The Girls of Room 28: Friendship, Hope, and Survival in Theresienstadt

by Hannelore Brenner-Wonschick; Hannelore Brenner

  “We shall give it a try,” said one of the boys’ counselors, the beautiful Licka Mautner, during a visit to Room 28 on the evening of March 26, 1943. She agreed that the boys and girls could meet daily on the ramparts for gymnastics, games, and contests, and that they could visit each other’s rooms on occasion. For some of the girls it was a dream come true. Others did not take to the idea and were in fact skeptical. Helga noted in her diary: “Licka was just telling us about how wonderful it is in Room 9, how they’ve formed a club, are writing a newspaper, and what a fine community they’ve formed—and right away the girls started arguing. Licka left at a quarter to eight. I’m sure she was thinking: These girls can only ruin her lads.”

  This much was clear—things had to change in Room 28. No more arguments, no groups of girls taking sides against other groups of girls. What could encourage this effort better than the Ma’agal? The transformation triggered by this idea was already apparent after just one week. The first formal meeting took place on April l. All the girls wore their new blue and white outfits. The letters VVBN were embroidered on each blouse. This was the acronym for the Ma’agal’s motto: “Věřiš mi— véñm ti. Viš a vím, bud’ jak bud’. Nezradiš—nezradím.”

  From this point on, these words were the motto of the girls of Room 28. And the girls created a symbol to go with it: a dark blue linen flag bearing the emblem of Ma’agal—a white circle around two clasped hands. On April 1, this flag was displayed in their room for the first time. And the first two members were elected to the Ma’agal, the “circle of perfection”—Pavla Seiner and Eva Landa.

  “Pavla Seiner was the first girl who went to great lengths to turn our Home into a good home,” Handa recalls. “She always tried to include girls who weren’t at the center of our community—such as Zajíček, Olilie, and Marta Kende. Even when we played dodgeball—Pavla was very athletic—she looked out for those girls because she didn’t want them to feel like outsiders.”

  Eva Landa was also given special recognition for her exemplary behavior. She was tidy and diligent, and she paid attention to the counselors’ instructions—in part because Eva sincerely liked living in the Girls’ Home. For her, life in a “collective”—a word that Eva heard for the first time in Theresienstadt—had a dash of adventure about it. At the very least, she preferred it to being under the influence of parents who were beleaguered by their own worries. In this regard she was an exception to the other girls. Eva was optimistic about her fate; at times she even felt as if she had ended up “in the Girl Scouts.”

  Eva must have felt this way on the evening that she and Pavla were inducted into the Ma’agal. As a solemn conclusion to their meeting, the girls sang for the first time the anthem of Room 28, which they had written themselves and set to the melody of a Czech folk song—“Ach padá, padá rosička” (“The Dew Is Falling”).

  We want to be united,

  To stand together, to like each other.

  We have come here, but our hope,

  A hope that shall come true,

  Is to return home again.

  We shall do battle with evil

  And forge the path to the good.

  We shall drive every evil away

  And won’t go home until we have.

  And then we shall sing:

  Ma’agal must triumph

  And bring us on the path to good.

  We clasp each other’s hands

  And sing

  This anthem of our home.

  A few months later, in October 1943, Lenka Lindt alluded to this event in her essay written to answer the question “What has made the deepest impression on you since you have been living in the Girls’ Home?”:

  I never want to leave our Home, not for anything in the world. We have many things in our Home that I cannot write about, because that might betray our Home. We have many celebrations with little banquets. Everyone likes being here. Our Home impresses me very much. Our Home is my life. I don’t know what I’ll do when I return home and have to live alone with my mother in an apartment. Brrrr—… I shall go to some sort of Home even when I have returned home. And I shall think about our Twenty-Eight Home and of the girls who lived there.

  The Ma’agal anthem. The musical notation was done by Flaška.

