The Girls of Room 28

by Hannelore Brenner

  Nothing out of the ordinary has happened over the last few days. The weather is very bad. We play the game of City, Country, River and sing. We have a new English teacher. She’s very likeable. I have already managed to get a white shirt for our uniform.

  Tuesday, March 30, 1943

  It is the first day that the children’s kitchen is open again. It was closed for about a month because of typhoid. The food is much better. For lunch today, there was potato soup with bread and noodles, and supper was a bun with half an ounce of margarine and black coffee. It was good, but too little of it. Papa had lentil soup and potatoes, and soup again in the evening. Am I ever stupid!!! I just keep on writing about the food.

  A little while ago we celebrated Maria Mühlstein’s birthday. Her mother cooks porridge for sick children and gives the children in the Homes extra food when they need it.

  Now I’ll describe the birthday party. For Theresienstadt it was very nice. Maria received a lot of presents, colored pencils from me. Frau Mühlstein had baked an oatmeal cake with coffee icing and marmalade filling. We drank cocoa with it. Imagine that—cocoa for forty people!

  Wednesday, March 31, 1943

  It’s been four years since Mama left for England, and four and a half years since I saw her last. It will probably be a long time before we see each other again. For now we have only one hope that each day brings us closer to the end of the war.

  Besides pneumonia, Lea has now developed pleurisy. She gets drained every day. The doctors have given up hope. I believe and hope in God, who cannot let such a little innocent creature die.

  The counselors in the Girls’ Home had set themselves an almost impossible task. How does one go about easing the unhappiness that each girl bore within her? How should one react to their fears, answer their questions? How could one help them live a semblance of a normal life together—a community of twenty-five to thirty girls crammed into an area that should accommodate no more than one-third their number?

  Very few of the girls managed to come to terms with such conditions. On top of their personal suffering, the girls had plenty of reason to be upset by the problems they faced every day—bad air, not enough room, not enough food, too much noise. The smallest thing could set a girl off—someone in an upper bunk putting a foot on her bed as she climbed down, for example. And the constant disorder, wherever one looked! But was it even possible to keep order with so many children in such close quarters? Tella, at any rate, demanded it. And at times there were severe punishments if the rules were broken.

  “One day Tella discovered a comb full of hair, a pair of dirty panties, and a toothbrush in Lenka’s food bowl,” Judith recalls. “She was so angry that she punished the whole room. Our punishment was that we weren’t allowed to leave the Home that evening and could not visit anyone, not even our parents.”

  Such measures were not very effective. Nothing was going to hold Judith back from seeing her mother and father. She simply would not accept the idea of Tella punishing everyone just because Lenka wasn’t tidy. Lenka was even less inclined to be impressed by such punishment. She was an extremely intelligent girl with a stubborn, rebellious streak. She was determined to form her own opinions and to see things from all angles. As a result, she often stood firm when asked to toe the line regarding matters she considered outmoded and obsolete, such as Tella’s implacable passion for order. Lenka was by far the least tidy girl in Room 28. And yet Lenka was truly treasured by them all, even by Tella. “She was very clever and mature for her age and had a lively imagination—what a personality, one of a kind,” her comrades said about her. “We admired her, and we all liked her. She radiated energy.”

  Lenka was not the only girl who had trouble with their strict counselor. Even today Marianne Deutsch has nightmares when she thinks of Tella. Marianne came from a prosperous family in Olomouc, in northern Moravia. For the first ten years of her life, her world had been a pleasant and agreeable one. “I had everything I needed,” she would say later. Above all, she had “Memme,” Emma Fischer, her governess, whom she adored, and who stayed with the family until their deportation in June 1942. “Memme would have preferred to convert to Judaism and accompany us to Theresienstadt. She cursed Hitler something awful and almost got herself arrested because of it.” Saying goodbye to Memme was very hard on Marianne. “It was worse than being separated from my parents. When I had to leave her, I shed the first truly bitter tears of my life.”

