# data[].attributes.body
“And so they lived, locked within walls and courtyards. This was their world, a world of color and shadow, of hunger and of hope, Jiri Weil, page 10, I Have Not Seen a Butterfly Here)”

# data[].attributes.body
Dicker-Brandeis gave them themes to think about, but also space and independence to express artistically.
Themes:

Some of Us

Topography of Terezin

Transports

Life Before Deportation (Expulsion from the schools)

The World Around Us (Flowers, Clogs or All of Us Outgrew our Shoes)

Memories of Home

Fairytales—Good and Evil

Beyond the Looking Glass

Dreams of Palestine

Dream of Returning

History

The Present…Reflections of the World Outside

Transport to Darkness

# data[].attributes.body
Anita Frankova wrote in the book I Have Not Seen a Butterfly Around Here, “In this abnormal environment they used all their remaining energy to create something unseen, unexpected and fascinating….”

# data[].attributes.body
These drawings are “not only an authentic document of the tragic persecution of the Jews, the victims of which quite indiscriminately included children, it is also a unique collection of the many times sole remembrances of those whose names would otherwise have remained completely forgotten,” (In the Jewish Museum of Prague).

# data[].attributes.body
Dicker-Brandeis volunteered to be transported to Auschwitz after her husband was sent there in September 1944. Before she left, she was able to preserve two suitcases filled with over 4,500 drawings and poems for someone outside of the ghetto. Because of this, we are able to experience a little of what life was like for these children in the ghetto. Dicker-Brandeis was murdered in Birkenau in October 1944. Her husband survived.

# data[].attributes.body
Throughout history people have had their freedom taken away. They have been made to believe they are less than. How could all the  wives of gestapo soldiers—who had children of their own--and worked in the Jewish Ghetto, not question, “Is this right?” Did they really think it was for good? Did they truly believe their thinking was what God wanted? And yet the human spirit reigns. Expression is individual.  Expression is communication. Is it more pronounced in difficult environments? Possibly. But can it be taken from us? It does not appear so.

# data[].attributes.headline
"I would grow up and protect my students..."

# data[].attributes.subject
"I would grow up and protect my students..."

# data[].attributes.body
Dicker-Brandeis wrote to a friend in 1940:
“I remember thinking in school how I would grow up and would protect my students from unpleasant impressions, from uncertainty, from scrappy learning... Today only one thing seems important — to rouse the desire towards creative work, to make it a habit, and to teach how to overcome difficulties that are insignificant in comparison with the goal to which you are striving.”

# data[].attributes.body
Artist Friedl Dicker-Brandeis and her husband were sent to Terezin December of 1942. Under the secret guidance of Dicker-Brandeis, the children caught in this catastrophic containment, painted pictures and wrote poems to express their joy and sorrow, and share their fears, hopes and memories. Dicker-Brandeis saw art as a way to understand emotions and what was happening in the moment. It is said that she was giving the children art therapy. Her goal was “to rouse the desire towards creative work.”

# data[].attributes.body
Of the 15,000 children who passed through the Terezin model camp, only 100 survived. “Drawing opened the way for the children of Terezin to memories of the world from which they were torn. It enabled them to see and describe sadness and the appalling reality, but above all, it carried them away to a world of fantasy and pure imagination where good triumphs over evil, where free will and abundance reign, where there is paradise on earth, (from the Jewish Museum in Prague).

# data[].attributes.body
The last, the very last,
So richly, brightly dazzlingly yellow.
Perhaps if the sun's tears would sing
against a white stone...

Such, such a yellow
Is carried lightly 'way up high.
It went away I'm sure because it wished
to kiss the world goodbye.

For seven weeks I've lived in here,
Penned up inside this ghetto
But I have found my people here.
The dandelions call to me
And the white chestnut candles in the court.
Only I never saw another butterfly.

That butterfly was the last one.
Butterflies don't live in here,
In the ghetto.

written by Pavel Reidmann, b. 1-7-1921, d. 9-29-1944
Excerpt from the book I Have Not Seen a Butterfly Around Here.