  When you read this, Frau Professor, you will say, “Lindt, you were supposed to write about what has impressed you the most about the Girls’ Home, and you are writing nonsense like this …”

  And so I shall tell you that my most impressive experience was when we wore our uniforms—and nothing more should interest you! Please don’t hold my being so fresh against me.17

  At moments like these, the room came under the spell of the magic word naděje (“hope”). When darkness had fallen and the girls were lying in their bunks, this word would brighten their conversations, like a star shining in a nighttime sky. At first, those sharing a bed would whisper to each other, then those sharing a bunk, and finally—all it took was one word to ignite it—voices were coming from every corner, and what had begun as a murmur evolved into a lively conversation.

  When I go back home … When the war is over …” That was how many of their sentences began, circling in ever-varying patterns around the magical concept of hope like variations on a musical leitmotif. “When the Germans are defeated, when we are free again …” Helga would join her mother in England. Eva Winkler would visit her old hometown of Miroslav Judith Schwarzbart would return to her parents’ house with its large garden in Brno-Jundrov Mari anne Deutsch would go back to Olomouc and her governess, Memme. Eva Landa, Lenka Lindt, and Pavla Seiner imagined returning to their beloved Prague; Ruth Schächter and Eva Heller would see their parents again in Eretz Yisrael, the Promised Land. Each had her fantasies, her dreams, her longings. “Yes, yes, yes,” they sometimes heard Flaška and Helga chant. It sounded like a battle cry: “Yes, yes, yes, Konzervatoř” (“We’ll attend the conservatory!”), and it would continue until the counselor urged them for the last time to be quiet. Their thoughts would circle around what they had experienced and heard until they finally drifted off to sleep.

  Lenka Lindt and her mother

  A new phase of Helga’s life in Room 28 began with the formation of Ma’agal and her move to a bunk next to Ela Stein. Helga liked this girl with dark eyes and black hair. There was something fascinating about Ela, who was so different from Helga. Ela was vivacious, enterprising, talkative, and always surrounded by friends. And she was quick to join in whenever there was singing, painting, or dancing—or when the conversation turned to boys.

  Helga and Ela sat next to each other more often now, in class and during their free time, when they had to stay indoors because it was raining. Sometimes they would join the others for a game or prepare their lessons.

  “Tella has just announced our grades,” she wrote on April 11, 1943. “I’ve got the best grades of anyone. If that’s true, and I’m only just starting to believe it, then I’ve undergone a fundamental change. I’m not the same person I was in Kyjov. Cleanliness: very good. Tidiness: very good. Conduct: good. Interest in learning: very good.”

  Daily lessons were a fundamental part of life in Room 28. Officially they were called “activity time,” because while the SS had forbidden formal classroom instruction, they permitted “activities” such as singing, painting, handicrafts, dancing, sports, and games. In the eyes of the Nazis, these pursuits were harmless. But an education in history, literature, and languages was dangerous. “It is enough if they can count up to 100,” an official in Rosenberg’s ministry had said, summarizing Hitler’s views on the differences between the Master Race and what he deemed the inferior races. “Every educated person is a future enemy. Religion we leave to them as a means of diversion. As for food, they won’t get any more than is absolutely necessary. We are the masters. We come first.”18

  This kind of thinking lay behind the Nazis’ determination to restrict education in every country they occupied. The Jewish leaders in Theresienstadt had t
o find ways to circumvent this control if they were to ensure that the children received a proper education. Their guiding principle was that no effort be spared in imparting the knowledge and experience of the adults to the children. One of their primary goals was to transmit Jewish culture and tradition; their method was to disguise the teaching as playing. The leading figures in of Theresienstadt—Jakob Edelstein, Otto Zucker, Leo Jannowitz, Gonda Redlich, Fredy Hirsch, Milos Salus, and Viktor Ullmann, to name just a few—were all united in this cause: to protect and preserve intellectual freedom.

