The Girls of Room 28

by Hannelore Brenner

  Before setting up a place to live in this shed, Julius Schwarzbart had slept in a little hut on the ramparts of the fortified walls that encircled the town. In the wide ditches between the ramparts he tended a large vegetable garden for the SS. It was the first garden in which young people were put to work, an arrangement that was the result of Julius Schwarzbart’s initiative. In the ghetto, young people under the age of sixteen were not officially required to do their part, but in reality, many children were put to work at age fourteen, sometimes even earlier. Julius Schwarzbart had gone to great lengths to have them employed on farms wherever possible. That way, even though they were strictly supervised and could not lag behind, they could at least get a few hours of the fresh air they so badly needed.

  That May of 1943 was not the first time Judith had spent recuperating with her father, who, along with her mother, took care of her and did all he could to restore his daughter to health. Her parents fretted that their previously spirited and healthy child kept falling seriously ill. Judith will never forget how she frightened her mother at one point by saying, “Do you know what I’d really love to eat, Mama? Pumpkin soup.” Amazing! As a child Judith had hated this soup, which her mother regarded as a delicacy. Judith recalls her mother’s reaction: “And then she fell silent. I still remember it. Today I understand that my desire for pumpkin soup must have shocked my mother. She realized at that moment how undernourished I was, how terribly hungry I must be if I was demanding, of all things, pumpkin soup.”

  Handa Pollak

  Handa Pollak was born in Prague on November 4, 1931. She spent her childhood in Olbramovice, a small village about thirty-five miles south of Prague, where her father owned a large farm. Her parents divorced when she was four. Handa’s mother, Alice Pollak, was not meant for country life. She loved to travel and preferred life in the city. She enjoyed plays and concerts, especially when her cousin Karel Ančerl, a well-known conductor of radio and theater orchestras in Prague, wielded the baton.

  Handa grew up in the care of her father, assisted by a Jewish governess named Jitka. Jewish traditions were not observed in her family of assimilated Jews, who considered themselves Czech first and foremost. It was not until she started school that Handa learned of her religious affiliation. On her first report card, under “religion,” the word “Mosaic” appeared. “I still remember how hard I cried, and I remember asking my father why my report card had something entirely different from the report cards of all the other kids. ‘Yes, we are Jews,’ he answered. ‘But that’s not so important. We’re Czechs like everyone else. This just means we are of a different religion.’ ”

  The events that were building up to a catastrophe in Germany after Hitler took power had little resonance in Olbramovice at this time, apart from rumors, wild stories, and crazy theories, all of which were easy to dismiss.

  That changed when the Germans occupied the Czech lands on March 15, 1939. A seemingly endless train filled with German soldiers rode through Olbramovice toward Prague. Restrictions of human rights for all Czechs ensued, especially for Jewish Czechs. The entrance gate to the Pollak farm now bore a sign announcing in large letters: ŽIDI VEN—JEWS GET OUT!

  What followed was an odyssey with a recurrent pattern: Karel Pollak sought refuge with relatives in Prague. Handa lived with her father’s sister for a while, then with a brother. In 1940 she stayed with her mother in Prague-Dějvice. Eventually Handa returned to her father, who was staying with his sister Hanička in the Smichov section of Prague.

  In the autumn of 1941 Karel Pollak was assigned to Theresienstadt as part of the “construction commando.” This first transport arrived on November 24. It consisted of 342 young men, craftsmen and laborers, whose task was to build up the ghetto. “They told us that the men could return home every weekend,” Handa recalls. “But that was a lie. No sooner were they there than the gates were locked behind them. We could write only an occasional special postcard, which was then censored—thirty words in German and in capital letters.”

  Handa was without her father for about six months. “I missed him terribly, and longed to follow him to Theresienstadt. In July of 1942 I finally arrived there, along with my aunt Hanička.”

  Anna Flach

  Anna Flach (“Flaška”) was born on November 26, 1930, the youngest child of Leo and Elisabeth Flach, née Kober, in the Polish-Czech border town of Polsky Tešin (now Cieszyn). When she was a year old the family moved to Český Tešin; shortly thereafter they moved on to Ostrava.

