The beds where prisoners slept. Photo: Photo: NikiSublime/flickr CC:BY.
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 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.
Two years ago, while on holiday in Malta, I attended an exhibition of these works. The sensitively drawn birds, flowers and trees and the poems expressing the children’s fears, hopes and dreams bore eloquent testimony to a world in which they saw meaning and beauty as well as despair and loss. An almost unbearable feeling of sadness overwhelmed me as I wandered around the exhibition hall and reflected on what befell those who had produced such beautiful things. Varying degrees of skill were apparent but even the untutored drawings of the very youngest children seemed to hold a lost world of promise in their bright colours and these were the most poignant of all. In this however, there seemed to be a kind of restoration or redemption of some sort. In those words and pictures, the humanity of these dead children was there to be recognised by the world.
The Nazis tried to rob their Jewish victims of every vestige of individuality and dignity before destroying them but now these youngsters had their names, not tattooed numbers, written beneath the works they had produced. Whenever and wherever their pictures are seen and their poems are read, one small triumph is made over the barbarism which sent them to their deaths.
I often think about those children and the lesson their story has for all of us. It is easy to forget the individuality or personhood of others and I sometimes find myself struggling to sustain that recognition as I carry out my work in the field of mental health. It is a world in which diagnostic classifications, treatment models and protocols abound. Mental health issues are rapidly becoming problems to be fixed by rational and technical means through the application of ‘packages of care’, each with its own price tag carefully worked out. For me, the best way of honouring the memory of the children of Theresienstadt is to focus on the humanity, individuality and suffering of each ‘client’, irrespective of diagnosis, and try to understand the totality of each person’s experience. I have ceased to believe in a transcendent God or a life beyond this one but I do believe that if God is to remain as a symbol of all that is good and the summation of our highest ideals then we must strive to encounter him in the face of all we meet.
Paul is a cognitive behavioural psychotherapist in training.
