| No 48 | January 2000 |
| ACTUALITIES |
| 60 Years Since the Transports to Nisko |
| Immediately after the occupation of Poland, in October of 1939, the first transports of Jews from Moravska Ostrava and Vienna were sent to the East - into the marshes between the rivers San and Bug, near Nisko. It was evidently a first trial for what was to follow 2-3 years later. The Association of Former Czechoslovaks in Israel commemorated the event during the annual memorial meeting, held in June 1999 at the Forest of the Czechoslovak Martyrs near Jerusalem. The main part of the meeting was dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the huge immigration wave from Czechoslovakia to Israel. |
| In Moravska Ostrava a memorial meeting for the Nisko transports was held on October 18, 1999. Peter Erben represented Beit Terezin and laid a wreath. The Czech Chief Rabbi Karol Sidon addressed the meeting and asked to redress a ghetto-like shameful situation: to remove a concrete wall erected by the municipality of Usti n/L. separating the living quarters of Czechs and of Romas in the town. |
| In the Footsteps of the Death Marches |
| Study days on the subject of the death marches from concentration camps toward the end of WWII were held from June 3, - June 6, 1999, at Flecken-Zechlin north of Berlin. The participants were survivors, historians, directors and workers of memorial sites and museums at former concentration camps from Poland, states of the former USSR, France, Austria, The Netherlands, Germany, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Israel. The program consisted of survivor's testimonies, lectures about the historical background of the marches, reports from the various memorial sites and discussions about the ways to transmit information to the visitors there. Yaakov Tsur, Kibbutz Naan, studies for years now the history of ghetto Terezin and mainly the fate of the transports sent from there to the East. He led the participants in the footsteps of the death march from Sachsenhausen (in which he took part as a prisoner), on the way they visited the many memorials erected there. Among them is also a small museum in a forest, where some 30.000 prisoners were held for many days without food or medical care. |
| Rescuers and Rescued Ones |
| On September 22, 1999, the Isr. ambassador in Prague Erella Hadar bestowed the title of "Righteous Gentile" on Karel Jirsa, aged 90. K. Jirsa helped to save the lives of Anka Lenkavicova and her friend Vera Kolarova, who escaped in January 1945 from a death march from concentration camp Christianstadt. They had been brought there in July 1944 from Auschwitz. The two were looking for a hiding place in Bohemia. Anka (now Haya Schoen, Mihmoret, Israel) participated in the ceremony together with her husband Efra and grandson Dan --they traveled to Prague and from there to Melnik, where Karel Jirsa lives. The director of the district museum in Melnik Renata Spackova wrote in the local press about the escape of the Jewish girls and about the help they got from Czech citizens. She brought a detailed interview with Haya Schoen about her dangerous escape, together with her friend Vera, who was like a sister to her and who died in 1998. Renata Spackova proposed in the name of the Melnik district museum a program titled "Empty Sites", to run from September 2000 until September 2001. In its framework local students would learn the history of the Jews and of the Holocaust, get to know the Jewish sites in the area and help in their maintenance. |
| Friedl Dicker-Brandeis Honored |
| A comprehensive exhibition of works by the artist Friedl Dicker-Brandeis was held from October 26, to November 28, 1999, at the Vienna Harrach Palais supported by the Wiesenthal Institute in Los Angeles. The exhibition was mounted by Elena Makarova from Jerusalem and included also drawings on loan from Beit Terezin. Christian Brandstaetter publishers, Munich and Vienna, brought out an impressive catalogue titled "A Life for Art and Instruction". There are nearly 400 drawings by F. Dicker-Brandeis from the different epochs of her life: from her birthplace Vienna, the Weimar Bauhaus, her Vienna studio, from the time of her escape to Prague (after her imprisonment because of Communist activities), from the time of her marriage to her cousin Peter Brandeis, when they lived in Hronov (Czech Republic), from ghetto Terezin where she taught drawing to more than 100 children, also as occupational therapy. The catalogue includes also drawings and reminiscences of some of her pupils living now in Israel - Lilka Bobasch (Amit), Dita Pollak (Kraus) and Eva Ehrlich (Adorian). The exhibition was widely acclaimed in the Austrian newspapers, e.g. in the Jewish monthly "Illustrierte Neue Welt", which in October 1999, devoted 2 pages to the subject. There is also a letter written by the artist on August 8, 1944, to Willy Groag on the occasion of his birthday. Willy was then director of the girl's home L-410, where Friedl lived and taught. She wrote about the meaning of life - two months before she met her death in Auschwitz. |
| Else Lasker-Schueler and Theresienstadt |
| The seventh annual "Else Lasker-Schueler Forum" was held on November 11, - 14, 1999, in Wuppertal and Solingen, Germany. It was devoted to the subject "Last Enclave of Poetry, Music and Painting in Theresienstadt". The event was under the patronage of the Czech president Vaclav Havel. A few witnesses from those times took part: Greta Klingsberg (Jerusalem), who had the role of Aninka in the children's opera "Brundibar" in the ghetto, the jazz player Coco Schumann, who was with the "Ghetto-Swingers" and the author Arnost Lustig, whose youth in Terezin and in the extermination camps is reflected in most of his works. Elena Makarova and her husband Sergej spoke about "The Academy of Survival" - the many hundreds of lectures given in the ghetto. |
| Nazi Public Opinion Polls |
