The Journey of Butterfly

If in barbed wire things can bloom, why couldn't I? I will not die, I will not die.
-Excerpt from On a Sunny Evening, written in 1944 by the children of Terezin-

Over the course of human history, individuals have created art, music and writings under the most adverse circumstances. The Journey of Butterfly: The Legacy and the original documentary The Journey of Butterfly reveals one of the most moving examples of this a Jewish ghetto in Terezin, Czechoslovakia, established in 1941 by Nazi forces. This "model" ghetto was created to deceive the world into believing Jews and other prisoners were being treated with dignity; they were not.

Introduced by Charles Gibson, co-host of Good Morning America, both of these one-hour documentaries came about when the American Boychoir from Princeton, New Jersey, was asked to perform at the official opening of the Jewish Museum in Terezin, commemorating the 50th year of Terezin's establishment as a ghetto. The choir performed I Never Saw Another Butterfly, a concert composed by Charles Davidson with words written by the children imprisoned in Terezin. The young singers' voices provide a dramatic refrain to the film, evoking the conflicting nature of Terezin a haunting place that could be, simultaneously, full of beauty and full of corpses.

Then ten years later, in October 2001, one of the members of the American Boychoir, Roger Pine, went back to the now Czech Republic, to Terezin and then to Prague to reunite with one of the survivors who appeared in the original documentary, Ela Weissberger. With their journey, later to be joined in the latter part of October at the American Boychoir School in Princeton, New Jersey, by another survivor Frederick Terna, who along with Ela had a reunion with eight members of the American Boychoir from 1991 to discuss the impact of the journey on their lives. This is the story of "The Legacy".

From 1941 to 1945 Terezin was a place where European Jews were imprisoned, where those who did not die of deprivation and torture eventually perished in concentration camps such as Auschwitz. Yet despite these conditions, a remarkable cultural life developed; prisoners in Terezin created music, poetry and paintings, and found ways to teach the children to do the same.

Woven through the performance is the spoken testimony of the ghetto's survivors and images of the creations of those prisoners who perished. These voices and visuals render dramatic stories and provide insight into the powerful motivations behind the creative, often secret, life inside the ghetto. Revealing an uncanny optimism and will to survive, as well as the excruciating experience of Terezin, the survivors emphasize how art and creativity provided an escape in the face of inhumanity and death.

The Journey of Butterfly: The Legacy and the original documentary The Journey of Butterfly , directed by Robert E. Frye of Bolthead Communications, incorporates paintings and drawings from the archives at the State Jewish Museum in Prague and Terezin.

The Journey of Butterfly is to be distributed to public television stations and will be made available on videocassette for educational purposes.