APS Special

Transcript #113

April 1996

The Journey of Butterfly

CHARLES GIBSON, Host : Hello, I'm Charles Gibson. What you are about to see and hear is a testament to the resiliance of the human spirit. At the height of World War II in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia, children, in the most barren of circumstance in the Ghetto Terezin, found beauty -- in art, in music, in poetry, in a solitary butterfly.

Fifty years later, the American Boychoir went to Czechoslovakia to sing the poetic words written by the children of Terezin. There is harshness in the music, but it is heart-rending, and, of course, it came from the harshest of times.

You should listen to the words -- ``if in barbed wire things can bloom, why couldn't I, I will not die.'' But, of course, most of the children did die. Their poetry did not. It remained, to be sung by the voices of angels, as you will hear.

NARRATOR: [scene shows butterflies and Terezin today] On a beautiful day in October a butterfly flies free. Another basks in the afternoon sun. A short distance away, another butterfly struggles to be freed, held captive in this place.

[scene shows photos from Nazi era] The butterfly became a symbol for a group of human beings held against their will in this very place, and for the freedom they hoped for and could not have.

[scene shows Terezin today] This place is Terezin, a small, walled-fortress town in the now Czech Republic north of the capitol city of Prague. Two hundred years ago, Terezin was built to house units of the Austro-Hungarian Army.

In March of 1939, Czechoslovakia fell under the domination of Nazi Germany and by the fall of 1941, Terezin -- or Theresienstadt, as it was called -- had been earmarked for a new role.

[scene returns to photos from Nazi era] Within its walls, barrack blocks were to imprison many thousands of Jewish citizens, adults and children, taken from their homes and livelihoods by the Nazis -- not only from Czechoslovakia, but eventually from all over Nazi-occupied Europe.

[scene shows photos while American Boychoir performs excerpt from ``I Never Saw Another Butterfly'']

--Only I never saw another butterfly--

[scene shows children's artwork from Terezin as backgound of introductory credits]

--Only I never saw another butterfly--

NARRATOR: [scene shows American Boychoir performance] In the autumn of 1991, the American Boychoir was invited to Czechoslovakia to perform in concert as a commemoration for those held prisoner in Terezin a half-century before. The work they are performing, I Never Saw Another Butterfly, is based on words written by the children who had been held captive by the Nazis.

[scene show faces of Terezin survivors today] Their writing survived, but most of the children did not.

AMERICAN BOYCHOIR: [scene shows faces of survivors then performance of ``The Butterfly'' by Pavel Freidman ]

The last, the very last,

So richly, brightly, dazzlingly yellow.

NARRATOR : [scene shows faces of survivors] On this journey of homage and discovery, the members of the Boychoir will meet a precious few of those children who did survive and who now, grown old, remember how it was.

FREDERICK TERNA, Prisoner in Terezin, 1943-1944 : [scene shows Terna speaking to American Boychoir members] There was a vibrance, a kind of electricity in the air, and it was fear but it was also a very positive feeling.

AMERICAN BOYCHOIR : [scene shows performance of `` The Butterfly '']

Perhaps if the sun's tears would sing
against a white stone...
Such, such a yellow
Is carried lightly 'way up high.

FREDERICK TERNA : [scene shows Terna speaking to American Boychoir members] And it was a place that was alive, and art kept us alive. For some strange reason, the Germans wanted to pretend to the outside world that it was a good place and so they allowed certain things, and when they allowed a little, we took a lot.

NARRATOR : [scene shows Terezin today, photos from the Nazi era, and Terezin artwork] Some of those imprisoned in Terezin -- painters, writers, musicians and performers -- had enjoyed recognition as accomplished artists before their capture, so the Nazis believed if they allowed limited cultural activities within the walls, this could be used for propaganda purposes on the outside. A cynical attempt to disguise the real nature and purpose of this confinement, for Terezin was a ghetto, a concentration camp, and for those who survived here it was a transit camp, a stop on the way to the east, to the gas chambers.

AMERICAN BOYCHOIR : [scene returns to performance]

--Only I never saw another butterfly--

FREDERICK TERNA : In Terezin you came in through a gate not too far away.

[scene shows photos of Nazi era and document captioned ``Nazi Transport List from Terezin to Concentration Camps''] We marched through a gate from Bohusovice actually, a long, long march from a railway station, until they built a spur-- a railroad spur which brought the trains right into this town-- not only to bring people in but more importantly, to take them out without the world seeing it.

