The Girls of Room 28: Friendship, Hope, and Survival in Theresienstadt [Englisch] [Gebundene Ausgabe]

Growing up in Europe during the late 1960s and 1970s, World War II was an immediate reality, if not one I had any firsthand experience of. Still, everywhere around me there were people who had -- as combattants, as civilians who had suffered bombing and invasion and occupation. I visited Anne Frank's House for the first time at the age of 7, and read her diary in the car as we traveled from the Netherlands to Denmark. By the time we arrived at the German frontier, I was hysterical at the idea of visiting the country whose Nazi leaders had murdered Anne Frank, my parents tell me.

Now, decades later, a lot more attention has been paid to the Holocaust. There have been histories of all kinds, from the straightforward ones by Martin Gilbert to Daniel Goldhagen's provocative analysis of the makeup of the extermination squads in Eastern Europe; there have been documentaries (Shoah) and dramas of all kinds (Sophie's Choice, Schindler's List) and innumerable memoirs. It sometimes feels as if there can be little left to say about the Holocaust and that the subject itself is in danger of becoming too ubiquitous to pack the same kind of powerful punch that it did when I first read Anne Frank's diary decades ago.

And then I began to read this book. From the very first pages, I was gripped by the story of young Helga Pollak, the central character around whom journalist Brenner carefully structures the stories of the young girls (aged between 12 and 14) who at one point or another inhabited Room 28 of Theresienstadt's Girls' Home. When we meet Helga, she has said farewell to her mother, who has brought her to a town in Czechoslovakia where she hopes Helga will be safe from the growing anti-Jewish sentiment in Nazi-occupied Vienna. Helga, however, who doesn't speak Czech, is lost and bewildered - and it will be six long years before she sees her mother again.

Brenner has drawn on diaries and notebooks written by the girls themselves, their families and their caretakers to supplement interviews she has conducted with the handful of those who survived. (Of the 12,000 or so children who entered Theresienstadt, only a few hundred survived; only about a dozen of those who went through Room 28 are still alive to reunite each year in Europe.) The approach works well, surprisingly, giving readers a way to break away from the main narrative -- a straightforward chronicle in time -- to read profiles of some of the main characters or poetry they wrote, or the lyrics of the music they sang, as well as excerpts from those diaries and notebooks.

Throughout, it's the clarity and distinctive viewpoint of these adolescent girls that makes this such a startling and remarkably fresh book. Against an ominous background, these girls (like Anne Frank) go through the kinds of petty squabbles, reveries about their futures (Helga even asks her father if he would mind if she were baptized after the war, since she doesn't really feel an attachment to her Jewish identity), evolving sexual identities common to adolescence against the backdrop of daily life in a concentration camp. The privations are stark and deeply felt even by the children, whom the camp elders have made a conscious decision to give greater access to food and other resources at the expense of the elderly.

But an important thread in Brenner's narrative is the importance of education and culture, and how these girls themselves valued experiences such as the children's opera, Brundibar, all the more because of the ominous environment in which it was staged. That opera, one recalled is "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." (Brundibar, in the opera, is an evil ice-cream seller - Hitler personified.)

A tribute to the power of Brenner's book is that even though we know the fate that awaits most of the camp's inhabitants -- they will enter the 'sluice' and head eastward to one of the extermination camps, such as Auschwitz-Birkenau -- I was only vaguely conscious of something ominous lurking in the wings, hints of which would occasionally surface in the book (when a group of obviously petrified Polish orphans arrives and recoils from the showers to which they are taken; when a bedbug epidemic is dealt with by gassing, forcing the children to sleep outdoors and avoid their rooms, which now bear signs warning of poison.) As in an opera, that ominous feeling grew (as a small sound of drums gradually grows louder to become the dominant theme in a piece of music), forcing me to turn the pages more and more rapidly to find out what would happen to each of the characters in the book. I ended up reading the whole thing in one sitting, cover to cover in five hours, because I couldn't bear to set it down.

Highly recommended. It's become a trite tribute to describe a book as being inspirational; this one truly deserves the label.

Ms. Wonschick's lovely book chronicles the story of children caught in the horror of Nazi Germany's internment camp at Theresienstadt near Prague. The story, of course is horrific, but told beautifully by the writer. The treasure of the book is the witness to the enormous spirit, love and courage by the children to keep pressing on in the midst of insanity, and to create a semblance of normalcy in their lives. The adults, in the face of death, devised an atmosphere where the hildren could think there was a life worth living. They sacrificed their gifts in music, art, drama, and poetry to distract their fellow captives from the daily threats deportation to Auschwitz. The story reminds us of what we are all called to create . . . love among our fellow men. The inmates at Theresienstadt overcame evil and fulfilled their destiny. Sadly, most of the children and adults did die at Auschwitz, but remarkably, some of the diaries, art and stories have all been salvaged. Hannelore has gathered all the stories with love and gentle care. Remarkably, due to the efforts of some of the artists at Thresienstadt, art therapy was created in the camp, and today is helping children overcome the travails in their lives today. Congratulations to Hannelore Wonschick for telling this important story with such love, gentleness and respect.

I am somewhat obsessed with Holocaust literature and have read scores of personal accounts. This one stands out. Well researched and beautifully written. Heartbreaking yet hopeful. It makes one realize that the Nazis and their cohorts didn't just kill Jewish bodies, they killed potential genius in the arts & sciences and future contributions to society at large by extinguishing so many talented Jewish souls.