are banned from parks, schools, and cinemas, forced to wear yellow stars, and assaulted just for being Jewish. Even playing sports is forbidden, and it’s been over a year since he played soccer, his favorite sport. Life in Prague has become unbearable, so maybe life in Terezin won’t be so bad. 

The young boy’s name is Michael Gruenbaum, and his story is the subject of a
deeply moving, compelling, and powerful memoir, Somewhere There is Still a Sun. Most of the book chronicles the three years that Michael, his mother Margaret, and his
sister Marietta were forced to live in the Terezin ghetto and concentration camp.
They arrived at the camp on November 20, 1942, along with thousands of other Jews
from Prague. This was almost a year after Michael’s father Karl, a prominent lawyer in Prague, was arrested and executed by the Nazis. Exhausted from months of grief, sadness, and ever-increasing restrictions, Michael felt a strange sense of relief to be leaving Prague. 

Michael as a young boy.

Upon arriving at Terezin, Michael was sent to live in barrack L417, one of the designated Children’s Homes. He lived in Room Seven, with about forty other boys and Franta Maier, their madrich, or youth counselor. Franta was in his early twenties, but already displayed remarkable qualities of
leadership and compassion, and his dedication to the boys under his care was truly extraordinary. In addition to keeping the boys on a structured daily schedule, supervising their undercover education, and ensuring they kept themselves and their room clean, Franta fostered a strong sense of community among the boys and provided them with the care and
emotional support they so badly needed.

The relationships Michael had with the other boys and with Franta is one of the most powerful aspects of Somewhere There is Still a Sun. The boys in Michael’s room called themselves the Nesharim, the Hebrew word for eagles, and they even had a special cheer. Michael struggled to adjust to life in Terezin, and initially found it challenging to fit in with the Nesharim. In time, he truly became part of the Nesharim family and developed close friendships with the other boys and with Franta. 

Michael and Franta Maier.

But they lived a truly precarious existence in Terezin, where the threat of transports to the East was always present. One day Michael would be playing soccer and tending the gardens with the other Nesharim, and then the next day some of his friends would be sent away on a transport. The book so vividly illustrates the friendships Michael developed with the Nesharim, and that makes it all the more upsetting to read about Michael’s friends
getting sent away on transports.

Another extraordinary part of the book is the way that Michael, Margaret, and Marietta were miraculously spared from the transports multiple times. This was in large part due to his mother’s determination to do everything in her power to save her children.

The family was placed on transports several times, but Michael’s mother managed to get them removed from each of these transports. In the end, it was Margaret’s heroic persistence, her unparalleled talent for making teddy bears, and a remarkable stroke of luck that saved them.

I’ve read many accounts of life in Terezin, but Somewhere There is Still a Sun stands out for the way it depicts everyday life in Terezin in such vivid and poignant detail. It painted such a clear picture in my mind of what it was truly like to be a child living in Terezin, from the daily routines, to the close relationships the children fostered, to the incredibly important role Franta and the other counselors and teachers played in the lives of these children. 

Michael with the other surviving Nesharim at a reunion in Terezin.

Michael’s memoir has the power to help readers begin to understand the realities of life in Terezin and the impact that the ghetto had on the children who were forced to live there. It also gives us a powerful insight into heroic individuals like Franta Maier, who devoted themselves to helping the children there.

This is one of the most powerful lessons in Somewhere There is Still a Sun, that human kindness can endure in the darkest of circumstances and bring the light of hope to others. 

The other lesson that stands out to me the most is the incredible resilience of the human spirit to endure and even triumph after surviving the most unspeakably terrifying
and horrific circumstances. We can see this resilience in the letter that Margaret wrote to some relatives who lived abroad, just a few days after she and her children were liberated from Terezin.

The final paragraph of her letter reads: 

“We do not know yet how the future will shape up for us. None of our old friends are alive anymore.  We do not know where we are going to live. Nothing! But somewhere in the world there is still a sun, mountains, the ocean, books, small clean apartments, and perhaps
the rebuilding of a new life.”

Michael and his mother at his MIT graduation, 1953.

Michael, Margaret, and Marietta returned to Prague and worked incredibly hard to build a new life for themselves. But just three years later, Margaret realized that the
Communists were planning to take over the government and managed to flee the country with her children. They had to live in Cuba for two years to await their quota
number before finally being allowed into the United States, and soon after, Michael started his undergraduate studies at MIT.

And just eight years after being liberated from Terezin, Michael graduated from MIT with a civil engineering degree. On his graduation day, Michael posed in his cap and gown for a picture with his mother, who is beaming with pride. This photo is deeply moving, and is a powerful example of what rebuilding a new life really means.

After reading Somewhere There is Still a Sun, I’m filled with a deep sense of gratitude to Michael for sharing his story with the world, and I truly believe that anyone who reads his memoir will feel the same. 

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.

Fredy Hirsch: Jewish Educator, Gifted Athlete and Defender of the Children of Terezin

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The little-known story of Fredy Hirsch, a German-Jewish youth leader and athlete, has recently gotten some attention in the media. The Jewish news and culture magazine The Forward recently featured an in-depth article on this remarkable man. I was glad to see he is finally getting more of the recognition he deserves. Being Jewish and gay made Fredy a prime target for the Nazis, yet he displayed remarkable courage in confronting them. Read on to learn more about the story of Fredy Hirsch.

Early Life

Alfred Hirsch, known as Fredy, was born in 1916 and raised in Aachen, Germany. In Aachen, he began his career as a teacher and educator in various Jewish youth organizations. An enthusiastic and talented athlete, Fredy also worked with Jewish sports associations. After the Nazis came to power in Germany, he fled to Czechoslovakia, where he believed he would be safe. Tragically, Czechoslovakia wouldn’t remain safe for long.

