120 pages, black/white, about 30 images/ documents by "The Girls of Room 28"

and 6 paintings by Bedřich Fritta

Date of Release: 28 June 2021

Translation: Hannelore Brenner

Editing: Maris Lyons, Cardiff/Wales

ISBN 978-3-9819140-3-0

From the Preface

This play is based on the true story of “The Girls of Room 28”, the Jewish girls who lived together in the Girls’ Home L410 in the Theresienstadt ghetto. It is the result of many conversations with survivors of this group mainly between the years 1996 and 2003, but also after.

I came across the story of these girls during my research for a radio-feature on the children’s opera Brundibár in the US, Czech Republic and Austria. In November 1996 I visited Anna Hanusová in Brno and Helga Kinsky in Vienna for the first time, and after that, we agreed to join forces to create what we set out to be a “Book of Remembrance”, a compilation of documents and recollections in memory of the girls of Room 28 and the children of the ghetto who did not survive the Holocaust. It was also intended as a tribute to the adults in the ghetto who lovingly took care of the children and taught them values that became fundamental to their lives.

From September 1998 we met every year in early autumn for several days in the Czech resort of Špindlerův Mlýn, in the Krkonoše Mountains. There, during our conversations while walking along the Elbe river or over the mountains, and during the workshops we held in order to bring together whatever available documents and memories the participants could contribute, I was both witness to and a participant in a work of remembrance that became more and more intense and vibrant with every meeting. A passage from Helga's diary, words from Flaška's scrap-book, a poem from Handa's notebook, a photograph, a child's drawing, a song – all of a sudden the past would come alive for the women, tangibly close even for me, the outsider, who was swept along by this stream of consciousness into the very centre of a story that would not let me go, even today.

Most of the scenes and dialogues woven into this play originated in these first annual meetings and are from our conversations which I recorded. The play I created was the first step towards giving the story an artistic form. The first version, called Ghetto Tears 1944.The Girls of Room 28 was finished in 2002, two years before the book The Girls of Room 28 was published by the German publishing house Droemer, Munich. (...)

The importance of Music in Room 28

While writing, music kept sounding in my mind which, of course, is not surprising at all. Thanks to the caretaker Ella Pollak, whom the girls called Tella, music played an important role in Room 28. Tella was a passionate pianist and music teacher. With her protégés she founded a choir, and with three of the girls – Flaška, Ela and Maria – she formed a trio. Often the girls’ singing was heard outside and it is said that passers-by stopped to listen to their voices.

Sometimes, in the evening, powerful singing was audible all the way up to Room 28. It came from the old vaulted cellar of the Girls’ Home. All the inmates knew that Rafael Schächter, the multifaceted musician – conductor, pianist, composer – was rehearsing with his choir – Mozart's Bastien and Bastienne, Smetana's Bartered Bride, or the unforgettable Requiem by Verdi.

In mid-summer 1944 the music came from the pavilion set up on the main square directly in front of the Girls' Home. The reason for this was the so-called “Beautification of the Town” measures ordered by the SS ‘Kommandantur’ in preparation for the visit of a delegation from the International Red Cross in June 1944. It was also on command of the SS that the “Stadtkapelle” (Town Band) had to play from now on at specific times as well as the “Ghetto Swingers”, an orchestra that played in the style of American swing and jazz, music which was forbitten throughout the Third Reich but admitted in the ghetto.

Music also echoed in my heart whenever I read Handa’s wonderful poems that she jotted in her notebook, or when I imagined specific scenes. And then of course, there was Brundibár! This children’s opera by Hans Krása and Adolf Hoffmeister is an essential part of the story of these girls and the very reason that led me to them, and one of the reasons why I finally told their story. In short, I always felt that the play needed music. (…)

And now, in May 2021, I am preparing the English edition with the help of the wonderful Maris Lyons, a performer and musical theatre producer who has worked extensively for Welsh National Opera (WNO) and Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff and who I got to know in June 2019 during WNO’s Freedom Season. WNO presented Brundibár as part of this Summer Season, conducted by its Music Director Tomáš Hanus, who is the son of one of the main protagonists of this play, Anna Hanusová, née Flachová, called Flaška. In the frame of the Freedom Season, WNO also presented our exhibition The Girls of Room 28 at Wales Millennium Centre, and it was here where Maris and I met, and she became interested in this work. Thank you so much Maris for editing the text of this play!

May this play, which I also see as a basis for a film-script, inspire many people and may the story of these girls continue to be told in the medium of theatre, music and film today, in all corners of the world, and long into the future.

Hannelore Brenner. Berlin, May 2021

Cast

The play can be cast in a variety of ways depending on the company size available. Here is the survey.

Helga Pollak. 1939

On November 14, 2020, the protagonist of the play, Helga Kinsky (née Pollak), passed away very unexpectedly at her home in Vienna. It felt to me as if she was torn away from the middle of life. Nothing foreshadowed her sudden death. She was in good health and spirits and if it would not have been for COVID-19, she would have celebrated her 90th birthday in the circle of her family and her big circle of friends.

In mid-September 2020 she was the first who received and read one of the first copies of the German original version of this play, and I was so happy when she called me to let me know that she liked it very much.  (...) The inspiration to this play originates in my first visit in Vienna in 1996, when she showed me her diary and the notes  that her father made in Theresienstadt. In the book "The Girls of Room 28" published in 2004 I wrote:

"From the very beginning I had a vision - and this is thanks to Helga Pollak. In my mind one scene after the other was passing by like a film as she told me about her childhood and read from her wonderful diary. Without Helga's well-documented fate – a circumstance which is due to the fact that her father Otto Pollak also survived and was able to save her diary and his own calendar notes and other valuable documents from Theresienstadt – the present book would never have been written."- Nor would this play have come into being.

Thus, the play, the book and exhibition The Girls of Room 28, as well as Helga’s diary contain the most valuable part of the legacy of Helga Pollak-Kinsky and her father Otto Pollak. I am happy that in 2014, I could bring about a German edition of her precious diary by publishing it myself as the first book of Edition Room 28 und the title: Mein Theresinestädter Tagebuch 1943-1944.

Thanks to David Haas, whom I got to know in 2019, I am able to enrich this booklet with drawings by Bedrich Fritta. David is the son of Tomas Fritta-Haas and the grandson of the painter Friedrich (Czech: Bedřich) Taussig, who became known under the artist name Bedřich Fritta. (Fritta is composed of the first two letters of the names Friedrich and Taussig). Also Leo Haas is David's grandfather, because after the war Leo Haas and his wife adopted Tomas, whose parents were murdered by the Nazis. At that time Tomas was four years old.

Otto Pollak's notes contain this entry from July 18, 1944: "Yesterday, three boys escaped from the ghetto. Among them was young Sklarek from Berlin. Probably as a reprisal, 5 important painters were arrested for denigrating the ghetto, together with their families, and taken to the Small Fortress. The persons concerned, most of them from Prague, were: Prof. Ungar, Haas, Troller, Strass and Fritta (Fritz Taussig), with whose droll chubby-cheeked little son Tommy we often joked."

Bedřich Fritta's drawings – like the book "Tommy zum dritten Geburtstag (Tommy for his third birthday), which Fritta painted for his son in Theresienstadt – bear witness to a shaken existence, flooded with love and hope, fear and tears. They also testify to a profoundly creative and human strength, as reflected in the works and strivings of many ghetto inmates, a strength that still lives on in the works of artists of all genres who once were prisoners of Theresienstadt.  (...)