In the Spring of 1948, Seymour was sent by UNICEF as a special correspondent to report on children in five European countries, 13 million children of Europe had survived World War II.
They were homeless and orphans, many of them physically wounded as well as mentally traumatized.
In a school for “backward and psychologically upset children,” as Seymour states in his story’s captions, Tereska, then seven or eight years old, is standing in front of a blackboard.
As we see in Seymour's contact sheets from a pinned notice on the blackboard, the teachers’ assignment was ‘To jest dom”- “This is home”.
That is what children were supposed to draw, but Tereska could only trace in chalk a tangle of frantic lines.
Her haunted eyes reflect her confusion and anguish. Tereska’s identity has remained a mystery for almost 70 years.
POTD 20190704 | Photography by David Seymour
