As a student in the time of physical history textbooks full of black-and-white photography, I often felt removed from what we were discussing in class. "Social Studies" was not a favorite subject in school and I did not come to appreciate history until I hit my 30s. Hollywood attempts to tell the stories of the Holocaust often succeed in producing moving images that evoke strong emotions. However, I find (in my 40s) that I most begin to reconcile my feelings about how we as humans have treated each other when I walk in the shadows of people who were once black-and-white. Fortunately, the arts make that possible. Art students continued to create while imprisoned in the ghetto. "The four and a half thousand children’s drawings from Terezín that [Friedl] Dicker-Brandeis collected after the classes and kept in two suitcases, which she hid in one of the ghetto’s children’s dormitories before her transport to Auschwitz, has been part of the Jewish Museum in Prague’s collection since the end of the war." (Children's Drawings From the Terezín Ghetto). After sitting through a screening of the Nazi propaganda film, I was overwhelmed and not interested in seeing any more evidence but my gaze happened upon this portrait of Ema Blažková and I could not look away. I read the first few paragraphs of her biography and could not finish. I was so emotional from the thought of young art students studying their craft being arrested, interrogated, and forced to be cleaning workers that I was not able to read to the end. For this reflection, I searched for her on the internet, not remembering her name and not having not taken note of it at the time. Miraculously, of all the names on the first page of the database, I happened to click on hers (subconscious recall?) which led to an artifact which led to a Google search of her name which led to an image that looked somewhat familiar, which led to the biography that filled my eyes. And from this sepia photo, I learn that she lived past Terezín and continued to create art until her death in 2003. The color image is soothing to me, as evidence that Ema had a future beyond the ghetto. As our group toured the small fortress at Terezín Ghetto, I purposely snapped photos in both black-and-white with a sister photo in color. I wanted to explore the difference in how I perceived the images. Would my mind feel detached from the horror if I later reviewed my Instagram post without the color of the life? Perhaps that is why I feel compelled to visit historical sites...to see the remnants of the past in living color. I find that I need the stories of humanity in a space in order to create associations that attempt to make sense of what we did and how we did it. There really in no making sense of what the SS inflicted upon human beings at Terezín. But it is important to walk the walk and see it for what it was. Reality for tens of thousands. They lived it in color. They deserve to be remembered in color. Ema's work in the database (Note - the Museum is creating an updated database of prisoners so this link has a shelf life). http://www.terezin.org/the-history-of-terezin/
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