Product Description

Fifteen thousand children under the age of fifteen passed through the Terezin Concentration Camp. Fewer than 100 survived. In these poems and pictures drawn by the young inmates, we see the daily misery of these uprooted children, as well as their hopes and fears, their courage and optimism. 60 color illustrations.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #32004 in Books
• Published on: 1994-03-15
• Released on: 1994-03-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 128 pages

Language Notes
Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Czech

From the Inside Flap
Fifteen thousand children under the age of fifteen passed through the Terezin Concentration Camp. Fewer than 100 survived. In these poems and pictures drawn by the young inmates, we see the daily misery of these uprooted children, as well as their hopes and fears, their courage and optimism. 60 color illustrations.

About the Author
The drawings and poems by the children of Terezin are among the most poignant documents of the Holocaust. This expanded edition of the unforgettable collection I Never Saw Another Butterfly was occasioned by the loan of the children's art by the State Jewish Museum in Prague to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., for exhibition and for this book.

The ghetto of Terezin (Theresienstadt), located in the hills outside Prague, was an unusual concentration camp in that it was created to cover up the Nazi genocide of the Jews. Billed as the "Fuhrer's gift to the Jews," this "model ghetto" was the site of a Red Cross inspection visit in 1944 and of a propaganda film produced by the Nazis. Some elderly Jews even paid to enter its protective ghetto walls. With its high proportion of artists and intellectuals, culture flourished in the ghetto -- alongside starvation, disease, and constant dread of the continuous transports to the death camps of the east. Every one of its inhabitants was condemned in advance to die.

A total of 15,000 children under the age of fifteen passed through the Terezin Concentration Camp between the years 1942 and 1944; less than 100 survived. In these poems and pictures drawn by the young inmates of Terezin, we see the daily misery of these uprooted children, as well as their courage and optimism, their hopes and fears.

The drawings and poems are all that is left of these children. About those who signed their names to their work, it has been possible to find out a few facts: the year and place of their birth, the date of their transport to Terezin and to Auschwitz, and the date of their death. For most of them that last date was 1944, a year before the end of the war.

These innocent and honest depictions allow us to see through the eyes of the children what life was like in the ghetto. Birds and butterflies flutter with the looming red roofs of Terezin in the background; a luminous moonlit room betrays the stark interior of the barracks. Pencil line drawings depict the threatening guards, work brigades, and deportations they witnessed. Side by side with the realities are images of hope -- a sailboat guided by a candle, a lighted menorah, children playing in a garden that resembles Eden, figures scaling mountain peaks to liberation.

The children's poems and drawings, revealing a maturity beyond their years, are haunting reminders of what no child should ever have to see. Each piece of art gives the overwhelming tragedy of genocide a human and individual face.

This new, expanded edition of I Never Saw Another Butterfly includes many additional drawings and poems chosen from the archives of the State Jewish Museum in Prague by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Customer Reviews

Butterfly wings
Only three of the poets and authors whose work is represented in this volume survived the Nazi Holocaust.

These works, however, are no more dead than the wings of butterflies mounted in a natural history museum.

They fly: They give the children voices for all time---not just the authors and poets' voices, but the voices of all 14,900 children who perished in Terezin from the arrival of the first transport in November 1941 to the ghetto's liberation in April 1945. Indeed, voices for all 141,000 Jewish people transported here from Germany, Holland, Poland, Denmark, Luxembourg, Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and elsewhere, including the relative handful---16,832---who survived.

The works here are a testament to the human spirit.

poignant
This book is a must for teachers, parents, and children 10 years old and up. It should read with children and an adult together and should have some Holocaust background explained first. If we want future generations to know what happened, we must tell them

Great Book
This is a really good book. It was a great tool for teaching my daughter about the Holocaust. The best thing about the book is that you are seeing pictures and poetry that was created by the children of one of the most terrible tragedies in history.