IV: The interview that you did in Oederan is mostly about Oederan.
HM: Yes.
IV: That time. And now I am interested in learning about the time before that.
Before that you were in Theresienstadt.
HM: Yes.
IV: Could you speak about Theresienstadt.
And how you came from Theresienstadt to Oederan and why.
HM. Yes.
So we came to Theresienstadt in '42, on one of the last transports that went from Czechoslovakia to Theresienstadt I believe.
I was with my mother and we came to...it was very cold then.
We were only allowed to bring 50 kilos with us and...
We traveled in open...in passenger trains.
But it was totally covered in ice because it was very cold.
And then we arrived in Theresienstadt.
In Theresienstadt they sent me to a room.
Before that I had been in Prague, with children...with young people...in..what that's called...youth alijah groups.
And they sent me to a room with girls, most of them had been in this youth alijah group.
My mother was sent to another room.
What Theresienstadt was like...I don't know, should I speak about Theresienstadt, how it...
IV: Yes, speak about how it was for you.
What your life was like there and your everyday life.
HM: Yes.
It was so:
We were...we were...I don't know whether you know all of this already, but we were...
We were in a normal apartment.
We lived in a normal three-room apartment.
And in each room there were around 20, 25 girls on three-level beds.
And everyone just had a bed, and that was all one had.
And when I think about it, that was a normal...a normal apartment...
And some 70 or more people lived there.
And sometimes I think...I can't remember.
How did we wash ourselves at the one sink when we had to go to work in the early morning?
Or how... how did we go to the toilet?
There was only one toilet in this apartment, only one sink.
And when I got there, there were an awful lot of bugs.
And when I...the first thing I saw when I entered the room was a girl.
She had just gotten undressed.
And she was totally red from bug bites.
And I thought, why isn't she ashamed to be so bitten by bugs and show it.
And a week later I was exactly the same.
And then they did something, a disinfection.
After that it was a little bit better with the bugs.
And we girls actually lived pretty well together
I think the good thing about Theresienstadt was there was no stealing.
And everyone helped each other.
And with the clothes we had... we all wore each others' clothes.
And we were all pretty good friends.
And despite everything bad that was there...it was pleasant to live with these girls.
Because there wasn't... nobody screaming at each other and no scuffling, nothing.
It was always good.
And...my mother unfortunately lived very badly.
And then I arranged for her to go to a different, a better room.
And that was typical of Theresienstadt.
That the children took care of the mothers.
Because we took it more lightly than...
My mother was actually still pretty young.
Looking back today, she was for her 42 years, she was still a young woman.
But still she found it difficult.
She was not really able to accept that she was in a camp and all that.
And lying on the ground.
And then I took care of her.
And I began to work right away.
I worked in the children's home.
First with children, small children, four and five year olds.
They also had a large room with two-level beds.
And later I was with youngsters, ten-year-old boys.
And then at that end I worked...for a while when the Red Cross came, a clean-up action was done.
I also worked there as a cleaner, for the sick people, where I cleaned everything.
And then at the end I worked with 16-year-old boys.
And they were all very clever and I was a bit...
I looked after them there.
And I always had the feeling that I was just one hour ahead...
Learning was forbidden, or how was it called... teaching, learning.
But they had classes anyway and I always had the impression that I was only an hour ahead of them.
Because they all knew so much and they were very very clever and very educated.
And in Theresienstadt there was a lot of cultural life.
And that was also very interesting because I could...
I came from a .. small town.
And in Theresienstadt I actually learned more about culture than...in this town.
Because there the major...for examples concerts were held there.
...such important names and people who played music well.
In Strakonice that was not so.
And so I learned a lot about music there.
And there were cabarets and theater and everything.
So I had more culture there than I had in ..
IV. in your town.
Hm. Yes, yes, as in a town.
But of course Theresienstadt was not only culture.
Theresienstadt was also food and Theresienstadt was also old people.
And it was actually...Theresienstadt was self-administration.
The Germans almost never came there.
I think because of the....because they were afraid of the diseases.
So there was this administration.
And the administration thought there should be more to eat. There was only a little food for everyone.
But the administration thought the children should be given a little more food.
Because they were our future.
Back then they didn't know that almost none of the children would survive.
But the children were given a little more to eat.
And for the older people, that was a catastrophe.
That was terrible because they had very, very little.
And they always went and begged, that someone should give them a little soup.
And they were truly so ill... they looked terrible.
And there were so many....so many every day 50 people.
IV: from exhaustion or hunger.
HM: From...hunger
From exhaustion and from hunger and other illnesses.
There were many different illnesses, Enzephalitis and Typhus and so.
And there was... grownup people got children's diseases, measles and things.
They died from that too.
But mostly from hunger, mostly they were so starved, these...
especially the old ...all the people were starved but the old people much more than the others.
Because those who worked got a little more.
And for the children, as I said, one tried the best...