  In February 1937 the family resettled in Brno, on Adler Gasse 13, where Flaška’s father opened a wholesale zipper business. Flaška had her first piano lessons in Brno, and along with her sister Alice attended the renowned ballet school of Ivo Váňa-Psota. In 1939 she began her first singing lessons with the great master of voice, Professor Sigmund Auspitzer, who had trained Maria Jeritza, a world-famous opera star from Brno.

  Shortly after the Germans marched into Brno, Leo Flach’s business was placed under the supervision of two “Aryan trustees.” “My father worked while the Germans kept watch on him and pocketed a lot of money doing it. We had to put up with them in our house every day. And from that point on the hostility grew worse.”

  In August 1940 Flaška’s sister Irena, assisted by the Youth Aliyah, managed to board a ship illegally transporting Jews to Palestine. “I shall be waiting for you to arrive soon, safe and sound.” These were the parting words that Irena wrote in her sister’s poetry album. “But for now—best wishes. Above all, practice your singing, because your voice is your sole possession.”26

  But Flaška was less and less in the mood to sing. One disheartening event followed another. Once, during the period when she had to wear a yellow star, a woman stopped in front of her, pointed to the new white felt boots that her mother had just gotten for her, and screamed, “You Jewish pig, give me those boots. Somebody like you shouldn’t even own boots like that!”

  “It was horrible. I still remember exactly how it felt. After that I was always afraid to wear those boots. But then it turned cold and I didn’t have any others.” Another time two Germans in uniform walked past her. “What a beautiful girl,” she heard one of them say, pointing at her. “Pity she’s a Jew.” That came as a great shock to Flaška. “What’s so bad about being a Jew? I still have the same strong, bitter feeling inside me when I think back to that. Or when I hear anti-Semitic remarks. It hurts me deeply. More than hunger and the other restrictions and prohibitions, it was the hate hurled at us, the unjustified humiliation that we were subjected to. That stays with you your whole life.”

  Order of Worship, Rosh Hashanah, September 1941

  The Jewish New Year had arrived, but people barely risked going to the synagogue. The admonition to the congregation after worship to “behave with calm, restraint, and dignity, and not to create a stir” only added to the anxiety and fear during that September of 1941. If the Jewish community had been able to do so, it would have made itself invisible altogether.

  On November 26, 1941, Flaška’s eleventh birthday, came the directive to “join the ranks for transport.” “That was my birthday present! I can still see my father bursting into tears. It was the first time I’d ever seen him cry.” Three days later the family set out for the assembly point. From there they were put on the first family transport from Brno, which arrived in Theresienstadt on December 2, 1941. Flaška was among the first children in the ghetto.

  Judith Schwarzbart

  Judith Schwarzbart was born in Brno on March 2, 1930, and was a year old when she moved to Mrštíkova 13 in Jundrov, on the outskirts of Brno, with her parents, Julius and Charlotte Schwarzbart, her sister, Ester, and her brother, Gideon. It was a large house with a garden that bordered on the woods. She loved it with all her heart, and even now has fond memories of it: “There were so many trees in our garden, with all sorts of fruit: white, black, yellow, and pink cherries, apricots, and two kinds of plums. There was also a fruit that I’ve never found anywhere else in the wo
rld. My father called it mischpulle, which was some sort of medlar. It was a brown, round fruit with one or two pits, not very large. The flesh tasted wonderful—a little like honey. Then there were currants—white, red, black. All kinds of apples. It was a garden of Eden—marvelous!”

  This photograph was taken in Israel in 1948.

  For Judith’s father, the large lot was a dream come true, and also the ideal spot to pursue his interests. He was an inventive man, a passionate do-it-yourselfer. One of his inventions, insulated bricks, guaranteed the family a steady income for several years. Judith’s parents were Zionists, but they were not religious in any strict sense.

  “‘You don’t need to go to a synagogue to pray,’ my father used to say. ‘If God exists, he is everywhere.’ ” Still, Jewish holidays were always celebrated, because Julius and Charlotte Schwarzbart believed strongly in making their children familiar with Jewish culture and tradition. Judith’s mother, who was born in Vienna, saw to it that a holiday atmosphere prevailed and always served the most delicious foods. “She was a wonderful cook—an artist. Her food was a dream come true!”

