Brundibár and the girls from room 28...these are two stories, inextricably intertwined. Brundibar, the children's opera by Hans Krása and Adolf Hoffmeister, written in Prague in 1938 shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War and performed over 50 times by the young prisoners in the Theresienstadt concentration camp, is now a memorial to the children who did not survive the Holocaust. The story of Aninka and Pepiček and the organ grinder Brundibár remains inextricably linked to the fate of their first actors in the Theresienstadt ghetto and keeps their memory alive; and with it the belief in the victory of good over evil.

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A special group of Holocaust survivors also carries on this memory – the “Girls from Room 28”. Over 75 years ago, between 1942 and 1944, they lived together in a very small space in the Theresienstadt ghetto, in the girls' home L 410 (Längsstrasse 4 number 10). They were 12 to 14 years old, Jewish prisoners, most of them from the Czechoslovak Republic, some originally from Austria, who lost their belongings after the Germans invaded their homeland, were deprived of their civil rights and - some alone, some with the Parents or with only one parent – were deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto. There, in room 28, their fates met.

When the children's opera Brundibár was rehearsed from July 1943, girls from room 28 were also there - Ela Stein as a cat, Maria Mühlstein as a sparrow, Handa Pollak and Anna Flach (Flaška) sang in the school children's choir. And Flaška stepped in twice for the role of Aninka and Handa for the dog. A few times the talented Maria Mühlstein, who often played the sparrow, played Aninka alongside her brother Piňta.

Illustration: Cover of the American edition, 2009

Ela Weissberger, née Stein, remembered: "We were three girls from our room - Flaška, Maria Mühlstein and me. And we had to line up in a row and everyone had to sing: La-la-la, up the scale and down. When it was my turn, I was shaking because I was afraid that I wouldn't sing well enough. But then Rudi Freudenfeld said to me: You know what? You will play a cat. A cat in a children's opera? That was something extraordinary."

These and other memories are on the exhibition board

The story of the "Girls from Room 28" contributed significantly to the renaissance of the Brundibár children's opera, as did the Brundibár pilot project Jeunesses Musicales Germany (JMD), which was initiated by the then Secretary General Thomas Rietschel in the mid-90s. With children from Poland, the Czech Republic and Germany, the JMD performed the opera in Berlin, Prague and Warsaw. A “Brundibár folder” (illustration) followed, a collection with information about the project, data and facts about the Theresienstadt ghetto, compiled by the Fritz Bauer Institute and with voices from contemporary witnesses. It also contains the text of my radio feature “Brundibar and the Children of Theresienstadt” as well as my article about Vedem, the newspaper of the boys from home 1 of the boys' home L 417.