Through Children's Eyes
The Documentary
The Holocaust as seen through the poetry and drawings of the children of Terezin.
Through Children's Eyes is a powerful multimedia presentation that brings to life the poetry and artwork created by children imprisoned in the Terezin concentration camp. Their words are set to evocative music, accompanied by their own drawings and paintings—poignant expressions of hope, fear, and resilience in the face of unimaginable hardship. The documentary follows the creation of this moving tribute and the extraordinary journey leading to a once-in-a-lifetime concert held in the historic Attic Theatre at Terezin, a space that once echoed with music during the darkest days of World War II.
From the composer - "As I composed the music for this piece, these children came to life for me. I could see their faces and hear their voices and I became deeply committed to sharing their stories and preserving their memory. After the premiere, my focus shifted to bringing the piece to life in the very place where the poetry was written—standing in the space where these precious children scream to us in silence through the walls of the camp."
The Story Behind the Documentary
Through Children's Eyes was commissioned by Mark Saltzman in 2007 and premiered at a Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) commemoration in Los Angeles in the spring of 2008. Over the course of the 30-minute concert, the haunting yet hopeful words of young poets imprisoned at Terezin are set to music by award-winning composer David Shukiar, accompanied by a visual display of the artwork the children created while held prisoner in the camp.
Though the piece was only performed once, a dream emerged following the premiere: to one day bring it to Terezin itself and perform it in the very place where the poetry and art were originally created.
The Attic Theatre, Terezin
After many years of dedication and persistence, special permission was granted to use the historic Attic Theatre in Terezin (pictured above), where musical performances took place during World War II. This unique venue is literally located in the attic of one of Terezin's barracks that housed some of the 140,000 inmates—and more than 13,000 children—who were imprisoned there.
Pictured from left to right
Mark Saltzman, Librettist
Phedon Papamichael, Director
David Shukiar, Composer
Thanks to the generosity of Beverly and Steven Shapiro, renowned cinematographer Phedon Papamichael—twice nominated for an Academy Award—was brought on as Director of Photography to document the concert held on Tuesday, November 19, 2024. He was joined by filmmaker Harry Patramanis, who co-directed the film alongside him. Together, they assembled an international film and sound crew to capture the performance and conduct interviews with the creators of the piece.
The staff at Terezin granted the crew unprecedented access to film throughout the camp.
Pictured from left to right
Harry Patranamis, Director
David Shukiar, Composer
The result is a moving and beautifully crafted 45-minute documentary that preserves this once-in-a-lifetime concert as a tribute for future generations. The film aims to educate viewers about the history of Terezin and honor the memory of the children who were imprisoned there.
We are also deeply grateful to the Mason Glazer Charitable Fund for their generous support, which enabled us to hire talented singers and musicians from Prague to bring this special concert to life.
If you're interested in hosting a private screening of the film in your community—featuring a dialogue and Q&A session with composer David Shukiar that highlights the extraordinary journey to bring this concert to Terezín—please click the link below.
Meet the Creative Team Behind the Film
Phedon Papamichael
Director
Two time Academy Award & BAFTA nominated cinematographer and Independent film director PHEDON PAPAMICHAEL was born in Athens, Greece in 1962.
Working as a photojournalist, Papamichael moved to NYC, where he began to cross over into directing, screenwriting and cinematography. Following a call from John Cassavetes, Phedon moved to Los Angeles, where he began his feature career as a cinematographer for Roger Corman.
He counts over fifty feature films to his credit as Director of Photography, many critically acclaimed, with 6 Oscar nominated for Best Picture.
The list includes Unstrung Heroes (dir: Diane Keaton), The Million Dollar Hotel (dir: Wim Wenders), Walk the Line (dir: James Mangold), Pursuit Of Happyness, The Ides of March (dir: George Clooney), Sideways, The Descendants and Nebraska (dir: Alexander Payne) for which Phedon received an Academy Award, BAFTA and ASC Nomination and won the BSC Award.
Ford vs. Ferrari was honored with 4 Academy Award Nominations and garnered another BAFTA and ASC nomination for Phedon. The Trial of The Chicago 7, was honored with 6 Academy Award Nominations, including Best Picture and Best Cinematography. Recently Phedon completed Indiana Jones - The Dial of Destiny, Daddio and A Complete Unknown, staring Timothée Chalamet in the Bob Dylan bio-pic. It was honored with 8 Academy Award Nominations and garnered the 6th ASC nomination for Phedon.
Papamichael’s directorial debut The Sketch Artist (1991), staring Drew Barrymore, won the Silver Award for Feature Film at the Houston International Film Festival.
