The infamous 1944 Nazi German propaganda film, “The Fuhrer Gives the Jews a City,” about the Czech ghetto Terezin or Theresienstadt, includes a sequence about Jewish children performing an opera, “Brundibar,” by Jewish composer Hans Krasa.
One of the children played a cat, and like all the Jewish children, she wore the yellow Star of David.
That child was Ela Stein. She was one of the few who survived their stay in this ghetto, which for the most part was a transit station to the extermination camps.
Today, now known by her married name Ela Weissberger, she speaks all over the country and in Europe about her experiences; and she has witnessed and participated in modern productions of “Brundibar.”
She also has co-written with Susan Goldman Rubin a book for children “The Cat With the Yellow Star: Coming of Age in Terezin” (Holiday House, 2006) about her experiences.
Weissberger, 78, will be the featured speaker at Milwaukee’s Yom HaShoah Commemoration: A Memorial to the Six Million and Remembrance of the Warsaw Ghetto and All Resistance.
The event will take place Sunday, April 19, 2 p.m., at the Harry & Rose Samson Family Jewish Community Center.
A ‘special saying’
Though she has spoken at many such commemorations, Weissberger told The Chronicle in a telephone interview that she doesn’t have a written text for her remarks.
She does this partly because “I don’t know how long” the organizers want her to speak, but also partly because “I have it in my heart. If I can’t say it from my heart, I wouldn’t talk.”
But she will recite one prepared item at the lighting of the remembrance candles, a “special saying” that she first heard from fellow Terezin survivor Rabbi Richard Feder when he first lit Yom HaShoah memorial candles. “That is something very special for me,” she said.
Weissberger said she feels driven to continue speaking about her experience because “I feel that it’s my duty, because my friends didn’t survive” and “because of the [Holocaust] deniers,” who she fears “are growing.”
Weissberger was born in the Sudetenland, the western region of what was then Czechoslovakia. This was deeded to Nazi Germany as part of the infamous Munich agreement in early autumn 1938.
After the Kristallnacht anti-Jewish riots in Germany in November 1938, Weissberger’s family was driven out. They went to Prague, but after the Germans conquered the whole country, they were confined to Terezin. Ela was 11 when she entered the ghetto and 15 when it was liberated.
She had shown talent for art even in the ghetto, and some of her works have been featured in famous shows of children’s art from Terezin. After the war, Ela studied art in Prague, but after the communist takeover in 1948, she and a few of her family who had survived went to Israel. She served in Israel’s army and there met Leo Weissberger.
They married and had a daughter there. In 1958, they moved to the United States, where their son was born. Her husband is now deceased, and she has retired from the interior design business she ran for many years.
She keeps busy traveling and speaking; and she is hoping someone will make a movie out of “The Cat With the Yellow Star.”
In addition to the ceremony and speech, the event will honor Paul Melrood for his years of support for the program. Winners of the Holocaust Youth Essay Contest, sponsored by the Habush Family Foundation, will be recognized.
The commemoration is a program of the JCC, and co-sponsored by the Generation After, an organization of children of Holocaust survivors, and area synagogues and organizations. Sandra Hoffman chairs the event.
For more information, call 414-964-4444.
Loading ...