I confided to Rita that I couldn’t get the thought out of my head. “This resistance movement would give my life here purpose . . .” I told her. “I have no husband or child to consider. I know if only given the chance to help them, I would.”
“Tell me about it,” Rita said. “I think about it every day, too.”
She let out a deep sigh and I watched as she dipped her brush into a jar of water, swirling it until it rinsed clean.
“I haven’t been able to find out any information about it, as much as I’ve tried. There is an artist who works in the technical department, by the name of Petr Kien. My friend Leah said she saw him drawing one of the old men who are hidden away upstairs in one of the attic rooms.” Rita turned her head away from me, her gaze now focused on one of the studio’s windows that had been boarded up with wood.
“Did you know that they keep the old in these attic rooms with no air, no windows. There are too many people and too little space, so the Council of Elders assigns these rooms to the people who they know won’t survive very long.”
I was, in fact, all too aware of this. On the top of our barracks, there was a room that housed six women who all looked like grandmothers. Not only did they have no windows or light, they were allotted half the amount of food rations as those of us who were young enough to work. Mother sometimes went up there and gave them a piece of fruit that Marta had smuggled from the orchard.
“This boy, Petr, is certainly part of the resistance . . . Leah tried to get more information from him, but he clammed up immediately. He told her he was drawing it for himself to keep up his artistic skills.” Rita was now shaking her head. “But even she knew better.”
Nearly a month later, much to Rita’s and my excitement, one of the men from the Jewish Organizing Committee came and asked for a volunteer to go work in the technical department.
“They need someone who has a good hand for drafting,” the man said.
Both Rita and I raised a hand. We were like two schoolgirls, desperate to be chosen. In both our minds we were imagining that once we got through the doorway and stepped into the drafting department, we’d be part of an underground movement that wielded brushes instead of swords.
“Please pick both of us,” I whispered under my breath. I did not want to lose my friendship with Rita over this, as badly as I wanted it.
“You with the pale eyes,” the man said, pointing to me. “What’s your name?”
“Lenka Kohn.”
“Go report now. Tell them I sent you.”
I looked quickly over at Rita, hoping she’d give me a sign that she wasn’t mad at me. I had made up my mind that if she looked upset, I would forfeit my new assignment. But Rita was not one to hold a grudge. She immediately smiled at me and mouthed the words “good luck” as I stood to follow the man out the door.
I met Bedřich Fritta that afternoon. I walked into the studio, which was also housed in the Magdeburg barracks, and was immediately greeted by a tall thin man who appeared to be in his midthirties.
“Are you the new recruit?” he asked. There was a trace of warmth in his voice, but mostly I heard a curiosity for more information.
“Yes, sir. I was told to come here immediately.”
“What’s your background?”
“Two and a half years at the Prague Academy.”
“Just like our young Petr Kien over there . . .” Now he smiled. I watched as he lifted his hand to point to a man in his twenties with thick black curly hair. I recognized the name as that of the man Rita had mentioned. I also now realized I had seen him before, walking through the camp prior to curfew. We all had. He was the only one who risked walking around with a sketchpad in one hand and a bottle of ink in the other. Mother had shaken her head, thinking he would end up imprisoned in the small fortress for his brazen disregard for the rules, but I had been envious of his courage.
“I’ll need to see you draw something freehand,” Fritta said, sliding a piece of paper and handing me a cartouche pen. “Here, sit down. I want to see the line of your hand . . . It will be important to know where to place you.”
I surveyed the room to decide what to draw, and chose to do a quick profile of Petr. Something about him resonated with me. Was it the thick, tempestuous hair? The fleshy mouth—lips so full they seemed to belong more on a woman than on a man—that reminded me of Josef? Or was it something else? I could feel my eyes running over the contour of his face. I noticed the thin blue vein pulsing from his temple. The curled fist resting against his cheek. His other hand with its fingers wrapped tightly around his pen. He was so completely absorbed in his work, he had neither heard Fritta mention his name to me nor realized that I had already taken my paper and pen and begun to sketch him.
I imagined I was the same way when I worked, my focus whittled to a sharp nib. A thread running between my eyes, my mind, and my hand. The artist’s sacred trinity.
I sat at the drawing board, and within a few seconds I had recorded an enviable likeness of Petr. I drew the sharp angles of his face, the length of his fingers pressed onto his paper, and his arched back as he huddled over his work. It was the sort of fast drawing I knew that Fritta, one of the preeminent satirists back in Prague, renowned for his political caricatures, would like, for it was a method he himself often used.
“Excellent,” Fritta said as he studied my drawing. “We will make good use of you here.”
I remember I looked not at Fritta when he said this, but at Petr. He was still completely focused on his drawing, and not for a single second had he lifted his gaze.
CHAPTER 29
LENKA
Few people are sensitive to the sound of paper being torn from a sketchpad or the scrape of a pen nib that is thirsty for ink. But to me they are like the sound of a razor or a scythe slicing through the air. These were the sounds of the technical department: sharp and unflinching, and I heard them every morning when I walked through the door.