He followed up with Dark Side of Genius (1993) and the award-winning psychological horror From Within (2008), which premiered at Tribeca Film Festival.
Papamichael directed Arcadia Lost (2010), staring Nick Nolte, Lost Angeles, staring Adam Goldberg and Seymour Cassel and the short film A Beautiful Day, staring James Brolin and Frances Fisher, which was selected at over 30 film festivals around the world and garnered multiple international awards.
His latest directorial endeavor is the social-political thriller Light Falls was filmed on location in Greece (2020). It had its World Premier at Tallinn Black Nights in 2023, where it was selected for Best Film in Critics' Picks Competition and has traveled since to a multitude of International film festivals.
_______________________________________
Harry
Patramanis
Director
HARRY PATRAMANIS is an award winning filmmaker with more that 30 years of experience. He has directed iconic commercials for clients around the world and his ad-work has received numerous Cannes awards. His feature film “Fynbos” screened at the Berlinale, won The Kodak Cinematography Award and is distributed through Amazon Prime. He is credited as a producer of the feature film “Learning to Drive” with Ben Kingsley and Patricia Clarkson and produced for the Onassis Foundation a feature length documentary “The Construction of Modern Athens”. His video installations have been exhibited in Rood Gallery In New York and at the Benaki Museum in Athens.
He is a member of the D.G.A.
_______________________________________
Steven
Shapiro
Executive Producer
STEVEN SHAPIRO is the founder of Summit Business Management, Inc. which is a nationally recognized independent Business Management and Accounting Firm. They provide specialized financial management services to members of the Entertainment Industry including Television, Motion Picture, Music, Professional Athletes and high net worth individuals.
The Founder, Steven L. Shapiro has been featured and recognized in Variety Magazine and the Hollywood Reporter for several years as a “Business Manager Elite” and “Top Business Manager”.
_______________________________________
David
Shukiar
Composer
The music of DAVID SHUKIAR has been heard in synagogues, concert halls (including multiple performances at Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall in New York) and theatres all over North America and in Israel and in HBO's The Rehearsal (season 1, episode 5). David is the composer for the music featured in the documentary, Through Children's Eyes, highlighting a once-in-a-lifetime concert held in the concentration camp at Terezin in the Czech Republic.
David has twice been awarded the Guild of Temple Musicians Young Composers Award, an honor shared by only four other composers in the history of this prestigious award. He has enjoyed commissions from cantors and synagogues from across the United States, Canada and Israel, including a commission from the American Conference of Cantors and the Guild of Temple Musicians to help dedicate a new building at Beit Daniel, a Reform community in Tel Aviv.
David has enjoyed being the composer and conductor-in-residence for the Atlanta Choral Festival and the inaugural Columbus Jewish Choral Festival in addition to various synagogues around the country.
As a composer of musical theatre, David’s most notable works include Make Believe, a two-time winner of the Burdette Fitzgerald Memorial Award for Theatre for Young Audiences, Benjamin and Judah, the Chanukah Musical, which premiered in New York and has been performed on both the East and West coasts, including two successful productions at Temple Adat Elohim and at the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza, and Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, The Musical, winner of the Y.E.S. Festival of New Works at Northern Kentucky University.
In addition to publishing many of his choral pieces, Transcontinental Music Publications, the largest publisher of Jewish Music in the world, has published, Klei Zemer, a book of David’s arrangements for synagogue ensembles for Shabbat.
David is also an accomplished music director, having shared his talents with CBS Television, Anita Mann Productions, Holland America and Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines, and various synagogues in the Los Angeles area.
For the past 17 years David has served in the cantorial office at Temple Adat Elohim in Thousand Oaks, CA. Here he has built a unique and successful music program spanning many generations. His musical forces include the TAE Chorale, a 25 voice choir of all temple members, the Band of Milk and Honey, a 10 piece instrumental ensemble of all temple members, the TAE Symphony Orchestra, a 30+ instrumental ensemble of all temple members, the Junior Cantors and Shirei Elohim, a junior choir. He also currently serves as president of the Guild of Temple Musicians, an affiliate of the American Conference of Cantors.
_______________________________________
Mark
Saltzman
Librettist
MARK SALTZMAN’s eclectic musical interests began with his studies on the cello and piano, culminating with a BA Phi Beta Kappa from UC Irvine in vocal performance. He immediately went from Irvine into a professional career, singing for many years on opera stages and in concert halls throughout the world. For nearly twenty years he served as the Cantor for Congregation Kol Ami in West Hollywood, where he is now Cantor Emeritus and also served as an Artistic Director at Boston Court Pasadena for 10 years. Currently he runs the Prima Voce Emerging Artists training and performance program, engaging with an interesting and diverse group of vocal performers from all over the country.
