“Neighbors Who Disappeared” Project (started in 1999 under the auspices of the Office of the president Vaclav Havel)

The Education and Culture Center of the Jewish Museum in Prague (ECC JMP) in collaboration with its project partner Forgotten NGO, with a support of the Terezín Memorial, Hidden Child, Czech Federation of Jewish Communities, invite anyone interested to participate in a unique project called “Neighbors Who Disappeared”. This project is a social phenomenon of the . In the light of strong assimilation of the Jewish population till 1939 and following radical change and in the shade of the period 1945-1989, which did not care of the gradual devastation of historic sights and religious life, the path on vanishing traces of local Jewish settlement might for young people become a find of special context. 1. The goal of the project NWD is to help students 12-21 years old to formulate questions, which relate to the fate of the people who have disappeared during the 2nd World War in their neighborhood. Students are doing research into local and state archives, in Terezin Memorial and other related organizations, oral history with witnesses and survivors. Then they are preparing brochures or collection with family photos and documents, often as a first research about Jewish Community life in their . Since 2002 is the individual effort of students multiplied by following activities of local Jewish communities and Non-Governmental organizations. The outputs are research studies and essays saving local photos and documentation, often important for databases, archives and scholars and the exhibition Neighbors Who Disappeared (12 panels) accompanied by the catalogue.

2. The II. stage of the project called A Tribute to the Child Holocaust Victims addresses again young people aged 12 –21 and proposes that they work independently on the stories of people who lived with their neighbors in a harmony until WWII and who were then mostly marked, restricted, persecuted, and finally liquidated. This project’s topic, however, is in the first place the life of the children and youngsters in the same community where children – participants live today. The output is a digital tablet permanently placed in each participated school accompanied by web-sites, brochures and volumes presented as a report about students research work. These outputs are based on the students long-time-self learning project and common local activities (schools-archives-libraries and cultural centers- families- municipalities). Copy of that in English is a part of a national traveling exhibition (in October 2005 there is 7 posters 80 x 200 cm) each from different locality accompanied by common catalogue and later on by individual brochures (supported by each school and local municipalities).

Supervisor and coordinator: The Education and Culture Centre of the Jewish Museum in Prague, Maiselova 15, Prague 1, 110 00, Czech Republic phone: +420 222 325 172, +420 224 814 926 Marie Zahradníková fax: +420 222 318 856, [email protected] Methodologist and coordinator: Marta Vančurová ([email protected]), mobile: +420 603 147 074

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S u m m a r y: Zuzana Krizova Stříbro, High School

I do not have any ancestors of Jewish origin. But my grandmother told me she had had a Jewish girlfriend. Her name was Eva. They attended the same class and were inseparable friends. When according to the law Eva had to leave the school, my grandmother risked her life and visited her secretly. She taught her what Eva missed at school and at night they used to go for walks. Then Eva was transported to Terezin and was killed together with her mother. When my grandmother had a baby girl she did not think twice about naming the child after her friend… Eva. What's more, most of my grandmother's classmates have daughters of the same name. All of them named their daughters in honour of her so that she could live on with them.

Junior High School and Public School of Arts in Husova Street, Usti nad Labem We thought this work would help us to find responses to our questions. The contrary is true. The more we learned, the more other questions appeared. I feel that it is impossible to find the answer to the cardinal question – how could it happen? In spite of this we will keep asking. …We particularly wanted to publish memories of the people whose lives were changed by the war and the Holocaust. We had the opportunity to meet Mrs. Viera Siladinova who survived Auschwitz. On the Internet we were in touch with Mrs. Rachel Isserow who, together with her family, left Usti nad Labem for Izrael. We had a chance to have a look at the authentic diary notes of our classmate’s great-grandfather and get acquainted with the memories of our two classmates’ grandmothers. (Vratislav Drobecek, 8.B student)

My story is about me, Zuzana Elbertova (High School Pripotocni, Prague 10) Only recently my father learnt from my grandfather’s friends that he comes from a Jewish family. Unfortunately this information is fragmentary, only assembled from several preserved documents, as this topic has been taboo in my father’s family until recently. My grandfather is not alive and my grandmother is scarred from the past, she has never spoken about it as she does not want to be reminded of it any more.

