Human Rights Watch USHMM / 5424&MediaId=6581 Children’s Art: Terezin and Darfur Cathy Blake Member – Isak Federman Holocaust Teaching Cadre 2010

“Art plays a role in everyday life. There may be the special concert or play, but art can be used in non-traditional ways. Art can become a comfort, a teaching tool and an assessment to learn how to reach a person. The use of art, whether it’s visual or performing, can be a way to know and react to the larger world. Art, in its essence, is a type of language that can help an individual, group or the larger, more dynamic society.” (“The Language of the Mind,” July-August, 2010, p. 58)

“Children’s Drawing under Genocide and Extreme Trauma: Comparison -- Terezin and Darfur, A Brief Text” Copyright 2010 Dr. Ellen Handler Spitz Honors College Professor of Visual Arts, University of Maryland – Baltimore, MD Used with permission – see Resources “Children in Terezin drew under the aegis of a gifted and devoted teacher, Friedl Dicker-Brandeis. Friedl was a Bauhaus-trained artist who worked tirelessly with these children to teach and to aide them both aesthetically and psychologically. She wanted them to use their art as a way of coping with the lot they had innocently been dealt by fate, not as an escape but also not as a way just to express fear, anxiety, and loss. She believed in the power of the process of art-making itself and in its healing, wholistic aspects.” "

“The children of Terezin were housed by the Nazis in special buildings for boys and girls respectively and on floors arranged by age, and they were cruelly separated from their parents. They were prohibited from attending school, from having lessons in any academic subjects. Art, music, and theater were not, however, considered important enough by the Nazis to prohibit. In these children’s drawings, we find many images of activities, places, and objects drawn from their daily lives before they were forced into the concentration camp. One drawing shows a little black dog, for example, which must have been a child’s pet, one which—we may imagine—the child was fondly missing and re- imagining. We find trees and flowers and dinners where families are gathered together. The drawings also show scenes of horror, but many of them see to evoke pictorially the children’s longing for what has gone missing in their lives.”

Theresienstadt (Terezin) Map Basic Facts about Terezin 1.Jews from Czechoslovakia, Germany & Western Europe imprisoned in Terezin. 2. In 1944 the camp was shown to a visiting committee of the International Red Cross--presented as “model camp.” 3.Propaganda movie made about the camp. 4.In reality, camp was an overcrowded transit station where death was everpresent. Many died there; others sent to death camps. 5.Terezin was liberated by the Red Army in May Only 3000 survivors of 155,650 Jews deported to Terezin. 7.Children were forced to lived apart from their parents. 8.“The children of Terezin left a remarkable legacy in their poetry and art.” (... I never saw another butterfly... p. viii ) 9.Friedl Dicker-Brandeis, a gifted artist herself, was the children’s art teacher. 10. Of deportees who were children, 100 survived, none under the age of 14. (Yad Vashem)

The Chiildren’s World of Terezin During liberation, 4000 of the children’s paintings and drawings were recovered. These artworks serve as “potent symbols of resistance.” Friedl Dicker-Brandeis saw art as “a form of creative release.” She encouraged the children to chose their subjects by telling them stories or listing objects for them to arrange and organize. Classes were primarily for girls; far fewer boys’ pictures survived. The girls’ works show three distinct types: those where the medium & technique are of primary importance, those where the theme is key—celebrating Seder, images of home & the countryside, vases of flowers, those that depict everyday ghetto life. (Stargardt, Nov. 1998)

Ms. Dicker-Brandeis saved the art materials she could gather for the children—she didn’t create much of her own work. One of her students who survived remembered her teacher “... as a tender, highly intelligent woman, who managed—for some hours every week—to create a fairy world for us in Terezin... A world that made us forget all the surrounding hardships...” (... I never saw another butterfly..., p. xx) The teacher was deported to Auschwitz in October She died in Birkenau. Following liberation of the camp, two suitcases of artwork were given to the Prague Jewish community. There was little interest in them for ten years. When they were rediscovered, they were exhibited internationally. In her book Museums of the Mind, Dr. Ellen Handler Spitz, devotes a chapter to the “Music of Hope” about the opera Brundibar, which was performed the children of Terizin many times. She discusses the “power of art to shape the mind as well as be shaped by it.” (Spitz,1995, p. 162) This power can be seen in the artwork from Terezin, and this artwork provided “nourishment through culture and the hope to survive.” (Spitz, 1995, p. 170)

