| No 50 | January 2001 |
| ACTUALITIES |
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THERESIENSTADT ART TEACHER An exhibition on the life and work of the revered art teacher Friedl Dicker-Brandeis (1898-1944), who worked in ghetto Terezin, was opened on November 14, 2000 in France at the Paris Museum for Jewish Art and History. Two days before the opening the museum organized a study day about ghetto Theresienstadt. It included a lecture about the visit of the delegation of the International Red Cross in the ghetto, a Nazi propaganda film about the ghetto and art and music created in the ghetto. The exhibition contains drawings, furniture and objects designed by Friedl (as she was called by the children), photographs from her life and a selection of children's drawings from ghetto Terezin. The initiator of the exhibition Lena Makarova (Jerusalem) attended the opening. The traveling exhibition is under the patronage of the Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. It was shown in the summer of 2000 at Cesky Krumlov. After Paris it will travel to Berlin, Stockholm, Atlanta and Tokio. The story of Friedl Dicker-Brandeis and the children of ghetto Terezin arouse interest all the time: Fireflies in the Dark is the name of a book on the subject by Susan Goldmann-Rubin. It is intended for youth and contains many drawings. (published in 2000 by Holiday House, New York). The author, who lives in California interviewed in Israel i. a. Willy Groag, Dita Kraus and Edna Amit. He donated ten signed copies to Beit Terezin. HONOURS On the occasion of the Czech national holiday on October 28, 2000, President Vaclav Havel bestowed 38 awards on deserving citizens. Among them was the author and journalist Arnost Lustig (born 1926), a former prisoner of ghetto Terezin. A large part of his work is based on his experiences in the ghetto and in concentration camps. The list included also Olga Fierzova (1900-1990), who cared for orphans from ghetto Terezin and other homeless children after WWII. CHILDREN DRAW THE HOLOCAUST Since 1996 a competition for Holocaust drawings by Czech children is held annually at springtime. It was initiated by the former prisoner of ghetto Terezin Hana Greenfield and is organised by the education department of Pamatnik Terezin. The best works were exhibited at the ghetto museum and the winners received prizes. Though the drawings are imbued with sadness, fear and homesickness - as attested to by the titles in the catalogue: Unanswered Lament, Homesickness - there are sparks of hope for a better future. PICTURES FROM THE PAST An exhibition of paintings on self-made paper by Chava Pressburger titled Beit Levitus - the Story of a House opened in September 2000 at the renovated Spanish Synagogue in Prague, the Israeli ambassador Erella Hadar attended the event. The title of the exhibition refers to the house of Herma (an aunt of Chava P.) and Karel Levitus, who both perished in August 1942 at the extermination camp of Maly Trostinec. The house was built in the 30ties in Podoli, a southern suburb of Prague and the extended family spent many happy hours there. The paintings include also family photographs, among them of Chava (then Eva Ginz) and of her brother Petr. He was the talented editor of the youth newspaper Vedem at the children's home Shkid in ghetto Terezin. Through her work the artist comes to terms with the Holocaust and mainly with the death of her brother in Auschwitz, who was then 16 years old. Her whole life is under this influence, she was aged 14 when she was deported to the ghetto. Today Chava Pressburger lives in Omer near Beer Sheba. WOMEN'S LOVE The Short Life of the Jewess Felice Schragenheim is the title of an exhibition opened in September 2000 at the State Archives of Detmold, Germany. The initiative came from the local Society for Christian-Jewish Cooperation. Photographs, documents and testimonies tell the story of Felice, the daughter of a Jewish family from Berlin. The young lesbian was hidden by her German friend Lilly Wust until 1944. In August of that year the Gestapo imprisoned the 22-year-old Felice. In September she was brought to ghetto Theresienstadt and one month later through Auschwitz to the concentration camp Gross-Rosen, where she died. LEAVE-TAKING IN AUSCHWITZ For the first time after 52 years the actress Hana Pravda returned to a Czech stage - it was for a festive event at the Viola club in Prague. Hana left Czechoclovakia in 1948 and after six years in Australia she settled with her second husband (also an actor) in England. There both played at English theaters. During an interview given to the Czech newspaper Lidove noviny, published on June 10, 2000, Hana related that she volunteered to accompany her first husband Sasha Munk from Terezin to Auschwitz. She recalls the instant on the "ramp" when the women were separated from the men and led to an adjacent camp: from afar Hana heard a whistled tune from Beethoven's Pastorale, which they both loved. Hana, who could never whistle, suddenly answered him - whistling too. That was a farewell forever: Sasha died in an overcrowded cattle car on April 20, 1945, just a few days before liberation. BRUNDIBAR Michelle Laufer's three children, all less than nine years old, saw in June 2000 a performance of the children's opera Brundibar by Hans Krasa, which was performed many times in ghetto Terezin. It was