Pupils of Velhartice Elementary and Junior High School We have a small girls’ group in Velhartice and when we were offered the project Neighbors Who Disappeared by the basic school I asked the girls if they wanted to set about dealing with it. They did and so we set off to follow the traces of the neighbors who disappeared. Why did we choose Lili’s story? When Lili was leaving for Prague she was as old as the girls. We also enjoyed the narration of Alena’s grandmother. I think it is important for the girls to consider that children of the same age had totally different worries, that their fate was hard and came unfortunately to such a tragic end. Ivona Synáčová, leader of the Girls Christian Group

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Junior High School in Lostice – Last Fates of the Jewish Community in Loštice In the publication on the history of Lostice published by the municipal authority in 1999 the report on the Morgensterns is missing. Five Morgenstern children and their father Richard Morgenstern belong to the saved Eckstein family, too. The children are alive and they are the only first-hand witnesses to the Lostice Holocaust. Among plenty of offers arriving at our school this one was different. Three girls in the highest level (Veronika Naplavova, Nina Koudelkova, Terezie Tatounova) responded to it quite spontaneously. It made me very happy, as I myself would not dare to take part. (Frantisek Kobza – teacher at Lostice Junior High School)

Six testimonies on those who disappeared – Mašťov (Kadaň) Petr Vesely, High School Kadan The Fantl family lived in a small house, number 134, near the synagogue. The house was beneath the chateaux close to the Zamecka alley. Heinrich and Julia Fantl had five children: Richard, Ernst, Josef, Helena and Frieda. The only one who survived and also got back to Mastov was Richard. He survived the concentration camps only thanks to - as he later remembered - the fact that in the camp he led a pony pulling a cart and shared oats with the horse. In the summer of 1945 he returned to his native town Mastov with broken health. He was 26. After six years of concentration camp, cold and starvation he suffered from advanced tuberculosis. Mrs Fantl came from a mixed marriage as her father was Czech and her mother was German. She had known Richard since their school years and he always used to joke he would marry her one day. He kept his word. She already had her luggage packed and was waiting to be transferred to Germany with her family. She spent six weeks in Podborany where all Germans were concentrated before the transfer. Richard came for her and later they got married.

Martin Fencl, High School Porg, Prague 8 (The Jewish Settlement in Liteň, Mořina and Beroun) Thanks to the project “Neighbors Who Disappeared” I have created totally my own work, which I would probably never have made up my mind to do by myself. Unlike the works that one carries out by collecting pieces of second-hand information from books, I, in my work, only wrote about what I saw with my own eyes. I have made something of my own.

Students in High School in Ostrava – Hrabuvka - Ostrava We got involved in this project because people have been gradually forgetting how World War II changed people’s lives, mostly Jewish. Many of them died and to those who were lucky and survived, the nightmares will evoke memories of the horrors that were committed on them. Today’s generation, without any knowledge what it is all about, only laughs at it. That is why we think that this project can help them to understand. In 1899 there was the first Jewish gymnastics club in Czech lands called Bar Kochba, in 1924 renamed ZKS Makkabi. Jan Mayer was a member as well – in the photo of the Makkabi Games 1931.

3 The Fates of the Šumperk Jewish Families Martina Polisenska and Vera Skubalova, Zabreh na Morave, High School I have never been interested in the Jews before. The project „Neighbours Who Disappeared“ came at the time when I, within the framework of a school film screening, had to see Steven Spilberg‘s film Schindler‘s List. After the film sequence when human ashes are falling onto a small town I was overcome with terror and hate of human cruelty that caused the death of many people. Maybe that is why my friend and I set out to search for the fate of the Jewish families in Sumperk.

