Ela Weissberger; Photo by Laura McNamara

Seventy years ago one could have called her a starlet. Trapped in the Nazi Concentration Camp of Theresienstadt, 11-year-old Ela Weissberger played the leading role of “Cat” in the opera “Brundibár.” Though cold and starving, she and the other children of Terezín sang from the heart to escape the horrors forced upon those marked by the Star of David.

“When we were on stage, we forgot where we were,” Weissberger recalled. “We didn’t have the Jewish star on.”

Now, at 80 years old, Weissberger is back in the spotlight. The Holocaust survivor is the inspiration behind both a documentary and a feature film that delve into “a relatively unknown chapter in world history” – a most rare account of how an opera thrived amidst genocide and how the Jewish creative elite kept their art alive through the children that survived.

Gabriel Bologna, the filmmaker behind both film projects, recognized Weissberger as the epitome of survival and triumph in Teresienstadt, or Terezín.

“Ela was literally in the eye of the storm of every aspect of the Terezín experience. She was a pupil of renowned artists. She was a lead in ‘Brundibar,’ the opera.”

Pupil. Artists. Opera. Descriptions most would deem uncommon when speaking of a Nazi concentration camp.

“This is an aspect of the Holocaust that people know virtually nothing about… the fact that they even managed to compose in the face of such oppression and death, that is a message that the world has to understand,” Bologna said.

The documentary “Children of Terezín” and the feature film “Brundibár” chronicle Weissberger’s experience as a means of sharing that message.

At just 11-years-old, Weissberger was among the first to arrive at Terezín in February 1942 and she spent the next three and a half years of her life as a Nazi inmate.

“Very shortly after we came, nine people were hung,” Weissberger shares. “Young people. This was the punishment… They hung them and they took us kids out to see it… they let them hang there for a whole week – for show and to scare people.”

Weissberger was given a mere 70 centimeters of space to keep her things, to sleep. She was cold and hungry. Rations for the elderly were given to the children and the elderly were left to die of starvation. Whispers of “something worse” kept prisoners fearful of being sent away.

“They gave them three hours maybe to pack… I wanted to go with my uncle… he was in the first part of the train and under the train. I remember, punished people was written… I remember that we tried so hard to give them something for their hope: a little bread, a little hanky, something,” said Weissberger. “You didn’t think that it would not be given to them. That they will take the luggage and send them to the gas.”

The conditions were bleak. But, a unique community of artists taught the children to find solace in their creative passions.

“For me, Friedl Dicker-Brandeis, she was something so special, that everything that she said is still here (points to her heart),” she said. “Friedl would come to give us [art] lessons. She would call us to the window and she would say: ‘Kids look up. It’s a beautiful spring day. The sun is shining. We are surrounded by mountains. The sun is above those mountains. But what is important is, behind those mountains, there is freedom waiting for you. And hope that you will survive.’ So I always say: ‘Here I am. I survived.’”

Not only did Weissberger survive, she represents one of a handful of children who performed in each of the 55 productions of “Brundibár” held inside the camp. Though the opera became a propaganda piece for the Nazis – a lie sold to the world about the “fair treatment of the Jews” – most outsiders did not understand what it truly represented.

“What they were singing was actually about defeating Fascism,” Bologna said. “So even though a propaganda film was made of the opera, the music was such a massive source of inspiration to the Jews of the camp.”

Weissberger confirms Bologna’s sentiment.“I feel that ‘Brundibar’ is the memorial for children. Not only those that were singing. Also those that were listening and were part of Terezin.”

Fifteen thousand children passed through the gates of Terezín. Little more than 100 lived to share the secrets of their unique, artistic mentors.

“This is an extraordinarily important story that needs to be told,” said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean at the Simon Wiesenthal Center/Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles.

Since the Holocaust, “Brundibár” the opera has been performed in 30 countries and in more than 15 languages. World-renowned conductor James Conlon will present the opera at Disney Concert Hall Aug. 13 and 14 where Weissberger will be making a special on-stage appearance after the show. The documentary, Children of Terezín, is scheduled for release later this year. “Brundibár” the movie begins filming in spring of 2012.

“Though so many lives were cut short, so many of Terezin’s Jews were bigger-than-life people who left behind such a large body of work… As of now, all those great composers, writers, painters died in vain because their work has not tapped into the public consciousness,” Bologna said. “I want to change that. I want the world to know that there are 100,000 paintings, poems, compositions, operas, even manuscripts that were created there – that somehow survived though the authors have not.”

In cased you missed part one, “The Lost Renaissance: Filmmaker Distinguishes Legacy of Art Amdist Jewish Genocide,” read the incredible story from the beginning.