Vera Nath
Vera Nath and her transport tag, which she was wearing around her neck when she arrived in Theresienstadt
Vera Nath was born near the Czech-Polish border in Opava, the capital of the Moravian Silesian region, on March 25, 1930, four years after her sister, Hana. Her father, Hermann Nath, was of Russian heritage and dealt in textiles and carpets. Her mother, Elisabeth Nath, née Kolb, came from Sopron in Hungary.
Like most people in Opava, her family spoke German. But in 1936 Vera was sent to a Czech school, in response to the obvious change in the political climate caused by Germany’s policy of expansion and as an expression of allegiance to the Czech Republic. The next two years were peaceful ones for Vera, apart from the language problems she faced at school. The family still spent vacations in Hungary or Yugo slavia, or at Spindlermühle in the Giant Mountains.
Then came March 1938 and the annexation of Austria. “We had just returned from a vacation in Yugoslavia, when my Papa suddenly came home very upset and said, ‘We must go to Slovakia at once. There might be a plebiscite. It would be better for us not to be here.’ I still recall that moment very clearly. I was terribly sad, because I had brought a turtle back from Yugoslavia and had to leave it behind.”
Six months later, the Sudetenland was occupied and the Naths fled—first to Trenčin, then to Brno, and finally to Ostrava in Moravia. There Vera was enrolled in a Jewish school. “People spoke a different Czech from the one I had learned, which was something I didn’t like at all. I was very unhappy. I was in the third grade. But I had not even finished the year when the Germans marched in and burned down seven houses of worship, and we fled to Prague.”
Trapped in Prague, the Nath family met the fate typical of Czech Jews in the years that followed. Although Hermann Nath had a considerable fortune, the Nazis’ policy of Aryanization of Jewish property barred him from any access to it. By the time the family finally managed to obtain a visa and tickets for passage to Chile, the borders were closed. They were lucky, however, not to have set sail on the ship on which they had booked—the Goral—which ran into a mine and exploded. There were no survivors. Eventually the Naths, along with four other families, wound up in cramped quarters at Karová 13 in the Old City. They arrived in Theresienstadt on July 8, 1943, on one of the last transports from Prague.
Hanka Wertheimer
Hanka Wertheimer was born on December 12, 1929, in Znojmo, an industrial town in southern Moravia, where her grandparents owned a canning factory that was steeped in tradition and famous for its Znaimer pickles and sauerkraut. It was a family business that was run by Hanka’s father, Fritz, and several of his siblings.
Hanka’s mother, Lily Wertheimer, née Reich, came from Nový Bydzov in Moravia and had studied philology and philosophy at the Sorbonne. She was a progressive, cosmopolitan woman who loved to travel. She was one of the first women in Czechoslovakia to own an automobile and to drive it herself.
Hanka had a close relationship with her governess, Mařka, who was like a second mother to her and who stayed with the family even as the times grew difficult. After the Wertheimers fled from Znojmo to Prague, their living space became smaller. Hanka’s sister, Miriam, managed to emigrate to Palestine in 1939, but her father was seized by the Gestapo in 1940.
From 1941 on, Hanka, her mother, and Mařka lived in a little apartment at Žitná 38, near Wenceslas Square. Mařka had rented it in her own name. Although she was a Christian and although the family could no longer afford to pay her, she stayed with them.
During this period, Hanka attended the Jewish School at Jáchymová 3 and spent most of her weekends at Hagibor, the Jewish athletic field. Life for her became increasingly defined by fear.
