Monday, March 18th | 9 Adar II 5784

Subscribe
December 3, 2021 12:28 pm
0

Tree of ‘Continuity’ First Planted by Children at Terezin Concentration Camp Dedicated at Museum of Jewish Heritage

×

avatar by Shiryn Ghermezian

Terezin concentration camp survivor Fred Terna, center, waters the tree planted at the Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust. Photo: John Halpern.

New York City’s Museum of Jewish Heritage and the Battery Park City Authority held a dedication ceremony on Thursday for the descendant of a tree that was originally planted by Jewish children inside the Theresienstadt (Terezín) concentration camp during the Holocaust.

Called “The Children’s Tree,” the silver maple 15-foot tree was planted near the front entrance of the Jewish museum.

“With roots born of the Holocaust, the tree — now firmly planted in the ground outside our museum — has branches that point us towards a brighter future,” said Museum President and CEO Jack Kliger. “We are calling this silver maple ‘the Children’s Tree’ because of you, the children of today and tomorrow. By learning about the children who planted and nurtured the original Tree of Life 80 years ago, you are becoming witnesses to the story of the Holocaust and caretakers of a piece of history in your own backyard.”

Several Holocaust survivors attended the ceremony, including Theresienstadt survivor Fred Terna, as well as Mara Sonnenschein, the great-granddaughter of Dorette Roos, who died at the concentration camp. Terna and Sonnenschein helped water the tree planted outside the museum.

“My feeling of the tree is one word: memory,” Terna said. “This an occasion of remembering. This planting is a form of remembering and that’s what this tree is: continuity.”

The Nazis allowed children at Theresienstadt, located in what was then Czechoslovakia, to be educated as part of a tactic to conceal the camp’s true genocidal intentions, the museum said. Jewish teacher Irma Lauscher and some other adult prisoners formed a council of educators.

In January 1943, Lauscher bribed a Czech camp guard to smuggle a tree sapling into the camp. Together with a group of Jewish children, they planted the tree in a secret ceremony to celebrate the holiday of Tu B’Shevat, often dubbed the Jewish “new year for trees.” The group used their water rations to keep the tree alive.

Most of the children who planted the tree were later deported to the Auschwitz extermination camp in Poland, where they eventually died. More than 15,000 Jewish children were imprisoned in Theresienstadt during the Holocaust, with fewer than 200 surviving.

“The children at Theresienstadt cared for the tree every day, knowing that it would endure and live a life that they would not,” said Michael Berenbaum, historian and director of the Sigi Ziering Institute at American Jewish University. “This was an act of spiritual resistance of the highest magnitude.”

After the Theresienstadt camp was liberated, survivors placed a sign at the base of the tree reading, “As the branches of this tree, so the branches of our people!” The tree was later destroyed in a flood — but not before saplings were cut from it and planted in Jerusalem, San Francisco, Chicago, and Philadelphia. Now, another offspring has taken root in New York City, which is home to the largest number of Holocaust survivors and their descendants outside of Israel.

A Jewish philanthropist recently purchased a farm in New Hope, Pennsylvania — where seven trees have grown from cuttings of the original tree — and agreed to donate one of them to the museum. The tree replanted in New York City will be cared for by students at PS/IS 276: The Battery Park City School, which is located across the street from the museum.

Thursday’s dedication ceremony also featured remarks from a number of dignitaries, including US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield and Czech Consul General Arnošt Kareš. There was also a performance from the Battery Park City School student choir.

“We are all moved by different exhibits, different ways of telling the stories of the Holocaust,” Linda Thomas-Greenfield said. “For me, personally, the story of this tree is one of the most powerful I have ever come across.”

Share this Story: Share On Facebook Share On Twitter

Let your voice be heard!

Join the Algemeiner

Algemeiner.com

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.