Terezin: Voices from the Holocaust by Ruth Thomson 2011

"[A] varied and fascinating account—for readers over age 8—of what was, in truth, a brutal transit camp." from a review by Meghan Cox Gurdon in WSJ.com 2/19/11

This slim, picture-book size volume was conceived for young readers, but that should not put off adults who will find this book beautifully executed and worthy of their attention if they are interested in the Holocaust or the Theresienstadt concentration camp, in particular.  The author has assembled the text from primary sources, using mostly quotes from journals, oral histories, works of art and photos of artifacts like records of an identity card of those who had been deported to Theresienstadt. Also, she has included photos of the camp, some of its buildings and prisoners, and current memorials.

The history of Hitler’s rise and the building and set-up of Theresienstadt are laid out simply. The written, oral and visual records provide the emotional impact inherent in eye-witness accounts. Some of these accounts were created during the lives of the prisoners simultaneous with their being in incarcerated. Some were written as recollections by survivors.

We learn about overcrowding, illness, deportations - mainly to Auschwitz, and the role of the Jewish Council of Elders. Since so many artists and intellectuals were incarcerated in Theresienstadt, the role of culture and education are stressed: lectures, classes, and the creation and/or performance of literary, visual, musical and theater arts, both those activities sanctioned and those that took place in secret.

Thomson spends important time on the visit to Theresienstadt by a committee of the Red Cross at the request of the King of Denmark. In anticipation of being found out, Nazi leadership retrofitted the camp in an effort to deceive the Red Cross committee. We hear how deportations for Theresienstadt before the visit helped to reduce crowding, and how keeping the elderly and ill far away from the planned route lowered the risk of exposure. And we learn about the cultural activities that were set up to entertain the visiting committee.

Ruth Thompson’s judicious choice of material as well as the layout in 60 plus pages makes this book of interest to a reader of any age. The Thereseinstadt concentration camp is movingly evoked in this volume.

This book includes several maps, a timeline from 1934-1945, a glossary of terms, sources, an index, and photo acknowledgements.

To read an article about the importance of music in Theresienstadt, click here.
To read an obituary of Joza Karas who recovered and helped publicize music performed in Theresienstadt, click here.

People
Edih Baneth
Henriette S. Beck
Ferdinand Bloch
Frank Bright
Charlotte Buresova
Friedl Dicker-Brandeis
Jakob Edelstein
Zdenka Ehrlich
Raja Englanderova
Pavel Fantl
John Fink
Lily Fischl
Peter Frank
Steven Frank
John Freund
Jana Renee Friesova
Bedrich Fritta
 Tommy Fritta – son of Bedrich
Kurt Gerron
Leo Haas
John Hartman
Ben Helfgott
Mayer Hersh
Hans Hofer
Albert Huberman
Arnold Jakubovic
Alfred Kantor
Helga Kinsky
Freddie Knoller
Rma Laushcherova
Berdrich Lederer
Zdenek Lederer
Peter Lowenstein
George Mahler
Eva Meitner
Frantisek M. Nagl
Josef Polak
Helga Pollak
Hana Pravda
Gonda Redlich
Paul Aron Sandfort
Malvina Schalkova
John Silberman
Alice Sittig
Aron Sloma
Joseph E. A. Spier
Gerty Spies
Norbert Troller
Otto Ungar
Charlotte Veresova
Helga Weissova-Hoskova

Places
Theresienstadt, Czechoslovakia

Memories of Survival by Esther Nisenthal Krinitz and Bernice Steinhardt 2005

Winner of the Sydney Taylor Honor Award for Older Readers in 2006, awarded by The Sydney Taylor Book Award Committee of the Association of Jewish Libraries

Memories of Survival is a book of fascinating artwork and narration created by the Holocaust survivor Esther Nisenthal Krinitz (b. 1927) to present to viewers and readers scenes from her life between the years 1937 to 1949. In the Introduction, her daughter Bernice Steinhardt writes that her mother felt compelled to tell the stories of what happened to her family repeatedly, even trying to write them out in English and Yiddish. But it wasn’t until she turned to art at the age of 50 that she was really able to convey what happened in a way that is suitably dramatic and emotionally engaging.

Bernice Steinhardt writes that her mother learned how to sew at the age of eight and was expected to become a seamstress. Because of her training and talent, she brought to her artwork a skill in needlework that she exploited to the fullest, using the techniques of embroidery and fabric collage to create each intricately detailed panel.

The panels narrate the story of the round-up of the Jews in the small town of Mniszek in Poland and how she, at the age of 13, and her younger sister fled into the forest and disguised themselves as Christian peasants. When they were liberated by the Russians, they lived in a displaced person’s camp where each of the two sisters, the only survivors in their family, married survivors. Esther Nisenthal Krinitz and her family came to America in 1949 and settled in New York where she died in 2001 at the age of 74.

This book is published under the imprint of Hyperion Books for Children. The School Library Journal has classified it as a Young Adult book suitable for grade 6-9, and on one level this is a picture book with limited text which makes it easy for children to read. Esther Nisenthal Krinitz hand-stitched a date and a few sentences to describe each panel and the book reproduces those captions for each panel in larger print  with commentary written by her daughter that fleshes out some of the details. However, like in all books for young readers, you do not get the larger complex historical picture.

The art work is also accessible to young readers, even though the panels are sophisticated works of art and would appeal to viewers of all ages. Though intricate in their construction, they have a primitive quality that recalls the Eden-like innocence of childhood. Early scenes from before the war recreate the bucolic setting of her childhood - family and community immersed in farm activities and seasonal Jewish holiday celebrations. But even as the evil of Nazism takes over, the vibrancy of the country setting is ever present. The Nazis were agents of death and destruction. They destroyed the Jewish community and tainted the landscape with their concentration camps (the panel that depicts the Maidenek concentration camp has almost no vegetation), but they did not destroy the artist’s memory of the vibrancy of the natural surroundings and the nature-centered human activity that stand in opposition to the unnatural, monstrous acts of the Nazis.

