Ruth Halova

Holubov, Czech Republic
Interviewed in Prague in 2006 by Lenka Koprivova

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“It was that first awful incident that burned a hole in me.”

One fall day in 1938, I went to school as usual. I entered the classroom, sat down and began to take things out of my briefcase. But my classmates began chanting the slogan ‘Juden raus!,’ ‘Jews out!’ I put on a brave face, refused to start crying, and I stacked my things nicely back into my briefcase. My Jewish friend Leo and I left the class. We were the only two Jews in the class. I remember telling him in front of the school: ‘The worst thing about it is that now we'll stay dumb forever, as we can't count on any more education.’

I was in sekunda [second year of an eight-year high school, or Grade 6] when I was forced out of school. My sister was even worse off; she was in her last year. We spent the next few days at home, and couldn’t even go out into the street – young Germans, the Hitlerjugend [Hitler Youth] were marching around outside, and you wouldn’t have met a decent person in the street. Now I was afraid. Of course I hadn’t even dreamed, in my worst nightmare, of what was to come. It was that first awful incident that burned a hole in me.

Ruth Halova moved to Prague with her mother, where she was able to attend school until the German invasion in March 1939. Her mother sent her away in one of the last kindertransports to England. Ruth’s entire family was sent off to the concentration camps. Only her mother and a cousin survived. Ruth returned to Czechoslovakia after the war.