The George Segal Gallery in collaboration with the Holocaust Council of Greater MetroWest present Theresienstadt: Terror and Triumph. Featured speaker: Ela Stein Weissberger, one of the few survivors of the children of Terezin.

Thursday
December 10
6:00pm-7:30pm

On February 12, 1942, 11 year old Ela Stein Weissberger and her mother, sister and grandmother were deported to Terezin, the last stop to Auschwitz and Treblinka. Separated from her family in July 1942, Ela was sent to Girls Home L410 Room 28 to be with children her own age. There they were allowed to paint with Bauhaus artist Friedl Dicker-Brandeis and trained to perform Hans Krása’s  children’s opera, Brundibár. Ela has this to say about the experience, “When we sang, we forgot where we were. We forgot hunger, we forgot all the troubles that we had to go through. We didn’t have to wear the Jewish star on our clothing. We had to perform our best to keep our lives. The Nazis didn’t realize
that the Victory Song of the opera’s end had a double meaning. In our eyes Brundibár was Hitler.” Ela took the role of the cat in the opera, which she performed on stage 55 times. Brundibár was a
propaganda material for the Nazis performed for an international audience including the International Red Cross. Of the 15,000 children sent to Terezin, 100 survived.