The Diary of Petr Ginz, 1941–1942 Read online

  When I saw them, I felt as if Petr hadn’t actually died. It seemed to me that he was alive somewhere in eternity and was letting me know by sending this particular message. The newly found items contained two small diaries where Petr had recorded the events from the years 1941–1942, the period before his deportation to Theresienstadt, while we were all still living together at home in Prague. As soon as I saw the pages of the diary and Petr’s drawings, I knew instantly that they were genuine. I recognized my brother’s handwriting and I also remembered the events he was describing there. Petr’s handwriting gradually changes in the diary pages—it becomes nervous and less legible as the date of his call-up to the transport to Theresienstadt approaches. My own distress grew equally, as I read each new page. Petr does not write explicitly about his fear of the future; nevertheless, his notes reflect the black clouds that were gathering upon him and were soon to engulf him.

  Together with the diaries, the find also contained Petr’s linocuts, especially illustrations to novels of Jules Verne, who was my brother’s favourite author at the time. There was also the first part of one of Petr’s novels, two more exercise books containing his articles, and finally a list of all his literary writings.

  My husband and I decided to travel to Prague to find the owner of Petr’s newly found bequest. I had hoped that I would have a legal right to this inheritance from Petr. But after consulting a lawyer, I was told that I had no legal rights whatsoever, because the house where the items were found had belonged to a new owner for more than three years. However, in the end, I succeeded in obtaining the bequest, so that I now own Petr’s two diaries and some linocuts. The remainder has become the property of the Yad Vashem Museum in Jerusalem.

  2

  Petr’s diary is very dear to me, as dear as the happy childhood we shared. Yet it had lasted a short time, ending with the beginning of the persecution of Jews by the Nazis. Until then we had lived as a happy family.

  According to Nazi Nuremberg laws, children from mixed marriages, where one partner was a Jew and the other an Aryan, were considered “First Degree Mischlings (mixed-breeds).” This meant that we had to submit to the same laws and restrictions as all other Jews (we wore a yellow star, we were thrown out of public schools, at the end of 1941 the Jewish school was closed too, in street cars we were allowed only in the last car if at all, etc.), with only one exception: we were deported to concentration camps only upon reaching the age of fourteen.

  This is why our parents had to give Petr away to the Germans when he turned fourteen in 1942. They waited with horror and tension and hope that the end of the war would come before I was taken away as well. But their hope was for naught, and my time to leave came in 1944, a year before the end of the war. In the end, Father was also deported to Theresienstadt (until then, he had been protected by his Aryan wife, according to Nuremberg laws) and Mother stayed home alone. After the liberation, I returned to Prague with my father.

  Petr and I were both born in Prague. Father spoke several languages and worked as a manager of the export department of a textile company. He met our mother at an Esperanto conference. Both our parents were progressive people; they looked after our education and healthy lifestyle. We all took up many sports, skiing and ice skating in the winter, swimming and walking in the summer, especially during the holidays.

  Mother was from Hradec Kralove; her father was a village teacher. Our frequent visits to relatives in Hradec, especially for Christmas, are among some of my most beautiful memories. Mother loved music; she had a beautiful voice and loved to sing arias to us at home from operas and operettas. This was when we were little. After the war, the Holocaust, and Petr’s tragic fate, she never sang again.

  Our father was born in Zdanice near Prague; his family came from the Kourim area. Later, they lived in Prague. My grandfather had an antique shop in Jungmanovo Square. Grandfather Ginz was a very educated and wise man. His shop specialized mainly in old, rare books. He was also a talented artist, as witnessed by his small bequest, and he also had literary talents—his business correspondence with clients was often conducted in verse. He died prematurely, at the age of fifty-five, but he took good care of his wife and five children. In the end, everyone from the Jewish side of our family, except for my father, myself, and one cousin, was killed during the Holocaust, so that it could be said that Grandfather’s early death saved him from terrible suffering.

  I remember our relatives from Hradec and our aunts and uncles in Prague, cousin Pavel Ginz, and Grandmother Ginz, with love and pleasure, but also with pain in my heart.

  3

  Our parents raised Petr and me to have good manners, discipline, and education. They taught us to distinguish between right and wrong, good and bad.

  The Holocaust convinced us that there are evil people in the world, often led by fanaticism, who are capable of murder and merciless torture. But there are also others, those who try to help under any circumstances, and for whom love is all-important. Such people avoid hate, even against the evil they disagree with.

  Petr’s young spirit was fully directed toward the good. The essence of his interests and desires had its source in the richness of his soul. He belonged to that important category of people endowed with the gift of positive thinking.

  My brother wanted to see; not just to glimpse but to really immerse himself in the things he thought about and investigated. He wanted to get to know the essence of the subject of his research and to test the results of his understanding. His great need to perceive things in depth is evidenced by the large number of his drawings that have survived—the Yad Vashem Museum has over 120 of them in storage.

  Every child has a number of interests as part of his or her natural development, one of which begins to dominate over time and later determines whether the child becomes a painter, scientist, writer, or leads to some other profession. Petr was interested in almost everything. Today, we can only guess where Petr’s life journey would have led and which of the wide spectrum of his interests would have gained preference.