  The unique situation in Theresienstadt gave rise to a sophisticated system of child welfare and education. Willy Groag, a Zionist youth leader who became head of the Girls’ Home in late autumn 1943, described it as follows: “The majority of the teachers were members of Zionist and, in some cases, Communist organizations. But because we did not want to shortchange the children’s development and their specific talents and interests in any way, we brought people who were independent of these associations into the pedagogical program as well, so new arrivals in the ghetto who appeared qualified to teach or supervise the children were asked by administrators to submit their résumés to the Youth Welfare Office. On the basis of their professional qualifications and pedagogical experience, they were assigned either to the administration of the Youth Welfare Department or to one of the children’s Homes as counselors or teachers—sometimes as both. It was in this way that the Youth Welfare Office was able to enlist not only devoted Zionists and Communists, but also extraordinary people from all walks of life—teachers, professors, scientists, and artists.”19

  To some extent, the children of Theresienstadt had the opportunity to learn more than children of the same age in Prague or Brno. For one thing, the artists and professors teaching the children in Theresienstadt would rarely be found in ordinary schools in normal times. Moreover, outside Theresienstadt, Czech schools suffered under Nazi rule, their curricula distorted by Nazi ideology. Although the children of Theresienstadt had to learn in secret, their education included subjects that were forbidden by the Germans.

  “Our room was divided into three groups—A, B, and C—on the basis of our knowledge and interests,” Handa Pollak recalls, as she explains the educational system. “We had classes every morning. But it was a bit strange, because so many transports were arriving and departing. And the same was true of our teachers—they came and went. For example, if an English teacher arrived, we were taught English. But it wasn’t long before he had to leave on a transport. Then another teacher came to replace him, but maybe what he knew wasn’t English but mathematics. And so we were taught mathematics. That’s how we learned. We could never keep to a fixed curriculum. Everything was uncertain. And pupils came and went as well.”

  Magda and Edith Weiss taught Latin and Czech; Kurt Haček (whom the girls nicknamed Kartáček, Czech for “little brush”) taught modern Hebrew. For a brief time the girls had an English teacher who introduced herself as Mrs. Idis and whom the girls called Missisipidis. They called another Hebrew teacher Shemihl Springer, because the first words he had spoken to the girls by way of introduction were “Sh’mee Springer,” which is Hebrew for “My name is Springer.”

  Classroom notes and doodles from Všechno, Handa Pollak’s notebook

  For a while the girls were taught mathematics, which was not exactly Handa’s favorite subject, as is evident from her notebook. Alongside the mathematical formulas and calculations are all sorts of doodles—of people, landscapes, animals. She was much fonder of Czech literature, German, drawing, history, and geography.

  Three subjects are linked in the girls’ memories with unforgettable individuals: drawing with Friedl Dicker-Brandeis, and geography and history with Zdenka Brumliková.

  “I loved Professor Brumliková most of all,” Handa recalls. “I remember the way she told us stories from Greek and Roman mythology. We sat there spellbound, following every word of her account. She was wonderful! She had such a grand way of telling things. For example, the life of Prometheus. How he wanted to bring the gift of fire to humankind, holy fire from divine Olympus, how he secretly stole it. But the gods noticed, of course, and meted out an awful punishment. They bound him to a rock with strong chains and sent savage birds to eat his liver. But each time his liver would grow back after the birds had eaten it, and the birds kept returning. I still remember her telling us about that.”

  The girls hung on her every word. Frau Brumliková was small and slender, with freckles and short salt-and-pepper hair. She kept the memory of a free Czechoslovakia alive for them, recounting the old legends of Bohemia and Moravia and drawing a map of their Czech homeland— its prewar borders; its mountain ranges, rivers, and cities; each landscape with its distinctive characteristics. The hours with Frau Brumliková simply flew by.

  Although there were such lighthearted moments, everyone was constantly aware of the lurking danger. “We were always afraid because we knew that all of it was forbidden—and punishable. One girl would stand watch outside the door.” Under no circumstances were the girls to be caught at their lessons by the SS. This would have had serious consequences, especially for the adults involved, who might be taken to the Little Fortress. which was the name for the Gestapo prison outside the ghetto walls. The mere mention of it filled everyone at Theresienstadt with fear and trembling.

