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My sister, mother, father, Grandpa Hynek Polak and I all went into the transport together. We got a summons, packed our rucksacks with the allowed 20 kilos. We took practical things - some dishes, a pan, mess tins, I think a cooker, too. It made no difference, because they confiscated a bunch of things, and also stole all sorts of things along the way.
I must admit that I took it all fairly optimistically, I was even looking forward to Terezin, because there were no young people in Luze, and I was hoping that I'd meet someone there I could talk to. So, on 2nd December 1942 we got on some trucks, and they drove us to Pardubice. Just from Luze there were 41 of us, they took us there together with the rest of the Jews in the Pardubice district. There, we slept a couple of nights just like that on the bare wood floor of the Pardubice Sokol Hall.
Around the 5th or 6th of December, we got on the transport to Terezin. We went by train, it wasn't in cattle wagons, but a normal passenger train. The whole time in the train, I had this tendency to keep by my family. I met some young people there, and they told me to come sit with them, but I didn't want to leave my parents. So much so that my father had to tell me that everything was fine, that I should go ahead and go chat with them. The Deutsch brothers from Policka were there, these nice guys, there were about five of them. The entire way, we told jokes and stories, it was great fun - we laughed all the way from Pardubice to Terezin.
Back then there wasn't a spur line to Terezin yet, so we walked from Bohusovice to Terezin with our rucksacks on our backs. It was cold, our bags were so heavy, we were wearing two coats, we looked like we were pregnant...
In Terezin they were registering us, we were standing in line, and they asked Jirka Deutsch and me if we were husband and wife. So I said: 'Jesus Christ, no!' - 'So you're engaged?' - to this Jirka answered 'Yes,' so I had to say 'He's full of it,' and he was terribly insulted, that I hadn't said that we were together. If I would've said that we were engaged, they would have given us a place to live together, and who knows how I would've ended up, because the Deutsches went right on the next transport to the East, in January. I would probably have died along with them. Back then, everything was a question of coincidences like that!
We didn't know much about life in Terezin, it was more of a hunch. For example, we knew that we'd be living separately - men and women and children separately. But we didn't have much information, as it was forbidden to write and associate with other people in the region. The first prisoners, the men from the AK1 transport, who'd been summoned to prepare the ghetto for the future camp, weren't allowed to write anything home. Some of them broke the prohibition and managed to smuggle out information. They were sentenced to death for it, and what's more in such a fashion that they had to shoot each other, so that the Germans didn't dirty their hands. Later, Fischer the executioner took care of executions in Terezin. He was a person who was a former executioner, and applied for this job in Terezin on his own accord.
My father lived separately, with the men. My mother, my sister Eva, my cousin Vera, her sister and mother and I lived in this smaller room. We were six relatives living together, we were extremely lucky that Vera's husband was from the AK [short for 'Arbeitskolonne' - 'Work Column'], so he arranged this room for us. The room was relatively puny, on top of our suitcases we laid the straw mattresses that we slept on at night, and during the day we shoved them against the wall.
I must admit that I took it all fairly optimistically, I was even looking forward to Terezin, because there were no young people in Luze, and I was hoping that I'd meet someone there I could talk to. So, on 2nd December 1942 we got on some trucks, and they drove us to Pardubice. Just from Luze there were 41 of us, they took us there together with the rest of the Jews in the Pardubice district. There, we slept a couple of nights just like that on the bare wood floor of the Pardubice Sokol Hall.
Around the 5th or 6th of December, we got on the transport to Terezin. We went by train, it wasn't in cattle wagons, but a normal passenger train. The whole time in the train, I had this tendency to keep by my family. I met some young people there, and they told me to come sit with them, but I didn't want to leave my parents. So much so that my father had to tell me that everything was fine, that I should go ahead and go chat with them. The Deutsch brothers from Policka were there, these nice guys, there were about five of them. The entire way, we told jokes and stories, it was great fun - we laughed all the way from Pardubice to Terezin.
Back then there wasn't a spur line to Terezin yet, so we walked from Bohusovice to Terezin with our rucksacks on our backs. It was cold, our bags were so heavy, we were wearing two coats, we looked like we were pregnant...
In Terezin they were registering us, we were standing in line, and they asked Jirka Deutsch and me if we were husband and wife. So I said: 'Jesus Christ, no!' - 'So you're engaged?' - to this Jirka answered 'Yes,' so I had to say 'He's full of it,' and he was terribly insulted, that I hadn't said that we were together. If I would've said that we were engaged, they would have given us a place to live together, and who knows how I would've ended up, because the Deutsches went right on the next transport to the East, in January. I would probably have died along with them. Back then, everything was a question of coincidences like that!
We didn't know much about life in Terezin, it was more of a hunch. For example, we knew that we'd be living separately - men and women and children separately. But we didn't have much information, as it was forbidden to write and associate with other people in the region. The first prisoners, the men from the AK1 transport, who'd been summoned to prepare the ghetto for the future camp, weren't allowed to write anything home. Some of them broke the prohibition and managed to smuggle out information. They were sentenced to death for it, and what's more in such a fashion that they had to shoot each other, so that the Germans didn't dirty their hands. Later, Fischer the executioner took care of executions in Terezin. He was a person who was a former executioner, and applied for this job in Terezin on his own accord.
My father lived separately, with the men. My mother, my sister Eva, my cousin Vera, her sister and mother and I lived in this smaller room. We were six relatives living together, we were extremely lucky that Vera's husband was from the AK [short for 'Arbeitskolonne' - 'Work Column'], so he arranged this room for us. The room was relatively puny, on top of our suitcases we laid the straw mattresses that we slept on at night, and during the day we shoved them against the wall.
Period
Year
1942
Location
Czechia
Interview
anna mrazkova