A Few Leaves: Children's Poems and Pictures from Terezín and Osvtím

By Tom Vaughan

First shown to the public in the months following the Liberation of Prague, the letters, art work and poetry of the children of Terezín and Osvtim were then fresh upon the page. Many survived to within a few months of the victory. One could almost touch their hands.

The unimaginable tragedy of the slaughter of millions is viewed more intimately when a survivor sees in an old album the faces of family members who were killed and recognizes their goodness and humanity. In the same way, the images and verses of children, expressive of their private thoughts, sentiments and observations offer the opportunity to acknowledge the enormity of their loss from a closer, more personal perspective.

The author has been for many years a clinical and research physician and teacher at the Illinois West Side Medical Center. Born in England, trained at a London teaching hospital, and possessing advanced medical qualifications there and in the USA, he has degrees from Oxford University in Physiology and European languages and literature; and from the University of London in sociology.

He has maintained close contact with Prague friends from student days, contacts which could be resumed after the Velvet Revolution of November 1989.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 14, 2008
• ISBN: 9781664133648

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Copyright © 2008 by Tom Vaughan. 573789

All rights reserved. No part of this book may

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and retrieval system, without permission in writing from

the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters,

places and incidents either are the product of the

author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any

resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead,

events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Library of Congress Control Number:     2006901959

Book Designer: Alfred B. Ilagan

Rev. date: 09/25/2020

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frontispiece: reader! see

by Erika Taussigová, b. 12-10-34, d. 16-10-44, Osvětim

a few leaves

Children’s Poems and Pictures from Terezín and Osvĕtím

Presented by Tom Vaughan

Dedication

Children’s drawings and poems from Terezín and a smaller number from Osvĕtim are to be found in the Státní Židovské Muzeum in Prague. These notorious places are better known as Theresienstadt and Auschwitz, but I have retained the names by which they were known by the children.

The few leaves of the title include a number of the children’s poems in translation and reflections responding to the tragedy of their loss.

For loving assistance in my translation of what they wrote, I am indebted to my very dear friend and contemporary, Inj. Jarmila Maršalková, long-time secretary of the Czech branch of the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize-winning International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War; to whom, as to the children of the ghetto, this text is dedicated.

One may perchance attain to such … sincerity that … the presented vision of regret or pity, of terror or mirth shall awaken in the hearts of the beholders that feeling of unavoidable solidarity: of the solidarity in mysterious origin, in toil, in joy, in hope, in uncertain fate, which binds men to each other and all mankind to the visible world.

Joseph Conrad, Notes and Prefaces, 1897

people crossing dark bridges, passing saints

seen only by the feeble lights of candles; clouds parading

against grey skies, above the churches with their darkening towers;

and one who leans upon the square stone parapet,

his hand resting on the ancient stone,

as he looks down into the twilight waters

Kafka’s Prague, 1903 (trans. t.v.)

a few leaves

In the Old Town of Prague, only a few yards from the thirteenth century Gothic Old-New Synagogue,¹ stands the Old Jewish Cemetery.² In earlier times, the cemetery was sometimes referred to as ‘the Jewish Garden.’

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the Staronové Synagog, Altneuschul or Old-New

Synagogue, medallion of 1990 commemorating

its 700th Anniversary

Over almost three centuries, between 1439 and 1737, this was the burial place of Prague Jewry. In the Prague Jewish Museum, a stoneware pitcher of 1801 depicts members of the Burial Brotherhood at their task, a Holy Society³ whose members were not permitted to profit from the dead.

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with its shade trees, elaborately carved inscriptions and draped, exotic figures, the Cemetery provided romantic subjects for Bohemian painters.

Extended several times by the purchase of adjacent lots, the area available for burial was never adequate to the community’s need. Thus, twelve thousand graves of successive generations lie here in twelve tiers, their inscriptions indicating: personal and family name; age, sex and place of origin; indications of scholarship and rank; symbols of trade and profession, coupled with sentiments of praise and grief.

Beside the Cemetery, a section of the Museum is housed in the Romanesque Ceremonial Hall. In its upper room, more than fifty years after they were first displayed, the few leaves of the title are to be found: drawings and poems by children, of whom a tiny remnant survived the years of captivity in Terezín.

As the gravestones of the Old Cemetery record three centuries of loss and remembrance, in accordance with the bureaucratic procedures of the camps, the dates of each child’s birth and death are