  The children knew just what to do if the SS showed up unexpectedly. “When we got the sign that the Germans were approaching our Home, we quickly gathered up all the papers and pencils and hid them under our blankets or in the attic.” When the alarm did sound, those standing watch would warn: “The Germans are coming!” or “SS inspection!” The girls would quickly hide the evidence of their intellectual activity— notebooks, test papers, books—and return to the activities that were allowed. In Room 28 that was usually singing. So it was that while SS officers were on the ground floor questioning the leaders of the Girls’ Home and peering into one or another of the rooms, girls’ voices were coming from upstairs, at first softly, then gradually swelling, singing a favorite round to fight off their fear. “Bejvávalo, bejvávalo, bejvávalo dobře…” (“Life was once, was once, was once good, when we were young and the world was like a flower—life was once, was once, was once good …”).

  On only one occasion did the SS come really close. They were searching for an illegal radio receiver, first in the Boys’ Home, then in the Girls’. They combed through everything. They even crept into the sewer down in the courtyard of the Girls’ Home. Then they tromped up the stone staircase in their black boots, the deserted stairwell echoing with the sound. On the top floor, in Room 28, the girls sat on their bunks, terrified by what might happen next. They heard voices, footsteps, doors banging. “The door was flung open, we saw the brief glow of a flashlight, and then the door quickly closed. They didn’t enter the room.”

  Tuesday, April 6, 1943

  The daily routine in our day in our Home is unvarying, but the days still pass quickly. It’s hard to imagine that I’ve been here three months now.

  Günther, the top SS man, is coming tomorrow. No children are allowed on the streets tomorrow. Papa doesn’t know about this yet, but I’m going to die of hunger in the evening. He got word that he’s received a package, and I won’t be able to pick it up for him today. Papa can’t really carry anything.

  Wednesday, April 7, 1943

  I was missing my father a little, but I got over my longing to see him, since the other girls can’t visit their parents either. I know that Papa will surely come here to me. It’s not as though I was bored. This morning we sang and a counselor read to us from Microbe Hunters. After our noonday meal I washed up and then read a fantastic book: Gold Rush by F. Lloyd-Owen. I liked it a lot. It is about a 12-year-old boy who ran away from home and traveled west.

  Saturday, April 10, 1943

  The barracks are all under lockdown. No one is allowed on the street without special permission, and children don’t get special permission. Thi
s can last for days, or even months. I thought I wouldn’t see Papa for a long time. But he came twice, and Mimi came and brought me something to eat. I feel like a bird trapped in a cage with other birds. We’re not even allowed outside the building. Not even allowed to see our parents. And all because two people, a brother and sister, escaped.

  A new girl has joined us, Emma Taub. They call her Muška—little fly. She arrived yesterday from Prague, from an orphanage where she stayed for two weeks. She is from Telč in southern Moravia. She’s a very likeable girl and has splendid thick braids.

  Sunday, April 11, 1943

  At times I think it’s better that Mama isn’t here with us. I start wishing she were here with me, and then I feel very selfish. I’m getting quite annoyed at having to hang around in the same one room all the time. To hell with this barracks lockdown.

  A “big shot” was expected to visit on April 7, 1943: SS Sturmbannführer Hans Günther, the head of the Prague Central Office for Jewish Emigration. As even the girls of Room 28 knew, this did not bode well. Usually he marched through town escorted by a squad of SS men and flanked by the camp commandant, Siegfried Seidl, and Adolf Eichmann, the man behind all deportations, the man from the Reich Security Main Office in Berlin and Himmler’s “head of the department for Jewish affairs.” “Every time he came, problems were sure to follow,” Eva Weiss, the children’s counselor, recalls. “Usually it was followed by transports to the East. And there was always a barracks lockdown, and we weren’t allowed out on the streets.”