Darfur Map & Background Information from The World Fact Book Basic Facts about Darfur from “A Unit to Accompany the film Darfur Now & the book Not On Our Watch” 1.Sudan is located in North Africa. 2.Its capital is Khartoum. 3.It’s a region about the size of Texas. 4.Most of its residents are Muslims. 5.Languages spoken: Arabic & African dialects

Knowing Genocide: Photographing Darfur in Conflict was sparked when rebels from Darfur attacked a base in In retaliation, the Janjaweed (military & government-backed militias) attacked African residents of Darfur. 8. These attacks include village burnings, murders, maimings, poisonings of wells, raping women, kidnapping children. 9. United Nations estimates show at least 200,000 Darfurians killed since Estimates show at least 2.5 million forced to leave their villages since 2003.

According the UNICEF data from June of 2005: *1.5 million children are affected by the crisis in Darfur *many are have witnesses atrocities *many have been victims themselves *many have found healing in art *UNICEF & partners support “child-friendly” centers in refugee camps where children are provided with, among other things, art supplies “A simple packet of crayons gives a child an opportunity to express herself.” *art helps children cope with & overcome trauma *over time, children being the recovery process & their drawings change

Smallest Witnesses: The Crisis in Darfur Through Children's Eyes, Dr. Annie Sparrow, with illustrations “In early 2005, two Human Rights Watch researchers, one a pediatrician, the other a lawyer, traveled to camps along the Chad-Sudan border housing refugee men, women, and children from Darfur. The purpose of the mission was to examine the consequences of sexual violence on refugees as part of the conflict, and the services and protection provided. During interviews with refugees, their children were given paper and crayons to draw whatever they wished.”

“The first child Human Rights Watch encountered, an eight-year-old named Mohammed, had never held a crayon or pencil before. That is not uncommon in a region where education and other services are minimal and children must help with subsistence chores from an early age. While HRW talked to the adults, Mohammed and his brothers drew -- without any instruction -- pictures of Janjaweed on horseback and camel shooting civilians, Antonovs dropping bombs on civilian homes, an army tank firing on fleeing villagers. Looking at the drawings, Mohammed whispered, "I am still scared of the Janjaweed. I remember the guns and the planes." The last thing he said to Human Rights Watch researchers was "Darigi jugi" -- I need to go home." ‘Over the following weeks of the research mission, these violent scenes were repeated in hundreds of drawings Human Rights Watch was given, depicting the attacks by ground and by air. These children have created their own "visual vocabulary" through which others can virtually see what they have witnessed. The children have become the missing eyewitnesses. This "ethnic cleansing" was always meant to be out of the public view. There are virtually no publicly available photographs and little footage of Janjaweed militias or Sudanese soldiers attacking villagers, making it hard to hold the perpetrators accountable. The drawings corroborate unerringly what we know of the crimes, illustrating a compelling case against the government of Sudan as the architect of this man-made crisis in Darfur.”

Health professionals believe that it is important to victims to tell their stories. Creative activities, including drawings, give young survivors a way to tell their stories. Smallest Witnesses

Drawn in Darfur: Pictures Don't Lie “Anna Schmitt was in eastern Chad interviewing Sudanese refugees from the Darfur region when the women at a displacement camp gave her some advice.“If you want information, you should ask the children.” So she did just that. During her research for the non-government organisation Waging Peace, Schmitt sat in a classroom with the camp’s children... ( 2007/08/31/drawn-in-darfur- pictures-don’t-lie/)

“When we turn to the drawing by children of Darfur, such positive scenes and images are stunningly absent. Here, by contrast, we do not seem to have a population of children who were suddenly wrenched from a peaceful life and plunged into a hellish world, as under the Nazis. Here, we have a population of children who seem to have suffered longer and, in some cases, to such an extent that the horror has obliterated all happy imagery. Whereas, in the Terezin drawings, we rarely if ever observe violence, we see it graphically depicted in the art of the children of Darfur. Spears fly, dead people are shown upside down, villages burn down, attackers and fleeing people are portrayed, weapons, airplanes. Fire and mayhem ensue. The drawings are profoundly disturbing to behold.”

“The children of these two populations were exposed, as we know, to ghastly but different forms of horror, and their drawings reflect those differences. In Terezin, children rarely saw anyone being murdered before their eyes; whereas, the opposite was true with the children of Darfur, who witnessed rapes and horrible forms of killing, and whose drawings stand as a mute testament to the outrages of violence and brutality. They constitute a witness in ways very different from what we find in Terezin, where art served the children also as wish fulfillment and nostalgia and game them a chance to ‘get out’ for a while, as their art teacher Friedl planned and hoped and arranged.”

“It is very important to note that in one case there was a teacher, a supremely sensitive and gifted and experienced teacher, and that, in the other case— in Darfur—the children drew spontaneously what came to their minds when asked by the peace workers to record their impressions. There was no teacher, and they were both freer and in a way, less free. They were given a task: Tell us what happened to you and to your family and to your village. In their art, they held fast to this mission. Whereas, the Terezin children had a much broader palette of subject matter and a greater emotional range. They were guided by a teacher who wanted to draw out of them more than a record, and therefore their drawings reflect a wider range of content, form, and style.”

“What is supremely important in both cases is the daunting capacity of the traumatized children to express themselves so powerfully in graphic media. They were able to draw. They used pencil, pen, graphite, paint, paper, crayons, and chalk, and they allowed themselves to become absorbed in the process of trying to put down what was in their hearts and minds. In doing so, they staved off the horror. They pushed back destruction by being creative. We can imagine how supremely valuable and important this was to them. How much it helped. While drawing, each child was master or mistress of his or her own experience, and however horrible the content, it was the child now who could control it and tell it and not—in that moment—not in that sense—be a victim.” “Children’s Drawing under Genocide and Extreme Trauma: Comparison -- Terezin and Darfur, A Brief Text” Copyright 2010 Dr. Ellen Handler Spitz

Viewing and analyzing the children’s artwork from Terezin and Darfur can help us learn about the children and their experiences. You will be participating in activities where you will choose artworks to view, analyze and discuss the drawings/paintings/collages, and (with your classmates) find similarities and differences in the children’s experiences and their abilities to bear witness about those experiences through their art.

The Many Roles of Art – Therapy, Healing, Resistance, Witness The artworks you are about to see and analyze and discuss in more detail represent children of various ages, skill levels, geographic locations, experiences, cultures, and beliefs. All of these affect the artist and his or her work. Cathy Malchiodi, in her blog entitled “The Healing Arts – The Restorative Power of Imagination,” finds that “after a disaster, children’s art and play provides a window into the experience of the trauma.... Art, play, and imagination are ways children naturally express the unspeakable...” The art teacher in Terezin certainly understood the power of art in helping her students cope, survive each day, and resist. The international aid workers, while initially hoping to provide an activity to engage children while their parents were being interviewed, came to understand the power of art in helping those children of Darfur relate their experiences and bear witness to atrocities committed against them.

What did you learn? TerezinChildren’s ArtDarfur As you complete the activities, think about the following questions.

Are there general characteristics that can be found in the art of children of genocide? How might art therapy benefit those children? What was the value of this activity to you personally? What questions do you have that you might wish to research on your own?

Resources Arts in Health & Care. Smallest Witnesses: the crisis in Darfur through Children’s Eyes. crisis-in-darfur-through-childrens-eyes/ crisis-in-darfur-through-childrens-eyes/ Arts in Health & Care. Drawn in Darfur – Pictures Don’t Lie. don’t-lie/ Artvista.org. Telling Stories to Change the World. CIA – The World Factbook. Africa-Sudan. factbook/geos/su.html Dr. Ellen Handler Spitz, personnel communication, August 25, Children’s Drawing under Genocide and Extreme Trauma: Comparison -- Terezin and Darfur, A Brief Text. Copyright 2010.

Facing History. A Unit to Accompany the Film Darfur Now and the Book Not On Our Watch. Volavkovvd, Hana (ed.).... I never saw another butterfly.... New York: Schocken Books, “The Language of the Mind.” KC Studio. (July-August 2010.) pp Psychology Today. “When Trauma Happens, Children Draw, Part i.” happens-children-draw-part-i Psychology Today. “When Trauma Happens, Children Draw, Part ii.” happens-children-draw-part-ii Stagardt, Nicholas. (Nov. 1998). “Children’s Art of the Holocaust.” ol1 Traveljournals.net. Terezin, Czech Republic.

UNICEF. Darfur (Sudan/Chad) – Region in Crisis. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Knowing Genocide: Photographing Darfur in Yad Vashem. Between the Worlds: Social Circles in the Theresienstadt Ghetto. **Special thanks to Penny Selle, Notre Dame de Sion High School. The activity “Looking at a Work of Art” was based on an activity and evaluation sheet created by her.