The Cat with the Yellow Star: coming of age in Terezin by Susan Goldman Rubin with Ela Weissberger

Theresienstadt, or Terezin as it was commonly called, is probably best remembered as the ‘showcase’ camp among all the Nazi concentration camps. Part camp, part ghetto, conditions in Theresienstadt were appalling for the most part and it also served as a major deportation center. Deportations, Ela Weissberger writes in The Cat with the Yellow Star, were called “being sent to the East” and the inmates of Terezin thought that meant they were going east to work; they didn’t have any idea it meant being sent to a concentration camp like Auschwitz. But Terezin was also the promoted by the Nazis as a cultural center and many of the inmates were among some of the most well-known Jewish members of the arts throughout Europe in the 1930s.

The Cat with the Yellow Star is the true story of Ela Weissberger and her life before, during and after the part of her childhood that she spent in Terezin.

Ela and her family were living in the Sudetenland when the Nazis took control of this area of Czechoslovakia. The family decided to move to Prague, but not before her father, Max Stein, was arrested by the Nazis for speaking out against Hitler. Ela never saw him again.

Not long after arriving in Prague, Jewish children were prohibited from to attend school, all Jews were forced to wear a yellow star, and in 1941, deportations began. In 1942, Ela, age 11, and her family were sent to Terezin. For a while, Ela lived with her mother in a barrack, but her mother soon sent her to live in a barrack designed for girls only. There were 28 girls altogether and began to make Ela lots of friends. The caretaker in her barrack, Tella, was very strict about hygiene even under the terrible conditions of the camp, making sure the girls kept the barrack clean, the bedding was aired out everyday to fight the bedbugs and lice they were plagued with and having the girls wash daily even if the water was ice cold.

But Tella also taught them songs and made sure they did their schoolwork, both of which were forbidden and accomplished in secrecy. Also forbidden was any descriptions of the camp, whether in writing or drawing, but the well-known artist Friedl Dicker-Brandeis was also in Terezin and brought the children art supplies to use under her supervision.

Also in Terezin was composer Hans Krása, who had written the children’s opera Brundibar as an anti-Nazi work. In 1943, he reworked it and it was announced that Brundibar was going to be performed. Ela was cast to play the part of a cat. The Nazi officers were very capricious about allowing cultural activities, but play was allowed to rehearse several times in the summer on 1943. Brundibar was preformed a number of times during 1943-1944. Sadly, as children were deported, their parts were taken over by other kids. Ela, however, was fortunate enough to have never been deported and therefore, never missed any of the 55 performances that were given and always played a cat.

Original performers in Terezin's production of Brundibar

In 1944, both the Danish Red Cross and the International Red Cross was allowed to visit Terezin. Of course, the camp was cleaned up and temporarily turned into a “model camp” for the visitors. Among the things the Red Cross visitors were shown was a performance of Brundibar. The Nazis managed to fool the visitors completely with their ruse.

Unfortunately, after this visit, deportations increased considerably and soon there were only three girls left in the barrack besides Ela. Then, in the early spring of 1945, hundreds of people suddenly began streaming into the camp. They were the survivors of the Death March from Auschwitz to Terezin. Among them was Ela’s old friend Helga. Helga told Ela about what life was like in an extermination camp and Ela finally understood what the meaning to “sent to the East” meant. On May 3, 1945, Terezin was liberated and turned over to the International Red Cross.

Ela Weissberger lived in Terezin for 3 ½ years, making many friends there. After the war, she lived in Israel and later, she moved to Brooklyn, NY. On a trip to Europe in the 1970s, she discovered her friend Helga living in Vienna. A reunion of the girls from Ela’s barrack was arranged and they discovered that altogether 15 of them had survived.

Brundiabar seemed to have been lost to history, until renewed interest in it began in 1987. Since then it has been preformed fairly frequently, and Ela has been able to attend performances many times. Ela also spends time speaking to school groups about her experiences in Terezin.

The Cat with the Yellow Star is an excellent book for young readers containing a wealth of information. There are photographs of Ela’s family, copies of the art work she produced in Terezin and some wonderful pictures of her with her friends after they founded each other again in the 1970s. This was an interesting first-hand account of life in a ghetto/concentration camp that was always different from the others. Theresienstadt stands as an example of how clever the Nazis were at deception and propaganda. It was a place that they used to deflect interest away from what they were doing in the other camps and yet, of the 10,632 children sent to Terezin, only 4,096 survived.

