From then on Brundibár was performed once a week. Every performance was a sellout. Tickets, which were given out by the Freizeit-gestaltung (recreation office), disappeared in a flash. This little piece mesmerized both audience and performers. “It was a light in the darkness for the children, and even for the adults,” said Leopold Lowy, who had also seen the production at the orphanage in Prague.
Suddenly there were young stars in Theresienstadt. “There goes Aninka,” the children called out when they saw Greta Hofmeister. “Hello, Pepíček,” they said when they ran into Piňt’a Mühlstein. Zdeněk Ohrenstein now answered to the name of Dog. Ela was Cat or Kitty, and Maria Mühlstein was Sparrow. And little Stephan Sommer, the youngest member of the ensemble, who shared the role of the sparrow with Maria Mühlstein and hopped about the stage so charmingly, often heard people say, “Here he is, our sweet little sparrow.”
But most popular of all was Brundibár himself, the organ-grinder, played by Honza Treichlinger. Rudolf Freudenfeld composed an unforgettable memorial to him: “He truly joined the ranks of the famous. He was renowned and revered. Wherever he went, the cry went up, ‘Brundibár, Brundibár.’ Honza instinctively portrayed the figure of Brundibár with such humanity that, although he played the role of the villain, he was not just the children’s favorite, but the audience’s as well. He learned to wiggle his pasted-on mustache, wiggle it so brilliantly and at just the perfect moment that all tension in the audience vanished and we could actually hear the children heave a sigh of relief. From the moment he first created the character he played every performance without a stand-in. No one could have replaced him.”3
Everyone was thrilled by Honza Treichlinger. “We loved him,” the girls of Room 28 say, “although he was playing Brundibár, the villain and the enemy of us children. But he did it so comically and with such wit—we loved Honza in that role. He was one of a kind—simply wonderful.”
Greta Klingsberg, née Hofmeister, lived in Room 25 of Girls’ Home L 410. She played the role of Aninka. “It was incredibly beautiful,” she says of the production. “It was out of this world. The opera’s message was, of course, very important to us: Those who love justice and stand by us can play with us. Most important of all: Good will triumph because we stick together.”
Handa Pollak sang in the choir and on one occasion played the role of the dog. “The opera’s strength was in the idea of solidarity, of holding together,” she says. “We saw Brundibár as Hitler, and the baker who does not want to give bread to the children and the milkman who does not want to give them milk as the SS. With every performance we triumphed over them. It was something like our small underground war against Hitler and the Nazis.”
Eva Herrmann lived in Room 24 of Girls’ Home L 414. She sang in the children’s choir. “We just belted the finale out,” she recalls. “At that moment, we felt free. Somehow we sensed that this was not just a play. Suddenly we were able to identify with an idea that embraced all our hopes: that good would triumph over evil.”
Jiří Kotouč lived in Room 1 of Boys’ Home L 417. “Most of the children who acted in Brundibár did not survive. So it must be said that for them, Brundibár was the last source of great joy in their lives.”
Eva Landa tried to get tickets for as many performances of Brundibár as she possibly could. Although she was still sorry that she had not been chosen to play one of the schoolchildren, and although she envied her close friends—especially Ela, Maria, Flaška, and Handa—because they were part of the ensemble, she was still happy just to sit in the audience in the Magdeburg Barracks alongside one of her girlfriends or her boyfriend, Harry.
By now she knew every scene and every song, as well as many of the actors and musicians. The moment the first measures of the opening song rang out, the boundaries between her and the brother and sister on the stage fell away, and Eva lost herself in the performance as if in a wonderful, recurring dream. She eagerly awaited the lullaby, which sounded as if it was being sung by angels. “Maminka kolíbá, détátko houpy, hou, myslí si co bude, až děti vyrostou.” (“Mama rocks the cradle and thinks, my, my, what will become of the children when they are grown?”) It always grew very quiet in the audience, everyone holding their breath in expectation. “Každý kos ze hnízda jedenkrát vylétá.” (“Every bird will one day fly from the nest. Must leave, not knowing why, and fly out into the world.”)
