Theatrical play: The Girls from Room 28

Hannelore Brenner

Theresienstadt. The Girls in Room 28

Play

120 pages. 5 acts

Translation: Renate Müller

First German edition.

Edition Room 28, Berlin. September 2020

Cover Photo: From Anna Flachová's poetry album

Cover Design: Walter Hagenow, Wiesbaden

Text and Presentation: Hannelore Brenner

With documents from the „Girls from Room 28“

With drawings by Bedřich Fritta

This book has not yet an ISBN number.

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This theatrical piece set to music conveys to us what happened in the microcosm of Room 28 in Girls' Shelter L 410 in the Theresienstadt ghetto. The piece takes us back to the experiences of a group of Jewish children, as well as the songs they sing. The story became internationally known through the book and exhibition The Girls in Room 28 and the authentic diary of Helga Pollak, who was 12 to 14 years old at the time. The book was published by Edition Room 28 under the title Mein Theresienstädter Tagebuch 1943–1944.

Comments

This play is based on the authentic story of the Girls in Room 28, L 410 Theresienstadt. It is the result of many conversations I had between 1996 and 2002 with a very special group of Theresienstadt ghetto survivors and other Holocaust survivors in the United States, Israel, the Czech Republic, Germany and Vienna, as well as during our annual meetings during autumn at Špindlerův Mlýn/Spindlermühle (Spindleruv Mill), situated in the Giants Mountains.

There, during our workshops, I was a witness and, at the same time, a participant in a work of memories that with each meeting grew in intensity and vitality. A passage from Helga's diary, words taken from Flaška's poetry album, a poem from Handa's notebook, a photo, a drawing made by a child – and suddenly the past became present, tangible even for me, enraptured for this flow of consciousness into a story that has not left me to this day.

Most of the scenes and dialogues that are intertwined in this play had their origins in these first annual meetings. The piece was my first attempt to transport the text into an artistic form.

However, the script never seemed to be “done.” Even while I was writing, I was listening to music. In Room 28, music played a significant role, thanks to caregiver Ella Pollak (Tella), a pianist and music educator. Together with her protégés, she founded a choir and with three girls from her room she formed a trio. Their singing could often be heard outside, all the way to the main square. It is said that passers-by stopped in front of the Girls' Shelter to listen to the voices that sang.

Music was often heard in Room 28. It originated from the basement of the Girls' Shelter, where Rafael Schächter rehearsed his choir – Mozart's Bastien and Bastienenne, Smetana's The Sold Bride or Verdi's unforgettable Requiem. From the summer of 1944 onwards, music also began to be heard from the newly built pavilion in the main square, right in front of the Girls' Shelter. There, the town band usually played and sometimes the Ghettoswingers too.

Even while reading poems – for example, poems by Handa Drori, nee Pollak, who wrote wonderful poems in her notebook in Theresienstadt – or during certain scenes, I listened to music in my mind. And also in scenes related to the children's opera Brundibár. I was certain: only a theatrical piece set to music could do justice to the theme.

But how would I be able to put everything that came to mind on paper? Everything I heard between the lines and still hear today? Me, alone, without a composer, without a group of musicians with a fierce desire to take the story to the stage? – At that time, I left the manuscript aside. And I started to focus on the book, which was first published by Droemer Verlag Munich 2004. This was followed by a Czech edition (2006, an American one (2009), a Polish one (2013) and a Brazilian one (Editora Leya in 2014).

However, I didn't abandon the manuscript completely. And so, from 2003 onwards, the play was chosen by several youth theater groups and performed in different cities. At some point, I put the manuscript in the drawer again and only took it out again in 2020. To then present the piece in its current format.

With the publication of the book in 2004 and the exhibition opening for the first time in Schwerin in the same year, the material began to take on a life of its own. The play has always returned to the stage in different ways. Not only due to the countless readings of the material I did with the survivors, most of them with the Viennese Helga Kinski, who read excerpts from her original Theresienstadt diary. These events were often accompanied by artistic performances. Notable were the performances in which the small ensemble of Anna Töller from Bad Aibling (in Bavaria) sang songs from Brundibár and the performances with the fantastic Ensemble Zwockhaus from Berlin, with their wonderful authentic songs convincingly performed by the Theresienstädter Kabarett and Ilse Weber .

Even though it was loosely based on the book, the artistic material reached the stage again and again. The fascinating production “Und der Regen rinnt...” (And the rain falls...) presented in July 2014 in Friedrichshafen was unforgettable. This was the concluding work of the theater pedagogical education seminar in Meckenbeuren under the direction of Jürgen Mack and directed by Olek Witt. The central messages of the story were wonderfully staged by the director, demonstrating the importance of art, culture and humanity in an inhumane time. Since then, Olek Witt has brought the story to the stage in various forms, most recently in Dresden in 2019. The performance consisting of text, video and music was titled “Where is the Heart of Our World?” a quote from Helga Pollak's diary.

Another quote from Helga's diary is the title of an event that had been planned for June 20, 2020 at the Leipziger Gewandhaus, with the Gewandhaus children's choir: “Music is the most beautiful creation of the human soul.” For this project I created a collection of songs. Unfortunately, the event prepared by choir director Frank-Steffen Elster and Olek Witt (direct) was canceled due to the pandemic.

As a result, my desire to publish the manuscript became even greater. I do so regardless of limitations of time, location, or personal constraints, such as those that typically occur during an actual implementation on a given stage. For this reason, I call the piece (due to its scope and, above all, its “incompleteness”) and due to the lack or just hints of musical elements, a “scene booklet”. The other reason is that I also see this with some of the treatment given to a film. But this shouldn't give the impression that the scenes are randomly strung together, quite the opposite. The scenes follow an internal logic, intensifying the dramaturgy from start to finish. At the same time, the material, as conveyed by the book and the exhibition and revealed by Helga Pollak's diary, is an inexhaustible source of inspiration that will evoke new images, scenes and ideas in all who deal with it.

The fact that the first German publication launched in September 2020 will also be published in a translated edition into Portuguese is thanks to Renate Müller, the Portuguese translator of my book and the exhibition As Meninas do Quarto 28. Thank you very much, Renate !

I also dedicate the play to the memory of Helga Pollak-Kinsky, who passed away unexpectedly on November 14, 2020, while I was working on the Portuguese language edition. Helga was the first person to get her hands on the September 2020 German edition and read it immediately. I was very happy when Helga valued this “stone of memory” more.
May this play inspire many people, so that the story of these girls can still be heard and told in theater, music and cinema.

Hannelore Brenner
November 30, 2020

Translation: Renate Müller

Photos from the theater performance, Fribourg, Germany, 2004.

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