Friedl Dicker-Brandeis and Her Work in Terezin: Children, Art, and Hope

The author's focus in this essay is to advocate for the arts by bearing witness to their power during times of great trouble. If art can help children exist under conditions of irrational hatred, racism, terror, and mass murder--under conditions so dire that life's fundamental necessities of food, shelter, and family love are withheld and perception shut down so that stimuli are warded off for purposes of survival--then surely art, as well as (at least occasional) access to untrammeled perception and free play, deserves a place in children's lives during times of peace, when relative measures of health and safety prevail. This essay recounts the life and work of an artist-teacher, Friedl Dicker-Brandeis, who devoted herself in the last years of her life to children who were about to die (as was she); children who lived amidst cruelty, sickness, and death; children who had lost almost everything they knew. She taught them art and gave them hope. (Contains 2 figures and 14 notes.)