staged by the workshop of the Opera for Children and Youth in Jerusalem. Greta Klingsberger (Hofmeister) who in the ghetto played the role of Aninka attended the Jerusalem performance. Michelle Laufer, a daughter of Holocaust survivors, relates in the Jerusalem Report of July 31, 2000, that, since her three years old daughter saw the opera, she always asks to go to sleep with tunes from the performance (they have a casette recording in Czech). And her 8 years old brother regrets that he does not understand the words... The city theater Teatro Curci in Barletta, Italy, brought on November 18, and 19, 2000, Krasa's children's opera Brundibar, performed by the childrens orchestra and choir of the N. Piccini conservatory, the orchstra under the baton of Francesco Lotoro, the choir under Emanuela Aymone. On this occasion the International orchestra of Italy played the cantata Remember What Amalek did to you. It expresses the history of the deportations and of the Holocaust in traditional Jewish melodies. FRITTA HONORED The Youth Wing of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem confers every year the Ben Yitzhak Award for the Illustration of a Children's Book. Among the recipients in 2000 was the painter Fritta for the book Tommy. Fritta, Fritz and also Bedrich Taussig by his real name was arrested and brought together with other painters in the summer of 1944 from ghetto Terezin to the Gestapo prison at the "Small Fortress" - after their paintings of ghetto scenes were found while being smuggled out of the ghetto. Fritta did not survive the prison. Yad Vashem published the book in Hebrew, in 1999. The prizes were bestowed on December 26, 2000. THE BOYS OF BIRKENAU The Beth-El Temple in San Pedro near Los Angeles owns a torah scroll, which before WWII belonged to the Ceske Budejovice synagogue. It was bought - among hundreds - from the Communist government. On Friday, March 3, 2000, John Freund from Toronto, who was born in C. Budejovice, addressed the congregants of the synagogue. (C.Budejovice is of course the Czech name of Budweis, well known to every beer drinker). He talked about life in his birth place, whose Jewish congregation numbered in the 30ties about 1000 members. Only some 35 survived the Holocaust. John (Honza) Freund is one of the Boys of Birkenau, a group of boys aged 13 to 15, whom Mengele chose in July 1944 as messenger boys in the men's camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau, before the prisoners of the family camp were exterminated. Thus the boys were spared.. In February 2000 John Freund and his buddy George Brady, who were together in the Terezin boy's home L-417, attended a 2-days long meeting at the Moravian College in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. An exhibition The Arts as Strategies for Survival was opened, whose main attraction were drawings by children and their teacher Friedl Dicker-Brandeis from ghetto Theresienstadt. The exhibits were partly from the Prague Jewish Museum and partly from Beit Terezin. A performance I Never Saw Another Butterfly written by Geraldine Teagarden and Sharon Talbot inspired by a play with this name by Celeste Raspanti was given 18 times in March 2000 at the Meyzer Theatre, New York East End. Afterwards John Freund and other survivors of ghetto Terezin answered the many questions from the audience about life in the ghetto. The performance is based on verse and prose written by children in the ghetto - and now performed by children, too. ICE HOCKEY ON JEWISH SPORTS FIELD After the German occupation in March 1939 the Hagibor sports grounds located in the Prague suburb Strasnice was the only one where Jews were allowed to enter. There Fredy Hirsch headed gymnastics and sports days for the members of the Jewish Zionist Youth Movements - until it was forbidden. The newspaper MF - Dnes in its issue of July 17, 2000, reports that on the former Hagibor plot now belonging to the state and used by the TJ Bohemians Association, a new ice hockey stadium will be built. The 2003 ice hockey world competition will be held there. ERASED PAST Adolf Hitler's book Mein Kampf was published in March 2000 in Czech translation, without any explanations or footnotes. It is freely available in the Czech Republic in book shops and over the Internet. This triggered a vehement discussion in the Czech press. There were some, who did not want to prohibit the sale, citing the right of the public to know. Others proposed to make the book available to generations who did not know Hitler - under the condition that it would be a scientific edition with commentaries. And some wanted to prohibit the sale totally. The Internet site http://www.schiessen-preiswert.de published an ad recommending a shooting range for families and associations at the Terezin Small Fortress. According to the ad signed by the Helena hotel in Litomerice there are 10 shooting positions for the convenience of the marksmen. Beit Terezin answered the ad and tried to make reservations "for shooting practice", for the end of November 2000. The hotel owner R. Potucek answered, that the shooting season is over for this year: "It is no pleasure to shoot in the cold. Perhaps you should try again in April..." Beit Terezin approached the director of Pamatnik Terezin Dr. Jan Munk and the Isr. ambassador in Prague Erella Hadar, to try to prevent the profanation of the site. |