My father was very Zionist-oriented. Already during World War I, when he was about 15, he led a group of younger boys, Tchelet Lavan. For some time he also organized hakhsharahs [8].
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Displaying 43711 - 43740 of 50826 results
Michaela Vidlakova
He was from a German environment, and his mother tongue was German. My father graduated from a German council school [7] and then took a two-year business course. Something like less advanced high school, but without a leaving exam. More advanced high school was four years with a leaving exam. I don’t know the official name of the school. Even though my father was from a German-speaking environment, he also spoke Czech.
She was originally a housewife, but after Grandpa died, she supported herself by arranging or offering goods. She moved to Prague, and I remember that we used to see her a lot.
The Kohn family was somewhat more religious than the Lauscher family. In the very least, they fasted for Yom Kippur.
Grandma and Grandpa weren’t exceptionally religious in any way, they simply just upheld Jewish traditions. They used to go to synagogue for the High Holidays. They didn’t keep a kosher [6] household.
They already spoke Czech at home. I don’t think that Grandpa had any education more advanced than high school. He likely worked as the sales director of a chocolate factory, Velimka, I think.
Her mother tongue was German. I don’t think that she had any sort of higher education; she was a housewife.
The cultural commission, which I chaired, was also cancelled, the reason given was that we were a religious community and had no business concerning ourselves with culture. So the organization of the celebration of holidays, which had originally been taken care of by the cultural commission, was moved into the cult department, which for long years was under Mr. Feuerlicht. And we kept on going...
Sometime in 1975, some authority at the state ecclesiastical office declared that the Jewish community was a religious organization, and that only a real rabbi or cantor was allowed to teach religion, so they forbade us from performing any educational activities. Then it was also said that we weren’t any sort of sports organization, se we weren’t allowed to put on any camps and sports events. So from the originally only Jewish children we expanded, added other children, and kept on going, now however under the auspices of the ROH.
I visited Israel for the first time in April 1989. The first time I went there for about 14 days with a small group from the Union of Anti-Fascist Fighters. The opportunity to travel freely, to see friends in the West, that was for me, personally, the greatest change that the revolution brought.
,
1989
See text in interview
August 1968 [26] was a huge shock for me. Prior to that there had been this relaxed atmosphere, and one had all sorts of hopes. I remember that we were at home, and at around 3am my husband’s friend called. I said to him on the phone, ‘Are you crazy?! Why are you calling at this hour?’ And he answered, ‘Open your window and listen!’ From the nearby airport you could hear the roar of planes landing. ‘That’s the Russians landing, and they’re occupying us!
While I was still living with my parents, we’d observe Jewish holidays, like before the war. After my wedding we’d go to my parents’ for holidays, in which my husband participated at first. But later he stopped associating with my parents, and so I’d take our son to my parents’ for holidays, as we’d all go to the Jewish community. After the February putsch, Chanukkah and Purim were celebrated at the Jewish community.
But I think that it wasn’t so much an expression of anti-Semitism as of compensation for certain complexes. Back then he wasn’t a university graduate yet, and I was already working at a research institute. I think that he simply didn’t feel good, and compensated for that by attacking me in an area that he knew was the most sensitive for me. Thanks to that we became estranged, of course. We didn’t get divorced, because in the meantime, in 1963 our son Daniel was born. Back then I had practically no place to go, I wouldn’t have been granted an apartment anyways.
I then remained in Krc until 1994, when I retired. I worked in a research lab there as a regular researcher. Quite a few Jewish physicians worked there, such as Dr. Brod, Dr. Fabry, Dr. Braun, and Dr. Bergmann. They were mostly very well liked, so I’ve got to say that I didn’t feel any anti-Semitism there.
It took about three months before we found some at least halfway decent accommodation. At first they wanted to assign us one horrible apartment with no bathroom, toilet or kitchen. We succeeded in refusing it and finally they gave us a bachelor apartment in Strasnice, without central heating, but clean and dry. They said that if we didn’t take it, we’d have to leave Prague, so in the end we took it. After my father’s return we managed to exchange this apartment for another one in the Vinohrady district.
Probably the worst thing was that they confiscated our apartment, even though they didn’t have the right, as there was nothing like that in the sentence. When my mother and I were leaving the courthouse, we thought that we were going home, but we found out that some Mr. Liska was living there, apparently an employee of the StB [23]. Our things were piled up in the cellar and we had no place to go.
I was 16, so I was still a minor, but even so the Communists tried to make a big political trial out of it. The Israeli embassy, espionage and so on. This bubble luckily burst, and all that remained was an attempt to leave the republic. I spent a half year in remand custody in Bartolomejska Street and then in jail in Pankrac. I got a half-year suspended sentence, which was very mild for the times. My mother got one and a half years hard time, but they subtracted a year due to the amnesty and she’d spent a half year in remand custody, so she also went straight home after the trial. My father was sentenced to two years, so after the trial they put him in jail in Valdice for another half year.
