The children of Theresienstadt

Paul Green finds that artwork by children in a concentration camp encourages him to recognise that of God in all he meets

The beds where prisoners slept. | Photo: Photo: NikiSublime/flickr CC:BY.

The combined ghetto and concentration camp at Theresienstadt (in what is now the Czech Republic) housed many prominent Jewish artists, writers, composers and intellectuals. Its rich cultural life was exploited by the Nazis who presented it to the Red Cross as a model community, even producing a propaganda film in which the inmates were depicted dining in cafes and being entertained by street musicians. This Potemkin village hid a world of brutality, suffering and death behind its carefully constructed facade and, of the 15,000 children who passed through its gates, fewer than 100 survived. After the war the paintings, drawings and poems they had produced were found in two suitcases left behind by the artist and teacher Friedl Dick-Brandeis before her transportation to Auschwitz, a fate shared by many of her young charges.

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