Students perform, survivors reflect, on tales written by children of Terezin Jewish ghetto
By: John Dunphy
Throughout World War II, amidst the millions killed, tens of thousands of Jews many of them scholars, doctors, artists and musicians were held in the Terezin Jewish ghetto.
Of those many people, 15,000 of them were children teens, toddlers.
When it was liberated on May 8, 1945, only 126 children walked out.
What also survived was a suitcase of poems, stories, letters and drawings, written between 1942 and 1944 by children held prisoner in Terezin. After a decade, the suitcase was found and restored.
Many of these works have since been compiled into a book, "I Never Saw Another Butterfly," which has since been read and studied by many people across the world.
Students of Lorie Baldwin’s drama program at Lawrence High School presented the story of Raja, one of the 126 survivors, in a one-act cutting of the theatrical rendition of "I Never Saw Another Butterfly," on Friday. Members of the New Jersey Commission on Holocaust Education, which held its monthly meeting Friday at the high school, were in attendance.
"My name is Raja. I was born in Prague … I am all alone," said 11th-grade student Perri Lerner, who played Raja in the first production of "I Never Saw Another Butterfly." Three performances were held throughout the day.
"But, that’s not important. What’s important is I am a Jew. And I survived Terezin," Perri said.
To have survived, whether in Terezin or at any of the other countless concentration camps, was no easy task, recalled Joel Fabian, a south New Jersey resident and child survivor of Terezin who attended the performance.
"Very few of us are lucky to have survived," he said. "Talk to any survivor and they will tell you it is luck that they are alive."
Terezin, once a civilian town in the Bohemian Mountains, just southwest of Prague, then Czechoslovakia, was built for 8,000 people. At one point, it housed close to 60,000 Jewish prisoners. Many of those were shipped to Auschwitz, a place where most were ultimately killed, Mr. Fabian said.
During World War II, it has been documented, the outside world was told Terezin was a place for Jews to be protected from the stresses of war. On one occasion, the Red Cross paid Terezin a visit, only to see usually barren shop windows filled with produce, baked goods and candies. Selected prisoners would be dressed up in clean clothes and told to stand at strategic places along the designated route in Terezin. Only after the war did the world find out what had really been going on there.
Nancy Hendrickson, the Lawrence School District psychologist and Ms. Baldwin, the LHS theater director, spent over a year in collaboration to bring the play to the stage in commemoration of Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, which began at sundown Sunday.
The New Jersey Commission on Holocaust Education, upon hearing the play would take place, accepted an invitation to hold its meeting at the high school.
"The production on Friday was a wonderful example that showed students were really learning about the Holocaust, genocide and prejudice reduction," said Dr. Paul Winkler, executive director for the commission. "Teaching in this way meets the deeper educational instruction by having children not only know something, but also feel and understand what they’re learning."
Rebecca Gold, director of personnel and technology for LHS, called the commission’s decision to meet at the school and see the production "a great honor."
"It’s amazing for the commission to see what’s going on in the schools," she said. "There are real people behind this. And that’s so, so important."
For Camelia Court resident Vera Goodkin, the production "brought tears to my eyes."
Though not held in Terezin, her story is a familiar one. Ms. Goodkin, along with her family, had been kept in two Hungarian holding prisons, in Budapest, and another in Kistarcsa, where they were rescued in October 1944 by Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish humanitarian sent to Hungary to save Hungarian Jews from the Holocaust.
Ms. Goodkin, 76, told the cast of the 10 a.m. performance about how her own Holocaust horror story, which began in 1939, when she was 9 years old.
"I heard the rhythmic bumping of boots. It turned out to be Nazi boots," she said. "Somehow I had a feeling, I knew even as a child… I yelled, ‘They’re going to kill us!’ I didn’t know how prophetic I would be."
"We were nonentities," Ms. Goodkin continued. "We lost our human rights, we lost our civil rights. As we lost our rights, we realized if we didn’t do something about it, we’d also lose our lives."
Ms. Goodkin and her family became "professional escapees."
"We ran and ran and ran," she said. "We hid in more attics, more cellars, more false walls."
The family was eventually caught in 1943.
It was around this same time that Mr. Fabian, 67, was sent with his family to Terezin, known in German as Theresienstadt. He was 4 years old.
Though the children lived their lives not knowing whether they would survive the night, Mr. Fabian said, the original poem "I Never Saw Another Butterfly," from which the play and book are based, became the hallmark of Terezin.
"Through horror, they were still looking for butterflies," he said.
Mr. Fabian recalled his own childlike actions while at the holding facility. There, amidst the prisoners starving to death the prison guards were treated to a swimming pool and gardens, abundant with fresh fruits and vegetables.
As a toddler, Mr. Fabian snuck into one of those gardens and took tomatoes. But, he took one too many to conceal underneath his clothes. He wasn’t caught by a guard, however, but his mother.
"When my mother found out I had been in the garden, she never let me out of her sight again," he said.
Brandi Poland, a senior at Lawrence High School and co-director of the one-act production, along with senior Caleb Whipple, said having the New Jersey Commission on Holocaust Education in attendance, as well as a surviving Terezin prisoner, was initially "nerve wracking."
"We wondered ‘Are we portraying this right?’ she said. "It was very touching to hear ‘we were amazed.’ It was such a good feeling."
While Brandi noted she and other students had been learning about the Holocaust since early in their elementary school education, "It’s different to actually immerse yourself in this. A schoolbook will never teach what seeing it or talking with someone about it will."
Education is far from over, both Mr. Fabian and Ms. Goodkin said. Not only must the atrocities of the Holocaust not be forgotten, but action must be taken to stop genocide happening today.
Ethnic cleansings have occurred in Bosnia, Rwanda, Cambodia, and in Darfur. "They still exist," Mr. Fabian said.
"Though the victims and perpetrators are different, ethnic cleansing is alive and well," Ms. Goodkin said. "Education is the key."
As survivors grow older and are no longer able to speak publicly about the Holocaust, she noted the need for second and third generation family of survivors to start talking.
A program called Adopt-a-Survivor, which pairs a high school student with a Holocaust survivor, is another way to educate, Ms. Goodkin said.
"Once they know the story, they promise to find a public forum to discuss it in 2045," she said.
It is through efforts such as these that people will remember the events of the Holocaust, and the current genocides, in hope that once and for all, genocide will come to an end, Ms. Goodkin said.
"In Theresienstadt, you woke up hungry, you woke up with lice, you woke up scared, and you didn’t know what would happen by nightfall," Mr. Fabian said.
Educational resources on the Holocaust are available to the public, including a Holocaust Resource Center at Lawrence High School. For more information about resources available in the district, call Nancy Hendrickson at (609) 671-5500 ext. 4307. You can also visit the New Jersey Commission on Holocaust Education site at state.nj.us/njed/holocaust and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum at ushmm.org.