_______________________________________
The Poetry of the Children Used in Through Children's Eyes
THE GARDEN, by Franta Bass
A little garden,
Fragrant and full of roses.
The path is narrow
And a little boy walks along it.
A little boy, a sweet boy,
Like that growing blossom.
When the blossom comes to bloom,
The little boy will be no more.
AT TEREZIN, by "Teddy" 1943
When a new child comes
Everything seems strange to him.
What, on the ground I have to lie?
Eat black potatoes? No! Not I!
I've got to stay? It's dirty here!
The floor – why, look, it's dirt, I fear!
And I'm supposed to sleep on it?
I'll get all dirty!
Here the sound of shouting, cries,
And oh, so many flies.
Everyone knows flies carry disease.
Oooh, something bit me! Wasn't that a bedbug?
Here in Terezin, life is hell
And when I'll go home again, I can't yet tell
THE LITTLE MOUSE, November 26, 1944 Koleba (M. Kosek, H. Lowy, Bachner)
A mousie sat upon a shelf, catching fleas in his coat of fur.
But he couldn’t catch her---what chagrin!
She’s hidden ‘way inside his skin.
He turned and wriggled, knew no rest,
That flea was such a nasty pest!
His daddy came and searched his coat.
He caught the flea and off he ran
To cook her in the frying pan
The little mouse cried, “Come and see!
For lunch we’ve got a nice, fat flea!
IT ALL DEPENDS ON HOW YOU LOOK AT IT, by Miroslav Kosek
I.
Terezin is full of beauty.
It's in your eyes now clear
And through the street the tramp
Of many marching feet I hear.
In the ghetto at Terezin.
It looks that way to me,
Is a square kilometer of earth
Cut off from the world that's free.
II.
Death, after all, claims everyone,
You find it everywhere.
It catches up with even those
Who wear their noses in the air.
The whole, wide world is ruled
With a certain justice, so
That helps perhaps to sweeten
The poor man's pain and woe.
I'D LIKE TO GO ALONE, by Alena Synkova
I'd like to go away alone
Where there are other, nicer people,
Somewhere into the far unknown,
There, where no one kills another.
Maybe more of us,
A thousand strong,
Will reach this goal
Before too long.
FEAR, by Eva Pickova, 12 years old, Nymburk
Today the ghetto knows a different fear.
Close in its grip, Death wields an icy scythe.
An evil sickness spreads a terror in its wake
The victims of its shadow weep and writhe.
Today a father’s heartbeat tells his fright
And mothers bend their heads into their hands.
Now children choke and die with typhus here
A bitter tax is taken from their bands.
My heart still beats inside my breast
While friends depart for other worlds.
Perhaps it’s better-who-can say?---
Than watching this, to die today?
No, no, my God we want to live!
Not watch our numbers melt away.
We want to have a better world,
We want to work—we must not die!
THE CLOSED TOWN (excerpts), Anonymous
Everything in this place leans, like tottering, hunched old women.
Then,
A week [after] before the end,
Everything will be empty here.
A hungry dove will peck for bread.
In the middle of the street will stand
An empty, dirty
Hearse.
TEREZIN, by Mif 1944
The heaviest wheel rolls across our foreheads
To bury itself deep somewhere in our memories.
We've suffered here more than enough
Here in this clot of grief and shame,
Wanting a badge of blindness to be a proof for their own children.
A fourth year of waiting, like standing above a swamp,
From which any moment might gush forth a spring.
Meanwhile the rivers flow another way
Not letting you die, not letting you live.
And the cannons don't scream
And the guns don't bark,
And you don't see blood here.
Nothing – only hunger.
Children steal bread here and ask
And all would wish keep silent
And just go to sleep again.
The heaviest wheel rolls across our foreheads
To bury itself deep somewhere in our memories.
Excerpts from the prose of Petr Fischel, age 15
We got used to standing in line at seven o’clock in the morning, at twelve noon, and again at seven o’clock in the evening... We got used to undeserved slaps, blows, and executions… We got used to sleeping without a bed, to saluting every uniform… To seeing people die in their own excrement… To seeing the piles of corpses.
BIRDSONG (excerpt), Anonymous 1941
Open [up] your heart
To beauty; go to the woods some day
And weave a wreath of memory there.
Then if the tears obscure your way
You’ll know how wonderful it is
To be alive.
1941 Anonymous
Production Photos
All photos shot on location at Terezin, Czech Republic
