Helga Weiss diary - Butterflies in the Ghetto

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.

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.

Butterflies in the Ghetto

Stories of the artists of Terezin concentration camp

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Teaching Helga’s Diary Through Her Paintings