Lipník nad Bečvou - Mr Steiner tells the students of Lipnik High School: “Hard it is to express the feelings of a man who is a native of Lipnik nad Becvou, and also a former student of Lipnik secondary school, who went through Terezin, Auschwitz, Buchenwald Aussenkomando HASSAG, Werk Meuselwitz and the march of death - and who is standing in a classroom of Lipnik grammar school in front of dozens of young people as young as he was when he was deported and who due to this lost his home, his family and his friends as well.” Various thoughts are on my mind. “Am I able to tell them anything at all? Will they be asking, will they be interested in the narration of an elderly gentleman? Do they know who their “Neighbors Who Disappeared” were?” With this group of students I spent two unforgettable hours then. They were great, each of their questions radiated a deep interest in the topic. Soon it was clear that I had a well-informed and knowledgeable audience in front of me. After finishing the talk I got a beautiful present in remembrance - a ceramic model of the synagogue in Lipnik that competes with Prague’s Old-New Synagogue both in style and antiquity. The model of the synagogue, where I - in front of the whole Jewish community - sang my part of the Torah at my Bar micva. That was the last year and the last month when about 150 Lipnik Jews lived as free people in democratic . In fact, of the entire family - I counted there were about 34 of us - only two of us came back, that is my father and I. More than two hundred people left Lipnik and only seven of them returned in total. Those were two of us, coming directly from a concentration camp, then two mixed marriages, whose Jewish members were deported at the end of the war, and then one man of the same age arrived with the allied army. Much later Frantisek Sin returned, now living somewhere in the USA. So this would be the whole “final balance”.

Sokolov - Michal Vessel, High School in Sokolov The subject „Jewish settlement within the Sokolov region“ had never been specifically examined. Therefore I was able to try to fill in a blank space in the history of our region. One could say that the project “Neighbors Who Disappeared” became a part of my life for one year. For the whole period I tried – anywhere it was possible – to collect data, documents, photographs and in fact anything somehow connected with this subject. But all the time I met a total lack of any data available. The documents of highest value, that is the records of Jewish communities within the Sokolov area, have been irretrievably damaged. I have made my own photographs of Jewish sites of our region and recorded the epitaphs on the tombstones if legible. Leo Hoenig’s chronicle considerably extended my work. (Synagogue destroyed in “Crystal night“1938)→

4 A TRIBUTE TO CILD HOLOCAUST VICTIMS – II. Stage of Neighbors Who Disappeared project The project Tribute to the Child Holocaust Victims follows in suit of the project Neighbors Who Disappeared. Similarly to the latter it addresses young people aged 12 – 21 and proposes that they work independently on the stories of people who lived with their neighbors in harmony until WWII and who were then mostly marked, restricted, persecuted, and finally liquidated. This project’s topic, however, is in the first place the life of the WWII students and children in the same schools children go to today. The output should be a memorial tablet permanently placed in school. Copy of that is often a part of a regional exhibition and can become a part of a new national traveling exhibition (until there will be a capacity for that). The beginning of the project is often based on the list of those, who had to leave schools in 1938 – 1940 founded at school archives. What were the reasons for their sudden departure? Did somebody miss them? Did somebody help them before the transport? What was it like to be restricted, concentrated ….and if they have had a chance to come back? The preparation of the best pilot projects took more than several months and is enabled thanks to lot of voluntarily teachers and students work. Exhibitions and local projects are influencing people standing around (families, schools, state representatives etc.)

Jan Jirsík High School, České Budějovice - Gossip At the outset of our research, we began to gradually explore what for us was the unknown history of the Holocaust. We tried to find as much information as possible in libraries and archives. We were most interested in the magazine Klepy (“Gossip”), which was published clandestinely by young Jews in an attempt to find at least a shred of hope in their dire situation. We also discovered the story of Jan Freund, whose elder brother used to attend out high school. Several years ago, Mr. Freund came over here from Canada to familiarize young people of the area with his story. We had a unique opportunity to see a video recording of this meeting. Through this recording, we came to a better understanding of the extent of the suffering that Holocaust victims had to endure. We should definitely not forget this dark chapter of history, before it is buried under the dust of centuries. It is said that history often repeats itself, but we hope that this is not fated to happen in this case. Pavlína Tichá, Eliška Homolková, Barbora Houdková, Vendula Konvičková, Pavla Syrovátková, leader- Vladimír Kojan

