After the war we were no longer members of the Jewish community. My mother did consider converting back to Judaism, but the ceremony that she would have had to undergo, for them to take her back, discouraged her from it. While when I was becoming a member of the community, they weren't interested in whether I'd been christened or not. The wanted to know my mother's origin. The reason my mother wanted to return was that she wanted to be together with Father. But I used to tell her that she'd meet up with him one way or the other. I think that what a person has in his heart is more important than what religion he formally belongs to.
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Displaying 12121 - 12150 of 50826 results
Martin Glas
Actually, after the war my brother became the head of the family. He used to fill out various questionnaires and forms, that's something I couldn't do. So it was he, my brother, who decided that we wouldn't emigrate, that we'd stay here. My mother's two sisters lived in Australia, and Grandma moved there, too. But I wouldn't be able to get used to any other country, my home is here. My mother and brother were also of the same opinion.
My brother left Terezin for Auschwitz, and from there onwards to Kaufering, a branch camp of Dachau [24]. There was a secret airplane factory there, but my brother worked for the funeral commando, he stood in waist-deep water and buried corpses. He caught tuberculosis from this. He actually only talked about what he'd experienced immediately after his return, with our mother. His experiences were so terrifying that he never wanted to return to them. After the war he always had a big complex that he hadn't gotten a proper education. Yet he was very talented and would definitely have had the abilities for it. But he didn't get the opportunity.
After the war we didn't return to our apartment. Right at the end of the war, some people that had been bombed out moved into it. My mother was issued this tiny little apartment, one small room plus another one with a kitchenette, about 16 square meters all told. The kitchenette had only a sink and a hotplate, in the other part of the room there was a table plus room for a bed that she had brought over from Terezin. My brother and I lived in the larger room. Then my brother got married and moved out. Then I got married and moved out, so Mother remained there alone.
My mother was also very much influenced by her war experiences. She used to say that the only language that she really knew well, German, she hated. Which is, of course, nonsense, how can someone hate a language? A language can't be responsible for something. She was brought up in German, studied in German and didn't learn Czech until before the occupation, and never properly. She also used to say that Germans should be castrated. I understood it, it was an expression of her desperation.
There, I one day got a letter addressed in handwriting that I knew very well - it was my brother's. First my mother wrote, that she's terribly happy, that our little Honza had returned, and all that remained was for Father to return, and we'll all be together again.
I surprised Mother, she had no idea that I was going to appear that day. It was right around noon, and my mother was all flustered because she didn't know what to feed me. Finally she pan- fried some cooked potatoes in some butter for me, and I remember to this day how I was sitting at the table and saying: 'Mom, these potatoes are so good...
Even though nothing all that bad really happened to me - I survived, experiences from Terezin keep coming back to me time and time again. I constantly have to think about friends that didn't have that kind of luck, who never returned. I feel that I owe them something. I constantly think of those little children who were carried by their unsuspecting mothers along with them into the gas chambers. On various occasions thoughts about the suffering and destruction of so many human lives awaken in me again, and so it seems to me that for me, the Holocaust won't end until I die. A psychiatrist told me that it's a guilt complex. I guess so. I feel a great responsibility for my actions to those who died, I know that I can disappoint them.
Terezin was being liberated by a mixed army, cars, tanks, which had a tough time turning a 90 degree turn, galloping by us came a soldier on a brewery mare. The mare slipped on the cobblestones, but regained her balance and galloped on. Can you imagine what we were feeling? Finally the day we'd wished for since the beginning of our suffering had arrived. I stood there with the others, and we were roaring like wild animals in the jungle. I until midnight, the others greeted the liberators with hollering and celebrated the end of the Terezin ghetto perhaps until morning!
That long-awaited day came on 8th May 1945. It was already almost evening, I was standing by the road that passed by Terezin, and was watching the cars with German soldiers that were running away. Someone threw a hand grenade in our direction from one of them, but luckily nothing happened and the grenade didn't explode. The Germans were gone, about a half-hour's silence ensued, which was interrupted by the arrival of the Red Army.
Starting 16th June 1944, when I turned thirteen, I had to start working, because back then compulsory labor started at thirteen, and I've still got my time book from back then.
