Honza Treichlinger (M / Czechia, 1929-1944), Holocaust victim

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Honza Treichlinger (M / Czechia, 1929-1944), Holocaust victim.

Biography

Born in Plzeň, in Theresienstadt he was the acclaimed protagonist of the opera Brundibar. Deported to Auschwitz, he perished at his arrival in the gas chambers on October 16, 1945.

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Singer. A talented non-professional, he created the title role of Hans Krasa's classic children's opera "Brundibar" and is a central figure in that work's tragic early history. Little is known of his early life or what became of his parents, but by 1942 he was at the Jewish Boys Orphanage in Nazi-occupied Prague and a member of its choir. Krasa had given the yet-unperformed score of "Brundibar" (written in 1938) to the orphanage shortly before he was deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp, and the outgoing Treichlinger successfully auditioned as the villain of the piece. It was secretly staged three times before the Gestapo arrested the adults involved in the production. When the population of the orphanage arrived at Theresienstadt in 1943, Krasa reconstructed the music of "Brundibar" and Treichlinger resumed his role; it was the most successful musical event in the history of the camp and made the boy a celebrity there. According to surviving witnesses he was fully aware that the bullying street musician Brundibar was a spoof of Hitler, yet he made the character oddly sympathetic as well as blustery. He appeared in all of the opera's 55 performances at Theresienstadt; an excerpt from one of these was captured for the Nazi propaganda film "The Fuhrer Presents a Town to the Jews" (1944). It is our only visual record of him. On October 16, 1944, Treichlinger and most of the young cast of "Brundibar" were put on a transport east and never heard from again. Years later a fellow inmate wondered, "What might he have become? Actor or engineer? How he could have humanized his own life as he had his role! ... He was 14 years old. He went to Auschwitz with the old and the small children and directly into the gas chamber." Today the comic bad guy Treichlinger originated is sung by adults as well as children around the world.

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