The “Eichmann men” never came without a reason. The Council of Elders, the involuntary middlemen between the Germans and the ghetto’s inmates, were painfully aware that Eichmann always acted according to plan, but they had no way of knowing what that plan might be. When transports to the East were ordered, the purpose of their visit became evident to everyone, of course. But many of the Nazis’ objectives were unveiled only over time. Or too late.
Eichmann was frequently in Theresienstadt. At his trial in Israel in 1961, he explained that he always made a stop there, whether or not he had a specific purpose in mind. “We were passing through,” he said. “It’s the route you take by car when you’re …”20 He did not finish the sentence. He would presumably have revealed more than he intended if he had named all his assignments, all the camps and places that he inspected and contacted as special deputy and secret ambassador in charge of the “final solution to the Jewish question”—Lublin, Chelmno, Lodz, Auschwitz, Treblinka, Minsk, Lemberg, Warsaw. …
And so once again, in April 1943, there was a flurry of bonkes, the prisoners’ slang for rumors—a muddle of any scrap of news that could be picked up somewhere, would then become latched onto the prisoners’ own hopes and fears, and then make the rounds of the ghetto in every conceivable variation.
Sources of news were sparse, but they did exist: a quick peek in the central office at reports from the front prepared by the High Command of the Wehrmacht and printed in The Black Corps, the newspaper of the SS; an official German broadcast overheard while cleaning the Germans’ offices; listening in secret to broadcasts from London or Moscow on radio receivers smuggled into the camp or rigged up illegally by the prisoners; a brief conversation with a kindly Czech policeman.
Most rumors sprang from the conviction that the Germans would soon lose the war and that the liberation was only a matter of time. These rumors were fueled by reports of the Allied landing in North Africa in November 1942 and the devastating defeat of the German Sixth Army at Stalingrad in February 1943. The relative peace and quiet that had reigned in the ghetto over the last two months gave additional impetus to the hope that it would be possible to survive the war in Theresienstadt. The last transport from the ghetto had left Theresienstadt on February 1, 1943, and since then there had been nothing to indicate that more would follow. Was this because the Germans knew that their defeat was imminent?
But what was the significance of the visit from the “big shot”? And of this lockdown that went on for several days? “I saw Eichmann from the window,” Eva Weiss recalls. “We all had to stay inside. We were terrified. Why was he coming here? Is that good for us? Is it bad for us?”
The boys in Home A in the Children’s Home at Q 609 came up with their own explanation. In early April there had been a big to-do, about which they reported a few months later, on November 26, 1943, in the fifth edition of the newspaper the children produced on their own, called Kamarád: “Five of our boys escaped from the ghetto, three of whom returned on their own. Müller was caught, but Belov escaped with his sister. Then the local police came… and the criminal division, and turned everything upside down, but found no incriminating evidence. But as punishment the entire ghetto was placed under a total lockdown and lights-out for two months, which also meant we were prohibited from visiting our parents.”21
Was the escape of these five youngsters the reason that leading officers of the SS had come to Theresienstadt? Those inside the ghetto could only speculate. They could not know what the Nazis were really up to—could not know what was happening in the East, what awaited them there. Nor did they have any way of learning about the directive Heinrich Himmler gave his staff on April 19, 1943:
“The most important thing for me continues to be deporting as many Jews as possible to the East. All I want to read in the brief monthly reports of the security police is, if at all possible, the number of monthly deportations and how many Jews are still left.”22
Sunday, April 11, 1943
My dream job would be a medical doctor; it’s been my dream for three years now. How splendid it is to heal people. Ever since we read Microbe Hunters I haven’t wanted anything else. My role model is Robert Koch.
Monday, April 12, 1943
If I ever should become a doctor, I’d like to have a practice in a quiet little town and a little villa at the edge of the woods, where I could have my laboratory and where I could spend my free time. But enough of that!!! What a lively imagination I have! I still have such naïve ideas about the future. I can’t think about my future until the war is over and I’m out of this hated Theresienstadt. I hope Mama will have saved enough money to make it possible for me to go to college. Only then can longings become reality. I’ve been going crazy thinking about medicine, I think about it constantly, but today I will stop, otherwise I’ll end up in the madhouse in the Hohenelbe Barracks.
I guarded the door from six to six-thirty today to prevent any children from running outside.
Friday, April 16, 1943
I’ve been in bed for three days now with a very bad cold.
Sunday, April 18, 1943
It’s been three months now since I lined up for transport to the ghetto in the Hungarian town of Brod. I received a package yesterday. Today is my first day out of bed. Mimi has been visiting me every day. Yesterday she brought me two crepes. Hurrah! We have fourteen days vacation. There will be no lessons, and instead we can play and dance or just keep busy for fourteen days. The only stupid part is that we still have a barracks lockdown and can’t go to the ramparts.
What was the SS plotting? The children had no idea, but they sensed the trembling uncertainty in the camp, and that the adults, too, were groping in the dark. How could anyone know what was going on beyond the hermetically sealed ghetto walls of Theresienstadt? How could anyone know that reports about Nazi genocide were increasing in the foreign press, that the Germans were worried that this publicity would rob them of their ability to carry out their plans and would force them to resort to tricks to camouflage their murderous deeds? Or that Theresienstadt, of all places, was to play a crucial role in the next stage of the propaganda game?
