I returned to Prague on 11th May, but I knew my parents weren't alive. My sister's friend and my cousin were on one of the last transports to go through Christianstadt, and her friend told me that my sister had gone with her little girl on the last transport from Terezin in October 1944 straight to the gas chambers at Auschwitz. Her husband died in 1945, somewhere on the death march. He had phlegmon in the leg.
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Displaying 13171 - 13200 of 50826 results
Anna Hyndrakova
In July they sent us to Christianstadt [now Krzystkowice in western Poland]; this belonged to Gross Rosen. There were several workplaces in Christianstadt and I was allotted to the forest commando. We went to a forest where we knocked down trees and pulled out the stumps. When we left it, there were roads there. They didn't have an asphalt covering - that wasn't finished - but they were graveled. After that, we worked in a munitions factory and in a sandpit, where we loaded sand onto trucks. That was terrible drudgery.
I cut out their heads with manicure scissors and wrapped them in cellophane and hid them under my hair- clip. We were searched to see if we were hiding anything. I kept shifting the photos. I had them in my mouth when I was examined by a Slovak woman, who said: 'What's in your mouth, you goose?' 'Photos,' I replied. 'Who of?' 'Mum.' 'Go on then.' So I smuggled them through. I was there about a fortnight and it was sheer hell. There were endless roll calls. For entire days we gazed across the ramp at our old family camp. One morning the camp was empty.
In May 1944 I was placed with my parents to be transported again. We were put along with fifty people in one cattle-truck with two buckets of water and some bread. I don't remember how long the way to Auschwitz was. In Auschwitz most of us didn't work because we were in the family camp. We saw smoke from the crematorium and knew what it meant. Mum's hearing wasn't very good, which protected her quite a bit from the nerve-racking situations that the others went through.
At first, my sister lived apart from her husband, but they later built a kind of closet out of wood-wool slabs in the attic of a house, and there they lived, which was a big advantage.
My first job in Terezin was in the box-making workshop, where they colored those disgustingly garish bookmarks. I would have liked to do that but I didn't get to do it - what I did was stick cellophane wrappers on powder boxes. I then became seriously ill. It began with an infection of the middle ear and then I got a high fever, although I didn't know why, and then I got jaundice. By the time I had got a bit better, I got phlegmon in the neck, and then I got jaundice again.
We went on transport Ca to Terezin; that was in October 1942. Two or three days later, the train went straight to the gas chambers at Auschwitz. But because my sister and brother-in-law had already been in Terezin for some time and knew the ropes, they hid us, so we managed to escape it.
The grocer from next door, however, occasionally left us things he wasn't supposed to. All this didn't frustrate me; I was just bothered that friends kept disappearing. Later on, we just kept company with other Jews. Because of all the inequality and lack of freedom, I was actually quite looking forward to going to Terezin, for I saw it as a kind of scout outing.
They obviously got married quickly because deportations were already taking place at that time and they wanted to go together. Immediately after the wedding, Frantisek was sent to a work camp [forced labor camp] in Lipa and then to Terezin. My sister went to Terezin in December 1941.
Jewish firms were closed down. After that, dad got a job painting lampshades, and I helped him with it. They were garish items for export to Germany, but at least he got the odd crown for them. I made up my own designs and drew catkins. You got more money for your own designs. We used acetone paints, which smelt awful. Mum didn't make me do the dishes any more. Instead, she told me to go out for some fresh air.
In 1940 or 1941, dad was no longer allowed to work as a commercial traveler. His boss was no longer Mr. Korwig but a Mr. Simsa, who wasn't a Jew. Mr. Simsa behaved very decently and even gave dad some money, although he was no longer working for him. Jews weren't allowed to travel or to be employed by an Aryan-owned firm.
We were walking together - me with the star on, her without - when we met some woman who said to my friend: 'You should be ashamed of yourself, going around with a Jewess.' When she got home she made a scene and said she wanted to wear the star, too.
At the time of the Munich Pact in 1938, I remember that dad was somewhere in Moravia, I was sleeping with mum in his bed and she was crying. She was worried about how dad would get here now. I can also remember that my sister was on duty at the air-raid defense in May 1938 during the first mobilization. People were supposed to go around with gas masks, and all she had was this case with plums in it.
Our standard of living corresponded to that of the lower middle class. I never felt in need of anything, but what we had was no luxury. When my parents were doing well, we had a maid, and when they weren't so well off, we didn't have one. It kind of varied. A cleaner came round to our house when there was a lot of washing to do. I remember that we had a servant.