The Project Classmates was established at a High School in Pilsen – on Mikulášské Square – in 2003 as part of a literary seminar. Its aim was to find traces of former Jewish students who attended the school before the Second World War and whose lives were adversely affected by the Nuremberg Laws. Among the first sources of information were

5 school almanacs, class registers, archival materials on the life of the Jewish community in pre-war Pilsen and, in particular, the testimonies of former pupils of the high school. In the end, we managed to establish contact with some Holocaust survivors or with their descendants. Egon Löbner was the one only one in his family to survive the extermination camps; at the end of 1945, he left for the United States, where he became an important physicist. We met with his three children and grand-children in May 2005. Hanuš Löw escaped from Auschwitz and joined Ludvík Svoboda’s army in Slovakia. After the Communist takeover of Czechoslovakia in 1948, he emigrated to Chile where, to this day, he runs a family-owned company with his son. Arnošt Epstein, his sister Charlotta Epsteinová and Mirko Lauterstein came from mixed marriages and spent the war in a Nazi labour camp in Postoloprty, North . Charlotta Epsteinová is still alive and lives in Pilsen. In October 2004, memorial plaques were unveiled in the high school, recalling the tragic fate of former pupils and students of the school. Another objective of the project is to publish a collection of papers that would bring together the acquired material. In cooperation with younger students, we are also preparing a continuation of the project, entitled Room Pokoj 127. Put together by Ilona Dvořáková, Kristýna Homolová, Jan Jáchim, Aleš Turnovec and Adéla Zagainová, leader - Monika Stehlíková.

A 1. Elementary and Middle School in Litomyšl: In 2002, our school research team began searching for pre-war Jewish inhabitants of Litomyšl, a town that now has no Jewish population. We started out from a list made by Margareta Freyová, who died many years ago. After several months we had made dozens of people aware of our project. We have managed to get permanent inhabitants to cast their minds back and to remember names, stories and fleeting observations. People in Litomyšl have gradually started to talk again about people who were seemingly forgotten. Some have sent us to others to find out more information, anonymous persons have told us information on the phone, others have come to school in person with old documents. Our “Jewish Archive” has expanded to include photographs. Scraps of pre-war history have begun to make sense, slowly but surely falling into place. We have tried to verify every piece of information by referring to at least two sources – an extremely demanding yet important task. In a number of instances, we have had to discard some of the information using the above method of verification, although we may use it a later date. Perhaps somebody will remember some details and contact us. Even if this does not happen, we have still managed to achieve something important: we have made the people of Litomyšl aware once again of “their” Jewish fellow residents. Every school in the region – and the regional museum – now displays a poster with photographs of local child victims of the Holocaust and, in addition, makes use of our collection of papers on the fate of Litomyšl Jews as part of its lessons. Our website www.zmizeli-sousede.cz/litomysl is in Czech and English (we know how pleased relatives of victims living abroad have been with the project). We are glad that we have managed to achieve this.Martin Hubinka, Vojtěch Jána, Tereza Janáčková, Petr Kašpar, Štěpán Koryta, Radka Kulichová, Šimon Machů, Václav Machů, Klára Nováková, Karolína Osecká, Dominika Pávková, Václav Pechanec, Lenka Škeříková, Petr Tměj, Markéta Zrůbková, Dagmar Burdová - leader