Unlike my time in Lautscher, there were no piles of insipid postcards or thick, oily canvases sent on trucks to decorate the interiors of German villas. Here, there was a sense of efficiency and urgency.
“We are responsible for many things here, Lenka,” Fritta explained. “There are architects who are preparing blueprints for Terezín’s expansion. We need new roads for the increased population. Drawings for new barracks. The train tracks from Bohušovice into Terezín need to be extended. The camp’s antiquated sewer system needs to be updated. All of these things need to be drawn up by architects and engineers working in this office, and artists like yourself will help them with that.”
As he spoke, he moved across the room with a quiet authority. I noticed everyone was working—a line of backs arched over drawing boards—a few people were clustered in groups, a pile of supplies placed in the center of a shared table. Everyone’s head was down. I did not see a single face.
“We have deadlines that we have to meet, Lenka. So when I tell you I need something in three days, try and get it done in two.”
I nodded.
“Do not waste our supplies. They are our most precious asset.”
Again, I nodded.
As Fritta talked to me, his eyes scanned the room. His physical presence sent a signal to everyone that order had to be maintained in the drawing room at all times. Fritta was the commander here, and the rest of us were his troops. But why, I wondered, were we working—and working so hard—for an army whose objective was to corral us into a ghetto of disease and starvation? Where was the resistance? I wanted to ask Fritta. I looked around the room, past the dozens of men and women who looked like mechanical drones, and shuddered. I could not sense any sort of resistance at all.
“Lenka, meet Otto Unger.”
Fritta and I stood next to a desk where a frail man was hunched over a book of illustrations.
When he stood up, I saw that his face was chiseled. He gave the appearance of someone sculpted from clay, deep tunnels fingered out from underneath his eye sockets.<
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“I’m Otto.” He stood up and extended his hand. His smile was warm, but his fingers were ice cold.
“I’m Lenka Kohn,” I said.
“Lenka?” He said my name like a question. “It’s a beautiful name. You’re the first Lenka I’ve met in Terezín.”
I blushed.
“No flirting here old man.” Fritta wagged a finger at him. It was the first break for levity I had experienced since I had walked into the room. I smiled.
“Since when is forty-two old?” Otto teased. I shook my head; the harsh conditions had clearly made him appear older than his years. It would only be a matter of time before the same thing happened to me.
“Otto, I want Lenka to work on the workbook detailing the progress of the railroad tracks from Bohušovice into the camp. Show her the format you used with the drawing for the sewer system. She should model her illustrations on them.”
“No problem, sir. Yes, right away.
“Let’s get you started here.” Something about Otto reminded me of my father. He had wide dark eyes, a narrow face, and a gentle way of speaking. He pulled out a chair for me and handed me a stack of technical drawings. “These are the engineer’s drawings,” he began. “You will need to do some illustrations that will supplement the book. Your drawings should show men working on the construction of the railroad lines into Terezín and the new buildings that surround it. We will send it to the Germans who have requested detailed information on Terezín’s expansion.”
I nodded that I understood the assignment.
“We have gouache and watercolor pigments on the shelves, as well as brushes and pen and ink. Choose whatever medium you think is best, but please try not to make mistakes.”
“Yes, I know.” I smiled. Seeing how hard Mother was working to get supplies to her students, I was sensitive to the importance of these materials.
He smiled back at me. It was a warm, paternal smile and it made me miss Father.
“Very well, then.” He knotted his hands in front of him. “I’ll let you get to work, Lenka.” He returned to his chair and reached for his pen and pad.
Otto’s face was the color of wax. He always looked melancholy when he drew, while the others in the room hardly had any expression at all. I watched him sometimes out of the corner of my eye. He always wet his paper with water before applying his pigment. This made the painting more difficult, because the colors could bleed. The borders could blur. I wondered if he did this for the challenge. He had to work that much quicker to get everything into the drawing.
Occasionally, he would glance over at my work.
“I like the expression on the soldier’s face . . .” he said, and he appeared slightly amused.
I looked at the tiny figure I had drawn next to the men working to lay the tracks, and I noticed that I had given him an almost maniacal expression.
I laughed for a second. “I hadn’t even realized that I did it. Perhaps I need to start over.”
Otto shook his head. “No, keep it. It’s accurate. They tell us they want us to represent everything with complete accuracy, and you have.
“They’re all little shits,” he whispered to me. “I hate this. I loathe working for them.” He pressed his pen to the paper with such pressure that the ink began to pool. The drawing would have to be scrapped.
I looked at the ruined drawing and shuddered. What would Fritta do if he saw that ball of crumpled paper? It wasn’t Fritta who had the temper, but his second-in-command, an artist by the name of Leo Haas. He rarely spoke to any of us. He spoke only to Fritta.
But Otto didn’t throw the paper into the waste bin. Of course not. He waited for it to dry and he then folded it into a little flat square and hid it in his pocket.
Otto and I begin to spend more time with each other. Part of me, unrealistically, hopes that he will reveal to me that he is part of the artistic resistance. But he says very little except that he hates being forced to draw for men who want him and his family dead.
