Dancing on a Powder Keg
Ilse Weber (translation: Michal Schwartz)
Publisher: Bunim & Bannigan Ltd, in association with Yad Vashem.
The Story of ‘Wiegala’ Songstress Ilse Weber – In Her Own Words NEVER-BEFORE-SEEN LETTERS DETAIL A YOUNG MOTHER’S LOVE, SACRIFICE & ARTISTIC LEGACY UNDER THE LENGTHENING SHADOW OF HITLER’S THIRD REICH
Before Hitler’s Third Reich annexed and occupied Czechoslovakia, Ilse Weber was a young wife and working mother of two living in her ancestral town of Vítkovice, known throughout the German-speaking world for her extraordinary songs, theatre pieces, and books for children. A gifted poet, musician, and writer, following the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1939, Ilse and her husband, Willi, were able to get their oldest son, Hanuš, to safety via a ‘Kindertransport’ to London – where Hanuš would be cared for and protected by the daughter of a Swedish diplomat and friend of Ilse’s, Lilian von Löwenadler.
A carefully translated, painstakingly constructed collection of letters exchanged between Ilse and Lilian during the years 1933-44 while the lengthening shadow of the Nazi regime bore down over Europe, Dancing on a Powder Keg – set for release on January 15, 2017 via publisher Bunim & Bannigan, Ltd. – tells a one-of-a-kind, viscerally powerful story of unique friendship, dire historical circumstance, and the courage of a gifted woman in the face of unimaginable evil.
From Ilse’s time in Prague’s Thersienstadt Ghetto (where she worked in the children’s infirmary, entertaining her young patients with songs on her contraband guitar) to her voluntary transportation to Auschwitz (where she and her son, Tommy, were ultimately killed in the gas chambers in 1944), the publication of Dancing on a Powder Keg has only been made possible by discovery of Ilse’s letters in a London attic. The poems were hidden in Thersienstadt, and later retrieved and preserved by Ilse’s husband, Willi, and son, Hanuš, who were reunited in the autumn of 1945.
Ilse Weber's letters and poems, 1933-1944, record with vivid immediacy the lives of her small family during a time of increasing danger, when Europe descended from peace to the chaos of war and genocide. Ilse wrote to her Swedish friend, Lilian, who lived in London, and from 1939, also to her older son whom the Webers sent to Lilian on a Kindertransport. In 1942, Ilse, her husband and younger son, were deported to the Thersienstadt ghetto. Working there in the children's infirmary, Ilse eased the daily suffering of her patients and fellow inmates with songs she wrote and set to music, accompanying herself on her contraband guitar. These more than 60 songs and poems that trace Ilse's last years, have been performed by various artists and ensembles from around the world, having become symbols of ghetto life under Nazi occupation.Ilse Weber was born in 1903 in Vitkovice, in northern Czechoslovakia. A Jewish poet, she wrote in German and published children's books and radio scripts. In 1930 she married Willi Weber. In 1931 she gave birth to her first son, Hanus, and in 1934 to Tommy. In 1938, Hitler's Third Reich annexed Vítkovice and soon after, it occupied all of Czechoslovakia. In the spring of 1939, the Webers sent Hanus with a Kindertransport to England. In 1942, Ilse, Willi and Tommy were deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto. Ilse worked there with sick children, and in 1944, as the entire infirmary was deported, she refused to abandon the children and voluntarily registered to the transport to Auschwitz, where she and her younger son were murdered. Ilse's husband survived and retrieved her poems. The letters were fortuitously discovered decades later, when a London attic was emptied.AUTHOR HOME: Vitkovice / Prague, Czechoslovakia