I was miserable from that work, because I was all sticky from marmalade, but my mother indulged herself, and was constantly telling me that I'd saved her life.
He left on the last transport from Terezin, on 28th October 1944, and apparently died on 30th or 31st October 1944. The entire staff, who went into the gas without any selection, left on the last wagon of that transport. The Germans probably wanted to get rid of witnesses, even though everything was finally exposed anyways. Three weeks later, the gas chambers were blown up, so my father was one of the last people to die in this way.
My brother was going out with one girl in Terezin, and the story of their relationship is a very sad one. I think her name was Lixi, her last name I don't know. She was a bit younger than my brother, and had a hump. She had beautiful long hair, was very kind and her parents even arranged a wedding for them. It, of course, wasn't officially valid, weddings from Terezin weren't officially recognized. Lixi then left on a transport. I think that as a hunchback, she immediately went into the gas. Whether my brother told his future wife about that, that I don't know.
My father and brother were members of the Terezin mixed choir. My father had already been singing in a choir before the war, and now he continued in it. They met about twice a week.
Of course, we witnessed the so-called 'beautifications' of Terezin. I remember that there were tents containing war production in the Terezin town square, which was for the greater part of my stay there. When Terezin was being beautified, they removed the tents, the fence, too, and put in a lawn and planted flowers. I also remember there being a café in Terezin, where you could get melta, and where some sketches, cabarets, took place.
My parents argued terribly in Terezin - about food. We all lost weight in Terezin, but my mother used to say that especially Father had. His clothes were hanging off him, and so she tried to give him more food. Which is why he was always angry. He said that it was out of the question. My mother worked hard in the garden, while my father didn't work manually, he sat in an office, and for that reason, too, it was unacceptable for him to eat Mother's portion. But my mother put one over him. When she was putting food on the plates, she gave herself more and him less. Father was already automatically switching the plates, because he thought that Mother was, as always, putting more food on his plate. By switching them, he actually ended up with more food. When we then remained alone in Terezin, my mother told me that Father had never found out the truth.
Today most buildings in Terezin have two or three stories, but this one had only a ground floor. It was located in a side street that was perpendicular to Langestrasse, abutted to the stables, and its gates were designated L 409. Behind the gates there were actually two houses, but there was only one common designation. You went inside from the courtyard, where there was a so-called block kitchen and a mess window. This kitchen and window served people who lived scattered about outside the barracks, otherwise the barracks had their own mess halls inside. I remember how in the courtyard there'd always be people standing in line, and they would eat the food they got right there on the spot. Or they'd take it home to prepare it somehow, because in the courtyard there were no benches or even chairs that you could sit on.
Irena most likely then arranged for them to get into some building on the edge of Terezin, where upstairs there were girls and downstairs boys. They couldn't go back to school, because it was assumed that they'd departed. They stayed in hiding like this until the end of the war.
In Terezin we published a magazine together, which we called 'Domov' ['Home']. To this day, we still don't understand how with such scant knowledge we could have published a magazine at all, and made it look like it did. We were very inspired by 'Mlady Hlasatel,' where a comics serial about the 'Rychlé Sípy' [Fast Arrows] boys' club was published. Back then we didn't know other Terezin children's magazines from various 'Heims,' and neither did we know that they existed. None of the adults interfered with the magazine, just once someone arranged a meeting for us with a former writer for Prager Tagblatt [19], who gave us a few pieces of advice. We took work on the magazine very seriously, we imagined that we were addressing our readers. That a large part of our readers didn't actually know how to read is something we somehow didn't realize.
I learned all sorts of things in Terezin. That food is sacred is something I learned in Terezin. That loving someone is sacred. That you shouldn't cause anyone pain. Even unwittingly, that's the saddest thing, when you don't want to, and you cause someone pain. In Terezin, and then after the war, my mother explained to me that not just anyone could offend me, only a person of my own standing. To which I've added, why should a person of my standing want to offend me, unless by mistake, but that doesn't count.