In 1939, the Nazis marched into Czechoslovakia and began implementing laws against Jews. Among the many laws, the Nazis forbade Jewish children from attending school, joining clubs and teams, and visiting public places. When Fredy saw what was happening, he decided to do something about it.

Activities in Prague

Using the Jewish-owned Hagibor sports complex in Prague as his base, Fredy arranged a wide variety of educational activities, classes, and sports programs for Jewish children. Children who survived the war would remember the activities Hirsch arranged fondly, the gymnastics classes and soccer games which made their lives seem a little more normal and bearable. He was also involved in Zionist causes and assisted in efforts to bring Jewish children to Palestine.

Life in Terezin

When he was deported to Terezin in December 1941, Fredy organized activities for the children there. He used some grassy areas in Terezin as playing fields for sports games, including soccer and track and field events.

Fredy was described as athletic, attractive, and extremely caring. He made sure that the children kept themselves as clean as possible despite the lack of hot water and soap. Survivors remember him as a very kind and reassuring presence to the children. Fredy also secured medical treatment for the children and removed some of them from transports to the East.

Transport to Auschwitz

In September 1943, Fredy and 5,000 other people were sent to Auschwitz. This transport was moved into an empty camp at Auschwitz called the Family Camp. Fredy supervised the hundreds of children in the camp. He did everything he could to make life better for the children, even in the middle of Auschwitz. Fredy actually managed to convince to SS to provide more food for the children and to treat them better. But tragically, Fredy was unable to save the children or himself in the end.

In March 1944, all the children who arrived on the September transport were murdered by the Nazis. Fredy also died at Auschwitz, but it is unclear if he died with the children. The truth about Fredy’s fate remains unknown, though there are several theories. The most often cited theory is that he committed suicide, though most survivors who knew Fredy personally don’t believe he would have taken own life.

Fredy’s Legacy

What ultimately happened to Fredy may never be known, but we do know about all he did for Jewish children in Prague, Terezin, and Auschwitz. Fredy’s greatest legacy was his commitment to doing everything he could to make children’s lives better even in the most terrible and unimaginable circumstances.

To learn more about Fredy, I highly recommend you read the feature article on him in the Forward.

Sources:

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

https://forward.com/news/398268/the-little-known-gay-hero-who-tried-to-save-the-children-of-auschwitz/?attribution=more-articles-carousel-item-2-headline

6 Essential Holocaust Teaching Resources for Middle School Students

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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

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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.

Petr Ginz: A Prodigy Behind Walls

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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)

Franta Maier and the Boys of Room 7, Part 2

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A few days after arriving at Terezin, the children were assigned to various barracks based on their age and gender. Franta later spoke of the impact this trauma had on the children, saying that they were in shock at their world being torn apart once again. Franta remained in charge of these children, and he was able to access the barracks whenever necessary.

Under Franta’s influence, the children received extra rations and were kept on a schedule which included exercise, classes and recreation. He was assigned to be a madrich (leader) in Room 7, in which 40 boys aged twelve and thirteen lived.

Franta kept the boys on a disciplined schedule, and made sure they were clean and that the room was orderly. But what made the greatest impact on the boys was how Franta would speak to them at night and tell them that no matter what the Nazis did, they could not take away the boys’ dignity and humanity. He told them they had three duties: to survive, to respect their parents, and to be ready for a new life when the war was over. He encouraged them to love life, no matter what hardships they endured.

Still, Franta had fears and vulnerabilities that the boys did not know about. They did not know about the heartbreak he experienced when he proposed marriage to a woman named Lucy, hoping to save her from the transports. Lucy accepted his proposal, but Franta’s mother convinced Lucy to break off the engagement, believing this was the wrong time and place to marry. Lucy was later transported with her parents, and Franta was unable to forgive his mother for years. The boys also didn’t know how much Franta feared for them, how at night he would break down and cry silently as he wondered what would happen to them the next day.

A creative life developed in Room 7; they were the first home to produce plays, and two literary magazines, Rim Rim and Nesar were created and circulated. A sense of community developed among the boys of Room 7, and deep friendships were forged. When some of the boys had to leave on a transport, there was a profound sorrow when they had to say good-bye and the entire community felt the losses.

In September 1944, Franta was assigned to a transport. The night before he left, Franta said good-bye to the boys in Room 7; the scene was poignantly described by Pavel Weiner in his diary. Franta was sent to Auschwitz, where he learned that his family was dead, as were most of the children. He vowed he would live to see the Nazis defeated. In January, Franta was placed on a death march to a work camp called Blechhammer. As the Russians approached, the Nazis abandoned the camp, and Franta walked out of the camp to search for food. He was discovered by some Russian soldiers, who sent him to a repatriation center in Czestochowa. He later became a civilian assistant to an officer for the remainder of the war.

After the war, Franta worked hard to get properties back from the 24 relatives he lost during the war. He returned to his hometown of Brno and later married a woman who had lost her husband in the war. They immigrated to America in 1947, and Franta found work in a business that produced malt for breweries. Though he initially did not know anything about this industry, he learned quickly and became a successful businessman in the malt business and later the paper export business.

Franta died in 2013, and the surviving boys of Room 7 remember to this day how he profoundly touched their lives. Franta put forth tremendous effort to provide order, stability and compassion to these young boys, and their bond with him and with one another remained strong many decades later.

Further Reading
Nesarim: Child Survivors of Terezin by Thelma Gruenbaum