“For me it’s one of the most beautiful songs,” Eva says today. “It’s about saying goodbye to childhood—and that had a very deep meaning for us back then. We were twelve, thirteen years old, and our childhood was coming to an end. We were facing the adult world, the world of bakers, ice-cream vendors, policemen, and Brundibárs. And the better world, the world of the children, defeated the adults and Brundibár, who underestimated us. During the time that we were caught up in the opera, we firmly believed in our victory.”
Why should what was happening in the real world be any different from what was happening onstage, where a dramatic example of the united strength of children and animals—a dog, a cat, and a sparrow— was played out before their very eyes? Why shouldn’t everything turn out all right? “Panta rhei” (“Everything flows”), Eva Weiss had written on one of the motto cards she hung on the wall of Room 28, and now the choir of schoolchildren was singing the lullaby’s refrain: “Roste strom, teče proud, plyne cas mraky jdou.” (“The tree grows, the river flows, time flows, clouds pass. Year after year, step by step.”)
On the stage, the visitors to the market are tossing coin after coin into Pepíček’s cap. He happily shows them to his sister, Aninka. Then suddenly Brundibár appears, snatches the cap from the boy’s hand, and runs away—along with all the money! “Children, children, catch the thief!” Pepíček cries, and the entire chorus of schoolchildren chases after Brundibár.
The hunt begins. Because Brundibár represents the evil that has brought misery into the lives of the children, because they see him as Hitler, as his Nazis, and as all the hangers-on and supporters of his dictatorial regime, they pursue him with furious determination. The wellspring of sudden energy that fuels their common cause against Brundibár seems inexhaustible. It is an energy that flows from all sides—from the audience, from the musicians in the orchestra, from the very streets and barracks of Theresienstadt, and, of course, from the hearts of the performing children. All these energies are united to strike a single blow against the evil organ-grinder. The children finally catch up with Brundibár, who flings the cap away and flees. “Brundibár poražen!” (“We have defeated Brundibár!”) cry one and all. He is defeated by the children and their friends—the dog, the cat, and the sparrow. Good has triumphed over evil.
It was like a fairy tale, yet for the moment this was reality. It was a vision of the future transported to the stage, borne up by the principle of hope and belief in the victory over Hitler. “When at the end we all sang ‘Brundibár poražen,’ we firmly believed in ourselves and in our victory,” Eva says. “At that moment we looked optimistically into the future.”
Tuesday, September 28, 1943
Ela is going with Honza (from Home 9, he used to go with Lenka). Every evening she tells me about their rendezvous. My last thoughts here in Theresienstadt are about boys. At home they had been my first thoughts—for the simple reason that after 1941 I was no longer able to attend school and I had little opportunity to find a girlfriend. And so I made friends with boys. I had a lot of free time and was bored. Here, things are different. Every noon and every evening I go visit Papa for a while, and I have to spend the rest of my time in the Home, even when there are no classes. When we have a free day I use the time for drawing. When would I go out with boys?
Soon it will be Rosh Hashanah. We’re going to have a celebration.
Rosh Hashanah, the two-day observance of the Jewish New Year, was approaching, and the counselors made every effort to create an atmosphere of contemplation and introspection appropriate to the holiday. According to Jewish tradition, it is time when
the books containing the deeds of all humanity are opened and the fate of each person is determined for the coming year. This is why people place special emphasis on the wishes and dreams they hope will be fulfilled. “May you be inscribed for a good year,” or simply “Shanah tovah” (“A good year”), was the greeting on everyone’s lips.
Of course, it was impossible to celebrate Rosh Hashanah in Theresienstadt in the traditional fashion. There were neither apples nor honey to dip them in. There was no fish, whose head meat is customarily eaten (the literal translation of rosh is “head”), because just as we are directed by our heads, we pray that the good fate set down for us on Rosh Hashanah will direct our actions for the entire year. And there was no “new fruit” over which to say the traditional blessing of thankfulness for having been kept alive and healthy so that we can celebrate the holiday.
