After three days came the selection. They didn't let our mother go with us, after the war I found out that she had died of dysentery about two weeks later.
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Displaying 5881 - 5910 of 50826 results
marietta smolkova
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Thus it was that we were all deported to Auschwitz together. There were many of us, stuffed into the wagon, people were agitated, so they had diarrhea and we had only one pail at our disposal for this purpose. We arrived in Auschwitz and had absolutely no time to think, because right away the men were already separated from the women. We couldn't even say goodbye to our uncle, and we never saw him again. He was shot right after arrival, as I later found out. My mother looked relatively young, so she stayed with us, while women that were perhaps even younger in years, but looked worse, went to the other side, designated for death right off.
I sorted potatoes in the Dresden basement, and my sister worked with Dr. Hajek as a nurse. In the beginning my mother also used to go to the basement to sort potatoes. Uncle Viktor lived in the Magdeburg barracks in a doctor's room, and was allowed to visit us, once a week, I think. As additional transports arrived, the ghetto administration freed up additional barracks and later also private homes. Uncle Viktor became the head of the medical department in the Hamburg barracks and had the opportunity to move my mother, sister and me, so we once again lived together.
We arrived at the gathering place in Prague, Veletrnzni Palac, on 11th December 1941, and three days later we were transported to Terezin. My sister and I were young and strong, nothing was difficult. I remember that we were helping move hundreds of suitcases and trunks, and they all seemed to be light to us. My sister, with her experience from the hospital in Brno, began helping my uncle, who already worked here as a doctor. Then in Terezin my sister worked the whole time as a nurse.
We lived off our savings, and partly by selling things that we didn't need. I remember a large carpet, which due to its size not everyone could use. It was bought by one industrialist's widow, and we had an agreement with her that she'd officially transfer part of the money to a sealed bank account, which Jews had to have, and that the rest she'd give us in cash, which would have helped us very much, and would have hurt only the Germans. In reality we never got the remainder, and I'd be interested in knowing whether it laid on her conscience in any way. On the other hand, other people helped us very much, they hid our things for us so that we wouldn't have to give them to the Germans, and then after the war they came and returned them on their own initiative. Of course not everyone was like that, but they were to be found.
My sister and I had work arranged in one Jewish house in London, she as a cook and I as a chambermaid. We even had black dresses with white caps and aprons made, like proper servants. My sister already had all of her papers, but I wasn't 18 yet, and so my work permit wasn't valid until from August 1938. However, the war already began on 1st September [15], so my sister waited here with me, and then it was already impossible to leave.
Ota Gubic
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I've never been to Israel.
I felt myself to be a Slovak by nationality. Jewishness was in second place. I had friends from Catholic Christian circles, so I knew a fair bit about Christianity. I of course felt myself to be a Jew, in my youth I also practiced it, after all I was in Hashomer Hatzair, but in adulthood I no longer cared for it.
I was glad when the state of Israel was created, and that Jews from the whole world over will have a home.
My wife and I didn't observe any Jewish traditions. Our children know that they're Jews, but don't know anything about Judaism. We had Christmas, but only symbolically. I'm used to going to the prayer hall for the High Holidays, because ten people have to gather for prayers, for a minyan, and when there aren't enough, they call me.
My wife and I had season tickets to the Karlovy Vary theater. We also used to attend various social events. My wife wasn't a big dancer, but I liked dancing. I was also big on sports, which is why I encouraged my children to play sports.
The wedding was Jewish, and very modest. The only participants were my wife's witnesses and my witness, Janko [Jan] Porges. Three witnesses, and us. That was all. After our wedding, my wife at first worked for the regional committee, and after a year got a job at an elementary school. She taught Grade One.
She got a job in the Amati factory, which manufactured musical instruments.
I lived through democracy as a social order, I had the partisan movement behind me as well as illegal Communist work. For me it was a matter of fact that after the war I remained a Communist. In the 1950s they threw me out. I didn't accept it very easily, so I tried to get them to take me back, which I finally succeeded in doing, but then [32] they threw me out again. I was too much of a democrat for their tastes.
I started working as the secretary of the regional committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. I held this position for five years, and then was a cultural officer at the Regional Committee.
In 1947 I arrived in Karlovy Vary for some treatments, and here I met my wife, who used to come here to visit a girlfriend. One thing led to another, and on St. Nicholas Day in 1947 we were married. They allocated us a one-room apartment. I got a job in a printing shop. I didn't have any problems due to my being Jewish.