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Varnsdorf - Episcopal High School - František Peter Kien - Why We are Searching It all started with the “Neighbours Who Disappeared” project, which involved us and many other schools. We know that about 211 Jews used to live in Varnsdorf, so we went to Terezín to explore what happened to them. We were interested in documents on the Jewish painter Peter Kien, having found out that he lived in Varnsdorf. He even went to the same school as us. This is why we altered the project slightly and entitled it Neighbours Who Disappeared – Peter Kien Discovered. We managed to acquire paintings for his very first exhibition in the Czech Republic, which was held this year in Varnsdorf. In the future we intend to focus on the fates of other Jews from Varnsdorf. František Peter Kien was born on January 1, 1919 in Varnsdorf. At the end of 1929, the Kien family moved from Varnsdorf to Brno, where Peter continued his studies and began to drawn, paint and write poetry under the influence of Dostoyevsky and Kafka. In 1938 he met in Prague his future wife Ilsau Stránská with whom he concluded what was known as a “Terezín Marriage”. Peter was promised that he would be given a U.S. visa, but he was too close to his family and his country to leave. In December 1941, Peter Kien was deported to the Terezín ghetto, which was a transit camp for Jews en route to the extermination camps. During his stay at Terezín, Peter Kien was deputy head in the art room of the Jewish self-government’s Technical Office. In his spare time he drew still lifes and scenes from Terezín, using stolen drawing materials. As a result, we can now see work that faithfully captures the cruel, inhuman conditions that prevailed in the Terezín ghetto. Also in Terezín, Peter Kien wrote poetry (the Plague Town series), plays (The Puppets) and a libretto for the opera Emperor of Atlantis. However, he did not live to see the premiere of his work, as he allowed himself to be included on one of the last transports to Auschwitz so that he could be with his close relatives. He died of an infectious disease in Auschwitz in October 1994. Adéla NIkodémová, Martin Flekna, Martina Janoušková, Michal Šafus, Milan Junek, Jiří Jakoubek, Barbora Louková, Iveta Školníková, group leader – Jiří Čunát (director of the school).

A group of students at the Commercial Academy in Chotěboř (a town not far from Havlíčkův Brod in east Bohemia) has focused for more than a year on the fate of the Jewish inhabitants of the town in which they live. At the outset, it was very difficult to gain the trust of Holocaust survivors and witnesses and to get them to help out with the project. As part of the project, students had to complete a number of workshops which introduced them to issues concerning the Second World War and the persecution of selected population groups, not only of Jewish descent. These workshops were completed mostly as part of the activities organized by the Jewish Museum in Prague’s Education and Culture Centre, but also by the Terezín Memorial. In July of last year the students visited the death camps of Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II-Birkenau. Among other things, they also arranged meetings between students (not only from their school) with Holocaust survivors and witnesses and put on an exhibition on Anne Frank, which they organized at the school, together with an exhibition of children drawings from Terezín. The culmination of their activities was the exhibition Chotěboř Neighbours Who Disappeared, which was held at the school in the first half of February 2005.

7 Children and Youth´s House and Otokar Březina High School, Telč: Notes: Pavel Adamec, 13 years old: I’m interested in the history of World War Two, a period that cannot be seen separately from the fate of the Jews. I wanted to learn more about it, so I went to meetings with people who witnessed the war. I found several answers to the question: “What was it like in Telč?” Katka Opatrná, 15 years old: I first heard about the Holocaust in a meeting with Mr. Spitzer. He was deported to Terezín when he was exactly as old as I am now. I can’t imagine how I would manage in such a situation. Ondra Koubík, 15 years old: I visited an old Jewish cemetery in a wood with my national history class and I wondered who were those people who had to stay apart from the others even after their deaths? Klára Křížková, 16 years old Of the several tragic destinies that I got to know, there was at least one with a happy ending. What’s more, our searching helped two childhood friends – Mr. Hahn and Mr. Spitzer – to meet again after almost 70 years. Jindřiška Adamcová, 16 years old: Previously, I was very unfamiliar with Jews and their culture, even though I had learnt a lot about this topic from literature. Now I know about the fates of individual people. Many of them were students of my age. They had similar pleasures but their lives ended so differently. Leader - Božena Kadeřávková, 59 years old: The project “Neighbours Who Disappeared from Telč” started with only slight memories of the Taub family and their three children. After one and a half year of searching, our common knowledge about our families and our children broadened to such an extent that we have come to realise our research will be a never-ending story.

Education ond Culture Center of the Jewish Museum in Prague - Marie Zahradníková ([email protected])

The Forgotten Ones – Marta Vančurová ([email protected])

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