AMERICAN BOYCHOIR MEMBER 1 : [scene shows Terezin today during performance of ``Night in the Ghetto'' by Anonymous, Terezin, 1943]

Another day has gone for keeps
Into the bottomless pit of time
Again it has wounded a man, held captive
by his brethren.
After dusk, he longs for bandages,
For soft hands to shield his eyes
From all the horrors that stare by day.
But in the ghetto, darkness too is kind
To weary eyes which all day long
have had to watch.

FREDERICK TERNA : These are the barracks where I spent about a year-and-a-half here in Terezin. I stayed there from March '43 until late in '44. After all this misery that was there -- fleas, bedbugs -- I have somewhere some positive memories of it. There is discussing things, talking about things, evaluating--

AMERICAN BOYCHOIR MEMBER 1 : [scene shows recitation continuing]

Dawn crawls again along the ghetto streets
Embracing all who walk this way.
Only a car like a greeting from a long-gone world
Gobbles up the dark with fiery eyes.
That sweet darkness that falls upon the soul
And heals those wounds illuminated by the day--
Along the street come light and ranks of people
Like a long black ribbon, loomed with gold.

NARRATOR/AMERICAN BOYCHOIR : [scene shows Terezin today during recitation by Ann McCabe then American Boychoir performance of ``It All Depends on How You Look at It'', by Miroslav Kosek, Terezin, age 11]

Terezin is full of beauty.
It's in your eyes now clear
And through the street the tramp
Of many marching feet I hear.

In the ghetto at Terezin,
It looks that way to me,
Is a square kilometer of earth
Cut off from the world that's free.

Death, after all, claims everyone,
You find it everywhere.
It catches up with even those
Who wear their noses in the air.

The whole, wide world is ruled
With a certain justice, so
That helps perhaps to sweeten
The poor man's pain and woe.

FRANTISEK LUKAS, Artist, Imprisoned in Terezin : [exhibiting artwork] Main Square, Theresienstadt. In the middle of that square was a church, a Christian church, and first I didn't know why I did paint all the houses without doors, without windows, without steeples, and after years, as I was looking at it and looking back at my past, I thought that it was maybe an instinct, some feeling which was in me, that at the ghetto Theresienstadt we didn't need any windows, any doors, because it was for most of the Jews the end of their life and no future was before them.

AMERICAN BOYCHOIR : [scene shows performance]

Terezin is full of beauty.
It's in your eyes now clear--
Terezin is full of beauty.
It's in your eyes now clear--

FRANTISEK LUKAS : [shown speaking while exhibiting artwork then scenes of Terezin today] I did come at the beginning of the Ghetto Theresienstadt. I was one of staff -- that means of some technician people, pupils -- who did draw the barracks. In that office was employed the whole group of Theresienstadt drawers and painters and, official, we have made illustrations for reports of SS Commandant tour, and reports were given to the Commandant tour and the Germans were very content. They did like it and therefore, we had enough paper and enough other materials like colors, chalks, and so on, but we have neither showed many, many other drawings and paintings for our own use, not pleasure, but we needed to try that something will remain after our death which could document the real truth - - what in Theresienstadt all happened.

AMERICAN BOYCHOIR MEMBER 2 : [scene shows artwork done at Terezin during recitation of `` From the Prose of Petr Fischl '']

We got used to standing in line at seven o'clock in the morning, at 12 noon, and again at seven o'clock in the evening. We stood in a long queue with a plate in our hand, into which they ladled a little warmed-up water with a salty or a coffee flavor. Or else they gave us a few potatoes. We got used to sleeping without a bed, to saluting every uniform, not to walk on the sidewalks, and then again to walk on the sidewalks. We got used to undeserved slaps, blows and executions. We got accustomed to seeing people die in their own excrement, to seeing piled-up coffins full of corpses, to seeing the sick amidst dirt and filth and to seeing the helpless doctors. We got used to that from time to time, one thousand unhappy souls would come here and that, from time to time, another thousand unhappy souls would go away--

FRANTISEK LUKAS : You never did know if you will be alive tomorrow, or after tomorrow, but you did hope that your drawings, paintings will stay.

