News Release
January 2000

Moravian College to exhibit Children's art created during Holocaust

An exhibition, symposium and concert to highlight how children used art, music, and education as strategies for survival

(Bethlehem, Pennsylvania) - Moravian College will host a program that brings to life the compelling art, music, and experiences of children in the Nazi internment camp at Theresienstadt (Terezín in Czech), in the former Czechoslovakia. The program, "Art, Music and Education as Strategies for Survival," begins February 10 and includes an art exhibit, a two-day symposium, and a concert. All of the activities will take place in the Priscilla Payne Hurd Center for Music and Art, on the Church Street Campus of Moravian College in historic Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

During World War II, the Nazis established an internment camp at Theresienstadt in the former Czechoslovakia. Twelve thousand children passed through the camp, but fewer than one hundred under the age of fifteen survived.

An exhibition of art by children from Theresienstadt will be held at the Payne Gallery of Moravian College from February 10 to March 5. The exhibition, The Arts as Strategies for Survival: Theresienstadt 1941 – 45, will focus on a selection of drawings, paintings and collages from the collection of the Jewish Museum in Prague in the Czech Republic. This exhibit marks the first time the children's artwork has ever been exhibited in the United States. It will include 30 original pieces of children's art along with 70 reproductions.

Also included in the exhibition will be work by Friedl Dicker-Brandeis, an artist who spent three years in Theresienstadt teaching art to children in the camp. She taught drawing and painting, based on principles of guided free expression to hundreds of children. For most, the artwork produced by the children is the only record of their lives that exists. On October 4, 1944, Friedl Dicker-Brandeis accompanied thirty of her young pupils on a transport from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz, where all perished immediately after arrival.

A two-day symposium will be held on February 10-11, in conjunction with the exhibition to explore both the range and the meaning of the educational and cultural life in "Ghetto Theresienstadt." The symposium will include presentations by historians, art educators, art therapists, artists, and musicians. A special panel will include three child-survivors who studied art with Friedl Dicker-Brandeis in Theresienstadt. The art by these survivors will also be featured in the exhibition. There are only four living child-survivors from Terezín. Each of them will speak during the panel session on day two of the symposium.

The evening concert, "Music in Terezín," on Thursday will include works by Theresienstadt composers Gideon Klein, Pavel Haas, Viktor Ullman and selections from the children’s opera, Brundibar, by Hans Krasa. The opera was one of a number of stage shows performed by the children of Terezín. Members of the Hawthorne String Quartet, featuring pianist Virginia Eskin, will perform the concert. Admission is free and open to the public.

Children interned in Theresienstadt from 1941 to 1945 created over 4000 drawings. This work is not only a unique and powerful record of the Holocaust, it is evidence of the influence of a teacher, trained at the Bauhaus, who passed on to her young pupils principles of modern art and design learned from her own teachers and mentors — Johannes Itten, Walter Gropius, Paul Klee, and Wassily Kandinsky.

"We hope, through this exhibition, symposium, and concert to demonstrate for today’s generations, both the fragility of human rights and the power of art to teach, express and heal," said Anne Dutlinger, Assistant Professor of Art at Moravian College. Dutlinger is both curator of the exhibition and the symposium organizer. "It is through the generous support of the Helen Bader Foundation and others that has enabled Moravian College to bring such a moving and important program and exhibit to the Lehigh Valley," she said.

"Art, Music and Education as Strategies for Survival," was made possible by a grant from the Helen Bader Foundation, Inc. The Milwaukee-based foundation supports innovative projects and programs that advance the well-being of people and promote successful relationships with their families and communities. The Foundation has committed over $70 million to hundreds of projects and programs in the United States and Israel since its inception in 1991.

The exhibition, The Arts as Strategies for Survival: Theresienstadt 1941–45, is partially funded by Payne Gallery of Moravian College. The Jewish Federation of the Lehigh Valley supported the concert, "Music in Terezín." Additional support and cooperation was provided by the Jewish Museum in Prague, Pamatník Terezín, Simon Wiesenthal Center, the Consulate General of the Czech Republic in New York and the Hon. Consulate General of the Czech Republic - Philadelphia, and the Philip and Muriel Berman Center for Jewish Studies at Lehigh University.

For more information on the program or to register for the symposium, call the Moravian College Art Department at (610) 861-1680 or visit the Moravian College Web site at www.moravian.edu. Moravian College is a private, coeducational, selective liberal arts college located in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Tracing its founding to 1742, it is recognized as America's sixth-oldest college.