I Never Saw Another Butterfly

I Never Saw Another Butterfly is a collection of poems and drawings done by children who resided in Theresienstadt. Theresienstadt was the model ghetto the Nazi's used to show the Red Cross that they were trying to give the Jewish people a their own settlement, that they could run as they saw fit. In reality Theresienstadt was little more than a way-station for Jews that were later sent to Auschwitz.

Many of the people sent to Theresienstadt were prominant artists and writters, who saw it as their jobs to teach the children of the ghetto. One artist in particular, Friedl Dicker-Brandeis, taught the children drawing, it is because of her that so many of the children's drawings have survived: before she was sent to Auschwitz she hide over 4,000 drawings in two suitcases.

A total of 15,000 children under the age of fifteen passed through Theresienstadt between the years 1942-44; less than 100 survived. On my trip to the Czech Republic over spring break I got the chance to see the ghetto as well as many of the drawings done by children. I think what shocked me the most was how graphic some of them were, one drawing was of the shower rooms where people were forced to stripe and then shower in groups. I can't imagine what it would have been like to live through something like that.