  Marianne missed her governess. Despite her joy over every package that arrived from Memme—and Memme sent as many as she possibly could—each one rekindled Marianne’s agonizing longing to see her. It was especially at such moments that Marianne railed against her fate. She simply wasn’t able to adjust to the community of Room 28, and Tella’s iron hand just exacerbated the problem.

  “If there had been no Tella, I’m sure I would have liked it better,” Marianne comments. “The other counselors were very nice. What wonderful evenings we had when they spent the night in our room. But Tella spoiled every minute for me. Either you take me as I am, or just leave me alone.” Tella evidently did the latter.

  Things were different with Handa—even though she was a match for Lenka when it came to the matter of messiness. Her little portion of the shelving along one wall, the only place where a girl could put a few personal items, was usually such a mess that even Handa’s neighbor, Eva Landa, fussed about it. But to no avail. Orderliness was not Handa’s strong suit, and in her eyes Tella, at least in this matter, was more or less crazed. “Our clothes had to be hung up neatly behind the curtain, and our shoes had to stand in dress ranks like soldiers. We had a place for shoes under the window, but it was always one big jumble. And every evening our slippers had to stand in pairs under our own bunks.”

  And then one day it happened. A single, forlorn slipper was found under a bunk. The slipper was old and terribly tattered, and its partner was simply nowhere to be found, no matter how hard the girls searched and how thoroughly Tella interrogated them all. It remained lost—much to Tella’s annoyance.

  For Handa and her friend Fiška, however, it became a great inspiration. They wrote a little play, Trikena, in which the main character was a single, tattered slipper:

  One day a single slipper showed up beneath a bunk—Trikena. And all the other shoes, the good shoes, made fun of Trikena because she was so alone and so shabby that no one could wear her anymore. Finally Trikena died—weary, old, and abandoned.

  Suddenly everyone felt sorry for her, and all the other shoes sorely regretted having treated Trikena so deplorably. They wondered: What can we do to bring her back to life? It was so mean of us to make fun of her, to humiliate her. They heaved many sighs of woe—and sounded like the chorus from an ancient Greek tragedy.

  The girls laughed heartily at this little cabaret, which Handa and Fiška performed for them with slipper puppets, and which can be read today in Handa’s little notebook. Handa had been given this notebook by Piňt’a Mühlstein on November 4, 1942, for her eleventh birthday, and she called it Všechno (Miscellany). In it she jotted down all sorts of things: classroom notes, mathematical formulas, poems, sketches for stories and plays, drawings, doodles.

  Performances of dramas such as Trikena, or of a comedy about two old maids, Amalka and Posinka, which Flaška and Lenka wrote and presented, were the sort of creations that even someone as strict as Tella appreciated. What better way could her girls be diverted, for a little while at least, from the gravity and misery of their imprisonment?

  Counselors had to walk a fine line between strictness and sympathy, punishment and indulgence. Some counselors, such as Tella, were strict enforcers of the rules. Others—among them Eva Weiss, Laura Šimko, Lilly Gross, Rita Böhm, and Eva Eckstein—relied upon compassion and creativity. But they were all united in one goal. As Rosa Engländer, the director of the Girls’ Home, put it, they wanted “to create a foundation of harmony and balance for each child. This foundation is the source of the energy that enables a child to
meet the demands of the outside world, a world that is tough and volatile and will continue to be so for our Jewish children.”14

  Eva Weiss contributed to the achievement of this goal in her own special way. She loved aphorisms and adages, and she used them to create art with a pedagogical bent. If she heard a clever saying or came across a wise adage, she would jot it down on a piece of paper, quickly paint a picture to accompany it, and then hang it on the wall. Eva’s pictures already adorned the walls of Room 104 in the Hamburg Barracks, and now they enhanced Room 28 as well.

  One read: Quidquid agis, prudenter agas et respice finem (“Whatever you do, do it cautiously and with an eye to the end”), while another cautioned: O si tacuisses, philosophus mansisses! (“Had you kept silent, you would have remained a philosopher!”). Rudyard Kipling was also represented: “If you’ve been knocked down a hundred times and get up a hundred times and keep on fighting, then ‘Hero of Life’ will be inscribed on your coat of arms.”

