There Are No Butterflies Here

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Drawing was one of the few activities that the children in Terezín were allowed to undertake. Some of them therefore spent a lot of time with pencil as a companion. Among them was, at that time, thirteen-year-old Helga Hošková, (neé Weissová). She recalled: “Many of the drawings came into existence under the guidance of an Austrian female painter, who ran away to Czechoslovakia after the Anschluss and married Mr. Brandeis here. Here name was Friedl Dicker-Brandeis. In Terezín she devoted herself to children to whom she gave drawing lessons. Without anyone knowing, she was hiding the drawings. After the war two suitcases with around five thousand drawings were found in the attic of one of the children’s houses in Terezín. At present, they are the property of the Jewish Museum in Prague and in the world they are known under the title ‘There Are No Butterflies Here’.” The title of this collection of drawings is derived from a poem composed by one Jewish boy. The poem was written in Terezín and its closing lines read: ‘I have not seen a butterfly here. There are no butterflies here, in the ghetto.’ Thanks to these drawings, Helga Weissová maintained contact with her parents who were placed in other section of the Terezín ghetto: “At the very beginning, when we were allowed to send only letters, I sent to my father this naïve children drawing of a snowman. And my father answered: ‘Draw what you see.’ So I started to draw the everyday life in Terezín. I was there for almost three years and I drew over hundred drawings. And I really captured the everyday life in the ghetto. Nowadays, the drawings are very rare and valuable because they are not very many pictures documenting the life in Terezín. Moreover, they were made by a child and they are thus easily understandable. The drawing were published in a book which is called ‘Draw what you see’ after what my father had told me."

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Art Activities of the Terezín Children

The collection of drawings form the Terezín ghetto comprises some 4,500 artworks by Jewish children who were incarcerated during the Second World War in the Terezín ghetto. All the drawings in the collection were made in just less than two years, (1942-44), in drawing lessons organized by the former Bauhaus student Friedl Dicker-Brandeisovou. Drawing lessons, like children's theater, enjoyed a privileged position within the clandestine system of schooling at Terezín. Dicker-Brandeis fully respected the individual personality of each child and gave them room to express themselves and to open up their imagination and emotions. In this sense the drawing lessons significantly helped children to endure the depressing realities of everyday life and thus had an invaluable therapeutic effect. Before being deported to Auschwitz, Dicker-Brandeis managed to hide hundreds of children’s drawings in suitcases in an attic. This female painter and educator never returned. On October 9, 1944 she perished in the gas chambers of Auschwitz.

Terezín (Theresienstadt), Main Fortress

Available in: English | Česky | Deutsch

The Terezín Main Fortress is part of the defensive complex founded by Emperor Joseph II in 1780. It lies on the confluence of the Rivers Labe, (Elbe), and Ohře, and was originally supposed to serve as a defensive fortress in the case of a Prussian invasion. It was never used in a military capacity however, as the Prussians simply circumvented it. Terezín gained the status of garrison town, the army remained present here until the end of the 20th century. The fortress comprises two parts: the Main Fortress and the Small Fortress. Already since its construction, the Small Fortress served as a military prison; the Main Fortress was inhabited. However, the Nazis decided to create a Jewish ghetto there, and so the civilian inhabitants were deported and on 24 November 1941 the Jewish ghetto of Terezín was founded. When preparing the ghetto, the Nazis made use of the Jewish Community of Prague. The Nazis claimed that Terezín would be a camp in which the Jewish population of the Protectorate would be interned, but from which it would not be transported East. In 1942 at a conference in Wannsee, the Nazis confirmed the specific status of the Terezín ghetto. It was supposed to be a so-called “old-age ghetto,” which would house old people, often veterans of World War 1 not only from the Protectorate, but also from Germany and Austria. In this way, the Nazis created an alibi for themselves – they could claim that old people were not being sent East into “labor camps,” but that they remained in Terezín. This was a lie because even from Terezín transports were dispatched, which were full of old people. In actual fact, the primary function of the ghetto was to collect the Jews and transport them elsewhere. The average number of inmates during the four years of the ghetto’s existence fluctuated between thirty to forty thousand, (before WWII the town had about 7,000 inhabitants, military garrison included). During its peak in September 1942, however, the camp held almost 58,500 prisoners (At the time, an average of 127 people died every day!). The overloaded capacity meant that the ghetto offered very bad living conditions causing a high death rate. To top it all, towards the end of the war a typhus epidemic broke out in the camp. Overall, approx. 155,000 people passed through the Terezín concentration camp, of which 118,000 did not survive World War II, (including those killed by the typhus epidemic). Terezín was liberated without any fighting. On 1 May 1945, control of the camp was entrusted to the Red Cross, on 5 May the last Nazis fled before the nearing front, and on 8 May 1945 the first Soviet units arrived.