During World War I he was at the front, and caught a disease there, angina pectoris, so afterwards he didn't work much anymore. Before that he had been a merchant, selling all sorts of things, he had these stalls. According to what I've heard, during the war he served somewhere in Italy, but exactly where and during which years, that I don't know. But I do know that he fought. He wasn't in the infantry, perhaps he was with the artillery, because apparently he was somewhere on one of those wagons or whatnot, and some shrapnel fell on it, and he miraculously survived.
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agi sofferova
She probably had a basic education, after all, what sort of education could people in Subcarpathian Ruthenia have had back then? And women in general didn't have much of an education.
Their mother tongue was Hungarian and back then people also spoke Yiddish in those parts.
Their mother tongue was Yiddish.
But as I've said, I myself never felt any anti-Semitism. When someone called my kids names, I took care of it. Once, when the girls were in school, some little boy was calling them names. I grabbed him, squashed his mouth, and said to him, 'You say something to them one more time, and I'll whip your butt so that you won't sit down for a month.' And that was that.
After the war, my husband then led the Jewish community's agenda here, but it then moved to Brno. So now I'm a member of the Brno Jewish community, I'm registered there, and pay the tax in Brno. I don't much observe either Christian nor Jewish holidays. Well, we do decorate a Christmas tree, and give each other gifts. But mainly for the children. You know, after the war it was tough. There were no Jewish children here, and the girls saw the trees, so we also had one. And today we again do it because of the little ones. You know, a person assimilated and after the war was sort of split down the middle.
As far as religion goes, after the war my husband and I didn't observe it that much any more, perhaps certain holidays, Chanukkah, Passover and so on, but only half-heartedly. The kashrut, for example, where could you keep it here? That means you wouldn't be able to eat anything, meat, milk, that didn't exist at all here.
After the revolution we also found out that my husband had had his first wife insured for 20,000. I somehow found it out by coincidence, I hadn't even known about it. They had sent some papers from Bavorov. Back then some lawyer was taking care of it for old people. So they also sent me the papers, they thought that I didn't have anybody, and that they'd take care of it for me. But he took a large part of it. We didn't even know that, we found out about it through the computer. And we didn't even know that my husband had his wife insured for 20,000. So we got something, I don't know how much, a few dollars. I got half of that insurance, and the girls each a quarter. Well, you know that I gave it away. I'm not good at holding on to money.
When the revolution came in 1989, I was in Austria at the time, for a week or so, to visit my husband's sister. And there we saw it on TV. The biggest influence it had on me was that I could then travel abroad without an invitation, and my daughter could go work outside, in Austria. The opportunity came along, and because she spoke German, she took it. Because when my husband and I didn't want the kids to understand what we were saying, we spoke German, and she caught on to it.
I liked everything in Israel. I met up with my cousin's daughter there, she was my mother's sister's daughter, who lived in Israel, in a kibbutz. So I went to visit her. We usually don't keep in touch, but when I was there, I went to see her. She had it good in that kibbutz, she didn't have any complaints. I also met the daughter of my husband's sister Herta there, with Ruth. She also lived in a kibbutz. I could communicate well only with her husband, who was a Hungarian Jew, and spoke Hungarian.
The Communists didn't even pressure me to join the Party. But they wanted my husband to inform on people. But that didn't even come into consideration. Our only problem with the Communists was that they didn't want to let my husband go to see his sister. He had a sister in Israel, and terribly wanted to go there. That's also a tragicomedy. When he could, when he had the money, they wouldn't allow it. He applied, several times he applied. The poor guy had everything, he would always bring them that invitation in his briefcase. But they didn't let him go. In 1977 we had two weddings. By then my husband was retired, but was working and so made some money on the side. Well, and the money that the poor guy had saved up, I took that from him for those two weddings. Well, and then, when he didn't have money, they gave him permission to go. And when they gave him that permission, and there would even have been enough money, he no longer had the strength. By then he was too old and ill. I was in Israel, but secretly, he didn't know about it, because if he had known, he'd have died.
Back then there was nothing here, and when you saw those things there, those cheeses and meat and all, that was something. You had five pounds or something like that, here you paid tons of money for them, and there you imagined that you'd buy half of England for it. I remember that we brought back a TV, a microwave oven, some bedclothes. Well, we had all a huge load when we were returning, and the customs officials let us in without any problems. They were amazing. We didn't even have to hide anything.
During Communism I didn't have any big problems. Life of course was no rose garden. My salary wasn't very big, my husband also didn't make much. From a distance Communism didn't even look that bad, because I'm socially conscious, one didn't know about those atrocities. In the 1950s I was terribly shaken by the Slansky [17] affair [18] and so on, that I remember. But I personally didn't experience any oppression.
When our daughters grew up, we split up our property among them. Ruzena got the house we had in the old town, and Vera got the cottage. But Vera needed money, so she sold it. And also because after the divorce she was alone, and a cottage needs a man to take care of it.
During our time off we used to go with the children to Vranov, which is about 20 kilometers from here. There, when they started giving out loans, we built a cottage, this log cabin. There we spent holidays with the kids. It was a beautiful cabin. In the beginning, when we didn't have a car, we used to take the train there, and walked. With knapsacks. It used to be nice there, sociable, with the neighbors and so on. We knew a lot of people around there. One of them started building a cottage, my husband saw it, and had to have one too. So during the summer we lived there. It was fun there, we made campfires, you could swim there, go picking mushrooms and raspberries in the woods. Our children grew up at that cottage.