A very nice compliment to The Cat with the Yellow Star is the 2003 story of Brundibar retold by Tony Kushner (Angels in America) and illustrated by Maurice Sendak. Unfortunately, the opera's composer Hans Krása was sent to Auschwitz and killed in October 1944 at the age of 45.





This book is recommended for readers age 9 to 12.
This book was borrowed from the Webster Branch of the NYPL.

An interesting interview with Ela Weissbergermay be found at Jweekly.com 

Holiday House offers an excellent Educators Guide for The Cat with the Yellow Star.

Non-fiction Monday is hosted this week bySimplyScience Blog

Traitor by Gudrun Pausewang, translated by Rachel Ward

Traitor begins in the winter of 1944. Anna Brünner, 16, lives in Stiegnitz, a small village, with her mother and grandmother, not exactly Nazi supporters, and her younger brother Felix, member of the Hitler Youth and completely indoctrinated in National Socialist dogma. Older brother Seff is fighting at the Eastern front. Anna's father, Felix Brünner, had been a conjuror with a traveling circus before marrying her mother, and had committed suicide when Anna was still a baby.

During the week, Anna goes to school in Schonberg, living in an attic room rented from a widow, and coming home every Saturday afternoon to Sunday afternoon.

While walking home from the train station, Anna notices some odd footprints in the snow. Becoming curious, she follows them all the way to her family’s barn. Climbing up into the hay loft, Anna finds a sleeping man lying there, wet and emaciated.  Anna assumes that he is an escaped patient from the nearby mental asylum, but at home, her grandmother tells her about eight Russian POWs who had escaped in the area. Seven of them were found and shot on the spot. Anna naturally assumes that the man in the barn is the last missing Russian, but still feels sorry for him.  She tells her grandmother that she thinks she is getting a cold and is given a jug of steaming milk and told to go to bed. Naturally, Anna sneaks it out to the hay loft and gives the milk to the man.

Anna continues to think about this man and before returning to school on Sunday, she givess him clean, dry clothes, some food and takes him to the Moserwald Bunker, a large complex that had been used for defense at one time, but has long since been abandoned. Using hand motions, she explains that he must stay there or he will be caught. With the help of a calendar, Anna indicates that she will return the following weekend.

Although Anna knows it is treasonous to help the enemy, she continues to bring the Russian, whose name is Maxim, more clothing and food. After giving him her older brother’s clothes, Anna becomes afraid that they can be traced back to her if Maxim if found. As Anna becomes increasingly stressed by this, her landlady, Mrs. Beraneck, notices and, knowing she is not a supporter of the NS regime, Anna finally confides in her that she is hiding Maxim. Just before Christmas vacation, Anna find clothing, toiletries and some kitchen utensils in her room for Maxim, left there by Mrs. Beranek.

The police have by now basically given up their search for Maxim. By now, the war is not going well for the Germans and the Russian Army has been pushing westward, getting closer and closer to Stieglitz. Anna’s brother Felix, however, has been watching her closely and following her when she goes to visit the bunker. He finally confronts Anna, telling her that he thinks she is hiding the prisoner and reminding her that that is treason, punishable by death. She explains that she goes to the bunker to be alone and write poetry. He accepts this explanation with skepticism.

Traitor is a taut, psychological novel, full of the kind of suspense that grips the reader, making it impossible to put the book down. It relies, for the most part, on Anna’s thoughts to move the narrative forward, so the reader can see the interesting play of what she thinks and what she does. It had me on the edge of my seat the whole time I was reading. There seemed no possibility that this story of Anna and Maxim could have any kind of good resolution. But as the Red Army gets closer, a good outcome seems to become a possibility. Still, the ending was not what I was expecting at all. Not one of the possibilities for a positive or negative ending that occurred to me prepared me for what does happen. But I leave it at that.

Traitor is so well worth reading and I highly recommend it. I think Anna dilemma and her actions, coupled with the way the author builds up the tension, would be very appealing to teen readers. Often translations are not as good as the original because, as they say, something gets lost. But Rachel Ward has done a great job capturing the deveolping warm relationship between Anna and Maxim in an otherwise cold and impersonal landscape that reflects the militaristic society the Nazis were so good at creating. They say you should write what you know and the Sudetenland under Nazi domination is something that Gudrun Pausewand would know about firsthand. Pausewang was born there in 1928 and spent her youth living under Nazi rule until fleeing with her family from the advancing Russian army in 1945.