My parents were planning to leave for Israel. But right after the war my father was still recuperating from tuberculosis, and the doctors were saying that if he arrived into that heat, the illness could return. On top of that my mother had kidney problems, so my parents wanted to get well first. Then they wanted to leave when they started working at the Israeli embassy, but back then the embassy asked them to wait a while, that they needed them here.
After the war my mother didn’t return to school as a teacher, but taught at home, privately, mainly languages. At that time there was a great shortage of language teachers, and my mother knew English, German, French and Latin. Upon our return my father made a living as a business broker. After the war, lots of military material remained here, and some sort of use had to be found for it, to sell it, offer it or manufacture something from it. I remember parachutes from beautiful silk. But what to do with so many parachutes? I know that my father found some company that colored them and sewed fantastic winter jackets from them.
I attended the English school until 1948 [20], when the school was closed due to its patronage by the British Council. Then I transferred to the socialist middle school of Frantiska Plaminkova, which was a nine-year school.
After the war I attended religion classes [19] at the Jewish community for a few years, until about 1949. There were about three or four of us children there.
Then she heard about a language school in Charvatova Street, which was supported by the British Council, and where they taught English. Because it was a selective school, you had to pass an entrance exam. Right when my mother and I arrived, they were doing entrance exams for Grade 5, and the examiner offered that I could try it with them, that what I’d manage, I’d manage. The exam was composed of dictation, composition and some math, and I easily passed it with straight A’s. The teacher began apologizing to my mother, that they couldn’t let a child of eight-and-a-half into Grade 5, that I couldn’t be among children that much older than I. And so they accepted me into Grade 4.
In September 1945 I had to go to school, so at the end of August we returned home to Prague. I was eight and a half at that time, so I actually already belonged in Grade 3. We went to the elementary school under Letna, where I belonged according to my address. But there they said that if I knew how to read and write, the most they could do was put me in Grade 3. But I’d already known how to read and write even before Terezin.
My first feeling of freedom is connected with a young soldier from the Russian army, who passed by the garden on a horse. We children were joyfully waving at him, and he came over to us, and pulled us up into the saddle with him, one after the other, and took us for rides. For me that was a truly fantastic feeling of liberation, when I was sitting with that young man on that horse and we were riding around in the Bohusovice basin.
I remember how in 1945 transports from other concentration camps began arriving in Terezin. One evening my mother told my father to go have a look if he couldn’t find Uncle Frantisek there. Whereupon I began crying and said that I didn’t want my uncle to be there. My mother asked me, ‘Why don’t you want that? After all, that would be great if your uncle returned.’ I said, ‘But did you see what those people look like? I don’t want my uncle to look like that!’ That was my child’s view of the world. My uncle never returned to us. He didn’t survive Auschwitz.
At that time my mother wanted to volunteer for the transport, because we’d said to each other that we’d always be together. But my father refused that. ‘Nothing doing,’ he said. ‘Here you after all do have a certain chance of surviving. Who knows what will be there, and with a child, rather not.’ If my mother would have volunteered back then, I’d have gone and my father would have stayed. We got lucky, one time out of many.
I remember being very ashamed that my father wasn’t in the transport. But my father did end up in the transport. He was even already in the departure barracks. At night a gale blew and tore some roofs from some buildings. An SS soldier came to the foreman of the ‘Bauhof,’ that they had to immediately repair them. But the foreman objected, ‘How am I supposed to immediately fix them, when my last carpenters are in the transport?’ To this the SS soldier replied, ‘The transport isn’t leaving yet, so have them go to work.
In the meantime there would often be air raid warnings, when you weren’t allowed to walk out in the street. In that case I’d always run into a nearby doorway and would zigzag my way though Terezin across courtyards and along all sorts of pathways with the food.
My responsibility was to make the rounds to fetch food at lunch. My father made me a wooden ‘traga’ for the mess tins. A ‘traga’ was this low wooden box with a handle, it’s also called a tool tray, similar to what tradesmen have. Lunch was given out in three places, always in the courtyard of the barracks, so I had to make the rounds to the children’s kitchen, the normal one for my mother, and for my father to the one for those doing heavy labor. It was a relatively demanding task for a child of seven to run around Terezin, stand in a queue each time, and bring it all home.
A child’s experiences from Terezin are of course completely different from those I’d have had there as an adult. I had a child’s problems, which from the viewpoint of an adult seem to be trifles, but for a small child they were important things. I was quite solitary for some time, and I remember my mother asking me why I didn’t play with other children.