In
the 1940’s HanuŠ Hachenburg, 1929 - 1943/44, and other young boys,
aged twelve to fifteen,
lived in Barracks L417 from 1942 to 1944, or Home One, which the boys referred to as the Republic of Shkid.
The Jewish boys secretly produced a weekly magazine called Vedem (In the Lead) at the model concentration camp, Terezin.
The young poet Hanuš Hachenburg Reflection meetings
Athem of The Republic of Škid Oh, what glory; all are cheering The whole of One is on its feet Government has come to being Of the Republic of Škid Every man is our brother Christian or Jewish kid United we march under the banner Of the Republic of Škid Insult us no one shall dare No one shall dare to hit To work hard we swear To honor the Republic of Škid.
In Tereziń Hanuš wrote a puppet play, ‘We are Looking for a Monster’, but it was never performed.
Over Valtr Eisinger en In the lead (Vedem) - A Teacher's Guide
Terezin boy who dreamt of flying to Moon to escape horrors of Earth
Hans Krása's Brundibár, and the Surreal Cultural Life of Theresienstadt"
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Vedem
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HanuŠ
droeg samen met andere jongens uit Huis Nummer Eén (L417)
in Terezín bij aan de inhoud van de wekelijkse ondergrondse
magazine Vedem,
opgericht door Petr Ginz. De grote en bijzonder gewaardeerde
bijdrage van Hanuš Hachenburg voor Vedem bestond meestal
uit gedichten. De dichterlijke, gevoelige en enigszins
eenzelvige teener was ook buitengewoon goed belezen en
geïnformeerd.
Valtr Eisinger: I do not want to give you ready answers. That would be too easy. Nor do I wish to say straight out: let us love these and hate those. I shall try to outline a method that is less easy, one that will force you to think and draw your own conclusions.(..) Let me quote some of Goethe's sayings, that they might become the basis for our thoughts and our conclusions! (..) "National hatred is altogether a strange thing. It is at its most powerful and most vehement on the lowest levels of culture. But there is a level where it completely disappears and where to some extent we stand above nations, and feel the fortunes or misfortunes of neighbouring nations as if they were our own. This cultural level is consistent with my nature." |
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List of the boys who perished: |
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Hanuš Hachenburg |
Petr Ginz |
Valtr Eisinger (oudere begeleider/leraar), |
Jirí Bauer |
Erich Zinn |
Emanuel Morgenstern |
? Lichtenstein |
Hanuš Kauders |
Hanuš Beamt |
Jirí Zappner |
Karel Liebstein |
Hanuš Beck |
Laci Willheim |
? Weisskopf |
Hanuš Kraus |
Zdenek Bienenfeld |
Benjamin ?, |
Emanuel Mühlstein |
Zdenek Weiner |
Bedrich Blum |
Beno Kaufmann |
Hanuš Pollak |
Zdenek Pollak |
Zdenek Weinberger |
Jirí Lebenhart |
Jirí Bruml |
Jirí Kosta |
Hanuš Weil |
František Feuerstein |
Bedrich Vielgut |
Robert Gelb |
Wiki Tauber |
Wiki Löwy |
Rudolf Haas |
Otto Sedlácek |
Adolf Immergut |
? Rosenberger |
Arnošt Kohn |
Hanuš Kahn |
Ota Pacovský |
Rudolf Laub |
Herbert Maier |
Kurt Fischer |
Jirí Vohryzek |
Zdenek Vohryzek |
Herbert Fischl |
Petr Fischl |
Jan Volk |
Zdenek Freund |
Ralph Popper |
Hanuš Kominík |
Jirí Taussig |
Jirí Frisch |
Herman Teichner |
Petr Gelber |
Egon Tenzer |
Kurt Glasner |
Kurt Segal |
Pavel Goldstein |
Otto Šindler |
Rudolf Gotlieb |
Harry Stern |
Karel Stern |
Jirí Grünbaum |
Walter Roth |
Hanuš Heller |
Norbert Picela |
Hanuš Kalich |
Leoš Marody |
Petr Lax |
? Grünwald |
Hanuš Sternschuss |
Jirí Herrmann |
Harry Pick |
Jirí Pick |
René Pick |
Bedrich Hoffmann |
Jirí Metzl |