  I remember the time when Petr and I were still children. Petr’s hair was dark blond, his eyes were serious and blue, but often playfully happy due to some boyish mischief. I remember how during our joint outings Petr walked with his eyes firmly on the ground, and therefore often found some “treasure”—a special veined stone, a bead, or even a coin. I don’t remember ever seeing him cry. This would have been beneath his sense of dignity. I, however, cried often and he teased me about it, calling me “sissy missy,” which made me cry even more. In 1942 my brother left for Theresienstadt, where we met again two years later: suddenly, Petr had become a tall, thin, and pale young man; his child’s face was gone.

  From very early youth, Petr was hungry for knowledge. Not even the Nazis succeeded in stifling his desire to learn, when they forced him, like all Jewish children, to leave school. In spite of all obstacles he realized his need for education, almost compulsively. He often planned his activities a month ahead, and then analyzed in detailed summaries how much of what he had intended had been successfully executed. In a report titled “September 1944” we read what he wrote in Theresienstadt before being sent with the transport of September 28, 1944, to Auschwitz, to his death.

  May 1944

  Eva arrived.1

  I finished the notes from Ceylon and bound them. Ceylon has been returned. I haven’t read all the notes yet, but I did complete the preparatory work for the study of general education: I have read The System of Sociology by Chalupny, which contains a classification of sciences, and in this framework I have made a plan to learn a little about each science.

  I have read: Gwen Bristow: Deep Summer. Franck Without a Penny Around the World, the detective novel The Silky Face, Chalupny: The System of Sociology, Wells: A Short History of the World, Pedagogical newsletter, Jiri Valja: The Storytellers.2

  I have drawn: The Brewery.

  June 1944

  I am working in lithography. I have made a physical map of A
sia and I have started a world map according to Mercator’s projection.

  I have read: Otahalova-Popelova: Seneca in Letters, Arbes: Crazy Job, My Friend the Murderer, The Devil, London: Lost Face, Musil: Desert and Oasis, Cosmos, 2 Selections, H. G. Wells: Christina Alberta’s Father, part of Descartes’ Discourse on Method.

  I have learned: The Antiquity (Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Indians, Phoenicians, Israelites, Greeks, Persians, etc.), the geography of Arabia, Holland, and the Moon.

  I have drawn: Behind the Lambing Pen and Vrchlabi.

  In my head and on paper, I have organized the subject of zoology. I attend evening lectures (on Rembrandt, Mastickar3).

  I don’t visit the cooks any more.

  July 1944

  I have read: Honoré de Balzac: Eugenie Grandet, Gorky: Stories, Fairy Tales and Complaints, André Theuriet: The Last Refuge, Valenta: Uncle Eskimo.

  I have drawn: Behind the Brewery, Buildings.

  I am still employed in lithography, but next month I’ll work only half a day and take part in the programme for half a day.

  I am learning more English. Eleven-twelfths of the map of the world is now traced in ink. I still have to colour it and fill in the towns.

  August 1944

  I have read: Dickens: A Christmas Carol, Hloucha: The Sun Carriage, Alexander Niklitschek: Miracles Everywhere, Flammarion and Schemer: Is There Life on Stars?, Lidman: The House of Old Maids, Stolba: From the West of India and Mexico, I, II, Tomek: Prague Jewish Tales and Legends, The Science of Man.

  September 1944

  I have read: Schweitzer: From My Life and Work, Dinko Simonovic: The Family Vincic, Thein de Vries: Rembrandt, Thomas Mann: Mario and the Magician, Dickens: A Christmas Carol, Danes: The Origins and Extinction of Aborigines in Australia and Oceania, Milli Dandolo: The Angel Spoke, K. May: The Bear Hunter’s Son, Oscar Wilde: De profundis and other novellas.

  Petr left these notes, titled “Plans and Reports,” in the Theresienstadt dormitory, where in spite of everything he managed to spend two years full of creative work. They fill me with very sad feelings. Petr’s life was cut short the day he was ordered to join the transport to Auschwitz, beginning his painful journey leading to death. They forced him into a cattle car and took him away to a mass grave.

  4

  The fact that Petr was a boy with a rich imagination is also documented by his literary works and experiments. Between the ages of eight and fourteen he wrote altogether five novels: From Prague to China, The Wizard from Altay Mountains, Journey to the Centre of the Earth, Around the World in One Second, and A Visit from Prehistory. As these titles suggest, Petr was a great admirer of the French novelist Jules Verne. He was such a dedicated reader of Verne that he wrote one of his novels pretending that Verne was its author: this was A Visit from Prehistory, the only of his titles that has survived complete. In its introduction he writes that he found an unknown manuscript in the attic of the house where Verne used to live, and he, Petr Ginz, is presenting it to the reader for the first time.

  A Visit from Prehistory is about a huge dinosaur Ka-du, born, as scientists assume, in the depths of an African lake from a prehistoric egg. The monster Ka-du is horrible—it destroys and kills everything in its way—so that in the end it takes over most of the African continent. But it turns out that the prehistoric lizard is in fact a robot, a massive mechanical monster created by a man who wants to use it to control the entire world. Ultimately, the monster is destroyed thanks to the efforts and courage of European scientists Dupont and Baker, and the world is saved.