Then, in May 1942, came the assassination of Heydrich and the German reprisals. Prague was put under curfew, with no one allowed on the streets after eight in the evening. The Gestapo began their sweep. Zitná 38 was not spared. “Two SS men with a big dog entered our apartment. Each of us had to show our papers. My mother couldn’t find hers. Because my mother spoke very good German, the SS man asked, ‘Are you German?’ And my mother responded, ‘No.’—‘Are you Czech?’—‘No.’—‘Well then, what are you?’ And my mother said, ‘I’m Jewish.’ And the SS man said, ‘Quick, quick, your papers!’ While my mother looked for her papers—I knew the whole time where they were but didn’t know whether she intentionally wasn’t finding them or simply couldn’t locate them—the building’s caretaker told the SS, who were actually looking for men, ‘There are no men living here. Only three women.’ He was on our side—which was very lucky for us. Once I realized that my mother really couldn’t find her papers, I told her where they were. She showed the documents, and the SS left. But the fear remained.”
The order for transport to Theresienstadt came in March 1943. Hanka experienced an odd sense of comfort when it did, because she knew that there she would meet many of her friends and relatives again. She owed her assignment to Room 28 to Rita Böhm, a counselor who was a cousin of her mother’s and who told her, “Put her in Room 28. It’s the best-run Home.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Light in the Darkness: Brundibár
Wednesday, September 22, 1943
Ela and I are like sisters. We share everything, from cottage cheese to pepper. I’d love to have an answer: What is nothing? Nothing doesn’t even exist! But there’s no such thing as total emptiness either; everything contains something. And then I’d love to know: How can a person imagine infinity—for example, an infinite line or the infinite universe?
Lights out in fifteen minutes, so I’ll have to stop writing soon.—The lights won’t be turned off after all. Eva has promised to leave a light on if we’re very quiet. That’s fair. I can go on writing and won’t have to start in all over again tomorrow morning.
Why is there life on Earth? Did nature do it, or is there really a higher power? Who can answer that for me, and whom can I believe? No one knows for sure. I don’t believe that our Earth is the only planet where there’s life. In infinite space we’re just a tiny island, so why would it be the only one with life on it???
I wish humanity’s dream of living in peace comes true. If two people live on a little island they become closer and grow fond of each other. And we on Earth are but a little island in infinite space. We’re constantly waging war for more lebensraum—and if we could we would declare war on other planets. Maybe we’ll be wiser someday. Maybe someday we’ll realize that by constantly waging war on each other we shed blood for nothing.
Eva said today that I would be a scientist someday. I don’t think so. We won’t have enough money after the war. But if I ever have the chance, these are the things I will study.
On September 22, 1943, the premiere of Brundibár was just one day away—and so was the twenty-second birthday of its musical director, Rudi Freudenfeld. The children’s excitement during rehearsals had been growing by leaps and bounds over the last few days.
Down in the basement of L 410, Kamilla Rosenbaum, the choreographer from Prague, was rehearsing the waltz steps with the young people for the umpteenth time. Tella was at the piano, playing the magical Valse lente cantabile that comes from Brundibár’s barrel organ. “One, two, three—girls, left foot forward, right foot to the side and draw the left foot across. The boys just the opposite, always keep the three-quarter time, one, two, three, and stand up straight, don’t let your head droop, keep your arms at the level of your eyes and right foot back and left foot to the side and turn, turn in waltz time. Keep an eye on your feet, otherwise you’ll be stepping on each other.” The children danced and danced, they whirled in circles. The world was whirling with them.
Rudolf Freudenfeld, the musical director of the Theresienstadt production of Brundibár
“I was so happy,” Ela says, as if this all happened only yesterday. “I ran to my mother, and my mother was an excellent dancer. And I said, ‘Mama, now you can dance the waltz with me, the English waltz.’ And she looked at me in asto
nishment and asked, ‘Where did you learn that?’ And I began to sing, and she threw her shoes to one side and said, ‘Let’s dance, Elinka!’ She loved dancing with me.”
As Markéta Stein danced across the room in three-quarter time with her daughter and gazed into Ela’s radiant eyes, reality was forgotten for a moment or two, and the room was filled with the conviction that everything would soon be all right again. How very much Markéta wished for a better life for her daughter! That Ela is taking part in a children’s opera—even playing the pretty role of the cat, that she had learned to dance—all this in the ghetto! Weren’t these good omens?