Yet most of the girls did not miss these rituals. Until now they had never known them. Like Helga, Ela, and Handa, they came from assimilated families. It was not unusual for their homes to be decorated with Christmas trees in December. Handa recalls just such a moment—it was right after their flight from Olbramovice. She was living with her aunt in Prague. Christmas Eve was drawing ever closer, and there was still no Christmas tree in the house. Finally she grew very nervous and asked her aunt about it. “My aunt pointed to the Hanukkah candles and said, ‘That is our Christmas tree.’ And I was very disappointed. I didn’t even know that there was such a holiday.”
In 1943 Professor Israel Kestenberg wrote about the goals of the Youth Welfare Office at Theresienstadt, pointing out that it was everyone’s duty to familiarize himself or herself with Jewish traditions and customs. “This is a prerequisite for any connection with a Jewish community. To celebrate the Sabbath and the High Holy Days, to behave in synagogue in traditional fashion, is a basic requirement for Jewish communal life. It is especially important to learn about our people’s past. Only in this way can our young people learn to value our nation, which has always been prepared to sacrifice like no other.”4
Flaška and Lenka did their part in helping to prepare for the feast in Room 28. They wrote a comedy about two old maids titled Amalka and Posinka and presented it as a prelude to Rosh Hashanah. The performance was a great success. They subsequently presented Amalka and Posinka with new variations and sequels, sometimes in other rooms of the Girls’ Home.
AMALKA AND POSINKA
Two old maids are sitting on a bench fast asleep. They are dressed in very funny clothes. One has a stocking on her head.
Posinka (suddenly wakes up): Amalka!
Amalka: What is it, Posinka?
Posinka: It will soon be Rosh Hashanah. Shouldn’t we buy something good to eat?
Amalka: A goose?
Posinka: That’s too expensive!
Amalka: A pig?
Posinka: That’s not kosher!
Amalka and Posinka together: Let’s buy a turkey!
Amalka and Posinka go off to buy a turkey and soon return with one. They tug it in by the wings and pluck all its feathers. Suddenly the turkey comes to life—but alas, without feathers! And since it’s so cold, the turkey starts to shiver. So Amalka and Posinka decide to knit it a sweater. They knit and knit, and keep trying the sweater on the turkey, and finally pull it down over it.
All of a sudden, someone comes bounding in and calls out:
“All Jews have to hand over their warm winter clothes!”
(There was, as Eva Landa recalls, always applause and laughter at this point.)
Amalka and Posinka take the turkey with them to the Council of Elders and ask for permission to let the turkey keep its warm sweater. They negotiate with the chief elder. Finally Amalka says to him: “You have hair on your body. But our turkey doesn’t have a single feather!” And the chief elder takes pity on the turkey and allows the two women to keep the sweater.
Very happy now, Amalka and Posinka return home, pulling the turkey by the wings and shouting: Long live Poppi—our turkey!
In another version, Amalka has false teeth that she keeps in a glass of water overnight. One night she wakes up thirsty and drinks the water, and her false teeth with it. This gives her a terrible tummy ache, and she goes to the doctor (played by Zajíček), who prescribes a laxative for her and says, “Take Darmol now; you’ll soon feel—wow!” Amalka takes the medicine and suddenly her false teeth drop into her chamber pot. Still half asleep, she picks them out, puts them in her mouth, and scrunches her face into a grimace.
At this point everyone laughed again, as did Amalka, who shook so hard that her false teeth fell out again.
Helga’s diary continues:
Thursday, September 30, 1943
Yesterday evening was so beautiful! I’ll never forget it as long as I live. We had the most beautifully decorated room. Since we don’t have a chandelier, we wove a wreath of green leaves, red berries, and colored ribbons around the lamp. Our flag, which we hung on the closet, was decorated with wildflowers, and the large table was covered with a tablecloth, and was then set with wonderfully prepared food. We had three sandwiches, each one different, and after that a pudding with a delightful topping. There were candles in the middle of the table. We all wore white blouses and dark blue skirts. First we sang, then Tella spoke about the past year, about all the good things we experienced, and the sad things, too. But the happy moments out-weighed the sad, and as a way of promising that we will never forget the good things or our ideals, we sang our hymn. Frau Mühlstein lit the candles and said the brachah. And then we had our blow-out banquet.