  In a short afterword, Petr (speaking as the writer Jules Verne) formulates a warning that is remarkably topical in view of his own reality:

  Belgian Congo was thus freed from a tyrant and the world was liberated from a supposedly prehistoric monster. But it has to be added, is it not possible that a new monster may appear on the surface of this Earth, worse than this one—a monster that, controlled by an evil will and equipped with the most advanced technical means, will torture mankind in a terrible manner? In the progressive nineteenth century it is entirely possible. Who knows?

  Several years after writing these sentences, Petr himself became not a symbolic but a real victim of the monster that was Nazism.

  5

  Petr arrived in Theresienstadt in October 1942, aged fourteen. He stayed there for two years. From all his activities in Theresienstadt it is clear that he believed he would return to the world from which he had been torn, and that he expected to fulfill a certain task in it, a mission for which he had to prepare. He believed that the world was waiting for his contribution.

  In Theresienstadt he found out about the horrors that can happen in human history, but it didn’t change his direction at all, as illustrated by this quote from an article he wrote there:

  They tore us unjustly away from the fertile ground of work, joy, and culture, which was supposed to nourish our youth. They do this for only one purpose—to destroy us not physically, but spiritually and morally. Will they succeed? Never! Deprived of our former sources of culture, we shall create new ones. Separated from the sources of our old happiness, we shall create a new and joyfully radiant life!

  These sentences express Petr’s spiritual strength, which propelled him even in Theresienstadt to great creativity. Only a small remnant of its expressions has survived.

  One of the fruits of his unusual energy was the magazine Vedem (“We Lead”), a weekly written by a group of young boys who inhabited House 1 in L 417 in the Theresienstadt ghetto. Petr founded this review, edited it, commissioned articles for it, and if there weren’t enough, he wrote them himself under a pseudonym. The magazine Vedem published opinion pieces, poems, reflections about the past and the future, thoughts that expressed not only helplessness about the situation at the time, but also faith and hope—often supported by black humour—that it will improve. We find here also poems full of sadness, poems about the world that had been destroyed and demolished. One of these is Petr’s poem about Prague, which he loved so much, but which he was never to see again.

  Petr Ginz (1928–1944), Sunflower, 1944. Watercolour on paper, Gift of Otto Ginz, Haifa; Collection of the Yad Vashem Art Museum, Jerusalem.

  REMEMBERING PRAGUE

  How long has it already been

  since last the sun was seen by me

  behind the Petrin hill, dropping out of sight?

  I kissed Prague with a teary glance when she

  wrapped herself in the shadows of the night.

  How long since in Vltava I could hear

  the pleasant murmur of the weir?

  Long ago the buzz of Wenceslas Square

  was forgotten. When did it disappear?

  How are those hidden corners of my city

  in the shadow of the slaughterhouse? I fear

  they are not sad, they don’t miss me

  as I miss them. It’s been a year.

  For a year I’ve been stuck in an ugly hole;

  instead of your beauties, I’ve a few streets alone.

  Like a wild animal trapped in a cage

  I remember you, my Prague, a fairy tale of stone.

  6

  This book consists mainly of two diaries written by my brother, Petr. I would like to preface them with a few words. The first one of Petr’s diaries contains brief entries about his daily life between September 19, 1941, and February 24, 1942, continuing in the second one from February 24 until August 9, 1942—the time before his transport to Theresienstadt.

  It is clear that Petr wrote his journals only for himself and that it never occurred to him that they could be read by someone else. And this is why we find here absolutely truthful accounts about Petr’s family life, about his friends and acquaintances, about the environment in which he grew up—and all this at a time when this environment is being destroyed, day after day, by Nazi abuse.

  Petr presents all the facts in a dry manner, without expressing emotions, without demonstrating worry, fear, or hate. T
hus, the fact that he was thrown off a streetcar because he was a Jew is mentioned next to his report card consisting of all A’s.

  Petr’s diaries are also testimonies of the method used by the Nazis during the Holocaust. Everything appears to be functioning as usual: the Jewish religious community, Jewish hospitals and schools. The Jews’ freedom is being restricted only gradually, with new laws being announced with increasing regularity, listing items Jews have to give up, places they are not allowed to frequent, everything they are forbidden to do. More and more people are being called up for transports. Suddenly, a relative is leaving, one pupil or another, or a teacher is missing at school. People help each other pack suitcases for the journey, there is organized assistance for carrying luggage. But those who remain continue to live their seemingly normal lives. A teacher assigns the copying of one hundred nouns as a punishment.

  People do not understand. When Mr. Mautner is called up for his transport, he goes to ask at the Jewish Community whether it isn’t a mistake. Can this be possible? I am fifty years old, and I have a heart defect! Those who are leaving for Poland have no idea that their carefully packed suitcases are loaded onto a special train car and they will never see them again. They do not suspect that maybe in as little as a week they will be gassed or burned or murdered in some other way.