VARNSDORF - About the project

Although Peter Kien has been known as a painter even before the Varnsdorf project took place (as he is one of the well-known Terezín painters and our project focuses on discovering those who would otherwise be forgotten) and he is also slightly older than the name of this phase of the project would suggest (being born in 1919), the students of the Varnsdorf Episcopal Secondary School brought him back to his hometown and helped put up a memorial plaque. The story of his life is one worth remembering: he gave up being a painter in Terezín and voluntarily joined his relatives on a transport.

There were 211 Jews in Varnsdorf before the war. Soon after the Sudetenland was occupied by Germany, most of them moved to those parts of Czechoslovakia that hadn't been occupied as yet. They were all affected by the horrors of the Holocaust, and František Petr Kien was one of the victims.

Project participants:
Adéla Nikodémová
Barbora Louková
Eva Štochlová
Helena Koutová
Iveta Školníková
Jakub Kittl
Jana Kupečková
Jana Špačková
Jiří Čunát
Jiří Jägr
Kateřina Krejčí
Lenka Gogová
Lenka Oborníková
Lucie Koudelková
Marika Školníková
Martin Flekna
Martina Janoušková
Martina Shejbalová
Martina Tognerová
Michaela Flusková
Michaela Vlková
Michal Šafus
Milan Junek
Monika Cibulková
Petr Kestler
Petr Vaněk
Stanislav Rejhon
Vendula Říhová
Veronika Kozáková


About the project

"At the beginning there was a word. Three words, actually: 'Neighbours Who Disappeared', a country-wide project, in which students of thirteenth grade of Varnsdorf Episcopal Secondary School (Biskupské gymnázium) in the academic year of 2004/2005. When they left our school, their younger schoolmates took over the project. It all began with the visit of the Terezín Memorial. We knew that 211 Jews used to live in Varnsdorf, but we had no further information about any of them. While visiting the Memorial, the story of Petr Kien, a Jewish painter who attended to the same school as we do, caught our interest. We slightly altered the project and entitled it "Neighbours Who Disappeared - the discovered Petr Kien. Eventually, we managed to piece together the story of his entire life. The tipping point was when his memorial plaque was unveiled, on what used to be his home - that's when the inhabitants of Varnsdorf realized something was happening.

The Varnsdorf project didn't end with that - the students presented it in the Czech Senate and the House of Representatives, in the Terezín memorial and in the Yad Vashem memorial in Izrael. They visited Auschwitz and arranged an exhibition of Petr Kien's paintings in Pilsen in cooperation with foreign historians.

The project was later built upon by other students, who dedicated a similar work to the Jewish painter Wenzel Salomon, which they named "Who Puts Out the Stars?".

Questions:
- František Petr Kien could have emigrated. Why do you think he decided to stay in the Czechlands?
- What were the reasons that led other Jews to stay and not emigrate despite having the resources and the necessary documents?
- Why did František Petr Kien perish?
- What do you think his greatest legacy is?


František Petr Kien

Life

Petr Kien was born on January 1, 1919 in Varnsdorf, to a family of a textile trader. Around the break of 1929 and 1930, Kien's family moved to Brno. Petr continued his studies there and started to draw, paint and write poetry under the influence of Dostoievsky and Kafka.
He moved to Prague in 1936 and, in 1938, he met his future wife Ilsa Stránská, whom he later married in Terezín (a so-called Terezín marriage). Petr was promised an American visa, but he was too closely tied to his family and his country to leave.
In December 1941, Kien was deported to the Terezín ghetto, which was but a stop on the way to extermination camps. In Terezín, he worked as the deputy head of the drawing workshop of the Jewish autonomy. In his spare time he drew stills and scenery from Terezín using stolen equipment. Today, we only have realistic pictures rendering the cruel and inhuman conditions in the Terezín ghetto thanks to him.
Kien's poems ("Morové město" - "The Plague Town"), theatre plays ("Loutky" - "Puppets") and opera libretto (to the opera "Císař Atlantidy" - "Empreror of Atlantis") were also written in Terezín.
Kien didn't live to see the opening night. He willingly joined one of the last transports to Auschwitz, where he died in October 1944 of an infectious disease, because he didn't want to part with his relatives.

Education

He gained his elementary education in Varnsdorf and continued his studies at a state secondary school in 1929. Due to the nation-wide economic crisis, his family moved to Brno, where he studied at a German secondary school. He concluded his secondary studies with a "maturita" exam in 1936. In 1937 he was admitted to Willi Nowak's Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. After the invasion of the Reich's army, Nowak's school was closed down and Kien attended Officina Pragensis, a private establishment.

The work on the "Neighbours Who Disappeared - the discovered Petr Kien" project will be concluded at the beginning of May 2006, with the first ever exhibition of Petr Kien's paintings in the Czech Republic and with the unveiling of a memorial plaque on the house he was born in, in Národní Street, Varnsdorf in presence of the representatives of the Czech Jewish Community and the Israeli Ambassador.
The story goes on
In May 2006, our school received a letter from France. Karel Steiner, a famous photographer, thanked the students for their work on the project and offered them drawings made by Petr Kien during his studies at the Varnsdorf Secondary School. We were very pleased by both the letter and the pictures. In June, we flew to Paris and after seventy years, the pictures of Petr Kien returned to the place of their origin. The Varnsdorf Secondary School students continue the work that started by participating in the "Neighbours who Disappeared" project and have created other projects aimed at educating about the Holocaust that have been introduced to a broad audience.