TOKYO, JAPAN.- The Tokyo Fuji Art Museum presents an exhibition that celebrates the life of Friedl Dicker-Brandeis, a Bauhaus-trained Austrian artist who, from 1942-44, was the dedicated art teacher of the children of the Terezin ghetto/concentration camp near Prague. Around 15,000 children were among those held at Terezin, known as the ’waiting room for hell,’ before being deported to Auschwitz, and only 100 are known to have survived.
Friedl devoted herself to teaching the children art to bring some joy and beauty into their lives. Her classes became essential means of self-expression for the traumatized children. ’She gave us hope,’ remembers Ela Weisburger, one of her few pupils to survive.
’Iris,’ by Milan Eisler, Terezin, 1943-44. Before her own deportation to Auschwitz in October 1944, Friedl hid some 5,000 children’s drawings packed in two suitcases which were only discovered 10 years later. In 1964, the publication of the book I Never Saw Another Butterfly brought the children’s story worldwide attention.
’Friedl and the Children of Terezin,’ previously shown in several European locations and in Atlanta, U.S.A., contains over 150 of Friedl’s own works, photographs and letters and 150 of the children’s drawings.
Organized by the Simon Wiesenthal Center/Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles and the Tokyo Fuji Art Museum and supported by Nihon Keizai Shimbun, the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Agency for Cultural Affairs, the exhibit will run from April 20-May 26 at the Tokyo Fuji Art Museum in Hachioji before moving on to other locations in Japan.