Perhaps the prophecy of her brother, Dr. Otto Altenstein, with whom she shared the little room, would soon come true. “When the plums are ripe,” he would say, “we’ll be going back home.”
Quite possibly Dr. Altenstein patted his niece on the head that day as he said those words. And even though the plum trees would soon be dropping their fruit for the second time since they arrived, he clung resolutely to this idea. One day he and his sister and her daughters Ela and Ilona would return to Prague and begin a new life there. And the children would gradually get over all they had experienced in their younger years.
An original poster for the Theresienstadt production of Brundibár
Late in the afternoon of September 23, 1943, throngs of people, young and old, streamed into the attic room of the Magdeburg Barracks. The hundred or so chairs were not nearly enough for an audience of at least three times that number. The doors were thrown open and there were more people crowding outside. They all wanted to be part of the extraordinary event that the children had been talking about for weeks: the premiere of Brundibár, an opera performed by children, for children.
In a little side room opening onto the improvised stage, the young actors, tense with stage fright, prepare to make their entrances. They go over their lines again and again, encouraging one another and humming their songs. With some dabs of makeup they are transformed into their characters. Ela, all in black in her sister’s ski pants and her mother’s black sweater, is electrified when, with a few strokes of chalk, František Zelenka, the stage designer and artistic director of the play, gives her face its feline expression. Then he quickly smears bootblack over her naked feet, and the metamorphosis is complete. She feels as if she is on a “real big stage.”
Excitement is running high, both backstage and out in front. The musicians take their places. The composer, Hans Krása, is present, as is the choreographer, Kamilla Rosenbaum. Baštík takes a peek at the audience and spots his father, Ota Freudenfeld, sitting in a place of honor. It was on Ota’s fiftieth birthday, in July 1941, that Rafael Schächter mentioned Brundibár for the first time, and on that very evening the decision was made to rehearse the opera with the children of the Boys’ Orphanage in Prague. Hans Krása followed the rehearsals of his opera with great interest. But he never got to attend the premiere. On August 10, 1942, a few days before the opera was performed—clandestinely, in the dining hall of the orphanage—he was on a transport to Theresienstadt.
Now, a year later, nearly all of them were together again—the young actors from that first performance and many of the friends who had met in the orphanage on Belgicka 25. And within a very short time, Brundibár, Krása’s children’s opera, was displaying its remarkable powers.
Forty children have gathered behind the plank wall. A few lamps cast a dim light. Then the first few notes sound, by genuine masters of chamber music: Karel Fröhlich, Romouald Süssmann, the Kohn brothers, Fritzek Weiss, and Gideon Klein.
The children keep repeating their opening lines in their minds. Their eyes move back and forth, from the audience to Baštík, who greets their glances with a smile. They do not even notice how hot it is in the room. All they can feel is the tension, the expectation in the air. Then Baštík steps before the orchestra and raises his baton.
A scene from the children’s opera Brundibár, sketched by Ruth Gutmann
The spirited opening measures have begun, and now the children are singing: “Tohle je malý Pepíček, zemrěl mu dávno tatíček za ruku vede Aninku, maji nemocnou maminku. …” (“That is little Pepíček. His father is dead. He’s holding Aninka’s hand. Their mother is sick. …”) Aninka and Pepíček come onstage, and Piňt’a Mühlstein sings: “Jà se jmenuju Pepíček, dávna mu zemřel tatíček. …” (“My name is Pepíček. My father died a long time ago. …”)
“Actually we conceived of the opera as a kind of Brechtian didactic play,” the librettist Adolf Hoffmeister, who managed to escape to England, would explain after the war. “The plot is very simple. The mother is ill, her two children, Pepíček and Aninka, go to fetch milk, but they have no money. They notice that passersby are giving money to the organ-grinder. So they stand at a street corner and begin to sing. But their voices are too weak. Then the animals of the town come and advise them to form a children’s choir to make their voices stronger. And the animals invite schoolchildren to join in, which they do, and their voices get strong enough to defeat the organ-grinder. The children’s solidarity allowed them to triumph over the organ-grinder Brundibár because they were undaunted by the task.”1
“The most difficult problem in planning this children’s opera was, needless to say, the libretto,” Hans Krása revealed in a brief retrospect in his 1943 report, written just a few days before the last children from the orphanage arrived in Theresienstadt on July 7, 1943. “The usual dramatic, human conflicts—erotic, political, and such—could not be used, of course. Neither the librettist nor I was partial to fairy tales. But all the same the author managed to create a text that has a childlike (but not childish) gaiety about it and that dramatizes a real-life occurrence, in which the effectiveness of collective strength in the struggle against evil is compellingly presented. In the case of this children’s opera it is a singing contest that pits all the children against the organ-grinder.
