The Treasure

Three children and the clown Kašpárek/Kasperle travel to Africa in search of a treasure, live with an Arabic-speaking tribe in the village of Aljanin, and return to Europe with a discovery that saves even the poorest from hunger: the potato. Due to the portrayals of the African characters the script would need extensive adaptation to be performed today. Although the notion of finding a new source of food was clearly relevant to the prisoners’ situation in the ghetto, The Treasure has few other connections with the world of Terezín/Theresienstadt. Perhaps it served what one survivor called the most important function of theater for children: “We needed to divert them. So that they would simply forget about everything around them. Because when a person simply fixated on what was happening in front of him, he forgot about all the rest.”