They could not know about these developments, any more than they could get wind of anything about the tireless inquiries and interventions on the part of Gerhard M. Riegner, head of the Geneva Bureau of the Jewish World Congress, Richard Lichtheim and Fritz Ullmann of the Jewish Agency, or Saly Mayer of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. These men were doing everything in their power to inform the Western world, especially President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill, about Nazi atrocities, to shake them up and move them to take immediate and effective action against genocide.
They were equally persistent in their repeated demands that the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) send representatives to the concentration camps in Poland and especially to Theresienstadt— demands to which the International Red Cross responded only slowly and hesitantly. The reason for this was partly, as Gerhard M. Riegner would later write, that under the direction of the Swiss jurist Max Huber, the ICRC proceeded “incredibly cautiously and legalistically.”23 But it was also true that their German colleagues were anything but allies. The German Red Cross had long since been made part of the Nazi machinery; its organization was run by Nazi bigwigs and permeated with Nazi ideology. The more critical the situation became in 1941 and 1942, the more the German Red Cross refused to cooperate with its international partners.24
No one in Theresienstadt knew much about the activities of the resistance group in Geneva, which included the work of Jaromir Kapocky, a member of the Czech government in exile that was based in London and led by Jan Masaryk. The inmates of Theresienstadt might speculate that the SS visit could in some way be connected to such efforts, but this was simply wishful thinking, as was the belief that transports had been ended because the Germans were expecting defeat.
In reality, the leading National Socialists had no intention of stopping the transpor
ts. Their machinery of death was running in high gear. No matter how great their military losses, and no matter what reports might appear in the foreign press about German crimes, they were not about to veer from their course. Quite the opposite was the case. Failures and the threat of impending defeat only fanned the fanatic zeal of the SS to employ all its energies in completing the “final solution” before the war came to an end.
Paradoxically, the urgent appeals to the Allies, in particular those coming from Geneva, gave the Nazis greater latitude for their actions. The information sent by telegram in March 1942 to London and Washington was so monstrous that it exceeded the ability of its recipients to comprehend it, and so the credibility of the messages was undermined—which suited the Germans just fine. It was easy for them to publicly brand such reports horror stories invented by their enemies and to turn to an old but effective instrument of their own: counterpropaganda.
What shape such counterpropaganda might take had long been decided, as is clear from a document issued by the Reich Security Main Office. When its head, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, suggested to his superior, Heinrich Himmler, that there be a “dispersal of those in Theresienstadt over sixty years of age,” and requested permission to begin transporting five thousand Jews over the age of sixty, Heinrich Himmler had his secretary reply on February 16: “The Reich Führer SS does not wish these Jews to be transported from Theresienstadt, since this action might disrupt the general tendency for Jews to die quietly in the old folks ghetto of Theresienstadt.”25
Thursday, April 22, 1943
I had a horrible earache and cried all night. I saw the ear doctor this morning—ear infection. I have to stop writing because it hurts too much.
Friday, April 23, 1943
I’m lying in sick bay. This morning they punctured my eardrum, and it hurt a lot. There are four of us in one room. I have my bed and my peace and quiet. Papa has a bad cold and won’t be coming to see me for two or three days.
Thursday, April 29, 1943
I’m still in sick bay, there’s a lot of seepage from the ear, but my fever is no longer so high. I’m reading a book of fairy tales that Auntie borrowed for me. I play with the doll that I borrowed from Trude. But most of the time I sleep. My other ear hurts a little, too.
Tuesday, May 4, 1943
I’m doing quite well today. They drew some blood from a vein yesterday, and twice from my finger. And again today. Dr. Stern has found something to indicate that I might have typhoid. Results will be back in a week. But I’m told that if I do have typhoid, it’s almost over, since my fever has gone down.
Papa received a package, but sad to say there was no fruit in it. I have such a craving for lemons and oranges. I haven’t eaten an orange for a year, or a lemon in two months. I lie here while it’s so beautiful outside. Everything is in bloom. The girls are still on vacation for Pesach, and Frau Prof. Brumliková has been reading Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables to them. They’re going to draw more blood, and I will scream with pure anger.
I hope that the war is over in a year. People here come up with rumors that are so optimistic, and they make everybody happy. When they learn the truth, they are crushed. And in Theresienstadt that sort of news spreads like wildfire.
While Helga was in sick bay, several girls in Room 28 were making presents for Mother’s Day. Ela carved the emblem of Theresienstadt out of a piece of wood. Judith would lay aside small bits of her scant daily rations, especially from the buns, in order to create a “cake” from them. Others painted a picture or designed Mother’s Day cards.
