Zuzana PodmelovaTerezin survivorLecturer, Jewish Museum, Prague
Helga Weissova-HoskovaTerezin survivorPainter, Prague
[during "Arts of Tolerance” a series of workshops, performances and discussions organized by the Stories Exchange Project, 18-19 September 2000]
TerezinCzech Republic
Zuzana Podmelova
Helga has so many duties in her family but she always finds time to do something for the community, and I really—
Helga Weissova-Hoskova
We spent twenty or thirty years with our families, but now the family doesn’t need us so much any more and – it’s interesting: we all go back to our past.
Zuzana Podmelova
It’s very close to us, the past.
Helga Weissova-Hoskova We are supposed to have forgotten it, but we didn’t. And now the older we are the more we are in the past again.
Zuzana Podmelova
I think it’s a good thing.
Helga Weissova-Hoskova
We married, and brought up our children. We were busy with our families, but now we are here again.
Zuzana Podmelova
I have no family any more. I have nobody. My husband died, my second husband—
Helga Weissova-Hoskova
But we have to, because there are no more people. Somebody must do it. It makes me tired and I don’t like it. I don’t like to talk about it: I prefer other things.
Zuzana Podmelova
Do you suppose that anybody would like to talk about such things?
But it is interesting that we all go back to Terezin, into the past.
[See also in “The Holocaust” menu of “Stories and Responses”:
1. “You can have a great influence,” stories about Terezin told by Helga Weissova-Hoskova at the Jewish Museum in Prague for an audience of Romany schoolchildren and teachers
2. another Terezin story told by Zuzana Podmelova in “To remember well, we have to know a lot more”
3. “Does it open up your world?”: responses to Jewish and Romany stories and music performed and discussed in ARTS OF TOLERANCE by Mark Ludwig, a violist in the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Director of the Terezin Chamber Music Foundation;
4. “How lucky I am to be doing what I’m doing”: reponses to the conversation between Helga Weissova-Hoskova and Zuzana Podmelova by Ronan Lefkowitz, another Boston Symphony Orceshtra musician who performed in the ARTS OF TOLERANCE concerts.
And see under “Terezin September 2000” in “Performances” Mark Ludwig’s remarks about music composed in Terezin, “What do they do? They create.”]
Recent Comments