Dancing on a Powder Keg

An Authentic Voice from the Dead

by Ilse Weber

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Pub Date Mar 29 2017 | Archive Date Feb 07 2018

Bunim & Bannigan in association with Yad Vashem (World’s Holocaust Remembrance Center) | Bunim & Bannigan in association with Yad Vasehm

History | Nonfiction (Adult)

Description

On May 6, 1939, Ilse Weber, in writing to her sister-in-law, Zofiah Mareni, noted "You will probably be happy to know how do we live here now? Well, at least we're not pestered by boredom. It's like dancing on a powder keg. The air is impregnated with insane rumors, which we no longer believe." Starting in 1933, Ilse's letters recorded the lives of her small family during a time of increasing danger, when Europe descended from peace to the chaos of war and genocide.

In 1933, Ilse Weber lived in her ancestral town, Vítkovice, near the industrial area of Moravia-Ostrava in northern Czechoslovakia. She was thirty, married to Willi Weber, and had a son Hanus, aged two. As author of children's books and radio scripts, she used her maiden name, Ilse Herlinger. She wrote in German, the language of that border region, thinking of herself as a Czech. Lilian von Löwenadler, to whom the letters were mostly addressed, was the daughter of a Swedish diplomat, with whom Ilse had maintained an epistolary relationship since childhood, enhanced by personal visits. At that time Lilian was living in England. In 1934, Ilse gave birth to a second son, Thomas. In 1938, Hitler's Third Reich annexed Vítkovice and the rest of what it called Sudetenland. Soon after, it occupied all of Czechoslovakia.

In the spring of 1939, the Webers, now living in Prague, sent Hanus on a Kindertransport to London, to Lilian, who took him to Sweden to live with her mother. In 1942, Ilse, Willi and Tommy were sent to the Thersienstadt Ghetto. Working there in the children's infirmary, Ilse entertained the patients with songs, accompanying herself on her contraband guitar. It is these songs and poems, mail correspondence having become near impossible, in which we can trace Ilse's last years. As inmates disappeared on trains to 'the East,' Willi hid his wife's music and poems in a work shed with his gardening tools. He went 'east,' followed, later in 1944, by Ilse and Tommy. In the autumn of 1945, Willi, having survived in a labor camp, was joined by fourteen year-old Hanus and they recovered Ilse's songs and poems. After a year of anxious inquiry, they relinquished hope that Tommy and Ilse were alive.

We would not have the letters had not someone, decades later, while cleaning out a London attic, found them in a box.

On May 6, 1939, Ilse Weber, in writing to her sister-in-law, Zofiah Mareni, noted "You will probably be happy to know how do we live here now? Well, at least we're not pestered by boredom. It's...

A Note From the Publisher

Physical ARC/galley copies & interviews with the book's translator, Michal Schwartz, available upon request.

Physical ARC/galley copies & interviews with the book's translator, Michal Schwartz, available upon request.

Advance Praise

“The literature about Theresienstadt (Terezin) and the fate of Czech Jewry during the Holocaust is voluminous, but Ilse Weber's story is unique. A tremendously gifted young woman, a poetess and musician, a son who is rescued to Britain and Sweden, a devoted husband, and many of whose wonderful poems have been miraculously rescued, form a unique testimony. Ilse Weber worked as a sick-nurse in a children's sick-room in Theresienstadt, and refused to abandon her charges when they were transported to Auschwitz. Miraculously, again, her last words at the entrance to the gas chamber were preserved. Her husband survived, and her older son finally made this publication possible. I have read many accounts, but this account by someone who did not survive, and whose story has been reconstructed, is exceptional.” -- Prof. Yehuda Bauer, Yad Vashem

“…Ilse’s charismatic and helpful personality made these poems not only popular, but for many inmates they became more important than “water and bread,” as they restored their courage to face life, pride and hope… the book’s story and the fate of its protagonists, finally wrested from oblivion… is absolutely touching… it necessitates a filming of Ilse Weber’s life…it must be recognized by future generations as one of the most important testimonies of the Shoa.” -- Florian Hunger, Jüdische Zeitung

“…with her smuggled guitar, this charismatic woman made music secretly half night through … Ilse became a legendary figure among the survivors of Theresienstadt.” -- Oliver Pfohlmann, Neue Zürcher Zeitung,

“Reading these [letters] today one remains speechless. Likewise the straightforward and visually expressive poems. They present themselves without flourish and embellishment, and for that they are gripping.” -- Roland Maurer, Der Kleine Bund, Züruch

“….even today, 60 years after the horrible events… Ilse Weber’s letters and poems... manifest the fate of an individual in dark times… get “under our skin.”” -- Hugo Ernst Käufer, Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung.

“Letters written to a best friend are something very personal…One confides things one doesn’t dare say loud, one is even afraid to think… I read Ilse’s letters and at times couldn’t hold back the tears: not because this young, educated woman was maudlin, but because I could not stop the calamity. To hope that the course of events would suddenly change is of course naive…but one must have hope when we get so close to this woman, get to know her…” -- Stefanie Nannen, Hamburger Abendblatt.

“The literature about Theresienstadt (Terezin) and the fate of Czech Jewry during the Holocaust is voluminous, but Ilse Weber's story is unique. A tremendously gifted young woman, a poetess and...