NARRATOR/AMERICAN BOYCHOIR : [scene shows Terezin artwork during recitation then performance of `` Terezin '' by Michael Flack, Terezin, 1944 ]

The heaviest wheel rolls across our foreheads
To bury itself deep somewhere in our memories.
We have suffered here more than enough,
Here in this clot of grief and shame,
Wanting a badge of blindness to be a proof
For their own children--

MICHAEL FLACK, Child Poet Imprisoned in Terezin : We did not know what's going to happen the day after tomorrow, and some of us were mature enough to know what has gone before.

NARRATOR/AMERICAN BOYCHOIR : [scene shows Terezin today during recitation then continues performance]

Meanwhile, the rivers flow another way,
Not letting you die, not letting you live.

And the cannons don't scream
And the guns don't bark,
And you don't see blood here.
Nothing. Only hunger.

MICHAEL FLACK : [scene shows performance] There was a more remarkable group of people here. There were young ones, young ones.

NARRATOR/AMERICAN BOYCHOIR : [scene returns to recitation and performance]

Children steal bread here and ask
and all would wish keep silent
and just go to sleep again.

AMERICAN BOYCHOIR : [scene shows Terezin]

The heaviest wheel rolls across our foreheads
To bury itself deep somewhere--
--deep somewhere in our memories

FREDERICK TERNA : [shown speaking to American Boychoir members] There were 15,000 children that went through Terezin. A handful only survived. Most of them were eventually were sent to the deathcamp Auchwitz or Ostevim, where they were gassed and burned in a crematorium, so all we have left are these very precious things.

[shown speaking while showing artwork of children to American Boychoir members] Their memories aren't allowed to them to escape with their minds and that they were held in that terrible place. They could not move. There was hunger, disease, dirt, but the one thing that they could do -- their minds were open. Their minds were kept open. They could think about things, they could express them. You know that they also wrote a lot of poetry, your own one I Never Saw Another Butterfly was written here.

[scene shows artwork during performance]

Only I never saw another butterfly--

FREDERICK TERNA: [shown speaking to American Boychoir members] There hardly were any butterflies at Terezin, but they really knew what a butterfly was and if they did not, then we showed them and encouraged them.

HELGA WEISSOVE HOSKOVA, Child Artist in Terezin: [shown speaking to American Boychoir members while showing them children's artwork from Terezin] It was the children lived there all the time, for example we had for three years, and they slowly had forgotten what it was at home and they all painted what was there in Terezin.

Now they're a little unusual in children's drawings, they are motifs you can never see in children's drawings at all. You see that bed?

FREDERICK TERNA: [also speaking while showing artwork with Ms. Hoskova] There's just enough space to lie down. Do you see triple bunks?

HELGA WEISSOVE HOSKOVA: [continues to show artwork] They use these also like coffins. There were funerals, a lot of funerals a day because many people died every day. There's a skeleton, so such motifs are now used in drawings for children.

Here is also important, because food is always very important for life and the cook is also a very important man because cook divided the food. But for example, here they remember how it was at home. It was sad, I suppose, but it is a table for this food. Then they had to wait, for an hour, for example, before they get something--

FREDERICK TERNA: [voice in background] Soup, usually cold.

HELGA WEISSOVE HOSKOVA: [continues to show artwork] Then, for example, here, all the town was at high walls that were impossible to run away.

FREDERICK TERNA: [voice in background] The other side leads to nowhere.

HELGA WEISSOVE HOSKOVA: [continues to show artwork] The line which divided two worlds -- there was freedom and there was ours.

AMERICAN BOYCHOIR: [scene shows children's artwork during performance]

The last, the very last,
So richly, brightly, dazzlingly yellow.
Perhaps if the sun's tears would sing
against a white stone...

Such, such a yellow
Is carried lightly 'way up high.
It went away I'm sure because it wished to
kiss the world goodbye.

For seven weeks weeks I've lived in here,
Penned up inside this ghetto
But I have found my people here.
The dandelions call to me
And the white chestnut candles in the court.
Only I never saw another butterfly--

CHARLES DAVIDSON, Composer ``I Never Saw Another Butterfly'': [shown speaking to American Boychoir members] This morning, as though someone really up there were listening to your singing through this open door on this late October cold, rainy day, a butterfly flew in through that door, circled around you, and went out the other door.

