Oto Ornest, Zdenek's brother, tried to smuggle the book across the border but the whole matter ended up in court because they caught Oto at the border. I was incredibly afraid, because before they caught him, we had met on a number of occasions: I had given him manuscripts to be sent abroad and I had supported this project financially. When he later got in front of the court, he only said what he had to and he didn't give away me or any other participants. He was sentenced, the procurator said that sending literary contributions across the border was a threat to our society.
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Kurt Kotouc
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The anti-Semitism that came after February prevented us from publishing our youthful literary attempts from Terezin. With the Prague Spring [20] of 1968, Zdenek Ornest and I were playing with the idea of putting together a book that would contain at least some fraction of the eight-hundred pages of the magazine. We were hesitant. With some detachment we had to choose the best prose and poems, of which all spoke to us in the intimate voices of our childhood friends. That is why we were glad to cooperate with Marie Rut Krizkova who is a literary historian.
During the trials I was working for the Brno House of Art. At that time I was at the army base, doing mandatory military service. After my return from the army, my friends told me that in the Brno House of Art there was some doorman or caretaker saying that I was a suspicious individual, perhaps an anti-state collaborator. He was a totally illiterate primitive and I'm convinced that his motivation was because I was Jewish. After the war, I didn't draw attention to the fact that I was Jewish, but I didn't deny it either. The Holocaust and the concentration camp awoke a consciousness about the Jewish fate in me. But I didn't think that this made me different from other people; being Jewish was simply a question of my fate.
I became a member of the Communist Party [of Czechoslovakia] [18] right after returning from the concentration camp. Gradually, I began to lose trust in the regime and in the end I even thought of emigration, but I already had a family and it wasn't so easy.
In the second half of the 1960s I married again, but the marriage only lasted until the beginning of the 1970s. My second wife worked as a journalist in CTK [Ceska Tiskova Kancelar, Czech press agency].
I married for the first time in 1951. My first wife had gone to the same secondary school. She wasn't Jewish and it didn't matter.
In 1949, I completed Industrial Art School in Brno, and I did various jobs.
Then a Brazilian businessman came through, who bought and sold seeds, and my brother got an offer to work for his company. He got a permit to move to Brazil. Until all the permits were worked out, he worked as a waiter and did other odd jobs in Brazil. After a few years, he became independent, set up an office and began doing business with construction ceramics. He married and lives in Rio de Janeiro.
At that time, I hadn't even thought of emigrating; my goal was to finish my secondary school education. Another reason why I didn't emigrate was that Valtr Eisinger had significantly influenced me in Terezin and so I didn't see the communist regime as a threat but more as a promise of something better. I had certain ideals and I really believed that the socialist regime would bring the solutions to the main problems people were facing.
In 1948 my brother immigrated to Germany. Although I knew that he had been thinking about emigration, I had no idea when it would actually happen. Then I got a greeting card from Germany, from him. Hanus wanted to go out into the world and he wanted to get away from the place where we had experienced so much horror.
My brother finished his studies that he had started before the war at the chemical industrial secondary school. We had to live modestly but we were young.
My brother had gone from Auschwitz to the work camp Gleiwitz [17] in southern Poland. It was a camp where they repaired damaged wagons and had been under the jurisdiction of Auschwitz. He survived there until the end of the war.
After my return, I found out that my brother was alive and I traveled to Mohelno, to my mother's birthplace, to rejoin him.
We got to Buchenwald, where right the next day, we were liberated by the American army. Later I found out that the Americans circled the whole of Buchenwald, which was located on a hill, before they came up to the camp. For a short while, shooting could be heard, the Germans surrendered and suddenly we saw the first jeep with a crew of one driver, two soldiers and one woman.
I will never forget how once, when we were working in the forest, a middle aged woman came to us, a German woman. None of us knew her and she brought us a big pot of boiled potatoes. For me it was a big experience, not only because of the food alone, but because Mr. Schroter, with that piece of Christmas cake and decent behavior, and this woman restored my idea of the Germans. They convinced me that among the Germans there are good, non-violent people, because a person needed a lot of courage to do what they had done.
Near the end of 1944, it became more common to pick prisoners for labor in Birkenau.
The days in Birkenau were indescribable. There wasn't anything to eat; it was so bad that people picked potato peels out of the mud. You couldn't sleep, because the wooden house was so full that you had to lie on your hip. People were crammed together on each level of the bunks. If we were not going to do some kind of work we were ever on guard. Drills and commands and constantly standing on guard in the harsh, cold weather were worse than the work in Birkenau.
As they led us, I saw Jirka Zappner behind the wires; he also used to be in home number one in Terezin. He waved at me when he saw me. Otherwise, I was in Birkenau by myself.
My brother and I were in Terezin until October 1944, until a series of transports practically wiped out the ghetto. My brother was deported at the beginning of October and my deportation ensued a few days later. I think there were seven transports and they went quickly one after the other. We didn't know where we were going at all, first the train headed west to Dresden but there it turned east. It probably went in a zig zag fashion because in the freight car some prisoner from the transport before us wrote in pencil 'to Auschwitz.' In Auschwitz-Birkenau, where 1,500 of us came to, most people went directly from the train into the gas chambers.
'Lights out' was at ten but we chatted after that until even the hardiest fell asleep. Those were magical moments, when the lights were out and we spoke to each other from the bunks. Eisinger was a great storyteller, we could have listened to him talk for hours. It is important to explain that it was unusual for a caretaker to live in the home. The caretakers had their own room in L-417. Just the fact that Eisinger decided to really live like one of us says more about him than words can ever say.
We, the older ones, would stay up later. We even got to see the famous Terezin attic performances: cabaret, theater recitals and concerts.