For the chilldren, they always tried to do the best.
And well, that is how it was in Theresienstadt.
IV: What did your mother do at that time? Did she work too?
HM: My...yes. My mother worked too.
She sewed something for the Germans.
I think it was...probably for the army.
She made gloves and various things.
It was a sewing room, where they only worked for the Germans.
And that is where she worked.
And that is how we lived.
Bad, but also a bit normal.
Because we still had our clothes.
And then they..the..and there were always transports.
And we were always very afraid of the transports because you never knew...that is you didn't know where you would be sent.
But one always knew in a way that, that it would be worse than Theresienstadt.
I don't know why but everyone had...no one was...everyone wanted to stay in Theresienstadt and not to go.
And how they selected people for the transport, I don't know.
And then in '44, that is when the very large transports came.
They probably wanted to empty the ghetto.
And my mother left on a transport.
And I wanted..I volunteered to go with her.
I was supposed to go with her.
But they didn't allow me.
And then a week later, I went too.
Actually I wasn't supposed to be on a transport.
Because my father was not a Jew.
And they didn't ...uh..the half-Jewish children were not so...were probably...
And this was one of those selections.
I remember that we were so...many people standing there and I joined them...
I went... an SS man stood there and he asked me.
"Do you have a child?"
And I said: "no."
And he said: "Then you are not in the transport."
And then it turned out that a woman was there with the same name as me, and she had a young child.
I didn't learn that until after the war...someone told me that.
And this woman went to someone who was putting together the transport.
And she prayed there and fell to her knees and pleaded with him not to send her with the child.
And then they found out that there was someone else with the same name there.
And then they sent me.
Actually during the transport... during the transport...when I was there, it was a...someone from...
Murmelstein was the Jewish eldest at the time and he had a man who worked with him.
And I saw him at the...in front of the train.
And I said: "Listen, I am not supposed...I am not supposed to be on the transport."
And I said: "Tell, tell the SS man, they should take me off the transport."
And he wanted to, but in the end he went to the SS man and told him that I was at the selection and they took me out.
And he said to me, the German said to me: "Yes, you are right.
But an additional wagon had come.
And I have to fill up the wagon.
Get in."
So then I climbed into the wagon.
And then suddenly my friend appeared.
Her parents were on the same transport.
And she wanted to go with her parents and they didn't let her.
And then, because they were looking for more people to fill the wagon, they let her go.
And that basically saved my life.
Because we were in the last wagon and then we drove to Auschwitz.
How that was, I can't remember very much about this trip.
just that we...that we couldn't move because there were so many people in it.
So much luggage.
And they gave us to buckets.
One for the..one with water, drinking water, and one for the toilet.
And at first no one went to the toilet, but then someone did.
And the Instettel, he didn't go in the toilet bucket, he went in the bucket with the water.
So we didn't have any drinking water the entire time.
There was a Wehmacht man with us in the wagon.
And he... he probably felt sorry for us and somehow it was explained and he emptied the bucket and brought us new drinking water.
So I know there was drinking water but how long it lasted and all that I don't know.
And then we were in Auschwitz, arrived in Auschwitz.
And my..and uh "leave all the luggage in the, in the ...leave it and move forward."
And my friend, whose mother was is the first wagon, said:
"Come! Let's got quickly to the front.
Maybe we'll find my parents there."
And we ran quickly to the front and we were at the very beginning.
And were were a transport with ...1,750 people.
And 200 girls and 50 men were sent to the left side and the rest were sent to the right side.
And the ones on the right side went to the gas.
And 50 men were left but as far as I know, from the 50 men only one survived.
And we were 200 women.
Then we went into a barrack the way it was there.
We had to take off our clothes.
our heads were shaved and we were naked.
And men came and took away our hair.
But it was... we were so tired from the journey and from the hunger and from everything that...I don't know...were very...
And the older prisoners there, they said the entire rest of the transport went to the gas.
And I think we didn't really know what that was.
Because it was hard to believe that all the other people weren't...
And then they said: "Look. They...are burning in this crematorium or something like that.
All those other people aren't alive."
We were not in Auschwitz for very long.
Because we were the second to last transport that went to Auschwitz.
They didn't give us any numbers or anything.
And they told us we were going to Germany to work.
And then we went through various selections.
And I don't know how it looked in Auschwitz, probably other people have already told you that so I don't need to say anything about it.
And well, we went through various selections.
And then we... they said, we are going...we are going to Germany to work.
And then the older girls who were there already, the older prisoners who were there said:
"You are going to a track.
When the train is there, then you are traveling to Germany.
If no train is there, then you are going to the gas.
And we arrived at the track and there was no train there.
And they sent us into some place and said: "you have to..."
In Auschwitz they always had uh...one always had to shower.
And they said to us: "Go take a shower."
I don't know, I always thought that it is not gas and that it, well, that we would leave.
And they had us shower and then we stood for roll call again.
