Helga Weissová and Terezín
copyright Erin Faith Allen
It is cold and the day is dark and wet. Peeling paint, missing plaster and exposed bricks are the silent companions to a lingering sense of desperation, and all of the buildings in this former ghetto wear layers of the seven decades that have passed. I wander in and out of the slippery vestibules of buildings still possessed by the memory of the people who were once imprisoned here. There is no motion in the streets. There are cars parked here and there, but there are no people. Where are the people? Where is the motion? Instead of people, Terezín is populated with a density that clogs up the atmosphere and squeezes the breath from my lungs.
Terezín has two parts: a prison, and a town that became a ghetto. In 1940, the Germans took possession of the centuries-old former fortress, and in 1941 they forced out the 7000 Czechoslovakian inhabitants of the town of Terezín, which the Germans called Theresienstadt. Jews who had been expelled from their homes across the territories of the Reich were brought in by train, and Terezín became a ghetto and concentration camp rolled into one: a transport center for prisoners doomed to the extermination and work camps in the east.
I’m here to prepare for my meeting with Helga tomorrow. A survivor of the ghetto and subsequent camps, Helga tells her story in Helga’s Diary, which also includes her drawings documenting the sights that surrounded her daily. I walk down Hlavni Pevnost, the street upon which the yellow sprawl of the Magdeburg administrative building sits, hulking and vibrant under a dark grey sky. When Terezín was a ghetto, the Magdeburg was home to the self-government offices for the Jews; behind its walls Helga’s uncle hid her stack of drawings and journal which ensured that their survival.
Down the road are the morgue, crematorium, and remnants of the former fortress that encircle the ghetto with brick walls and low, grass-topped roofs. I stop and stare at the long, slender strips of metal at my feet and lean down. Bringing my fingertips to touch the cold steel, my ears seem to ring with that screeching sound of rail wheels coming to a halt on their tracks. This is a sound that would have pierced the furtive whispers of the crowd gathered in the dark on the night Helga said goodbye to her father, Otto. The people of the ghetto did not know enough to understand that these tracks led to camps like Auschwitz, but here they gathered to say goodbye to loved ones being deported a step further, to the east, to work camps unknown. One by one, the men of this particular deportation said goodbye to their families as promises were made, questions were asked, and rumors spread like fearful fire.
“We are going east like the others.”
“East is the end for us, you see.”
“East means better work, better food.”
“I will not forget you.”
“I will send for you.”
“Be strong, my darling.”
And the guards would yell:
“Schnell! Schnell! Schnell!”
And so it went, day after day. Night after night.
“Schnell!” onto the train.
“Schnell!” on the work march.
“Schnell!” in the hungry bellies.
“Schnell!” on the lice-covered bed.
“Schnell!” in the scurry to smuggle a crumb of stale bread.
“Schnell!” in the rising pile of ash by the riverbank.
“Schnell!” remains like a frozen echo in these tired old tracks, and so does the weight of all the human heartbeats that have slid on by.
copyright Erin Faith Allen
The next day, I arrive at Helga’s home in the Palmovka neighborhood of Prague.
Helga lived here, in this same apartment, with Otto and her mother Irena until she was twelve years old. Forced to leave early one morning in December 1941 with meager possessions, they joined the city’s other Jews for a collective deportation to Terezín. Among Helga’s few items in her suitcase were colored pencils, watercolors, and crayons.
She shares with me how her commitment to documenting her true experiences and emotions began all those years ago when she had smuggled a drawing to Otto, who was living in the men’s barracks across the Terezín ghetto. Her drawing depicted children as they may have been in happier times, building a snowman. Otto replied with one sentence: Draw what you see.
From then on, she did. Her drawings and journal detail the daily lives of the inmates in Terezín and would become of the utmost historical importance. She continued her daily practice of documenting until, soon after Otto left, Helga and her mother also boarded one of those trains east. When the doors opened at their destination, they were in shock. Terezín had been awful, but Auschwitz was hell on earth. I ask her if, since she had left all of her drawing materials behind in the ghetto, she was able to create.
“Well, it is interesting you ask. Because in Auschwitz there was no ability to draw anything at all. I was working in a factory, and once I found some small labels and a pencil. It was Christmas time. And do you know what I drew? Angels. I didn’t draw what was happening, like I did at Terezín. I didn’t draw what I saw, like my father told me to do. Instead, in the worst situation, I escaped and drew angels. I don’t have those drawings, but I remember it clearly.”
She smiles and says, “I don’t think I’ve ever told anyone that before. Maybe I have. But you might be the first”.
copyright Erin Faith Allen
After months of hell in Auschwitz, then Freiberg and Mauthausen, Helga and her mother were liberated and returned to Prague, and eventually their original apartment was returned to them. The hook that once held a swing from Helga’s childhood is still in position in a doorway, the sole remaining witness to Helga’s life before the Nazis.
The hook survived.
Otto did not.
In spite of their efforts, Helga and her mother did not ever find out what happened to him. Otto simply disappeared after boarding that train headed east.
Helga wanders off into the next room, and I sit in silence while absorbing her prolific body of artwork adorning the walls. She has not stopped creating in this studio since her return. Surrounded by dried flowers and candles sits an 8x10 framed portrait of Otto, handsome in a dark suit and striped tie. He looks to be in his late thirties or early forties, with slightly wavy blond hair and serious eyes framed by spectacles. I see Helga in his face, and his in hers. Taking a few steps so that I can be closer to him, I look into his sepia-toned eyes and ask:
What happened to you, Otto? Where did you go?
I turn to face the bookcase across from his portrait. Upon its glass doors are taped several colorful crayon drawings made by his great-great-grandchildren.
The drawings are, like most children’s drawings, carefree, tender, and innocent.
Draw what you see.
.
An excerpt from my book The In Between.