  In the beginning, they were all-purpose adages. Then Eva came up with the idea of having each girl select a saying of her own. Soon little mottos with accompanying pictures were hanging from all the bunks. Eva Landa’s image had a laughing face and beside it the words: “No matter what, be cheerful, always be cheerful.” Flaška and Zajíček joined forces—they painted a little house and beside it wrote the unusual phrase Vlajici taška (“Flying purse”). It was an anagram of their names— an innovation that was characteristic of Flaška, who had a fondness for whimsical amusements. Ela Stein’s page was decorated with a painter’s palette and Helga’s with a lighthouse. Helga’s saying was “Always be prepared.”

  “The lighthouse,” Helga wrote in her diary, “could be hope, so the girls say. But I picture us here as being caught up in a storm, the raging sea all around us—war.”

  Eva’s breezy, cordial ways were an ideal counterbalance to the strict discipline that was so important to Tella. Because they worked so well in tandem, they were able to live up to the standards that Gonda Redlich, the head of Theresienstadt’s Youth Welfare Office, set for his colleagues. “More than ever, what is needed here are real love and enthusiasm, which are far more important and more difficult to instill under such hard living conditions than they would be in normal life. More than ever, it is crucial not to let a counselor’s creative spark be extinguished by a stultifying set of regulations. Even in those instances where counselors find it necessary to employ discipline, they must always present the best model for both children and adults, and be in a position to win the children’s trust.”15

  Friday, April 2, 1943

  This is a day full of joy. The Germans are suffering one loss after another. This afternoon I moved to a different bunk, beside Ela Stein. I’m so happy, because I had an unpleasant neighbor who would constantly scold me if I moved just an inch or two onto her space. Ela’s uncle and mother come from Kyjov, and her uncle’s bed is next to Papa’s.

  Yesterday we had for the first time a meeting in our blue and white outfits. Because things in our room are sometimes so terrible, we’ve decided to start afresh, as if we had only just arrived. We’re going to have a parliament, so to speak. Our counselors are the ministers, then come the members of parliament, in two classes. The second class is like a lower house, and the first class is like an upper house, which is called Ma’agal. The girls who are obliging and friendly and hardworking are in Ma’agal—and so can serve as examples to the others. The rest are ordinary people. Whoever has fifteen points or is voted in is part of the second class. We vote once a month. Whoever is voted in twice advances to the first class. Ma’agal makes its decisions in consultation with the counselors. Our motto is: Věřiš mi—věřim ti. Viš a vím, bud’ jak bud’. Nezradiš—nezradím. [“You believe me—I believe you. You know what I know. Come what may happen, you won’t betray me, and I won’t betray you.”]

  The idea for Ma’agal was one of those inspirations that catch on right from the start and develop an unexpected dynamic of their own, almost as though Ma’agal had set free a latent potential within the girls and given them a structure and direction. The atmosphere in Room 28 changed from one day to the next—as if a bud had burst into blossom overnight.

  Ma’agal is Hebrew for “circle” and, in a more metaphorical sense, for “perfection.” The girls wanted to strive for perfection. They resolved to be helpful and considerate at all times. Ma’agal became the symbol for this spirit of cooperation, and a great many hopes were bound up in its founding. The counselors saw it as a golden opportunity to improve both the discipline and the atmosphere in Room 28. Some of the girls might have seen in it a means of enhancing both their room and their own standing, and others were convinced that Ma’agal would reinforce an awareness of community and solidarity among all the girls—just as had happened in Boys’ Room 1, about which they were learning some surprising things.

  The boys in Room 1, in Boys’ Home L 417, had come up with an extraordinary idea. They had proclaimed their room the “Republic of Shkid” and conferred upon themselves the status of an autonomous democracy. They also published a newspaper that they read aloud among themselves every Friday evening, providing information and sometimes amusement to those involved. The newspaper was called Vedem (We Lead).16

  The Ma’agal emblem on the flag created by the girls in Room 28

  Room 1, headed by Walter Eisinger, contained some exceptionally talented boys, especially Petr Ginz, the editor of Vedem. More than half a century later, on created by the girls in Room 28 January 16, 2003, the Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon would take Petr Ginz’s drawing Moon Landscape with him on his flight aboard the American space shuttle Columbia. “I feel,” Ramon said at the time, “that my journey fulfills the dream of Petr Ginz fifty-eight years ago. A dream that is ultimate proof of the greatness of the soul of a boy imprisoned within the ghetto walls, the walls of which could not surrender his spirit.” Ilan Ramon did not return from his flight into space—he died on February 1, 2003, along with the six other astronauts on board Columbia when it exploded as it approached Earth on its flight back home.