“The special charm for me as a composer lay in writing music that is absolutely singable for children, but that sounds modern to audience members of all ages and does not resort to the clichés of children’s songs. Despite the fact that music for children should not have a range greater than the fifth, I did not want to do violence to my natural temperament as a composer.”2
Hans Krása and Adolf Hoffmeister had created the opera in 1938, inspired by an announcement in Rythmus, a monthly magazine for contemporary music. “The Association for Musical Education is announcing a competition and offering 5,000 crowns for a children’s opera,” the text read. “The rules are that the opera run no longer than sixty minutes and be written in such a way that it can be performed entirely by children. Any piece that was written or performed before this competition will be ineligible. The plays must be offered anonymously, in the form of piano music. The deadline is September 16, 1938. Address: SHU, Prague IV, Toskan Palace, where entrants can receive additional information.”
Hans Krása (left) and Adolf Hoffmeister in 1938
It was not the first time that these two friends had participated in a joint effort. Hans Krása had written the music for a theater piece titled Mládí ve hře (Youth at Play), Adolf Hoffmeister’s comedy produced in 1936 by the avant-garde theater director E. F. Burian. Krása’s Song for Anna became a popular hit when it appeared in a German version by Friedrich Torberg under the title Anna Says No.
Hoffmeister and Krása seized the opportunity offered by the competition and set to work. The danger from Germany was advancing relentlessly and the future appeared increasingly gloomy. What would become of the next generation?
Although their motivation for this final joint artistic effort was the competion, their underlying desire was to resist the political turmoil with the only weapon they had—art. Above all, they wanted to arm the children with the courage to face a perilous future. They could never have imagined what the fate of this generation of Jewish children— indeed, of their own families—would be, or the circumstances that would land one of these two frie
nds in Theresienstadt.
On their small improvised stage, the children perform with growing ease. Excitement and fear yield to an awareness of being part of something important. The actors merge with the opera’s plot, with their roles, with the songs and music. Reality is forgotten. The play is reality. Reality is life. They are performing for their lives. They sing, play, dance, spin in three-quarter time; ultimately they defeat and chase away the organ-grinder Brundibár. “Brundibár poražen” (“We have defeated Brundibár”) resounds triumphantly in every throat. They sing it one more time, and the voices of the audience blend with the voices onstage. Everyone is singing now, singing at the top of their lungs this hymn of victory over the evil Brundibár. Both the performers and the audience are caught up in the enthusiasm of a momentary certainty from which no one wants to awaken: “Brundibár poražen.”
“The applause was incredible,” recalls Ela, describing the elated response to the performance. “Whenever we sang the finale at the end, ‘Brundibár poražen,’ there was a storm of applause, and the audience wanted to hear the song again and again, until they almost had to throw us all out. We made the most of this moment of freedom.” Whenever Ela remembers this moment, it is as if the scene is coming back to life. “And there was something else, too,” she adds. “We didn’t have to wear the yellow stars. Even in Theresienstadt we always had to wear the yellow star—but not when we were performing Brundibár. It was the only exception. For those moments we were not branded with the yellow star, which meant that for this brief precious time, we were free.”
The Girls of Room 28: Friendship, Hope, and Survival in Theresienstadt Page 15