We eat our bread slowly together at lunchtime, chewing slowly, pretending that it is something else.
“I’m eating dumplings and pickled cabbage today. Mountains of it,” he tells me. Otto breaks a morsel of his stale bread. I watch him close his eyes as he attempts to use all his powers of imagination to transform a single bite into something far more satisfying.
“I’m eating chocolate cake,” I tell him. The bread is sawdust in my mouth. Yet I still cup one hand underneath my ration as I eat. I will not let a single crumb escape.
When Otto laughs, his eyes fill with tears.
Our fifteen-minute lunch break is nearly over.
“Fritta is a great man. We are lucky, Lenka. We are better off than the others,” he says as if he needs to remind himself or remind me.
“Yes, I know.” I nod. There are two pieces of paper folded against my brassiere. “Otto, I know.”
Every day I learn a little more about the technical department and our boss from my new friend Otto. I learn that Fritta was one of the initial arrivals at Terezín in November 1941—the Aufkommando. They were a select group of 350 or so highly skilled Jewish engineers, draftsmen, mechanics, and construction workers who volunteered to leave Prague to help enlarge the infrastructure within Terezín to prepare for the influx of Jews who would soon be arriving by transport. These men volunteered to work at Terezín early, with the promise that neither they nor their families would be sent “east.”
I learned that many of my colleagues at the technical department were like Fritta and had helped with the initial plans for the camp. An engineer by the name of Jíří had created drawings for the entire septic system, and another man, Beck, had drafted the original plans that were used to build the ghetto. These men had knowledge of the infrastructure of the camp that even the SS was not aware of, and later that knowledge would prove to be invaluable. If you wanted to hide something so no one would know where to find it, these would be the men to ask.
My fifteen minutes every day with Otto are my lifeline to information.
One day I dare to be bold.
“I’ve heard Fritta and Haas are working to get their drawings to the outside,” I whisper.
Otto doesn’t answer me. He chews more slowly. He closes his eyes as if he is pretending he didn’t hear what I just said.
“Otto?” I repeat my question. Still, he doesn’t answer me.
“Otto?” My voice is now a bit firmer.
“I heard you the first time, Lenka,” he says. He wipes his mouth with a handkerchief that is the color of dirty dishwater.
“Did you know I have a wife and five-year-old daughter?” he says changing the subject. “Her name is Zuzanna.”
I am shocked. It is the first time he has mentioned their existence.
“I don’t see them as much as I want to. At night, I miss them so much I close my eyes and try to imagine that I am digging a tunnel between my barracks and theirs.”
“I’m so sorry, Otto,” I say. “I had no idea.”
“It’s a terrible thing to go to sleep dreaming that you are clawing at the earth.”
I say nothing. I nod my head.
“It’s as though you’re buried all the time. Suffocating.”
Again I nod.
“No,” he tells me, “I know nothing of any resistance.”
He looks at me and his eyes are full of warning. The irises look like stop signs instructing me to halt.
“Lenka,” he says, reaching for my hand. “It’s time for us to go inside.”
I watched in amazement as Otto started on a watercolor of the Terezín ramparts. He worked quickly, first doing the dark lines of the brick walls, then filling them in with bleeding colors of soft browns and yellow. With a nimble hand he painted the soft, cloudy haze of the mountains beyond and patches of watery green. The next day, after he must have secretly stored the painting so that it could dry, he took a brush with pen and ink and painted the roping barbed wire like a knife blade cutting through the page.<
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I knew the Nazis had forbidden any kind of illustrations that depicted them unfavorably. We had been told that anyone caught doing so would be either imprisoned in the small fortress or put on the next transport east. Thus, it was no surprise to me that I had not yet seen any depictions of the atrocities that were ongoing within the camp. If these paintings existed, they could only be made in secret, either at night in the barracks or in crowded places where no one would be watching. Still, I would be lying if I did not say that I sensed a secret language flowing between Fritta and Haas while we all worked.
“Write this down!” they’d occasionally bark to each other over their desks. It was as though they were telling each other what they were recording.
Fritta and Haas left us alone as long as we met our deadlines. I’m sure they knew many of us were pilfering the supplies for our own work in our rooms. Otto was even bold enough to work on some of his own paintings during the day. He taught me how to keep my sketchpad filled with my illustrations for the Germans, and my own personal work hidden between the pages. If an SS officer surprised us at the studio, we could just pull down one of the pages in the sketchpad to cover what we were really painting.
I had yet to become friends with Petr Kien. There were times when I saw him secretly sketching program covers announcing an opera or a play that was going to be performed before curfew. We would later see these posters nailed to a post by one of the barracks, and we would all congregate to watch that evening’s entertainment.
As I look back on it now, it’s hard to believe how much artistic activity we managed to make time for in Terezín. Although the Germans turned a blind eye to the performances as long as they were not critical of the Reich, there was always some inevitable cruelty. How many times would we see German soldiers watching one of our performances, clapping at the tenor’s wonderful range, or the soprano’s mesmerizing aria, and the very next day ordering those same singers on the next transport east.
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