Voices of the butterflies

There is an extra measure of tragedy in the death of a child, and an immeasurable horror in the killing of a child. What sense then does one make of a place where almost 15,000 children were kept, with or without their parents, where they were regularly beaten, fed "warmed up water with a salty or a coffee flavor", where they daily saw death around them and lived with the knowledge that any day they could die or be sent away to certain death?

A haunting commemoration will be held on April 28 and 29 when the voices of the Terezin Jewish concentration camp inmates are heard once again after six decades. Czech Ambassador Stanislav Slavicky is spearheading the commemoration "Remembering Terezin" on the occasion of the 60th aniversary of the liberation of the Terezin concentration camp at the end of World War II. The commemoration is also presented by Israeli Ambassador Yehoshua Sagi and the Cultural Center of the Philippines.

On Thursday, April 28, at 6 p.m., a special screening of the film "Transport from Paradise" will be held at the CCP Little Theater. On Friday, April 29, the Philippine Philharmoic Orchestra under Maestro Eugene Castillo will present "Music from Terezin" featuring the music of Czech Jewish composers.

Ongoing until April 29 is "I Never Saw Another Butterfly", an exhibit of children’s drawings at the CCP Little Theater lobby.

In October 1941, the fortress town of Terezin in the central mountains of Bohemia in what is now the Czech Republic was converted by the advancing Nazi Germans into the Theresienstadt ghetto for Jews. It was a special camp, a "model ghetto", according to Nazi leader Heinrich Himmler, to house intellectuals, doctors, engineers, writers, composers, singers, artists– "a town inhabited by Jews and governed by them", with no Nazi troops within its walls. It would even have its own currency–with a picture of Moses carrying the Ten Commandments.

This "model ghetto" was the lie the Nazis peddled to Jews in Germany and showed to the international community to prove that Jews were treated well. In fact, in June 1944 a commission of the Red Cross arrived at Terezin to inspect the camp. They found clean, newly painted buildings, lovely gardens, a library with 60,000 books, stores filled with goods (which were confiscated from the residents in the first place), white uniformed nurses taking care of patients, cultural presentations... in short, a community that was more like a country resort than a concentration camp. A propaganda film was made shortly after that visit, showing the same idyllic deception.

In truth, there was starvation, disease, despair, death and the constant threat of death. In Terezin’s three and a half years as a Nazi ghetto, over 141, 000 Jews from all over Europe–from Germany, Holland, Denmark, Poland, Luxembourg, Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia–arrived at the camp. 88,202 of them were sent to Auschwitz and other death camps; 33,456 died in Terezin.

There were, in addition, over 15,000 children deported from Terezin to Auschwitz; only about 100 of them survived.

We get a poignant and heart-rending glimpse of their life in the camp through the drawings and writings of the children who lived in Terezin. Two suitcases of these drawings and writings survived, and most of them were published in a book entitled "...I never saw another butterfly..." Through these drawings and writings, the inmates of Terezin–especially the children–speak to millions all over the world from across time and hatred and war and death.

Because of the large number of intellectuals and artist at the camp, art classes were held for the children held there. One of the most remarkable teachers was painter Friedl Dicker-Brandeis, who arrived at Terezin in December 1942. Though she did not know Czech and spoke only German, she taught the Czech children about color and texture and told them stories, and from these stories the children drew objects she had mentioned.

One student said of her: "(She) managed–for some hours every week–to create a fairy world for us in Terezin... a world that made us forget all the surrounding hardships, which we were not spared despite our early age." Mrs. Brandeis was deported to Auschwitz in October 1944; she later died at Birkenau.

In their poems they wrote of simple longings and lofty thoughts, of a "sunny evening", of shouting and cries, of a little garden, of "filth in dirty walls".

The spectre of death was always before them, as Fanta Bass wrote in his poem "The Garden":
"A little garden,
Fragrant and full of roses.
The path is narrow
And a little boy walks along it.
A little boy, a sweet boy,
Like that growing blossom.
When the blossom comes to bloom,
The little boy will be no more."

Their works also show how Terezin had changed them. Hanus Hachenburg wrote in 1944:
"I was once a little child,
Three years ago,
That child who longed for other worlds.
But now I am no more a child
For I have learned to hate.
I am a grown-up person now,
I have known fear."

The most famous of the poems from Terezin is the one by Pavel Friedmann from which the title of the book is taken:
"The last, the very last,
So richly, brightly, dazzlingly yellow,
Perhaps if the sun‘s tears would sing against a white stone...
Such, such a yellow
Is carried lightly ’way up high.
It went away I’m sure because it wished to kiss the world good-bye.
For seven weeks I’ve lived in here,
Penned up inside this ghetto.
But I have found what I love here.
The dandelions call to me
And the white chestnut branches in the court.
Only I never saw another butterfly.
That butterfly was the last one.
Butterflies don’t live in here, in the ghetto."

And yet, despite all the hardship and the horror that they experienced in the camp, their spirit remained indomitable. Again from Franta Bass:
"I am a Jew and will be a Jew forever.
Even if I should die from hunger,
never will I submit.
I will always fight for my people,
on my honor.
I will never be ashamed of them,
I give my word.
I am proud of my people,
how dignified they are.
Even though I am suppressed,
I will always come back to life."

The voices of the Jews of Terezin live on in these drawings, writings and music the many artists in the camp created. The exhibit of the children’s drawings (samples shown on this spread) will be open for viewing until April 29. The film, "Transport from Paradise" also about the Terezin camp, will be shown on April 28 at 6 p.m. A gala commemorative concert with the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra and Israeli pianist Noam Sivan on April 29 at 8 p.m. will feature the works of Czech Jewish composers Pavel Haas, Gideon Klein and Victor Ullman. For more information, call the PPO office at 832-1125 loc. 1608.