We arrived at the Smichov train station, and after three years we were experiencing this kind of reverential feeling. I was sitting at the back, leaning up against the wagon, and on the way I had fallen asleep, and after we arrived in Prague I cried for about a half hour, because a man from the Revolutionary Guard had boarded the wagon, tapped me on the shoulder and said: 'Hey you, you're comin' over from the Yanks, you got cigarettes?' It was a horrible feeling. It was four months after most people had returned, the greetings had already taken place, and we were only interesting as a potential source of American cigarettes.
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Displaying 8191 - 8220 of 50826 results
Ruth Goetzova
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The English liberated us on 15th April 1945. Their behavior toward us was excellent; they worked miracles. They brought in running water, so we could finally bathe, began to distribute biscuits and food that we could eat. It was a horrible experience for them; they had come to a prison camp that was littered with corpses. Germans that hadn't managed to escape, or had been captured somewhere, had to clean it up. In a short time, before the war had ended yet, they emptied a small town named Celle, and moved us there.
Then Hungarians were guarding us, and if someone left the building, they would start shooting.
When this camp was destroyed, they took us by train to Bergen-Belsen [12]. You can't imagine anything worse. We were in barracks without bunks. As we arrived, we had to sit down and draw our knees up to our chins. Then another row arrived, and another, and in the end we were all sitting there, squeezed up against one another. We were locked in, sitting there, and about two or three times a day they would lead us out by stages to the latrine. It was horrible. Outside there were corpses lying around, people would walk and never get there. It was in the spring of 1945. I don't know how long we were there, the days seemed endless.
Then they drove us off to Neugraben or Neuengamme. We were there during the winter, at first we would walk to the town to cart away debris, clean bricks, basically cleanup detail. It was terribly cold; we had wooden shoes on our feet and worked without gloves.
Before I started attending school, my governess would take me for French lessons to this one old French woman. We also studied French in high school; our teacher was this incredibly sweet lady. I spoke fluently, but my grammar wasn't very good. And my teacher insisted that I had to learn it, while I insisted that I spoke French the best out of the whole class, so we had a conflict. And she said that if I didn't learn that grammar, she'd fail me. And I contradicted her, that she couldn't do that.
I attended Sokol from when I was little. As a child I attended ballet for some time, but mainly because I was very fond of those ballet slippers. Otherwise I'm a completely non-athletic type, but I did and still do like swimming.
I began attending a normal Czech public school in Vysehrad. I was the only Jewess there, because there were only two Jewish families in Vysehrad.
I was born in Germany, so I had German nationality, but in those days no one worried about that. Grandfather always said: 'In the end she'll get married anyways, so why should we do anything about it?' My mother tongue was Czech, because my mother was Czech. My nanny and governess were as well, but I was able to speak both languages. My mother sometimes spoke German with me, when my stepfather wasn't around, because he didn't know any German.
From the time I was in first grade I used to spend my summer vacation there, and spent my beautiful childhood and youth there.
My grandfather was likely a quite religious person. I remember that once at Christmas I wanted a tree, and he told me that he wouldn't have that in the apartment. But later I had that tree in the room that was used in the summer to enter to the garden, but wasn't used in the winter, and my grandfather made like he didn't know about it. With my grandfather, Christmas simply wasn't celebrated. But it was at Aunt Lilly's place. I've never since seen so many presents as at her place during Christmas. The room would be so full that there was no place to stand. There were presents for everyone, including the staff.
I don't think that we cooked kosher. I recall that we often had shoulet [chulent], but I didn't like it. We celebrated Jewish holidays, Chanukkah not very often, but Passover regularly. We had Passover supper; I recall hard-boiled eggs, matzot and vegetables. Grandfather was an expert at the Passover ritual. I fasted for the New Year, but as I was a child, for only a half day. And then I was once leaving the synagogue and saw my stepfather and my Uncle Rudolf, leaving a local butcher's with their mouths full.
We lived right by the factory. It was a three-story residential apartment house with a garden. My grandfather had a five-room house on the first floor, and my mother and her family lived on the second floor. When Uncle Rudolf moved away with his family, my grandfather and I moved to the second floor into a smaller, three-room apartment, where the two of us each had his own room. I lived alone with my grandfather, because my grandmother died at the beginning of the 1930s.
