The Underground Reporters

Susan Merskey is freelance writer in London, Ontario.

At the beginning of World War II, the Nazis occupied the small town of
Budejovice in Czechoslovakia. Soon Jewish children and young adults
could no longer go to school or play in public.

Two Jewish boys hated what was happening. John Freund loved sports and
couldn’t understand why everything he knew had changed so much. Ruda
Stadler, 15, took a more active approach: he created a newspaper called
Klepy (which means “gossip” in Czech). From 1940 to 1942, he and his
friends, including John, produced 22 issues (containing both news
stories and creative writing and drawing) that were circulated in
Budejovice’s Jewish community. Ruda, John, and the rest of that
community were deported to Theresienstadt concentration camp in 1942. In
1943, John was sent to Auschwitz. He was liberated from there in 1945
and immigrated to Toronto in 1948.

Before they left Budejovice, Ruda had given the case containing the
precious 22 issues to his family’s former housekeeper for safekeeping.
Miraculously, it survived the war and was reclaimed by Ruda’s sister,
Irena. In 1989, John visited Irene in Prague. Before he returned to
Toronto, he made photocopies of the newspapers to bring home with him.
Later, Irena’s children donated the originals to the Prague Museum.

Both as a “read-alone” and as a classroom teaching tool, The
Underground Reporters is a valuable contribution to the literature of
the Holocaust for young people. Highly recommended.