…I never saw another butterfly…

Children’s Drawings and Poems

From the Terezin Concentration Camp

1942-1944

What is Terezin?• “a Czech town, formed in

1780, nestled where two rivers meet”

• “surrounded by thick, octagon-shaped walls”

• “narrow streets joined at right angles”

• “homes dark and bleak”• “huge gray barracks” • “set in a serene world of

meadows and low rolling hills and summer butterflies”

How did Terezin become a concentration camp in 1941?

It was an attempt to make the Germans look humanitarian in the

eyes of the Free World!• “created by Germans to solve an

awkward problem they encountered…what to do with certain special categories of Jews”

• “Terezin became a model ghetto to be inhabited and governed by the Jews”

Who was transported to Terezin?

“Privileged Jews”• Intellectuals and writers• Actors, artists,

composers and conductors

• Jews married to Aryans• Half-Jews• Veterans of the First

World War• Jews of all ages

What actually went on inside the walls of Terezin?

• Men were separated from women and children

• It was forbidden to write home.• Smoking was punished.• Nobody was allowed to walk on pavement.• Every uniformed person had to be saluted.• There were no vehicles for transport.• There was not enough fuel, food or water.• The elderly died alone of dysentery.

Did the children know that death lay waiting for

them? …yes

“We stood in a long queue with a plate in our hand, into

which they ladled a little warmed-up

water with a salty or a coffee flavor.”

“We got used to sleeping

without a bed.”

“We got used to undeserved slaps,

blows, and executions.”

“We got accustomed to seeing people die

in their own excrement, to seeing piled-up coffins

full of corpses.”

-Peter Fischl, age 15

Terezin Statistics, 1941-1945

• From 1941-1945, over 141,000 Jews entered into Terezin

• 33,456 died in the here in the ghetto• 88,202 were transported to death

camps in the East• 16,832 remained by 1945• Of the 15,000 children deported from

here to Auschwitz……100 survived.-none under the age of 14

What did Terezin do to the children?

“…that ghetto, the sunlight of the day and the terrors of the night, their dreamy remembrances of the past and their desolate encounters with the present…”

Much of what it did to them we can see in the art they left behind.

Friedl Dicker-Brandeis• A highly sophisticated artist in Terezin• Put her life at risk as she used art to help

the children handle life in the ghetto• Would tell stories and have children draw

objects she mentioned• Encouraged children to draw their

concealed inner worlds and their tortured inner emotions

• Was deported to Auschwitz in 1944 and died"I remember thinking in school how I would grow up and would protect my

students from unpleasant impressions, from uncertainty, from scrappy learning. Today only one thing seems important — to rouse the desire towards creative work, to make it a habit, and to teach how to overcome difficulties that are insignificant in comparison with the goal to which you are striving." ~Friedl, 1940

Pavel Friedmann-born on January 7, 1921

-deported to Terezin in 1942-died in Auschwitz on September 29, 1944

“The Butterfly”-Pavel Friedmann, 1942

For seven weeks I’ve lived in here,Penned up inside this ghetto.But I have found what I love here.The dandelions call to meAnd the white chestnut branches in the court.

Only I never saw another butterfly.   That butterfly was the last one.Butterflies don’t live in here, in the ghetto.

The last, the very last,So richly, brightly, dazzlingly

yellow.Perhaps if the sun’s tears would sing

against a white stone....

Such, such a yellowIs carried lightly ’way up high.It went away I’m sure because it wished to kiss the world good-bye.

Final Thoughts…

• The last remaining Jews left Terezin on August 17, 1945.

• Terezin has since returned to its tranquil surroundings. Virtually no trace remains of those nightmarish ghetto years.

• One sees the rolling hills, the gentle juncture of the two rivers, the Bohemian mountains.

• And butterflies.