The Prague Post
September 8th, 2008
Endowment Fund     Business Listings ONLINE      Reservations      Classifieds    Subscriptions
Hotel Prague Centre

Home » Archives » Tempo

Child star of Terezín

A new film honors the short life of the original Brundibár

By Steffen Silvis
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
October 24th, 2007 issue

Many historical intersections took place the evening of Oct. 16 at the residence of the American ambassador, where the launch for a documentary on the life of a young Holocaust victim, Honza Treichlinger, was given.
Treichlinger originated the role of Brundibár, the eponymous comic-villain in Hans Krása’s famous children’s opera that was performed at the Terezín concentration camp. It was a part that Treichlinger played in all 55 performances at the camp before being sent to the gas chambers at Auschwitz.
Yet his performance as the wicked organ grinder managed to survive in fragments, embedded within the infamous Nazi propaganda film The Führer Gives a Village to the Jews, a Hitlerian ploy to cover rumors of the death camps. “For us, Honza Treichlinger is the personification of the Holocaust’s loss,” American filmmaker Nancy Petschek-Kohn told the reception audience.
The Star of Terezín is to be the brief life story of this tragic young actor once Petschek-Kohn and her Czech film partner, Martina Štolbová, raise money to finish the work.
The two women met through one of Štolbová’s last projects, the Emmy Award-winning film Nicholas Winton: The Power of Good, about the British man who created a kindertransport for Czech Jewish children before the Nazi invasion. Petschek-Kohn contacted Štolbová to see if she could help get the film more widely distributed. During their conversation, they discovered a shared interest in Brundibár and its forgotten star.
By accident, Štolbová stumbled upon the last surviving member of Treichlinger’s family, his cousin Shmuel Jirzi Bloch, an elderly Holocaust survivor living in Israel. Bloch was so surprised and delighted to hear from Štolbová that he immediately gave her and Petschek-Kohn full rights to all his surviving photos, letters and artifacts connected to Honza.
“Martina’s call was like from heaven,” an emotional Bloch said at the reception. “I couldn’t believe it.” Though not a participant in Brundibár, Bloch is a surviving witness to the little opera’s performances that brought some sliver of cheer to the dreadful camp.
But one of the last surviving cast members, Ela Stein Weissberger, was also present. She and Bloch had not seen each other since Terezín, so the evening became a reunion for the two guests.
“I knew you immediately,” Bloch said to Weissberger.
“Really?” she laughed. “I think I’ve changed a bit.”
In a shot from Brundibár, a little girl in black, with her face painted like a cat, stands next to Treichlinger: Ela Stein Weissberger. “Like Honza, I played my role in all 55 performances,” Weissberger said. “He was a lovely boy, everyone adored him.” Their appearance in the propaganda film would be their last performance together.
Weissberger now resides in New York, and has spent the last few years traveling America to speak about Brundibár. She even appeared in a staged prologue with actor Eli Wallach in the recent New York production that boasted designs by Maurice Sendak, with an English libretto of Adolf Hoffmeister’s original by playwright Tony Kushner. “This opera is the bridge to generations to come with what happened in Terezín,” Weissberger stated.
The evening finished with a children’s chorus singing a few of the songs from Brundibár in front of a replica of the original backdrop. As the children sang, Weissberger and two other camp survivors could be seen singing along in the audience. At the end, all three joined the children on stage for the “Victory Song” finale.
History appeared in many guises that night. “You know,” said Petschek-Kohn, “I’ve been in the residency a few times. The first time I came it was to take a look for my relatives. This used to be my family’s house.”
There was another, more tragic coincidence that Štolbová mentioned. “Today’s October 16th,” she noted. “The very day in 1944 that Honza Treichlinger was transported to Auschwitz.”
On that same transport was Krása, as well as the famed composers Viktor Ullmann and Pavel Haas. The famous German actor-director Kurt Gerron, the man forced to make the film that keeps Honza Treichlinger’s performance alive, was put on the next transport. All were gassed upon arriving at Auschwitz.

Steffen Silvis can be reached at ssilvis@praguepost.com


Other articles in Tempo (24/10/2007):

Browse the Current Issue

If you enjoyed this article, why don't you subscribe to the print version!
We accept secure online transactions provided by PayPal and Moneybookers

Be the first to add a comment!


Full Name: *
City: *
E-mail: **
This comment can be published in the print version of The Prague Post
Enter the text on the right:
 visual captcha
Comment: *
* Required field. In order to be approved for display, comments must have a first and last name and a city.
** E-mails are required and will only be used for internal purposes.

Most visited in Business Listings

Hotel booking
The Prague Post Online contains a selection of articles that have been printed in
The Prague Post, a weekly newspaper published in the Czech Republic.
To subscribe to the print paper, click here.
Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited.