HD-Video, 14 min., 2011
Anna Flachová-Hanušová (born in 1930 in Tesin Polski) was deported to Theresienstadt with the first family transport from Brno in December 1941. She was one of the first children in the camp and was called »Flaška«. Room 28 in the Girls Home L 410 on the marketplace became her accommodation. Later on Helga Pollak and Ela Stein also lived there and they all got friends. Flaška survived the Holocaust in Theresienstadt where she was liberated in May 1945. She became a pianist, a singer and a teacher of singing and piano. Together with her husband, the oboist Vítěslav Hanuš, she did guest performances and residencies in Beijing (China), Beirut (Lebanon) and Sydney (Australia). Since 1970 she lives and works in Brno.
long biography of Anna Flachová-Hanusová as pdf (in German)
Helga Pollak-Kinsky (born in 1930 in Vienna) was forced to emigrate as 8-year-old girl to Brno respectively Kyjov.With her father and her relatives, she was deported to Theresienstadt in January 1943. Together with other children she visited the secret classes - including the drawing lessons with Friedl Dicker-Brandeis. Often together with Flaška and Ela. During her internment she wrote a diary which is the basis for the book »The Girls of Room 28: Friendship, Hope and Survival in Theresienstadt« (published by Schocken Books, New York, 2009) and it was written by Hannelore Brenner-Wonschick. Helga Pollak was deported to Auschwitz in October 1944. During the selection she was assigned to a group of women who were destined to do forced labor in Oederan in Saxony in an ammunition factory. With a misery transport she was deported back to Theresienstadt at the end of April 1945 where she and her father witnessed the liberation. Today she lives and works in Vienna since 1957 after stopovers in Bangkok (Thailand) and Addis Abeba (Ethiopia).
long biography of Helga Pollak-Kinsky as pdf (in German)
Ela Stein-Weissberger (born in 1930 in Lom u Mostu) fled with her mother and sister to Prague in 1938 after the Nazis had let her father Max Stein »disappear« after the incidents of »Reichskristallnacht« when 300 Nazis had smashed their house to bits. From Prague their emigration into the USA failed in 1939. Together with her mother, grandmother, her uncle and her sister she was deported to Theresienstadt in February 1942. She performed the role of the »cat« in the children's opera »Brundibár« with Flaška who sang in the choir of the school children. After she was liberated with her mother and sister in May 1945, she lived in Prague where she attended the Art School for Ceramics and Porcelain from 1947 on. She emigrated to Israel in 1949, since 1958 she lives and works in the USA near New York.
long biography of Ela Stein-Weissberger as pdf (in German)
Source:
Hannelore Brenner-Wonschick, Die Mädchen von Zimmer 28: Freundschaft, Hoffnung und Überleben in Theresienstadt
www.room28projects.com