AMERICAN BOYCHOIR: [scene shows performance]

Only I never saw another butterfly--

FREDERICK TERNA: It was one of the moments of total privacy. When one is in front of a piece of paper, that rectangle or square, the world does really not exist, that if I am the total master of that little paper. I can do what with it what I want. My oppressors here, the Nazis and the Gestapo and SS, could do whatever they wanted. When I was in front of that little piece of paper, I was my own boss.

AMERICAN BOYCHOIR: [scene shows performance of ``I'd Like To Go Away Alone'' by Alena Synkova, Terezin, 1943]

I'd like to go away alone,

where there are other nicer people,

somewhere into the far unknown there,

where no one kills another.

ANNA HANUSOVA-FLACHOVA, Child Prisoner in Terezin: [shown speaking to American Boychoir members] Our dreams were that we would like to go home, we would like to go to school, we would like-- I wanted to do music and I wanted to be together with my parents.

AMERICAN BOYCHOIR MEMBER 3: [scene shows performance ``Homesick'' by Anonymous, Terezin, 1943]

I've lived in the ghetto here for more than a year,
in Terezin in the black town now,
and while I remember my old home so dear,
I can love it more than I did somehow.
Ah, home, home, why did they tear me away?
Here the weak die easy, easy as a feather,
and when they die, they die forever.
I'd like to go back home again.
It makes me think of sweet spring flowers.
Before -- when I used to live at home
it never seemed so dear and fair.
I remember now those golden days
but maybe I'll be going there soon again.

VERA SCHIFF, Child Prisoner, Terezin: So if you imagine, day after day, you are frozen in this hunger and filth and in this town. You cannot move, so you have to hang on to something, so the concerts, the cabarets, the little cafe which we had here, which all came late in the winter. Beautification actually came to Terezin. This all gave us-- took us away from the ugly reality.

EVA HERMANNOVA, Child Performer Imprisoned in Terezin: We was glad we can sing and we can do it. It was such a moment in which we feel free. If you can sing in every place, you feel free and happy.

[scene shows excerpts from performance of ``Brundibar, A Children's Opera'' by Hans Krasa, performed (in Czech) by Disman's Ensemble] But the opera for children, Brundibar, it was sold as the composer, his name was Hans Kraser, composed this opera in Prague for Jewish children. They began to study it in Prague and in this time they came here, and here we make the first night.

ELA WEISSBERGER, Performed in ``Brundibar'' at Terezin: [scene shows performance of ``Brundibar''] When they came with the idea to perform Brundibar in Terezin after so many years, we heard it almost like the original. It really made us very happy.

We really forgot at the moment that we started to sing, we forgot where we are. We were very happy about it, and what was very interesting -- that we really loved each other there. You know, we were very happy for each other that we were able to perform.

EVA HERMANNOVA: [shown speaking through translator] We were looking forward to getting together there and to start rehearsing, singing.

[scene shows performance of ``Brundibar''] Those who administered the camp began to understand that this could be used as propaganda, to show that the prisoners had such good times, that they could dance, sing, and play.

ELA WEISSBERGER: [scene shows photos from Nazi propaganda film] The Nazis decided to bring in film people and to put on a propaganda film, and when they looked at the children's opera, they decided this is really the point to show the world -- that children are cared for. That Terezin is a model camp.

VERA SCHIFF: It was simple children at Terezin, but the bad forces and the good forces, they fight each to get us and everything was the good one at the end was. So the good things, it was victory for the good things.

ELA WEISSBERGER: [scene shows performance of ``Brundibar''] When we overthrew Brundibar, we always thought on Hitler and all the children, we are free of him. So we had always on our mind, Hitler.

[on camera] The finale was for us, we loved to sing it and people were-- they didn't let us to finish, you know, we had to come back and come back-- and they were watching the clock, you know. It's too late, we have to run, and again we had to come out and to sing the finale because they loved to hear the last note -- that Brundibar perish in, that we really destroyed him, got rid of him and now we are like free. Like this was giving us hope.

[scene shows performance of finale of ``Brundibar'' with views of audience reaction]

[shown speaking to American Boychoir members] When you sing in your chorus I hear the voices of some of the beautiful children that they didn't make it.

EVA HERMANNOVA: [scene shows photos of child performers in ``Brudibar'' at Terezin] Just after the filming of the propaganda film, most of the children in the children's opera were sent to the gas chambers.

