In November 1941, the heads of the SS decided to establish the Theresienstadt Ghetto in the fortress city of Terezin. The Ghetto was portrayed to the Jewish leadership in Prague as a "Jewish City", where the Jews from Bohemia and Moravia would be concentrated. However, it was soon revealed to be a transit camp in which Jews from central Europe were held and then sent to the death camps in the east.
Despite the difficult conditions and the deportations to the east, the Ghetto had an active cultural life that emphasized the care and education of children and youth. On May 8, 1945, the Ghetto was liberated by the Soviet Red Army.
Out of 160,000 prisoners that passed through Theresienstadt between 1941 and 1945, 39,409 died in the ghetto from hunger or disease. 88,129 were deported from there to extermination camps and out of these 4,136 survived. Of the 15,000 children deported from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz, 100 survived - none under the age of fourteen.
Author’s Note:
Thirty miles outside Prague lies a town called Terezin. It was built in 1790 as a fortress and troop garrison. The stone ramparts and Empire-style buildings still stand, giving little evidence of the atrocities that took place in Terezin during World War II.
After occupying Czechoslovakia, the Germans turned Terezin into a concentration camp. Terezin was not a dearth camp like Auschwitz, though more than 35,000 people died there. Instead, Terezin was a holding place for prisoners who were ultimately shipped on to extermination in the East. More than 160,000 people passed through Terezin between November 1941 and May 1945.
Every room, attic, and cellar became living quarters in what the Nazis called, “The Jewish Ghetto.” Terezin’s prisoners included most of Czechoslovakia’s Jewish artists, writers, musicians, and political activists – and more than 15,000 children.
Adult prisoners set up schools for the children, and encouraged them to express themselves artistically. The children secretly created hundreds of journals, poems, stories, and drawings. They also issued several underground newspapers.
Fewer than 100 of the children who were sent to Terezin survived the war.
And a Child Shall Lead contains poems and stories written by some of the young prisoners. It is the result of interviews with survivors and from research in archives and museum collections in the Czech Republic.
The play was conceived to be performed by a multi-racial, multi-ethnic cast, as a reminder of the political atrocities children have fallen, and continue to fall, victim to throughout the world.
TRANSLATIONS:
German soldier in Act II: Attention: All who've been issued transport summons are to report to the trains immediately!
Thank you to Mr. Don Odato (PRHS) for recording this dialogue.
Russian solider in Act II: We're here to help you. You are free.
Thank you to Mr. Aleksander Kukushkin (GGHS) for recording this dialogue.