Anyway, they suggested he apply for an exception. That was at the end of the school year 1939/1940. Well, my dad got really angry and said he couldn't give a damn about asking for permission to send his child to go to school, so he went and enrolled me in a Jewish school.
At the time of the Munich Pact [7], my parents wanted me and my sister to learn foreign languages, so that it would be possible for us to emigrate.
My sister was called Gertruda Kowanitzova, nee Kovanicova, and was born in 1921 in Prague. She was seven years older than me. I think she went to a Czech high school and then to a private school of advertising. She then got a job in an office somewhere and drew for fashion magazines, from which she earned a living on the side. She was very clever and good with her hands. She could speak French and German and was really smart and beautiful. She could also play the piano, even though we didn't have one.
He said that Zionism is when one Jew sends another Jew to Palestine with a third Jew's money. During the occupation, when we were entirely dependent on the Jewish community, as the community was our only authority through which everything got arranged, my dad had a whole-hearted dislike of them [Jewish officials of the community, who were closer to Jews who professed Judaism before than to assimilants].
My dad became a commercial traveler, selling perfume for a firm called Korwig. He usually traveled by train; he didn't have a car. He used to give me these little tubes of toothpaste, which my friends and I liked to suck on - we'd then spit out the foam on the street. He often met up with other commercial travelers; they all knew each other and probably went on trips together. I knew some of them, because they and their families often went on holiday with us in the summer.
My mother wasn't as religious as my father. She took the Jewish religion more as a historical tradition. She was a housewife; she did all the sewing for us and, whenever necessary, helped out my grandmother in the store.
Mum went to a German-language school, but not out of conviction, it's just that there weren't Czech schools everywhere. She spoke Czech with my grandmother but wasn't too confidant about her written Czech. She had a compulsory education. Mum made friends with my dad's sister Elza and it was through her that she met him.
My dad was a supporter of Masaryk [4] and a patriot. He wept whenever he heard patriotic anthems like Our Czech Song [Ta nase pisnicka ceska]. He respected Masaryk for the stance he took in the Hilsner Trial [5].
My dad was called Pavel Kovanic and he was born in 1891 in Kolin. He went to a Czech elementary school and probably trained as a shop assistant later. He came from a Czech family, so we spoke Czech at home. My dad and mum spoke German together only when they didn't want me to know what they were saying. My dad could also speak Russian, because he had been in Russian captivity in World War I as a soldier in the Austro-Hungarian army [see KUK army] [3].
My grandmother lived with us in one apartment. She was quite a self- conscious and self-sufficient woman. When they went out for a beer in the evening, for instance, she would order a stout, but she always gave dad the money for it. My grandmother was the most religious person in our house; she kept to a kosher cuisine. She had a small haberdashery store in the center of town, where she sold thread, pins, needles, thimbles, press studs and tape measures.
In 1938 we moved to a nice area in Vinohrady, on Krkonosska Street, where my dad's two sisters were living at the time. This apartment was of a better standard, light-filled and healthy. There was a bathroom there but no heating, of course, just a big boiler. Mum bought black furniture, which shone from the polish. In the room there was a sideboard, couch, table and chairs.
First of all, I was living with my parents, sister and grandma in the center of Prague, in an apartment with two rooms and a kitchen. It was a pretty terrible place with a communal gallery - it was dark and had bed bugs. There was no running hot water and no bathroom in the apartment.
We observed Jewish and Christian holidays, just like we did Czech ones traditionally. I don't think that my parents were believers. They didn't bring me up in a religious way. I came to religion only during the war when I was in the Jewish school.
However, the woman in charge said she was sorry but they didn't accept Jews. Instead I went a few times to the Workers' P.T. Unit [Physical Training], which was a kind of social democratic organization. One time we were doing an exercise known as the 'Candle', and my insteps were stretched when one girl turned to me and said, 'You've got Jewish feet.' After that I stopped going there. Unfortunately I never learnt to ride a bike. I didn't have a bike, besides it wasn't very safe on the roads, with all that traffic where we lived.
This Jewish council school was based in Jachymova Street in Prague's Jewish quarter. First, I went to the school there, then I worked there at the Jewish Museum and now that is where I go to the [Terezin] Initiative Organization [9].
There were probably around 60 of us in the class, but a deportation train then took away half of the children and teachers. They took on more at the school and those who didn't make it had lessons in groups where they sometimes did exams later on. Dad said to me: 'You've done the fifth year [of elementary school] twice, so you're a clever girl.' He then put me straight down for the second year [of high school].