The wake up call was at six or seven in the morning, then we washed under cold water, cleaned the living quarters, and divided the daily duties: that is cleaning the rooms, the halls, the WC and the courtyard. Then we had breakfast and roll call. All the members of the homes gathered on the steps and the leader of L-417, Otik Klein, outlined the daily plan. Then the teaching began that all the children in the building attended. The teaching happened in the individual homes, but because of lack of space it mostly occurred in the attic, where it was also less likely that we would be barged in on by the SS. Wherever we were taught, one boy was always on guard duty. Each class was prepared to immediately start doing something different, like cleaning, in case the SS came to check up on us.
On a regular day at L-417, forty boys would go do different work around the ghetto. They were chosen from the homes where the oldest boys lived: homes one and five. I myself began going to work in 1943. It wasn't particularly hard work; usually we worked in the vegetable garden in the barricades around Terezin. At least we had a little bit of nature there.
The magazine Vedem [13] was exclusively the domain of us, the boys. Professor Eisinger only wrote introductions and sometimes he contributed with a translation from Russian. On Friday night we would always sit around the table, or on the bunks and each person who had written something that week would read their contribution. The magazine was not publicized in any other way than during these Friday night session.
One of Eisinger's strongest characteristics was his sense of tolerance. He himself firmly believed in a new, socially just way of organizing the world, but he didn't require us to mechanically take on his beliefs. In contrast, he said at our age it would be too early for us to have a set opinion, first he thought it was important to experience and know many things. His opinion came across in his practice; the diverse lectures in our home were a good example. People with all sorts of opinions visited us. For Eisinger it was dangerous to organize this kind of upbringing in a concentration camp [ghetto], with a flag, a group hymn and even a magazine that we produced. Back then, we didn't understand that; for us it was an adventure and it gave us the illusion of freedom.
With the exception of home number five, we were the only ones who were coming of age. At the beginning of the occupation we were too grown up to be able to lock ourselves into the microcosm of children. Actually, all these events sped up the process of growing up, at least psychologically and spiritually. We witnessed our homes being uprooted and our parents' powerlessness. Marked with stars and transport numbers, in quarantine and in sluice, we saw the fall of conventions, the fragility and impermanence of human relationships, selflessness and selfishness, we listened to the heavy breathing of the dying and to the breathing of couples making love.
Gradually, my brother worked in a number of locations. At one time, he worked in the disinfection squad where he used very dangerous gas; I think it was called Ventox. For some time he worked in a kitchen as a helper and so at least he could eat a little better.
In Terezin I was placed in Sudeten barracks; my brother was elsewhere. We were not allowed to leave the barracks and walk freely in the streets until 6th July 1942.
At that time, my brother and I didn't know about the death of our parents. Basically, we stayed alone, I was twelve and my brother was seventeen. Of our relatives, only my father's mother and sister lived in Brno, but grandma was over eighty and my aunt was chronically ill. They were both quite powerless. In 1942 they were murdered in Treblinka and Rejowiec [Poland].
Matilda Israel
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Nowadays the Jewish community in Bulgaria and especially in Sofia seems to me very united. Every time I go to the Bet Am [13], I feel warmth, which cannot be described with words. There is something interesting to do there every day and something to be learned. When I feel well, I always visit the groups teaching Hebrew, Ladino, the health club, 'Golden Age' club and others. In the summer we often go to excursions to different places in Bulgaria. I found many friends in the Jewish home and have a very good time there. My closest friends are Viska Kamhi, Reni Tadjer, Sarah Luna, Mati Asael, Mati Pilosof, but there are many others. Every day we have an organized lunch in the canteen. The food is prepared in the senior Jewish home in Sofia ['Home of the Parent']. The food is kosher and is transported to OJB Shalom [14] where we go to eat, paying just a small sum. At noon I go to the Jewish Center, where lunch is organized for the old people. The food there is delicious and I also get to meet my friends. I don't live far from the Jewish Center. There are some Jewish women living in the neighboring apartment blocks with whom I keep in touch.
I live relatively close to the Jewish home and when I feel well I go there. It is very pleasant, because while having lunch, I meet with my best friends. Various actors often come to visit us, especially those performing in a theater called '199', who staged performances for us a couple of times. Twice a week we gather in the mornings in the health club. We do some gymnastics and dance Jewish dances. Sometimes we also dance Bulgarian dances, but I'm no longer young and unfortunately I cannot dance for long. At the end of each month we celebrate the birthdays of all those who had one during the month. Everybody brings something for a treat and we have a very good time. In the evenings we often go to exhibitions or concerts. They also invite interesting people to hold lectures. We have had the chance to listen to Valeri Petrov [penname of Valeri Nissim Mevorah, one the most renowned contemporary poets of Bulgaria], Angel Vagenshtain [15], politicians, musicians, employees in the Israeli Embassy and others.
I live relatively close to the Jewish home and when I feel well I go there. It is very pleasant, because while having lunch, I meet with my best friends. Various actors often come to visit us, especially those performing in a theater called '199', who staged performances for us a couple of times. Twice a week we gather in the mornings in the health club. We do some gymnastics and dance Jewish dances. Sometimes we also dance Bulgarian dances, but I'm no longer young and unfortunately I cannot dance for long. At the end of each month we celebrate the birthdays of all those who had one during the month. Everybody brings something for a treat and we have a very good time. In the evenings we often go to exhibitions or concerts. They also invite interesting people to hold lectures. We have had the chance to listen to Valeri Petrov [penname of Valeri Nissim Mevorah, one the most renowned contemporary poets of Bulgaria], Angel Vagenshtain [15], politicians, musicians, employees in the Israeli Embassy and others.