Meeting the Morovian's lost names

by Valentine Olive (Spain)

A leap into the unknown Czech Republic

We were still catching our breath again when the others arrived. The sun's shine seemed to start burning out, alike our feet that had gotten sore from the long walks we had taken around Prague. I had insisted on that last visit which I thought was a must-seen; however, our mental exhaustion was palpable as we kept babbling and giggling, tickled with the excitement of holidays. We teased the boys when they were handed a mandatory kippa to wear inside. It did not take long for our goofy smiles to fade as we entered the History-loaded room of the Pinkas Synagogue which hosted the Memorial for Czech and Moravian Jews that were persecuted by the Nazis. As my eyes locked with the bright white walls, I was crushed by the dozen of thousands of names that seemed to expand infinitely. This urge grew in the tip of my fingers to lightly brush the black ink, carefully hand-engraved in the smooth stone. Squeezed and tight together, the crowd of names seemed to be screaming their agony in the last minutes of their life. Viktor, Julie, Eliška, Gertruda, Hanuš - moving forward by small steps, I was trying to absorb every name I could read, imagining each personal story hiding behind as if doing so could bring them back to life during this brief time. When the large corridors finally ended on the outdoor, it felt like I crossing over to another world. I stood alone for a time and took the time to enjoy taking a deep breath of fresh air. When part of our group reunited, we went for a walk through the cemetery in silence, feeling a mutual unspoken desire to properly feel the surroundings. We made our way between graves of all shapes and colours which intermingled with some animal representation made in stone. Some of them were so inclined towards the earth it seemed as if they would soon fall flat on the ground. In certain parts, a pile of graves from different centuries lied next to each other; we later learned beneath them lied another dozen of layers, as they had to elevate them throughout the years due to a lack of space on the land plot. Still feeling moved and dizzy from the previous exhibit, we moved on to the next one. Little did we know what we were about to see was beyond our imagination. The stairs leading to the first floor of the same Synagogue opened on a bright room filled with wooden showcases. The same silence we had previously heard, a delicate mix of respect and horror, hovered over our heads as we walked in. I quietly approached the first display. To my surprise, I discovered children-made drawings. I leaned in to observe them better and read their descriptions. More than four thousand depictions had been saved by Friedl Dicker-Brandeis, an outstanding female artist and drawing teacher at the Terezín ghetto, a way station towards the death camps in the East. She had hidden them before being deported like the rest of the Moravian Jewish children to Auschwitz, acting as the last reminder of their tragic fate. Faded colours on papers sheets that had turned yellow, random circles and collages as exercises that I could imagine acted as therapy; I was taken aback by the lightness and the casualty that derived from the drawings. Packed suitcases, homes, old friends; dreams of returning home started to appear – a sweet, yet poignant reminder of their innocence. One drawing after the other, I was thrown into those children’s minds as they experienced life at the ghetto. Reading the life dates made me retch, almost gag: “1940-1944”, “1939-1944”. Some had not had the time to learn how to write; I was beginning to feel submerged with a growing sense of injustice. When I finally arrived at the last one, my eyes felt drawn to a specific one: a house and other furniture along with two characters pictured in grey pencil; “Drawing exercise: Emilie Straková (1934 – survived). I got out on the street into a daze, with a feeling of grogginess; almost of grief. But weirdly, I felt relief too, and an idea growing into my mind.