Hanuš Kalich |
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The boys who survived:
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Juda Bacon |
Jan Boskovic |
Jiří Brady |
Toman Brod |
Adolf Bunzel |
Mendel Kopelovič |
Kurt Kotouč |
Pavel Kummermann |
Felix Kurschner |
Leopold Löwy |
Miroslav Neumann |
Zdenĕk Ornest |
Erik Pollak |
Zdenĕk Taussig |
Jaroslav Ћatečka |
Republic of Shkid - The boys based their Republic on the eponymous book, written by two former street gangsters - Grigori Belykh and Leonid Panteleyev. St. Petersburg's streets in the 1920’s are full of gangs of homeless kids. From time to time some of them are caught and placed into a special school which is named after Dostoyevsky ('SHKola Imeni Dostoyevskogo' - hence the name SHKID). SHKID has gathered hungry, but impudent and sharp kids. The boys set up their own government during the Friday evening celebration on December 18, 1942. |
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What
good to mankind is the beauty of science?
What
good is the beauty of pretty girls?
What
good is a world when there are no rights?
What
good is the sun when there is no day?
What
good is God? Is he only to punish?
Or
to make life better for mankind?
Or
are we beasts, vainly to suffer
And
rot beneath the yoke of our feelings?
What
good is life, when the living suffer?
Why
is my world surrounded by walls?
Know
son, this is here for a reason:
To
make you fight and conquer all!
Ha - (Hanuš Hachenburg)
We
are all children, little ones,
Playing
with a coloured ball.
We
cry easily with ruddy cheeks
And
then, with glowing faces
We
look at silvery world,
At
green hillsides,
At
Life. We look ahead
We
are soft deer,
Complaining
to crows
We
think that we live
But
merely accept blows
We
are all children,
Playing
with the globe,
Water
sprites
Pursing
our lips
To
receive our mother's milk,
peace,
life.
We
are all people,
That
is, we are matter.
The
millwheel of time turns
Our
feathers are drying, drying.
We
scratch away in the night
Over
our blouses
That
take away our eyes
And
in the day we are only in darkness.
We
are all people
Gambling
for the globe,
And
the globe turns in blood
And
turns and turns
And
we reach out
For
the small lights in the night
We
children, children
Of
a great revolution
We
want to learn
So
that from the earth we might
Freely
drink
Live
Triumph
Ha - (Hanuš Hachenburg)
My
Country
I
kiss my land and caress it,
Passing
much time in its presence.
This
land is not on this earth
Yet
it is within us everywhere.
It
is in the heavens, in the stars above,
Wherever
the bird nation lives.
I
se it again in my soul today,
And
my heart is heavy with tears.
One
day I shall fly tot the heights above,
Free
from my body's encumbrance,
Free
in expansiveness, free in distance,
And
free with me, my country.
Today
it is small. A handful of dreams
Encloses
its distant horizons
And
through the heavy dreams
Shimmer
the furies of war.
One
day I shall enter my country,
I
shall rejoin my motherland
There
is my country! There is yours!
There
is no "I" and no misery.
Ha - (Hanuš Hachenburg)
Life
and death, that is the whole world,
A
ray of sunlight,
A
fiery day,
A
violent tempest on the endless sea,
Blood
of the living earth - eternal love.
When
the trees are in full leaf
When
Monday always follow Sunday
When
summer breezes list
Through
the heart's innumerable pages,
When
the sailor young and strong
Fights
death in the ocean deep…
Eternally
red, life blood
Battles
against stone-cold walls,
Ever
the world's people
Struggle
upwards
Learning
to live.
The
centre is dark. This nothing - this circle -
This
nothing is law, space, God.