  In those days, a lovely old clock stood in a glass case in the living room, and engraved on it were these words in Hebrew: “May this hour be a blessed hour in this home.” That clock and a beautiful Pesach plate are all that remain of her parents’ possessions. Today they symbolize everything Judith had lost—childhood, parents, happiness, and the dreams of the first nine years of her life. Then the expulsion from paradise began. “It started when someone at the Sokol Athletic Club27 said to me, ‘You can’t come here anymore.’ Then my best friend, Teresa, came to me and said, ‘My father won’t let me play with you anymore. We’re not allowed to speak to each other.’ She came from a very pious Christian family, and we had often visited each other. Everything changed from one day to the next. I cried all the way home, asking myself, why? Why is this happening all of a sudden?”

  School grew more difficult for Judith with each passing day. She was the only Jew in her class, and the animosity of her fellow students became increasingly blatant. Before the occupation, she had occasionally attended Catholic religious in struction, since the class was held between other classes. “One day our religion teacher, a priest, said that Jews kill their firstborn sons to make matzos with. I stood up and said, ‘That’s not true. We have never killed a boy and we eat matzos every year!’ But the other children believed the teacher, not me.

  The Schwarzbart family home in Jundrov

  In 1939–40, after Jews were excluded from public schools, Judith attended the Jewish high school in Brno—an hour’s walk each way. Home did not ease her sadness; her parents’ anxieties were inescapable. How were they supposed to live? Julius Schwarzbart had his business license revoked and his car confiscated. Hoping for better times, he tinkered with his inventions and developed a shoe-polishing machine. But no one showed any interest in it.

  Judith’s happy childhood was turning dismal. Nature, which had once buoyed her youthful exuberance and dreams, became a refuge from her hurt and disappointment, and a place of increasing isolation. The only thing still holding her fragile soul together was her love for her sister and brother and for her parents, especially her father. “I idolized my father. He was a calm, quiet man—he spoke only when he had something to say. When he saw people chatting for hours about silly things, he would say, ‘They’re just flapping their jaws!’ ”

  One day neighbors denounced Julius Schwarzbart to the Germans, claiming that he was making brandy and doing other forbidden things. “Men in uniforms and clanking boots came to our house three times, turning everything upside down—they didn’t find a thing. Once my father showed them his medal from the war and the Germans just laughed at him. I can still picture them laughing. It was horrible. Nothing happened at that point. But our fear just kept growing.”

  In May 1942 the Schwarzbarts ended up on a transport. “I still recall it exactly. I was glad to leave. The atmosphere was so charged—like dynamite. We were living on a powder keg. When we received our deportation orders, I told myself that now at least there would be peace and quiet.”

  * What Helga could not possibly have known at the time was that a large portion of the items sold in these stores had been confiscated by the SS from the deported Jews upon their arrival at the Theresienstadt checkpoint, the so-called sluice. Some also came from the possessions of those who had died, or from prisoners who had been sent on to the death camps.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Island in a Raging Sea

  Helga has chosen a lighthouse as her symbol for her Home,” Otto Pollak wrote in his calendar diary on July 5, 1943. “She says it represents her life. The lighthouse is meant to light the way amid the stormy waves of life and lead her out of the darkness and into the light. I surprised my girl today with a drawing done by my comrade Bauer, the engineer, at the Home for the Invalids, showing the silhouette of a sail-boat approaching a lighthouse. Helga was overjoyed, hugged me, and told me that I understand her so well. This new emblem will adorn the wall beside her bed.”

  This expressive drawing of Helga’s personal emblem came at the right moment. The “stormy waves of life” had churned up a worldwide typhoon of death and destruction and hurled Europe into darkness. In Warsaw and in Bialystok (Poland), in Kolomyja, Ternopol, and Lvov (Ukraine), in Skopje (Macedonia), in Lemberg (eastern Galicia), in Novogrudok (Belorussia)—wherever their war of conquest brought them, the Germans engaged in horribly bloody massacres. On May 16, 1943, after several weeks of battle, the Warsaw Ghetto uprising was put down. The factories of death were running in high gear— Auschwitz-Birkenau, Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibór, Treblinka.

