Edition Room 28, in cooperation with the Music Publisher Boosey & Hawkes│Bote & Bock and supported by the NPO Room 28, has published a children's book telling the story of the plot of the children's opera Brundibár by Hans Krása and Adolf Hoffmeister to children aged about four to ten. 

Text: Hannelore Brenner. Illustrations © Maria Thomaschke. Legal representatives of Brundibár: Bosey & Hawkes - Bote & Bock. 

Published: 23 September 2023. 

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Since the Riga-based Israeli opera and theater director Mstislav Pentkovsky published a Statement Against the War in May 2022 - you can read it on my Blog on Edition Room 28 - we have become allies. Mstislav staged the children's opera Brundibár several times since 2015, most recently at the renowned Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg. He invited two of the "Girls of Room 28," Ela Weissberger and Evelina Merová, to Russia, which is how we got in contact with each other. However, only in the summer 2022 we met personally in Berlin. 

Mstislav came up with a special idea for the Ukrainian edition of the children's book Brundibár. As Brundibár is also a matter of the heart for him, we have further plans for the future. 

Brundibár and the Girls of Room 28…these are two stories, inseparably intertwined. Brundibár, the children's opera by Hans Krása and Adolf Hoffmeister, created in Prague in 1938 about a year before the outbreak of the World War II and performed more than 50 times by the young inmates in the Theresienstadt concentration camp between 1943 and 1944, is today a memorial to the children who did not survive the Holocaust. The story of Aninka and Pepiček and the organ grinder Brundibár remains inextricably linked to the fate of the first performers in the Theresienstadt ghetto and keeps their memories alive; and with it the faith in the victory of good over evil.  

Image: Poster of the Theresienstädter Brundibár-performances 1944.  © Pamatnik Terezin/Gedenkstätte Theresienstadt        

A special group of Holocaust survivors carries on this memory - the "Girls of Room 28". More than 75 years ago, between 1942 and 1944, they lived together in a very small space in the Theresienstadt ghetto, in the Girls’ Home L 410 – (Long Street 4 number 10).They were 12 to 14 years old, Jewish prisoners, most of them from the Czechoslovak Republic , some originally from Austria, who, after the Germans invaded their homeland, lost their belongings, were deprived of their civil rights and, some alone, some with their parents or with only one parent, were deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto. There, in room 28, their paths crossed.

When the rehearsals for performances of the opera began in July 1943, girls from Room 28 were also part of it. Ela Stein played the cat,  Maria Mühlstein the sparrow, Handa Pollak and Anna Flach (Flaška) sang in the chorus of schoolchildren. And twice Flaška stood in for the role of Aninka and Handa for the dog. A few times the talented Maria Mühlstein, played Aninka alongside her brother Piňta, while young Stephan Sommer played the sparrow.

Image: Cover of the American edition, 2009

 Ela Weissberger, née Stein, remembered:  

"We were three girls from our room - Flaška, Maria Mühlstein and me. And we had to line up, and each had to sing: la la la, up and down the scale. When my turn came, I was trembling with fear that I wouldn't sing well enough. But then Rudi Freudenfeld said to me: "You know what? You're going to play a cat. A cat in a children's opera? That was something extraordinary."

These and other recollections - including the memories of the young trumpeter Paul (Paul Aron Sandfort) - can be read on the exhibition panel on Brundibár - and will also be heard in the future via an audio-station. Other panels are also planned.  Photo: Ela Weissberger and Paul A. Sandfort, September 2006, Spindleruv Mlyn

My radio feature  then under the name Hannelore Wonschick) was produced in 1998 by the "Sender Freies Berlin" and 1999  by the Austrian Radio (ORF) Vienna. It is included in the double CD published by the label EDA records in 1999. The first CD contains the production of the children's opera Brundibár sung by a Stuttgart ensemble. For the radio  feature published by EDA, the ORF production was remixed with the music of the Stuttgart performance.  

Remembering Brundibár: Ela Weissberger, Anna Hanusová, Helga Kinsky, Greta Klingsberg, Alice Herz-Sommer, Eva Hermannová, Eliska Kleinová, Trude Simonsohn, Thomas Mandl, Leopold Lowy, Paul A. Sandfort.  Image: Brundibár CD by EDA records. - The radio-documentary by Austrian Radio with music sung by the Wiener Sängerknaben is part of our Room 28 Educational Project and available as CD. 

The story of the "Girls of Room 28" has made a significant contribution to the renaissance of the Brundibár children's opera, as has the Brundibár pilot project by Jeunesses Musicales Deutschland (JMD), which the then General Secretary Thomas Rietschel initiated in the mid-1990s. With children from Poland, the Czech Republic and Germany, the JMD performed the opera in Berlin, Prague and Warsaw. A “Brundibár folder” followed, a collection of information about the project, data and facts about the Theresienstadt ghetto compiled by the Fritz Bauer-Institute in Frankfurt a.M. It also contains the text of my radio feature “Brundibar and the children of Theresienstadt” and my essay about "Vedem", the newspaper of the boys from Room 1 of the Boys’ Home L 417. 

In April 1999 Thomas Rietschel invited the women and me to Weikersheim, the domicile of the Jeunesses Musicales Deutschland.  Since that time he is our ally and friend and later has become member of the Room 28 association.  

Image: Brundibár-folder by the JMD

Half a century after Brundibár's last chord had faded away in Theresienstadt in 1944, the opera remained silent. Then, decades later, all of a sudden, the spark ignited... Suddenly, Brundibár was being played up and down the country. With playful ease, this work inspired reflected work of memory and opened the eyes and hearts, especially of young people, to the incomprehensible tragedy that will forever be linked to the Theresienstadt performances of the children of the gjhetto. 

Today, Brundibár is a symbol of hope and resistance. Thus, as early as 1938, Hans Krása and librettist Adolf Hoffmeister, without being aware of it, created a work that would become their most significant legacy - a memorial to the children of Theresienstadt. It is a living memorial that carries the vision of the children of the ghetto into the present and into the future: The vision of the victory of good over evil, and their hope.

Image: Still from the propaganda film known under the title "The Führer gives the Jews a city".

The head of the Jeunesses Musicales Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Volker Ahmels, also got to know the women and our project in 1999 in Weikersheim. Thanks to his interest and amazing activities to revive forgotten music and come into dialogue with survivors of the Holocaust, the exhibition could be created in 2004 as part of his international Music Festival and Competition "Verfemte Musik"(Forbidden Music)  in Schwerin. 

The first opening took place on 23 September  2004. Strong bonds developed among us which lasted for years. Anna Hanusová, our Flaška, who was a singer and a pianist, gave master-classes and became a member of the jury for many years. Ute Lemm, today Dr. Ute Lemm and General Director of the Schleswig-Holstein State Theater led school-children through the exhibition for the first time. Written reflections by the young visitors still bear witness to these guided tours that she carried out with so much dedication. She has stood by us until today and has become a member of Room 28. When I received the Federal Cross of Merit in April 2023 Ute Lemm gave the laudation.

Photo: Schwerin, 23. September 2004. Opening of the exhibition.