Little Zajíček—Ruth Schächter—stood sadly on the sidelines and watched her friends’ activities. She had no one in Theresienstadt except her brother, Alex, who was two years older. Her parents had fled to Palestine, leaving both children behind in the Jewish orphanage in Brno—and her case was not unique. Many Jewish children ended up in orphanages even though their parents were still alive. Often the only choice adults had was to flee abroad illegally, but it was far too dangerous to take children along. And so many parents made the heartrending decision to place their children in the care of a Jewish orphanage and hope that the children would be able to follow them as soon as possible with what was called a “youth certificate.” This hope was rarely realized. Zajíček had just turned twelve. She felt very much alone. Like all girls her age, she was at a crucial point in her development, when a mother figure is indispensable.
“Although Tella was very strict,” Helga recalls today, “I did everything I could to gain her attention. I had a passionate need for a mother’s affection. I missed my mother very much.” Her longing for her mother comes up again and again throughout her diary. On June 9, 1943, she wrote:
For several days now I’ve been tormented by thoughts that keep circling around Mama and the question of why she divorced Papa. I plucked up my courage this evening and asked Papa. He told me that he would rather not reveal the reason for their divorce just yet. But, as I already knew, they had not separated in anger. He even bought her an apartment after the divorce, and furnished it, and bought her an entire wardrobe when she left Vienna. And they still correspond regularly. He also told me that Mama was very worried about me (but not like Papa—very few people worry the way he does).
People who don’t know why Mama left for England think she simply left me with Papa. I know it was Mama who wanted me to go to Auntie in Kyjov, and Papa agreed that this was better for me. Back then, Hitler wasn’t in Czechoslovakia yet. Mama was to go to England first and get herself established there. Then I was supposed to follow. But war broke out in the meantime.
I started sobbing yesterday, without meaning to, and Papa began to cry as well. When we calmed down, he said: After the war you’ll join your Mama, and things will get better for you. You’ll learn how a young lady behaves.
Utopian dreams give strength, as do memories of enjoyable moments—such as the time when Lenka’s mother had bought an old guitar for herself. Perhaps this was the last time that Lenka had seen her mother carefree and cheerful. Why else would she have written, with the help of her friend Handa, the following poem for her mother, which Handa had copied down in her notebook.
Once when times were very good
You bought for fun, in music mood,
An old guitar
At first the urge to strum was strong
And you practiced very long
On your old guitar
Less and less you played by choice,
Weaker got the guitar’s voice
Sometimes in and sometimes off
Time flew past, you did not play,
Not even touch it every day.
“I will tomorrow,” you did say
Alas, tomorrow never came
Abandoned the guitar became
You never ever played again
Two years have passed,
Fast and fleet
Since your guitar fell asleep
Will you with this gift remember
All the beauty of its song
All the days when your desire
To play it well was very strong
Translated by Eva Gross, née Weiss
Zajíček (“Bunny”)—Ruth Schächter
Lenka clung to her mother; Handa and Helga leaned on their fathers. Just knowing that they had a parent nearby gave them a vital feeling of security. Girls like Zajíček and Muška lacked that feeling of security; they lived in Theresienstadt without their parents. Eva Landa can still picture Muška—with those thick braids that made her look like an angel—on her thirteenth birthday, on April 30, 1943. A relative came to see her with a bouquet. Muška clasped the bouquet and wept.
Zajíček and Muška looked on wistfully as their friends prepared for Mother’s Day. And then Zajíček came to a decision, which she described later that year, in October 1943, in her essay answering the question “What has made the deepest impression on you since you have been living in the Girls’ Home?”
It was Mother’s Day. The girls
were all busy making presents for their mothers. I felt so dreadfully out of place. I thought maybe I should give a present to someone I felt about the way I feel about my mother. And that someone—my substitute mother—is really two people: Frau Mühlstein and Tella! They’ve looked after me for a year and a half like a mother. Why shouldn’t I thank them for that? I’d like to grow up to be like them.
I made little gifts. When I saw Frau Mühlstein sitting at the table, I was filled with emotion. I slowly went over to her, and eventually gave her my present and a big kiss. Then I ran away. I could see how surprised and happy Frau Mühlstein was. But my joy was a hundred times greater than hers.
Then I went to Tella. I was shaking all over. I wished her a happy Mother’s Day and began to cry. Suddenly I felt very good.—For as long as I live I shall never forget Mother’s Day in Theresienstadt.
Home 28
Ruth Schächter (Zajíček)
My parents live in Palestine.
Helga’s diary continues:
Thursday, May 6, 1943
It is horrible here in Theresienstadt, a regular Babylon: Germans, Austrians, Czechs, Dutch, a few Danes, French; I even know a Finnish girl. There are baptized Jews and so-called Mischlinge [children of mixed religious heritage]. A girl named Antonia, who bunked next to me, has had a very tough time. She arrived three weeks ago from Brno. Her father is Aryan, her mother Jewish. She’s fourteen and was baptized in 1939, but her baptism is not recognized. She is here all alone and has few belongings. She feels uncomfortable in a Jewish environment. She longs to go home so terribly that she cries almost all day. Her father accompanied her as far as Prague, where they said their heartrending goodbyes. Now she lies in the bunk beside me.
The Girls of Room 28: Friendship, Hope, and Survival in Theresienstadt Page 10