When after the war I then married my wife, who wasn't Jewish, for a long time I had this strange notion that my Jewish ancestors were looking at me accusingly, that I'd betrayed them. In the end I came to terms with it in some fashion, and I say that I'm a Czech Jew, a European, and that in Terezin I learned to be proud of being a human being. I also say that here in Central Europe it's nonsense to talk about any sort of racial purity, after all, nations traveled back and forth, so races and nations mixed together.
In Terezin we also studied Ivrit, which is modern Hebrew, and also the Hebrew alphabet, but not systematically. We did group exercises using Hebrew commands, but those then evaporated from my head. We practiced the Hatikvah [17], the Jewish hymn, and I also remember the song 'My Homeland is Palestine.' I knew that I was of Jewish origin, I was, after all, imprisoned in Terezin because of it, but from the time I know Czech, I feel myself to be a Czech, and ever since then the Czech lands have always been my native land.
In the afternoon we were off, and when it wasn't raining, we used to play on the barracks grounds and later soccer up on the fortifications. Sometimes there were organized games up on the fortifications, then we'd play for example dodge-ball, sometimes even with the girls. When the weather was bad and we couldn't go out, we'd play button soccer in the 'Heim,' with a team of 11 buttons we even had a league. Everyone played with everyone.
In the Hamburg barracks we, the children, had a library from our own resources - the way it worked was each one of us made his books available, and in exchange he could borrow the books of others. I don't remember anymore where it was, nor how exactly it was organized. Its opening hours are written in an issue of our magazine. But then everything fell apart when the young man who served as librarian left on a transport. We then took the books back. However, I'd contributed 'Záhada hlavolamu,' and then ended up with some piece of trash.
In the 'Heim' we were tormented by fleas and bedbugs. Bedbugs may have been bigger and so drank more blood, and when you squashed them they stank, but they were easier to catch, because they just crawled, while fleas jumped. We learned to find, catch and reliably kill fleas - you gripped them between your nails and tore them in half - otherwise there was the danger of them jumping away and continuing to bite. And so a regular part of our everyday schedule, like morning hygiene - with ear inspections, whether they're not dirty - breakfast and so on, was the compulsory catching of fleas at 7:20am. One boy once caught a record 28 fleas!
In the beginning, in 'Heim 236,' we slept on mattresses on the floor. Small children on one, older ones on two. The women that minded us slept with us, behind a partition of blankets. One day a minder came up to me and asked me whether I wouldn't give up one mattress, because additional children had arrived and there weren't enough mattresses, that after all I was big now. I was eleven, and for my age was quite big, so I gave up the mattress. After that sleeping wasn't very comfortable, because the mattress ended where my back ended, and so the edge of the mattress pressed into my back. Some time later, the minder came again, that more children had arrived and that there weren't any mattresses for them, whether I wouldn't give up the other mattress, too, since I was after all a big boy now. So then I slept just on a blanket on the ground.
She worked in agriculture, which had several advantages. For one, her tuberculosis improved. Being out in the fresh air was very beneficial to her, and her lungs began to function again. Then it was also good that she could eat some vegetables in the field from time to time, and so help herself and us. It wasn't all the time, not everything could be eaten raw, but for example when it was tomato season, Mother ate her fill of tomatoes and then left her ration for us. By the way, after the war she never ate another tomato.
At the Gestapo, a Gestapo officer stole our jewels and a watch from us while checking the list. Then we got lunch and in the afternoon, a jail paddy-wagon, a so-called 'Green Anton,' drove us to Hybernské, today Masaryk Station, and then we left on a normal passenger train under the watch of several civilians - probably from the Gestapo - to Bohusovice. At that time there wasn't yet a spur line from Bohusovice to Terezin, and so we then walked to Terezin, the luggage and old people were probably carted there on trucks.
,
1942
See text in interview
My brother's last school education was Grade 8, he wasn't allowed to school after that. I don't know how, but he then got brigade work with some farmer in eastern Bohemia. He actually could have stayed there for the whole war, because no one knew that he was a Jew. He got normal ration coupons like everyone else, he even got tobacco coupons. But when Jews had to register with the Gestapo, our parents were suddenly afraid that someone could inform on them, that they've got one more son. So they persuaded the police commissar to register my brother after the fact. My brother then registered in Prague, and then left with us for Terezin.