By Naoko Iwasa

　　　Friedl and the Children of Terezin─To Draw Is to Live, an overseas cultural exchange special exhibition, was held in the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sapporo, from October 1-20, 2002. This exhibition was witness to the life of Friedl Dicker-Brandeis as revealed through her artistic works. We feel the meaning of her life in her devotion to art and education while never yielding to the evils of fascism.

　　　Friedl Dicker was born to a Jewish family in Vienna, Austria, in 1898. Her mother had died before her fourth birthday. She was interested in art from her childhood, studying first at Johannes Itten; later, she entered the Bauhaus, the great German school of industrial design. After graduation, through the experience of working with her friends, she began to teach art to kindergarten teachers. It became her first career as a teacher.

　　　At the time, fascism was on the rise, and Friedl often discussed the political problems with her fellow teachers. She was faced with the problem of whether she should attempt to escape as a political refugee or stay and fight against fascism. To escape was a shame for her, so she chose to fight. To join the communist movement was the only choice that she believed opposed fascism. Although she was arrested for having taken part in helping some of her fellow teachers to escape and was put in prison, she was never afraid. She also bore humiliating interrogation. Friedl was released thanks to a fiend's testimony and left for Prague, Czechoslovakia, and in 1936 she got married to her cousin, Pavel Brandeis; it was not long, however, before she had a miscarriage.

　　　The persecution of the Jews had been accelerating in cruelty day by day, and the Friedl-Brandeis family was forced to move to the concentration camp at Terezin in 1942. Terezin, which was called "the waiting room for hell," was a relay on the road to Auschwitz. Most internees were educated people, and the Nazis used the plant to camouflage plans for the extermination of the Jews by letting them live a seemingly cultural life.

　　　Friedl lived with the 10 to 16 year old girls and their teachers in a three-storied building in the plant, where she taught drawing to hundreds of children to heal their sorrowful, hurt minds. Some children were suffering from the horrible sight of their fathers having been shot dead before their eyes, and others got sick in order to be isolated from their fellows. Friedl taught everyone without discrimination, and in 1943, she held an exhibition of children's pictures in the basement of the building. She let them draw whatever they wanted. Some children drew images of their everyday lives, such as their rations of food, transportation, and the interior appearances of the accommodation.

　　　However, Friedl, who was a teacher as well as an artist, never drew the real world─the transportation, the interior appearances, and the dead bodies─in front of children. Instead, she drew landscapes, flowers, and people. It was because it was not her mission as an artist to draw the dark side of the real world. It was her heart hoping for peace that she intended to really express.

　　　One of her pupils retraced those days; "Friedl taught us how to start drawing and taught us a way of looking at things and describing space." Friedl said, "The purpose of the class was not to make children artists. Rather, more important it was to awaken their imagination, and to enhance their insight into reality."

　　　Her husband Pavel, who was working as a carpenter in the camp, was transported to the construction site of a new camp in 1944. Friedl ached to go with him, but in vain. She insisted on being put on the applications' list of those to be sent by the next transportation. She was in a car of the train that left Terezin on October 6, 1944. Her pupils were also there. All those who had been carried by the train were killed in Auschwitz three days later, October 9, 1944.

　　　This exhibition taught us the tragedy of the Holocaust. To be a Jew determined to carry out her beliefs in those days and in that social situation meant her death.

　　　The Jew's tragedy has not ended yet. The fight between Israel and Palestine has been intensifying more and more. The attack by Israeli troops against the Palestinians has cost many lives. What is worse, the suicide bombings by Palestinians still continues. What a vicious circle! People around the globe wish to put an end to this foolish fighting. No one can deny that the most precious thing is 'peace.' I cannot help wishing for the peaceful world that Friedl pursued.