Aided by teachers and helpers recruited from former educators and students, the children lived in collectives of 200–300 per house, separated by language. Within each house, children were assigned to rooms by gender and age. Their housing was superior to that of other inmates and they were also better fed. The leadership of the Youth Welfare Office, including its head, , and Redlich's deputy Fredy Hirsch, were left-wing Zionists with a background in the youth movements. However, Redlich agreed that a good-quality non-Zionist education was preferred to a bad Zionist one. Because of this, the ideological quality of education depended on the inclination of the person who ran the home; this was formalized in a 1943 agreement. According to historian Anna Hájková, Zionists regarded the youth homes as hakhshara (preparation) for future life on a kibbutz in Palestine; Rothkirchen argues that the intentional community of the children's homes resembled kibbutzim. Different educators used assimilationism, Communism, or Zionism as the basis of their educational philosophies; Communist philosophy increased after the Red Army's military victories on the Eastern Front in 1943 and 1944. Although education was forbidden, the teachers continued to clandestinely teach general education subjects including Czech, German, history, geography, and mathematics. Study of the Hebrew language was mandatory despite the increased danger to educators if they were caught. Children also participated in cultural activities in the evenings after their lessons. Many of the children's homes produced magazines, of which the best known is Vedem from Home One (L417). Hundreds of children made drawings under the guidance of the Viennese art therapist Friedl Dicker-Brandeis. According to Rothkirchen, caring for the children was the self-administration's greatest achievement and the drawings left by children were Theresienstadt's "most precious legacy". Conditions Conditions in the ghetto varied depending on a prisoner's status. Most prisoners had to live in overcrowded collective dormitories with sixty to eighty people per room; men, women, and children lived separately. A few prisoners, especially those who had connections, managed to create private "cubbyholes" () in the attics of the barracks. Some "prominent" prisoners and Danish Jews were granted private apartments in spring 1944 for the Red Cross visit. Even before the Red Cross visit, "prominent" individuals received better living conditions and more food, and their deportation could only be ordered by the SS (not the self-administration), resulting in a significantly higher possibility of surviving. Food was generally inadequate and its distribution