Right after the war we wanted to immigrate to Israel; we thought about it, but I became pregnant with Vera. Plus it was difficult. My husband didn't have any sort of trade. And he wasn't much good at languages either. So then we were afraid to go, and stayed here. But it would have all been different, because back then I still spoke Hebrew well, and knew how to sew a bit, that would have been useful. Well, but it was hard. If he'd been an electrician or carpenter, or something else. But a merchant... when you don't know the language, what would he have done? Plus my sister was here, I didn't want to leave her. But in the end she was the one to leave. So in the 1950s we considered it, but not later.
At first as a warehouse employee and then as a buyer. He stayed there until retirement.
My husband and I met here in Znojmo. He saw me, fell in love, and wouldn't be dissuaded. He was crazy about me. We got married in 1947. There was quite a large age difference between us, 17 years. At the time we were married he was 42 and I was 25. Today I wouldn't recommend it to a daughter of mine, but back then I let myself be persuaded. After the war a person felt uprooted, I was so in pain that I didn't want a Christian man for a husband.
In 1947 they both returned here to Znojmo, and at one time lived with us. Because the Germans had nationalized their house before. But my husband got it back in restitution [Restitution: law regarding the return of property]. Before the war, my husband's father had had a store in the front, and in the back he had a cold box, as he was a butcher.
My husband's parents were named Hynek and Anna. She was very kind, this small, petite lady. She was refined, from a good family. Their daughter Herta got them to Palestine in some fashion before the war, where they then lived together in a kibbutz.
His native tongue was Czech, and he always considered himself to be a Czech; he was a big patriot. He had moved to Znojmo with his parents as a kid and attended school here. He only had public school [15], but maybe then had some sort of mercantile school, the kind that shop assistants had. Before the war he had worked as a sales rep for a large company. He sold shirts and ties and was relatively successful.
After the war I didn't return to high school. I did a two-year nursery teachers' course in Boskovice. Back then, they let us study even without having finished high school, because they had a shortage of teachers. They formed two classes, because there was a lot of interest in that course. I did distance studies. Because in 1954, after I had children, I started work as a foster mother. And the course was from 1958 to 1960. I worked as a nursery school teacher until I retired, which was in 1978. But then I still worked a bit. They still needed me, so I still worked there. Not full time, but only part time. I could have retired at the age of 55, because I'd been in a concentration camp, but I worked longer.
After the war I remained in Znojmo, and only went to Mukachevo to have a look. None of my siblings had returned there, but I did have some friends and relatives there.
We must have been close to the border, because we soon arrived in Usti nad Labem. But that trip was full of hardships. One Russian would give, another would take. And they wanted to rape us. We just barely managed to fend them off, really.
One hundred twenty of us women remained. Somewhere in Germany, I don't exactly remember the name anymore, you know, it's long ago now, but it was somewhere by the Elbe, because we crossed the river there and then back again, and then burrowed under some hay in some stable. Even though that German, the owner, didn't want to let us in, that the horse has to have peace and quiet. There was also one SS soldier with us, he probably had something with one of the prisoners, so he stayed with us and protected us. We stayed under that hay, and then the next morning you could hear the scouts, Russian scouts. The second day, when there was shrapnel falling already, the owner of the horse was lying there, spread-eagled, dead. The Russians were fighting a little ways away from there. Well, and then the Russians liberated us.
Well, and when we stepped out of the wagon, I said to my mother, 'Here nothing matters any more.' Because I saw those dogs and the Germans were shouting, 'Everyone out, everyone out' and you saw those chimneys smoking, and smelled it, and you knew that wasn't from a bakery or something. Well, and then on that ramp they separated us. To the right, to the left, as they used to say. I went to the right, my mother to the left. I never saw her again.
When my mother and I went onto the transport, we could only take 20 kilos of luggage. Well, what could I have taken with me? It wasn't much, enough for few pieces of clothing and a bit of food. I remember that my mother forgot a cup or perhaps a small pot in the ghetto, and so returned, and some policeman pushed her, a Hungarian policeman. I can see it as if it was today. I stepped in front of her and said, 'That's my mother.' He was completely taken aback. We were all dragging those bags along with us, it was quite far, they were driving us along across the whole city to the brick factory. My poor mother, she was quite kosher, but when she saw that there wasn't anything, she bought me a piece of sausage. She herself didn't eat it, but bought it for me. Some things dig themselves down into your memory and you can't get them out.
From what I've been told, I know that they perhaps went on some sort of death march [11]. Either she got some sort of poisoning, or was so weakened that she could no longer go on. That was probably sometime in 1945, when back then before the end of the war they were moving prisoners around. Apparently she wanted to return in this fashion. But she had bad luck, the poor thing. Those that were with her and survived, then told me about how good-natured she'd been, how she'd kept their spirits up, despite having it so hard, child and all. She had wanted a child so badly; if she hadn't gotten pregnant, she could have survived. But with a baby she had no chance. Also very few kids survived. Maybe still in Terezin, but in Auschwitz? And there were so many beautiful children there, who knows what they would have been like if they'd grown up. They were truly beautiful and talented.
I was the youngest, so I then lived alone with my mother and father. Each of my siblings had already gone their own way. Then in 1939, my father died. It wasn't at all easy, my older sisters helped my mother, after all, the family had to somehow get by. You know, there weren't any pensions, nothing. I also made some money, as I knew how to sew a bit. I basically did what I could. For some time I lived with my sister Jolan. Those were hard times.
We rented a two-room apartment with a small kitchen and front hall. The apartments didn't have too many amenities, we for example didn't have a bathroom. There was probably a small library, my mother for sure used to read. And my father used to go study the Torah. I also used to read a lot.