Magda Frkalova

Magda Frkalova

This is a photograph of me, Magda Frkalova, at the beginning of the 1940s, but I dont know where exactly it was taken. In 1942 I received a summons to Trnava. It was the very first transport which was supposed to leave, supposedly for work. But I refused. I somehow simply didn't believe that we were supposed to go someplace just to work. You see, already at that time I'd heard various rumors that there were camps for Jews in Germany, and that similar ones were being built in Poland as well. It was said that people were dying in them, and that they were even murdering them there. And that wasn't something I wanted. So I decided that I'd run away. My mother was of course against it at first, because she thought that by doing so I'd blacken the entire family, and that I'd harm them with it. But my father, who loved me very much, was for my leaving. So in the end I left for Subcarpathian Ruthenia, to live with my aunt, my mother's sister Olga. I hid at her place for almost a year, and on the cusp of the years 1942 and 1943 I had to return, because the regime had changed there, too, and they'd begun to persecute Jews. Once someone gave my godfather a tip that they'd be rounding up Jews during the night, and so they hid me at the vicarage. There I spent the night, and right the next day I had to set out for home. But my trip home wasn't easy. As I was traveling without any papers, it was very dangerous and difficult. It was already 1943, and the situation was more than complicated.
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