Revisiting the Shadows by Irene Shapiro

Author:Irene Shapiro [Shapiro, Irene]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: DeForest Press
Published: 2012-01-30T05:00:00+00:00

I visit the museum of Theresienstadt in November of 1994 and learn that a large transport of children from Bialystok arrived there in 1943. After some time, these children were sent to the gas chambers of Auschwitz. Swallowing my tears, I study the children’s drawings that cover the walls of the museum. I anxiously study the names that appear on those drawings, but not one of the names of my pupils come back to my mind. I search and search for the imaginary drawings of my little pupil whose angelic face I will always remember, but I do not know which, if any, of the imaginary drawings at Theresienstadt are his. Fifty years of life simply expunge the recollection of the style of my pupil’s drawings and erases his name from my memory.

Years later I read the poem “The Butterfly,” written at the ghetto of Therezienstadt by a Czech-Jewish boy called Pavel Friedman. And suddenly I recall the name of the Polish-Jewish boy called Pawelek Friedman, my imaginative pupil in the ghetto of Bialystok. I tell the story of searching for the drawings of Pawelek Friedman to a group of 7th graders at our local synagogue, and one of them tells me that I must go to Theresienstadt again and find the drawings of my pupil.

The following paraphrased excerpt is from April 2000 in the #362 issue of the Bialystoker Shtimme: “At the end of August 1943, at the time of the annihilation of the ghetto of Bialystok, 1,200 children ages 6-12 were transferred to Theresienstadt and placed in a special camp called Crete. The children who had infectious diseases were murdered in the small fortress of Theresienstadt. On the night of October 5, 1943, the Bialystok children disappeared. The only thing that remained was a list of the 1,196 children and 53 accompanying adults, listed as special transport number DN/a, to Auschwitz. Only after the war did it become known that the children were brought to Auschwitz and sent straight to the gas chambers. The children from the ghetto of Bialystok were among the last surviving Jewish children of Eastern Europe.”

I read the List of Children, Yad Vashem Archive No. 064/318 Abtransport DN/a 5.10.43 published by the same issue of the Bialystoker Shtimme and do not find the name of Pawelek Friedman on that list…

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