| In honor of the 70th birthday of the famous German historian Eberhard Jaeckel a study day on the subject "National Socialism and the Final Solution" took place at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem on October 31, 1999. Among the lecturers was Otto Dov Kulka who talked about "The Secret Nazi Reports on German Popular Opinion as a Factor in the Decision Making Process of the 'Final Solution' ". At the beginning of the Nazi regime the prevailing opinion was, that the "Jewish question" will have to be solved once and for all, but that changed after the Stalingrad debacle. Fear of retribution after the war and the concern about the price of the war crimes became dominant. Prof. Kulka was a child in ghetto Terezin and in the Birkenau family camp. |
| Jewish Gold |
| An international meeting of researchers titled "Phenomenon Holocaust" was held on October 6, - 8, 1999, at the Hradcany castle in Prag and at the former Magdeburg barracks in Terezin, under the patronage of president Vaclav Havel. It dealt with the murder of Jews and Roma in Bohemia and Moravia during the Nazi epoch. President Havel gave the opening address. The meeting was meant in the main, to help the Czech people to confront it's past during WWII. Among the lecturers was Prof. Yehuda Bauer from Jerusalem, born in Czechoslovakia, whose subject was the meaning of the Holocaust for the world today and in the future. All the media in the Czech Republic and other countries showed great interest in a lecture by Dr. Jirina Milotova, director of the Institute Terezinska Iniciativa. She talked about the so-called "Aryianization" - the transfer of Jewish property in the years 1939 - 1945 to non-Jews. Dr. Milotova is a member of a special governmental team established in the summer of 1999 and charged to research the extent of the sequestration of Jewish possessions and their fate since WWII. She related, that 614 kg gold, 17 tons of silver and silver utensils, 5 kg platinum and 5000 karat of diamonds, taken by the Nazis from Protectorate Jews, were in part sold in Switzerland and served to finance the "final solution". But a part of the valuables were left by the Nazis in safes at Prague banks. From there they were brought after war's end by the Red army to Moscow, as war booty. The full text of Dr. Milotova's lecture was in the November issue 1999 of the publication of the Czech Jewish communities "Ros Chodes". |
| Dr. Milotova, together with the Terezin historian Miroslav Karny (one of the founders of "Terezinska Iniciativa"), visited Israel in November 1999. They were at the Zionist archives, at the Lavon archive and at Yad Vashem, looking for material about the fate of Czech Jewry during the Holocaust. They also met the director and the team of Beit Terezin, to discuss future cooperation of the two associations regarding meetings, research and publications. |
| Every Person Has a Name |
| At the Prague Pinkas synagogue, whose walls bear the names of all Holocaust victims from Bohemia and Moravia, a commemoration ceremony "Every Person has a Name" was held on September 16, 1999. It was organized by the radio station "Vltava" together with the Jewish Museum and the Jewish community. Each of the personalities present - president Havel, authors, politicians, artists, ambassadors and others - read out 10 names of victims and their ages. During the 4 broadcasting hours (from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m.) a total of 3100 names were read. For the names of all the 88.000 victims 6 days and nights would be needed. |
| Cheated of their Childhood |
| A world conference of the organization "The Hidden Child" took place in Prague from September 2, - 5, 1999. 760 "Holocaust children" participated - from the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, Belgium, France, Switzerland, Austria, Germany, the USA, South American countries and Israel. There were lectures and workshops, guided by experienced psychotherapists. It was an occasion to look for friends from kindergarten, school and children's homes in the ghetto. The Czech branch of the organization published a booklet listing 47 families, who saved Jewish children in the Holocaust. There are also the Holocaust experiences of 10 children from the Czech Republic and Slovakia - wanderings, ghettoes, concentration camps. Jirina Urbanova from Kadan in Northern Bohemia discovered her Jewish origins only a short time ago: she was 4 years old when her parents were imprisoned by the Gestapo at the beginning of 1943. Her father was executed and she was shunted from one orphanage to another. In the fall of 1945, at the orphanage of Ricany, she was called to the gate and an emaciated woman said: "I am your mother". The 6-year old Jirina hit her - the woman, who had survived Auschwitz, Ravensbrueck and a death march and who was searching for her daughter for many months now: "You are not my mother, you are an ugly old woman!" |
| Voices of the Children |
| is the title of a TV program about the children of ghetto Terezin, broadcast by PBS in April 1998 in the USA. It was among the nominees of the "Emmy" awards for 1999, as a program of special historic value. Zuzana Justman, who was imprisoned in the ghetto as a girl from July 1943 until the liberation, wrote and edited the program. The producers: Jiri Jezek and Robert Kanter. |
| Drawings by a Girl |
| An exhibition of drawings by Helga Weissova-Hoskova, which she made as a girl in ghetto Terezin, was shown at the Prague Clam Gallas Palais from October 23, to November 13, 1999. The well known artist called the exhibition: "Draw What You See" - the words said to her by her father in the ghetto when she was deported there in December 1941. The exhibition was held by the Lower Saxony. Association for the Furthering of Theresienstadt. This association supports various cultural events connected with the history of the Small Fortress and of ghetto Terezin. |
| Tribute |
| In June of 1998 the president of the "Project Judaica Foundation" Mark E. Talisman and the Czech ambassador to the USA Alexandr Vondra bestowed a citation on Michael Flack. All his life he strove through his verse and prose to help people to understand the incomprehensible - the Holocaust and the children's fate. M. Flack (then Flach) was in ghetto Terezin from December 1941 to October 1944. |
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