I got a room on Liliova Street. There were three of us living there. I, the Heuman's son, and some woman. Heuman then moved away, so I remained alone. I was close to work, all I had to do was cross the courtyard, and I was in the print shop. It was a good thing for me, I was being paid 4500 crowns [in November 1945, the crown's value was set at 1 Kcs = 0.0177734 g of gold]. I was single, I was five minutes away from the National Theater and the Estates Theater, the Vltava River was also five minutes away, and my window looked out over Bethlehem Square, so for me the years 1945 and 1946 were beautiful.
I knew that it was only a dream and that I couldn't get over there, so I accepted a position in Prague. So in 1945 I set out for Prague in the back of a truck belonging to Carpathia. The Heumans, the owners of the jam factory, had given me an address to go to. Surprisingly, I found it very easily.
In Prievidza they allocated us a tiny little room with a kitchen. I started working at the Patria printing house as a typesetter.
About forty of us returned, but then everyone moved to Palestine. I don't even know anymore why I didn't move away as well. We didn't have any resources, and it was more people that had some funds hidden away that were moving there, or they had gold that they sold. All we had hidden away were documents.
We buried her in Prievidza at the Jewish cemetery, which unfortunately has since been destroyed. The Jewish cemetery was on the way to Handlova. When I was there last, the house of mourning was still there, but the graves had already been destroyed. She was buried by someone from the Prievidza religious community, because after the war the Jewish community was renewed.
Our mother continued living in Prievidza; in 1946 her health was already very poor and in June she died.
Our mother survived, but our father died in her arms in the mountains. They were hiding in a cabin up above Horny [Upper] Jelenec. My father had diabetes, and his feet got frostbitten, he got gangrene... He's buried above Horny Jelenec; they didn't want to allow us to have him exhumed. The officials were asking fifty thousand crowns to issue the permit, and I didn't have even five thousand, much less fifty thousand.
In 1943, after the Battle of Stalingrad, a delegation from the Ministry of the Interior came from Bratislava. The delegation was composed of members of the Ministry of the Interior, and the head of the delegation was named Pecuch [Julius Pecuch]. They probably came to sniff out what Jews thought about the solution to the Jewish question. Pecuch came up to my brother, and asked, 'What will happen to us after the war?' At that moment my brother was working on a machine that was processing cardboard. He didn't answer him, but drew a hammer and sickle on the cardboard.
In Poprad I started working at a printer's, they were happy that a typesetter had arrived. My first task was to typeset a mobilization proclamation. I was in Poprad for only a month, because as soon as I found out that my mother had survived, I set off for Prievidza.
Sometime in February, I think on 28th February 1945, we arrived in Myto pod Dumbierom. We'd learned that this territory had already been liberated. We were put up individually in people's homes. I also had one adventure. They put me up in one old lady's attic. There was hay and straw in the attic, and as I was deathly tired, I quickly fell asleep. When I woke up, there was a farmer holding a pitchfork standing above me. I didn't much feel like laughing, but in the end everything ended up fine.
As I've already mentioned, in 1942 my father called that I'd been invited for my journeyman's exams, and that's actually what saved me from the transport, because while I was on the phone with my father, an escort arrived and dragged off everyone from the hakhsharahh. After my exams I came home, and it was a big tragedy. I didn't want to go to Novaky, but both my parents started weeping, what sort of son was I, because if I don't go, they'll take them. Nothing could convince them, even when I told them that it was only a question of time before they came for them too. First they'd take the young boys, and then their turn would come. It didn't help. Finally I agreed and said, 'All right, I'll go to the camp.' I still remember the date, 31st March 1942.
But I attended the weekly Hashomer meeting regularly. We studied Hebrew and went on outings. During wartime I was also in hakhsharah for a short time, which they had opened in Prievidza in 1939. At that time I had already finished my schooling, but couldn't take my final exams. As a journeyman I didn't get any work, and our printing shop was already more or less Aryanized, so I left for hakhsharah.
I attended Hashomer Hatzair from the age of ten. My father tolerated it, but I'd say more that he tried to ignore it. We used to meet once a week, and then at summer camp. One was even in Prievidza, but as luck would have it, they didn't cook kosher there.
My brother and I had a bar mitzvah. I still remember something of it. First I had to recite a passage from the Torah at the synagogue, and though I knew Hebrew I didn't learn it by heart, so I recited it after a fashion with the help of a prompter. In the afternoon there was a feast. On the occasion of my bar mitzvah, I got a new outfit, this sailor's outfit with big buttons.