I thought: I really should hug Tella. She was so beautiful and winning, and far more radiant than usual. But it wasn’t that I was surprised by Tella—she was simply happy to see what she had made of us.
On today of all days, we had to learn that Walter Deutsch had escaped from Theresienstadt two weeks earlier, only to be caught and sent to a concentration camp. What was that crazy boy thinking? It’s not so awful here. His parents are in Poland, and he’s twenty-three. But even worse is that we learned from a postcard sent by Frau Korschil that Walter Pollak and his wife died on January 27, 1943. Our whole family figures it happened like this: Walter left Theresienstadt along with Uncle Karl on January 26, 1943. On the 27th they were still en route, or might just have arrived at their destination. It definitely wasn’t suicide. That’s just not like them. So we think that maybe they were too old to do hard labor and so were murdered. We have no news from Uncle Karl, and we’re afraid he has met the same fate as the Pollaks.
The escapee Walter Deutsch was a distant relative of Helga’s, the son of Gustav Deutsch from Prostejov, who was her father’s cousin. Why had he risked fleeing? What was happening to him now in the concentration camp? And why had Walter Pollak and his wife died under such mysterious circumstances as soon as they had left Theresienstadt?
Hardly a day passed that was not darkened by such questions, by upsetting news and events. As always, the counselors tried to shield their wards from such daily horrors. But too much was happening, and they had reached the limits of their ability to cope with it all; they were often at their wit’s end.
This atmosphere also affected relations among the counselors. Especially in the Girls’ Home, the antagonism between Communist and Zionist counselors became heated. Moreover, the building itself was in a desolate state. The plaster was peeling from the walls and ceiling. The beds were falling apart, the toilets were often clogged, and the doors and windows no longer closed properly.
These poor conditions had to be tackled, and the leadership of the Girls’ Home reinforced. Gonda Redlich, the head of the Youth Welfare Office, decided that an energetic and prudent man should share the leadership role with Rosa Engländer. He gave the position to Willy Groag and entrusted him with the task of “bringing a breath of fresh air to the Girls’ Home.”
Willy Groag, a handsome young man, was born in Olomouc on August 7, 1914, to assimilated Jews who were passionate monarchists, a sentiment that couldn’t help
but creep onto their son’s birth certificate: Wilhelm Franz Mordechai Groag. “Wilhelm, in honor of Kaiser Wilhelm,” he liked to emphasize, “Franz, in honor of Kaiser Franz Josef, and, just so that something of the Jewish tradition remained, Mordechai, in honor of my grandfather Markus Mordechai Groag.”
Willy Groag had a doctorate in chemistry, and ever since 1938, when Gonda Redlich had recommended he read Heinrich Graetz’s eleven-volume History of the Jews from the Earliest Period to the Present, he had been a committed Zionist and educator for Hachsharah. From 1939 to 1942 he had been the head of the Prague branch of Maccabi Hatza’ir, a Zionist youth organization, and had taught chemistry, physics, mathematics, and drawing at the Youth Aliyah School, the Jewish middle school. Many of the children already knew this pleasant blue-eyed young man from their days in Prague.
Once appointed to his new position in the Girls’ Home, Willy Groag lost no time in ordering remedial measures. Craftsmen were organized and the worst damages repaired. The young woman who was in charge of bread rations in the Provisions Office was relieved of her post on grounds of having “provided for her own stomach,” and was replaced by another woman. Several counselors, and even several children, changed Homes.
But otherwise everything remained as it had been. Frau Roubiček, who was in charge of the registry lists, continued on in her office in L 410, right next to the main entrance, keeping a meticulous record in a large thick book of the daily count of residents of the Girls’ Home. In the infirmary, pediatricians Dr. Stern and Dr. Fischer worked alongside social worker Margit Mühlstein and nurses Eliska Klein and Ilse Landa to take care of the sick children. And Frau Salus, who was in charge of toilets, was still sitting outside the washroom, her basin of Lysol and a fine-tooth comb always handy, keeping a constant watchful eye on the girls’ hair in order to make sure that she didn’t miss a single louse. She also tried her hand at writing poetry.
The Girls of Room 28: Friendship, Hope, and Survival in Theresienstadt Page 16