  Another resident of Room 1 was Piňt’a Mühlstein, Maria Mühlstein’s brother and a good friend of Handa Pollak. It was from him that the girls would hear about the latest achievements of the writers and journalists who contributed to Vedem. They spoke in particular about Hanuš Hachenburg’s talents as a lyric poet—he was Vedem’s most admired writer. His poems are among the most moving documents left behind by the children of the ghetto.

  Moon Landscape, by Petr Ginz (1928–1944), pencil on paper. According to Petr’s sister, Eva Ginz, the picture was drawn in Prague before his deportation in October 1942. Numerous other documents from within the pages of Vedem are evidence of the range of Petr’s talent, which matured within the walls of Theresienstadt. They also document his unbending spirit. Ilan Ramon quite rightly called Petr Ginz “a symbol of the talent lost in the Holocaust.”

  MY LAND

  I bear my land within my heart

  For me and me alone!

  It’s spun from threads of beauty,

  The only dream I’ve known.

  I can caress you now, that’s all,

  And feel you as my guide.

  My land is not upon this earth,

  It is within and yet so wide.

  My land is set among the stars,

  It is the bird named space.

  I long for it and weep sometimes

  And feel it everyplace.

  And yet one day I’ll fly away,

  Freed from my body’s chains,

  And soar toward freedom where I’ll see

  My land of endless plains.

  For now it’s still a little land

  And found in dreams alone.

  It holds me soft in its embrace,

  Here in this awful zone.

  One day I shall go to my land

  And be forever free,

  For in that space my longing found

  There is no “I,” n
o agony.

  Hanuš Hachenburg (1929–1944)

  Similar talents were displayed by the boys in Room 9. These boys, among them Honza Gelbkopf and Kurt Drechsler, were the same age as the girls in Room 28. Sometimes the boys and girls did gymnastics and played games together on the ramparts. It was there that friendships developed, sometimes accompanied by the first stirrings of romantic feelings. What could be more natural than the desire to ensure a certain regularity to these meetings, especially since the girls’ artistic ambitions were just as powerful as the boys’?

  “We shall give it a try,” said one of the boys’ counselors, the beautiful Licka Mautner, during a visit to Room 28 on the evening of March 26, 1943. She agreed that the boys and girls could meet daily on the ramparts for gymnastics, games, and contests, and that they could visit each other’s rooms on occasion. For some of the girls it was a dream come true. Others did not take to the idea and were in fact skeptical. Helga noted in her diary: “Licka was just telling us about how wonderful it is in Room 9, how they’ve formed a club, are writing a newspaper, and what a fine community they’ve formed—and right away the girls started arguing. Licka left at a quarter to eight. I’m sure she was thinking: These girls can only ruin her lads.”

  This much was clear—things had to change in Room 28. No more arguments, no groups of girls taking sides against other groups of girls. What could encourage this effort better than the Ma’agal? The transformation triggered by this idea was already apparent after just one week. The first formal meeting took place on April l. All the girls wore their new blue and white outfits. The letters VVBN were embroidered on each blouse. This was the acronym for the Ma’agal’s motto: “Věřiš mi— véñm ti. Viš a vím, bud’ jak bud’. Nezradiš—nezradím.”

  From this point on, these words were the motto of the girls of Room 28. And the girls created a symbol to go with it: a dark blue linen flag bearing the emblem of Ma’agal—a white circle around two clasped hands. On April 1, this flag was displayed in their room for the first time. And the first two members were elected to the Ma’agal, the “circle of perfection”—Pavla Seiner and Eva Landa.