Czeching out Prague: Terezin

I've always had a dramatic flair. I've always enjoyed acting and putting on a show.

In High School I got to use my dramatic side more than once, and honestly, the times I was on stage were some of my happiest memories. 

I love being able to fully integrate into a character and get to be "someone else" for just that little bit.

Now, it's one thing to play a fictional character. It's an entirely different thing to play a real person. Especially when it's a play about something as serious as The Holocaust.

In high school I had the great honor of playing the role/lead of Raja Englanderova, a girl that was held in the Terezin ghetto in Prague. The play is "I never saw another Butterfly" and it's based on the stories of all of the children that lived in the ghetto and off of one poem in particular.

Today, I got to experience a dream of mine. Jon and I finally made it to Terezin and I actually got to see the ghetto, the small fortress prison (most of the pictures are from that), and see pictures drawn by Raja. It was supremely surreal, emotional, and humbling.

Throughout this post I'll be putting poems written by the children of Terezin. These poems were also incorporated into the play as well...

The poor thing stands there vainly.

Vainly he strains his voice.

Perhaps he'll die. Then can you say

How beautiful is the world today?

Zdenek Ohrenstein (survived)

Birdsong

He doesn't know the world at all

Who stays in his next and doesn't go out.

He doesn't know what birds know best

Nor what I want to sing about,

That the world is full of lovliness.

When dewdrops sparkle in the grass

And earth's aflood with morning light,

A blackbird sings upon a bush

To greet the dawning after night.

Then I know how fine it is to live.

Hey, try to open up your heart

To beauty; go to the woods someday

And weave a wreathe of memory there.

Then if the tears obscure your way

You'll know how wonderful it is

To be alive.

unknown author

the killing field

Forgotten

You wanton, quiet memory that haunts me all the while

In order to remind me of her whom love I send.

Perhaps when you caress me sweetly, I will smile,

You are my confidante today, my very dearest friend.

our muskrat friends

You sweet remembrance, tell a fairy tale.

About my girl whose lost and gone, you see.

Tell, tell the one about the golden grail

And call the swallow, bring her back to me.

Fly somewhere back to he and ask her, soft and low,

If she thinks of me sometimes with love,

If she is well and ask her too before you go

If I am still her dearest, precious dove.

the gate the prisoners were brought to before they were executed

And hurry back, don't lose your way,
So I can think of other things,
But you were too lovely, perhaps, to stay.
I loved you once. Goodbye, my love!
Zdenek Ohrenstein (survived)

The Butterfly

The last, the very last,

So richly, brightly, dazzlingly yellow.

Perhaps if the sun's tears would sing

against a white stone...

Such, such a yellow

Is carried lightly 'way up high.

It went away I'm sure because it wished

to kiss the world goodbye.

For seven weeks I've lived in here,

Penned up inside this ghetto

But I have found my people here.

The dandelions call to me

And the white chestnut candles in the court.

Only I never saw another butterfly.

That butterfly was the last one.

Butterflies don't live in here,

In the ghetto

Pavel Friedmann (7.1.1921-29.9.1944)