This book is recommended for readers age 12 and up.
This book was borrowed from the Grand Central Branch of the NYPL

Another review of Traitor may be found at Bites

Someone Named Eva by Joan M. Wolf

Joan Wolf has written novel based on truth. The first part of Someone Named Eva is based on the famous massacre of the residents of Lidice, Czechoslovakia. The second part is based on a little known practice of the Nazis in which children who looked Aryan were forcibly taken from their families, placed in a Kinderheim (children’s home) and Germanized. After their Germanization was completed, they were adopted by German families.

The novel begins in the middle of the night on June 10, 1942, a few weeks after Milada Kralicek’s 11th birthday. There is a knock on the Kralicek’s front door and armed Nazis order the family to pack a few things and go with them. In the yard, Milada, her mother, grandmother and baby sister are separated from her father and older brother. Before they leave the yard, Milada’s grandmother surreptitiously gives her a star shaped garnet pin and tells her she must always keep it to remember who she is. The stars had always held special meaning for them; growing up, her grandmother had taught Milada all about the constellations and how the North Star can always help you find you way home.

On the road, they are joined by the other women and children of Lidice. These are all people who had believed that they were safe from the Nazis because they were not Jewish, but Hitler was enraged about the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich* in Prague by two Czechs. He gave an order that all adult men over 16 were to be executed, all women were to be sent to a work camp, the village of Lidice was to be burned to the ground and all children suitable for Germanization were to be removed. Wolf does not go into all the grime details of this terrible event, but the reader does slowly learn something about it as the story goes along.

From Lidice, the women and children are driven to Kladmo, where they are held in a large gymnasium. The floor is covered with hay and each family quickly claims a space for themselves on the floor. On the second day, two men go through the gym, looking over the children and picking a few to go with them, including Milada. These children have one thing in common - blond hair and blue eyes. They are lined up and examined, including measurements of their noses and heads. Even the color of their eyes is compared to an eye color chart. Late on the third day, Milada is taken away from her mother, who is later sent to Ravensbrück Concentration Camp. Milada and one other girl are put on a bus by themselves. In reality, it is estimated that around 100,000 children were stolen from their families for Germanization just as Milada is.

The girls are taken to Puschkau, Poland, a village surrounded by barbed wire. It is filled with Nazi women and girls who look just like Milada – blond hair, blue eyes. She is at a Lebensborn center, where she is about to be Germanized. Here, Milada ceases to exist as she is turned into Eva, an Aryan girl.

Milada/Eva spends two years at the center in Puschkau being Germanized, better known as brainwashing – learning how to speak German and how to be a proper Nazi wife and mother. There are no shortages here, none of the hunger she had felt at home, and there are always new warm clothes and shoes whenever they are needed. Though she tries hard to hang on to her original identity, Milada begins to slip away and Eva takes over.

After two years, Eva is adopted by a German family, and her new father is the commandant of Ravensbrück. At first, life is good there, with the exception of the terrible smell that permeates the air, and she begins to forget her past life in Czechoslovakia. One day, she wraps her grandmother’s star shaped pin in a handkerchief, puts it away in a draw and forgets about it. Then one scary day, Eva realizes she can no longer remember what her real name was. But by now, it is 1945 and Germany’s fortunes have started their downward turn. Eva is about to experience yet another major upheaval in her young life.

Someone named Eva is narrated in the first person by Milada, enabling Wolf to take two otherwise complicated and horrific subjects and present them in a very simple straightforward way, ideal for younger readers. There is also a long Author’s Note at the end of the book explaining the events that took place in Lidice and afterwards. Lebensborn centers were not originally intended for Germanization and indoctrination, but for reproducing racially correct babies. Nevertheless, during the war they took on this second task. I highly recommend Someone named Eva.

Someone named Eva has won a number of well deserved awards:
2007 Junior Library Guild Spring Selection
2007 VOYA Top Shelf Fiction for Middle School Readers
2008 CCBC Choices
2008 Society of Midland Authors Children’s Fiction Finalist
And to date, this novel is on 11 Children’s Choice Lists

More information about Someone named Eva may be found on Joan M. Wolf ‘s website at Joan M. Wolf 
Joan M. Wolf, who wrote Someone named Eva, is not to be confused with Joan Wolf, author of Christian fiction. They are two different people.

This book is recommended for readers aged 9-12.
This book was borrowed from the Yorkville Branch of the New York Public Library.

*Reinhard Heydrich, nicknamed “the Hangman” was a particularly hateful, cruel man and one of the architects of the Final Solution. He was named Reich Protector of Bohemia-Moravia in 1941. His job in Czechoslovakia was to organize and coordinate the deportation of Jews and other enemies of the state to death camps.