The family has set up an organization that circulates the artwork for educational purposes. To read about the goals of the organization and more about Esther Nisenthal Krinitz as well as to see all of the panels, click here.

People
Chaim  – author/artist’s  grandfather (It’s not clear whether maternal or paternal)
    Hersh Nisenthal – married Rachel Prizant
        Esther – Hersh and Rachel’s daughter; married Max Krinitz; author/artist
            Bernice – daughter of Esther and Max; married to Bruce Steinhardt; author/writer
                Rachel and Simon – children of Bernice and Bruce   
            Helene – daughter; of Esther and Max; married Jack McQuade
                John Henry – son of Helene and Jack
        Mania  – Hersh and Rachel’s daughter; married Lipa
            Harry and Rachel - children of Mania
        Ruven Nisenthal – Hersh and Rachel’s son
        Chana Nisenthal – Hersh and Rachel’s daughter
        Leah Nisenthal – Hersh and Rachel’s daughter

Places
The following places are all in Poland:
Mniszek
Rachow
Goscieradow
Krasnik
Dombrowa
Ksiezomierz
Grabowka
Janiszow prison camp
Maidenek concentration camp

Charlotte: Life or Theater?: An Autobiographical Play by Charlotte Salomon, work created 1940-1942

" [Charlotte Salomon's] intense fervor for life, which flamed up in the face of gradual processes of dehumanization, was also deeply political. It was an urgent assertion of her existence against the twin threats of suicide and annihilation." From a review by Leslie Camhi in the Village Voice in January, 2002 of a selection of Salomon's paintings that were being exhibited at the Jewish Museum in New York.

Charlotte Salomon (1917- 1943)  was born and brought up in Berlin, Germany, the daughter of accomplished, assimilated Jews involved in the rich intellectual life of Berlin before the war. But because of the war and the continued assault on the increasingly diminishing Jewish population, she fled in 1939 to the south of France to live with her grandparents who had moved there in 1933 when Hitler came to power. There Charlotte Salomon feverishly painted and dramatized her life in over 1000 gouaches which she completed and handed over to the village doctor for safe-keeping before she was deported and killed at Auschwitz.
   
Charlotte Salomon was a serious art student. She was an accomplished young artist, whose influences are apparent. She has presented her life as theater – theater of the absurd is what comes to mind. Her work is quite original – avante garde in conception and execution – consisting of painting as well as narration (often rhymed) with directions for musical accompaniment. It should be noted that she has created characters based on their real-life counterparts and given family members fictional last names.

The focus of her work is, on the surface, her family and its personal history – which caused her great pain and anxiety. There were multiple suicides on the maternal side of her family, including her mother’s sister Charlotte, after whom she was named. Her own mother took her life when Salomon was nine years old, and then her grandmother killed herself when Charlotte Salomon was living with her and her grandfather in the south of France. Knowing this family history, Salomon feared for her own mental stability.

Beneath that layer, intensifying the nightmare quality of the family story is the horror of the war and its immediate effect on her and her family. There has been some critical discussion about how in Theater or Life? Solomon blended fiction and fact. But however Salomon might have re-calibrated some events in her life to serve her art, there can be no question about her accuracy in portraying the war and its effect on her, her family and friends. The paintings that are specifically about the war have a documentary feel – the bare facts compromise a nightmare in and of themselves.

For example Act II starts with the April 1, 1933 Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses. She includes a rendering of a page from the Nazi newspaper, Der Sturmer, and then paints several pictures showing his father’s being fired from his medical position. She also builds a painting around a rendering of a 1938 page from a copy of Der Angriff, a Berlin Nazi newspaper full of anti-Jewish propaganda. What follows are family scenes of distress in reaction to the intensifying anti-Semitism. There’s a knock on the door – the Nazi police come for her father. His prominent wife, an opera singer, sets out to see if she can pull strings to get him released.

Salomon’s stated goal was to make an artistic creation of life as a way to reclaim her life. The tragic irony of course is that her immersion in this project did save her from suicide – but not from Auschwitz.

Note: As stated above, Charlotte Salomon changed the last name of family members and the full name of a close family friend. The Viking 1981 edition of Life or Theater has three introductory essays that, in giving us background information, use some of her characters’ real names. In the Preface, Judith C.E. Belinfante, the Director of the Jewish Historical Museum in Amsterdam, explains how the paintings came to be a part of their collection and what they have done to preserve and display them. In the Foreword, Judith Herzberg fills out the circumstances of Charlotte Salomon’s life including the circumstances surrounding her marriage shortly before her death to Alexander Nagler, an autobiographical event that Salomon does not include in her work. In an Editorial note, Gary Schwartz discusses how this Viking edition was constructed out of her paintings. (The Viking edition is now out of print but is available in libraries and for purchase as a used book.)

Since Charlotte Salomon's work is owned by the Jewish History Museum of Amsterdam, you can often find pictures of Charlotte Salomon's work on their site, but the museum changes what they feature on their site.To go to the website of the Jewish History of Amsterdam click here.

Names   
Albert Salomon – married Franziska; 2nd marriage to Paula Lindberg
     Charlotte – daughter of Albert and Franziska

Kurt Singer
Alfred Wolfsohn
Alexander Nagler

Places
Berlin, Germany
Villefranche, France
Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp
Gurs Internment Camp, France
Auschwitz, Poland