NARRATOR/AMERICAN BOYCHOIR: [scene shows flowers during recitation followed by performance of ``The Garden'' by Franta Bass, Terezin, age 13]

A little garden
fragrant and full of roses,
and a little boy walks along it.
A little boy, a sweet boy,
like that growing blossom.
When the blossom comes to bloom
the little boy will be no more.

NARRATOR/AMERICAN BOYCHOIR: [scene shows trees during recitation followed by performance of ``On a Sunny Evening'' by children in Terezin, ages 10 to 16]

On a purple, sunshot evening
under wide, flowering chestnut trees,
Upon the threshhold full of dust,
Yesterday, today,
The days are all like these.

Trees flower forth in beauty,
Lovely too, their very wood
all gnarled
And that I'm afraid to peer
into their crowns of green and gold.

The sun has made a veil of gold
so loving that my body aches.
Above, the heavens shriek with blue,
Convinced I've smiled by some mistake.

The world's abloom and seems to fly.
I want to fly, but where, how high?
If in barbed wire things could bloom,
why couldn't I?
I will not die.

EDITH KRAUS, Pianist While Prisoner in Terezin: [scene shows Kraus performing then speaking] In the beginning there was a piano at the acting school, and you hardly can call it a piano. It had no feet. Printed music, there was none at all, so I have to play only what I knew, what I had memorized, and so I give my first recital here. And then I played very many programs, from Bach recital to Shubert recital. Also, I played for two sonatas, and in between Mr. Berman was singing Shubert's songs, so this is a very old friendship.

KAREL BERMAN, Opera Singer Imprisoned in Terezin: [show speaking through translator] Once, as I was doing my job, an acquaintance met me. He was from Prague, and he was also a singer, and he said, ``Man, you are carrying garbage, and we have a big opera here. Wouldn't you like to work with us?'' And I said, ``Of course I would.''

[scene shows Kraus/Berman performance] We lived on art. Art lived in Theresienstadt so that people do not feel the horror.

[performance continues]

EDITH KRAUS: You know how these concerts came about? Do you know all about them? The Germans wanted to show off how good we are living here in paradise, this is that he gave for us a gift to the children. But for me, it was really good that I could play so at least one hour a day I could forget all my troubles and could concentrate on music.

[scene shows performance by Kraus]

EDITH KRAUS: They'd come in, and I played with some very good players from Vienna on two pianos, the orchestra. But this performance could take place only once because after that the transport started and almost all the men got taken away.

[performance of Kraus/Berman concludes]

KAREL BERMAN: [shown speaking through translator] You cannot imagine, normal people cannot understand, that in the most miserable of times, in the most miserable of suffering, it is possible to gain strength through good, professional art.

FREDERICK TERNA: I like to compare it to, the camp years, being a bass played by a crazy bassoonist, and I've learned to play the fiddle above it so it makes for some harmony.

FRANTISEK LUKAS: A lot of love stories have been in the ghetto. They did become true, even if it was in a prison, because nobody can give you or forbid you not to love anymore, not to have friendship in your hearts. All that is true in every moment you live.

ELA WEISSBERGER: A human life, and how many-- how much good you can give to people, that's important. To be nice to each other and to live in the really harmony, how we lived with those children, here, in those homes.

[scene shows photos of children of Terezin, captioned as taken in Prague, 1939 and 1940] They are gone, but we can't forget them. We will fight to the end that they should recognize what happened here.

[on camera]We were here 140,000 people, and you see how many-- that's not one transport-- what we are back here. In our transport there were 1,200 people and we are four people back. It's unbelievable what happened, but we hope for the best for them, and I think that the whole world should know that-- I'm sorry--

NARRATOR/AMERICAN BOYCHOIR: [scene shows Terezin artwork and photos of children during recitation and performance of ``Birdsong'' by Anonymous, Terezin, 1941]

He doesn't know the world at all
Who stays in his nest and doesn't go out.
He doesn't know what the birds know best
Nor what I want to sing about.
That the world is full of loveliness.

When dew drops sparkle in the grass
and earth's aflood with morning light,
A black bird sings upon a bush
To greet the dawning after night.
Then I know how fine it is to live!

Hey try to open up your heart to beauty.
Go to the woods some day
And weave a wreath of memory there.
Then if tears obscure your way,
You'll know how wonderful it is to be alive.