  On the Russian front, near Kursk, the largest tank battle of the war had begun; the British and American armies were about to land in Sicily, while Allied bombardments of German cities began to intensify after May 30, 1942, when the English flew their first thousand-bomb attack on Cologne. Events were coming to a climax, and the tremendous tension that hung in the air was palpable even in Room 28.

  Tella chastised her wards at a meeting of Ma’agal on July 9, 1943, for the lack of discipline in their room. “If you don’t pull together soon, there will be a catastrophe, and we shall have to introduce more severe punishments. Each of you in Ma’agal has slipped back by several points. You are inconsiderate and uncooperative, and some of you are egotistical as well. Be more tolerant and gentle with each other, but stricter with yourselves!”

  Helga had crept back into her shell: “Somehow I’ve become a bit of a loner here in Theresienstadt,” she brooded. “I know that I’ve become careless, that I must improve. Am I weak? Ela is at her singing lesson now. It’s already ten o’clock and she’ll be back any minute. I’m going to say to her: I need a friend. Maybe it could be you! Do you want to be? I’ll see how that goes.”

  The very next day brought disappointment. “Ela doesn’t want to. I can sense it. She’s trying to back away a little. It’s probably my fault.”

  The truth was that Ela simply had other things on her mind. She had a crush on Honza Gelbkopf from Home 9—a state that brought on a whirl of emotions and questions that Helga tended to shrug off. Lenka, Flaška, and Eva Landa showed far more understanding and compassion for these sorts of issues, since they had boyfriends of their own. Ela was gratified by their response.

  And there was something else, too. On July 7, 1943, the last transport of children from the Prague orphanage had arrived in Theresienstadt. With it came Ota Freudenfeld, the legendary head of the orphanage, and his son, Rudolf. The arrival of this transport drew everyone’s attention, especially that of the children who had lived in the orphanage on Belgicka Street prior to their own deportation. Decades later, Rudolf Freu denfeld would recall their arrival:

  As news spread through town that the head of the orphanage had arrived, the streets near the “sluice” were lined with children. My father passed through the crowd, happy to be among his children again. And they welcomed him the
way you greet someone you hold most dear—with childlike love amidst all that misery.

  That evening, Rafik [Rafael Schächter] arranged for a concert performance in our honor, in one of the attics, of The Bartered Bride, with a piano instead of an orchestra. After the performance, I proudly pulled out the score for Brundibár, and we decided then and there that I should begin rehearsing with the children.1

  The news spread through the ghetto like wildfire, and it wasn’t long before Tella sent her best musical talents to the attic of Boys’ Home 417, where Rafael Schächter and Rudolf Freudenfeld were holding tryouts and making their choices among the many candidates for the various roles in the opera.

  “There were three of us from our room—Flaška, Maria Mühlstein, and me. And we had to stand in a row and each had to sing up and down the scale, la la la.” Ela Stein has vivid memories of the casting of Brundibár. “When my turn came I shook with fright at the thought that I wouldn’t sing well enough. But then Rudi Freudenfeld said to me, ‘You know what? You’ll play a cat.’—A cat in a children’s opera? That was something extraordinary!”

  Gushing with joy, Ela brought the sensational news to her mother and uncle. “ ‘A children’s opera?’ they said in amazement. They couldn’t imagine what that might be. But they were so happy that I’d got the role.”

  Maria Mühlstein had reason to be happy as well. She was chosen for the role of the sparrow; her brother Piňt’a got the male lead role of little Pepíček. The female lead, Aninka, Pepíček’s sister, went to Greta Hofmeister from the Girls’ Home, Room 25; she had already sung in Smetana’s Bartered Bride and Verdi’s Requiem. Zdeněk Ohrenstein from Room 1, L 417, was cast as the dog.

  The other roles were assigned as well: a baker, a milkman, an icecream vendor, and a policeman.2 There were children who would play the people at the market and others who formed the chorus of schoolchildren. Among these were several girls from Room 28: Flaška, Handa, Zajíček, and Ruth Gutmann.