Ela Stein Informative Speech

Ela Stein is one of the most famous speakers who talks about her time during the Holocaust. Ela Stein was eleven years old in February of 1942 when she was sent to Terezin concentration camp with other Czech Jews(Rubin, Flap). Ela was transported with her mother, sister, grandmother, and her Uncle Otto. Once they got to Terezin a guard ordered them to get off the train, and they had to walk the last couple miles. As they approached the wooden gate of Terezin and the doors closed behind them they knew that were locked up.When they were separated into different barracks Ela’s grandmother was sent to one barrack, her Uncle Otto was sent to a barrack for men, and then Ela and her sister stayed in the same barrack with their mother. Ela remembers that when she went into the barrack that it was so cold and there were people layed there sick and dying from disease and hunger. (Rubin). One night Ela went out to the corridor and heard the sound of prayers. Below in

the courtyard she saw a rabbi holding a candle and saying Kaddish over dead bodies. Thirty bodies were stacked up on a flat cart. Ela ran back to the room and huddled close to her mother, shutting her eyes tight.(Rubin 12) As more people were coming to Terezin the Nazis were starting to send people to the East. No one knew why but there were rumors that the Nazis built a death camp.
Ela’s mother worked all day in the Germans’ gardens. This is a good job but the prisoners were not allowed to steal any of the vegetables. Ela’s mother was so skinny that she could at one time fit fifty tomatoes underneath her clothes. Her mother would then trade some of the tomatoes for some bread or sugar so that her family could have more to eat. Many times Ela’s mom would give her a little package of food to give to the kids who do not have parents(Rubin).
Ela’s sister Ilona was moved to a different barrack and a few months later her mother wanted Ela to move there too.

The Jewish Council of Elders would give the kids a little more food than they did before and they got a better place to live. Ela’s best friend was Eva Winkler. She was in the same room as Ela. Ela and some other girls in Room 28 heard someone singing opera one day and they asked their caretaker, Tella, if they could go down and listen. When the person heard Ela and her friends singing they put them in a choir in Room 28. Their job was to sing “Happy Birthday” to those whose birthday was that day or they would go to the sick and try and cheer them up. Ela was asked to be in a play with some other kids in the other rooms. When she tried out she got the part as the cat in Brundibar, the opera; and after many rehearsals the Nazis allowed them to perform their opera in front of all of the prisoners. Everyone in Terezin knew that Brundibar represented Hitler, and they all sang along to the

songs(Rubin).
One by one Ela’s friends got transported to a different place. When there were only three other girls left in Room 28 they ripped the flag into four pieces and said that they would put it back together after the war. Ela had to move into a house with her mother and sister and they worked in the gardens, one late afternoon in March or April of 1945 a flood of people came into Terezin. Word spread that it was the Death March. The Nazis knew that they were losing the war by the Allied troops who were approaching. Ela remembers that they looked like skeletons that were wearing torn stockings in the cold and were in very bad condition. (Rubin).
Ela spent three years in Terezin, she was almost fifteen when she was freed from the Nazis. On the one year anniversary of being free everyone was dancing in the streets, Ela heard someone whistling a tune from Brundibar when she went to see who it was she saw it was her musical director, Rudi Freudianfeld, he still called her kitty-cat. Ela still meets up with her friends from Room 28 even to this day(Rubin).