Next
to the whiteness of the clouds,
The
poison gas of mocking laughter,
And
next to Justice, brown earth,
And
then, then bright red love, a dream!
Everything
is colour: the grey river,
The
green fishpond, its nymph,
The
yellow rock, the longing
Black
circle, the imprisoning universe,
The
bright blue sky,
The
black and red execution.
Time
passed: strangely it twists,
Like
a black thread in a constant spiral,
As
time goes by, across the ruins
They
sing a song of life
Or
again, when death strangles them,
They
sing the sad song of death.
From
the womb of earth life was born
To
devour itself, to submit, to fertilize,
Once
a cell looked round
To
live and die.
Life
conquered space
To
live and become God.
That
was man. And man became the master
Over
life and death, his loins, his shoulders.
Time
passes and time twists constantly,
Strangely
in a circle, in a spiral.
Today
death holds his filthy hand
Over
the world and over my soul
But
the cup, fashioned of skulls,
With
brains shrivelled and dried,
Will
overflow, and all
The
bones, the blood, the muscles call:
"Life!
Life! Life!?"
Time
presses forward,
The
spiral turns,
People
are born and die,
History
happens, and seems to happen,
At
the end of the chain of time
Freed
from fetters, from money,
At
the end of its wild spiral
Love
twists into eternity.
Ha
- (Hanuš
Hachenburg)
Thoughts
I
stood at the corner and looked int het window
To
a place where heart is divided from heart
On
the bed lay Had's limp shadows,
When
a madman suddenly lifted his hand, crying:
"Mummy!…
Mummy,
come here, let's play together
And
kiss and talk to each other!"
Poor
people, madmen, miserable figures,
Wrapped
against the weather, they went
Shivering
with cold, and wanting to shout
Before
their days were done:
"Mummy,
hold me, I'm leaf about to fall,
Look
how I wither, I feel so cold!"
As
the awful chorale echoed across the barracks,
I
- swept up in it - sing along with them.
Ha - (Hanuš Hachenburg)
Remembrance
In that grey house, an old woman
Suffered
on her bed. No one knew her.
And
as she shrivelled away, with God her only succour
She
secretly hugged something to her.
A
kind of cardboard box, and when she dies
The
ghetto will be her only heir.
And
how she cried, that helpless woman.
She
wanted to live to see her children one time more.
She
did not want to die;
She
wrung her hands (or clung to her faded souvenir)
Then
in the night, dry for lack of water, died.
I
was upset for fully half a day.
When
they came for her things in the morning -
Such
a beautiful balmy day -
All
they found was four simple flowers
And
a picture of her son clapsed
Tightly
in her twisted, stiffened hands.
They
took it from her, clumsily, roughly,
And
tore it up.
I look at her.
I learned nothing more. But
I believe -
I hope,
That
mother and son were burned together.
Ha - (Hanuš
Hachenburg)
The Heart
There’s
probably a tiny room
Where
a man cherishes his “I”
Like
a ring on his little finger.
A
terrible burden I cherish there,
So
many feelings without a name
And
In
every heart, in a nameless corner
I
cannot express them.
I
am an echo in the wind.
My
child, when he is born,
Eager
to live, will be a man
May
he never live through
What
I have seen and suffered.
I
do not know what name to give
To
my small room with its small door,
Perhaps
a bird will whisper a message
In
my ear like an echo.
Perhaps
my child will say:
“Dad,
I know how you are.”
My
heart is so cruel to me
It
will not let me dream,
But
always says:
“My
good man -
How
would you put me in words?”
Today
I said: the heart is a fire,
I
have no strength to put it out.
Academy (Hanuš Hachenburg)
About this site:
Members of the Hanuš Hachenburg group in Holland will remember all deported people who died in concentration camps during World War II. Besides, we will commemorate the inhabitants of House One in Terezin and will memorize their Vedem activities while rebuilding a new European House. The group is independent of any other organisation. We will discuss local volunteer opportunities and resources for continued education on social issues and means for continued community involvement.
From:
Gary Friedman |