We lived in the Vysehrad neighborhood of Prague; it's a beautiful place that I like to visit to this day. When you walk around Vysehrad, you can see out over all of Prague.
They belonged to the wealthier part of society. Later Rudolf took over the factory from my grandfather, and proved to be very good at it. Rudolf would tell how Grandpa first sent him to some associate, who also owned a factory, so he could get himself some work experience.
After the war Baruska used to visit me and each time she would bring me some family item of my aunt's. It was humorous that she would bring it to me as a gift, but even so I was ever so grateful for it, because in this way I got to my things.
My parents' marriage didn't last long, and they divorced after four years. After that my mother returned with me to Prague, but my father didn't want to let my mother keep me. In the end they had to go to court, which decided that I would live with my grandmother and grandfather on my mother's side.
Grandma ran the household. Although she used to go shopping at the market, she had a driver in livery for it. I don't know what sort of family she came from, but she was probably used to that. Once a week one of the seamstresses from the factory would come over and organize her wardrobe, do the laundry, ironing and sewing.
I don't think that she had any sort of higher education. She was a Czech Jew; at home they made a point of speaking Czech.
I think that my grandfather tended towards the Social Democrats, but I don't know if he was a member of some political party.
The SS soldiers would wake us up every day by walking around with a cane, and shouted at us and pounded the bunks and us. Early in the morning they would take us to work on a steamboat. At first we worked in some sort of factory where they made asphalt. It was all bombed out, and there were layers of asphalt everywhere. We had to work early in the morning, because later it was too warm and the asphalt got runny. We had to throw the asphalt into these steel drums. It was endless work, because it would run out again and again.
It's interesting that the time we passed along the most recipes to each other was in Auschwitz.
For me the hardest times began when the September transport went to the gas chambers, in March 1944. Then some transports arrived, from Hungary I think. The crematoriums couldn't keep up, so they burned people in piles soaked with gasoline. I'll always be able to see those horrible, huge greasy ashes that sometimes flew all the way to our camp. It was the most horrible feeling that I can remember. And throughout it all, my mother kept repeating: 'I'll return, I'll survive, I'll return.
I had an unusual experience in Auschwitz, connected to a German prisoner named Willy, a former sailor, who was in jail for murder. He delivered bread to the camps, and somehow he found out that we were in the family camp. And one day this Willy called us over, and when we came we found that he had brought my stepfather, who was with the others in the main camp, and left us to talk to him for about a quarter of an hour. That was something unexpected, and from that time onwards my mother absolutely believed that we would survive.
At first I carried rocks, it was typical work, so that people would be hungry. One day we carried a rock off somewhere, and the next day we carried it back. Then we worked directly in the block, where we sat on stools and manufactured rifle slings out of some coarse plastic. Although we had to work there all day, we had the advantage that we sat under a roof.
My mother, sister and I were transported to Auschwitz in December of 1943, and were put into the family camp.
In Terezin I met Ota Himmelreich, who was quite a bit older than I. Ota was a smart young man from Prerov. We fell in love, and for sure would have gotten married after the war. He had a job outside of the ghetto walls, and therefore could stay in Terezin and so also save his family, that is either his parents or wife. His parents wished us well and liked me a lot. They said, 'We're not important any more, simply have the rabbi marry you, and you'll stay here together.' It was a horrible decision to make, whom to sentence. In the end he voluntarily put his own name in for our transport to Auschwitz, and left his parents in Terezin. Neither he nor his parents survived, which is something I'll never be able to get over.
That SS soldier took the money, led Mr. Beran out of the prison, and on the way to Prague shot him.
The Germans started to investigate, and not only did they put Mr. Beran in prison, but also those three Jews of ours. All of them went to Terezin, but didn't go to the ghetto, but to the Small Fortress [9].
Then he said that I should put it away somewhere so it wouldn't be out in the open for everyone to see. When we were then leaving work later that day, I peeked into it and it was full of food, which in fact the SS soldiers had brought me. There was a lot of it, and my mother, who also worked there with me, and I had to inconspicuously carry it off bit by bit. It was utterly fantastic.