And that was terrible, it was raining and was cold.
It was winter by then.
And we didn't have any stockings and we only had a light...everyone just had what they had when they...
One girl had ballet shoes and the others...I, for one, was lucky.
I had...I had gotten slippers from some grandfather, so they were at least warm shoes.
But we didn't have any stockings and only light clothing with short sleeves and a short jacket over it.
And then we had.. from the jacket, that.. what is it called... what is inside the sleeves, the...
IV: Lining.
HM: Then we had the lining, then someone began and we all began to take out the lining from the sleeves and put it on our feet.
So that we were a little warmer.
And then we waited and waited and a train arrived.
And we got on the train.
About the trip from Auschwitz to Oederan... it must have been very bad because I don't remember anything about it.
And then we arrived in Oederan.
And my first impression was that.. I left the wagon and there was light and I saw the other girls, the ones who came out of the other wagons.
I said: "Oh, those poor girls. Where did they come from?"
And then I remembered that I looked exactly like these girls.
And then they took us into a factory.
Not in the factory, but rather where we lived.
And they gave us a soup.
And then we...we uh...laid down on the bunk.
We had three-level beds.
And we got a blanket and we were very happy that we had gotten away from Auschwitz.
And then we didn't work for the first three weeks in Oederan because there was no material to work with.
And we were not allowed to leave the beds.
And on the one hand, that was bad, but on the other...it helped us a lot that we could rest for three weeks.
IV: You regained your strength.
HM: Yes, we regained our strength a bit.
And then they sent us to work.
I worked at first as a cleaner for the overseers.
That was until Christmas.
After Christmas until January me and my friends, my two friends, they also worked there as cleaners.
And that was not bad because our head overseer was not there.
And the overseer who was there in her place was...a normal woman, from the area.
She had six children and she worked there.
She was not bad and she told us to sit down and sew something for her or knit something.
She took it easy but we had it good too because we were sitting in a warm room,
and then the head overseer came and that changed.
She forbid them that.
She said: "If you need something sewn, then sew it yourself
The prisoners are not here to do that. They have to work."
And then she threw us out of the fac...out of there.
Because she didn't think we were working enough.
And I worked in the factory too.
And that was hard because...we had three shifts.
And the night shift...and of course always standing for the roll call.
That was a part of life, that we always had the roll call.
They counted us for hours.
And, then I had...these three shifts, the night shift was very hard.
And the work was hard too because we made some kind of cartridge.
And it was iron on iron.
We put holes into the cartridge for a ...a ring which was put...on the cartridge.
And that was very hard, making this hole...because it was all made of iron, you had to do like that. And well...
IV: I would like to jump over the time in Oederan.
HM: Yes.
Because you described...
HM: Yes.
IV: this in great detail in that interview.
And now I would like to continue to what happened next.
You went then from Oederan back to...
HM: To Theresien...to Th...
IV: Could you tell me how it ended in Oederan and how you came back...then what happened.
HM: Well, in Oederan, you could already hear the Russians and... then they decided to have us evacuated.
And, it was...there was no one to watch over us.
There were only these young boys watching us or very old men.
They brought us ...to the train.
And then we left.
And the whole time there was hullabaloo.
The trains didn't move, we drove a bit forward, a bit backwards and these low-flying planes were always firing at us.
Actually they didn't shoot at our train.
Maybe they saw us in the open wgon so they didn't shoot at us.
But they fired at the trains on the tracks.
And I have a story here {laughs}.
There was nothing to eat.
And the overseers said they already gave their money to buy food for us too.
And that they didn't have any money.
And on the train next to us and they said that there were many wounded German soldiers on it.
And the head person was a high-level SS officer.
And he was with our overseer...and I was in the wagon that was closed.
He was with the overseer.
Again...in one half were the overseers and in the other half... a few prisoners.
They cooked for the overseers and cleaned the wagon.
And I was with my friend in this wagon.
So I know a bit more than the others.
And then this SS man arrived.
He spoke to our overseer and she told him she didn't have anything to give the prisoners to eat.
And he said: "Give me two girls and I'll...
We'll go to a village and I'll use my money to buy..."
What he bought was sugar beet.
So try it, if you want to know something bad, you should try eating an uncooked sugar beet.
It is almost impossible to eat but actually it was good for our transport.
I don't know, he came, he brought a cart.
My friend and I pulled it.
And there were two overseers with us and we went to the village.
And he bought these sacks with the sugar beet and put them on the cart.
And he left again and came back with bread and salami.
And he gave me and my friend a piece of bread with salami.
And then our overseer went...and I ate a bit.
And then an overseer appeared and she grabbed it out of my hand and ate it.
Because they were probably hungry too.
They were traveling a long time too without anything to eat.
And he...he saw this.
He didn't say anything.
And then he said: "Come. Let's get something to drink."
And we went into a guesthouse and there was a large...
I remember it well.
It was a long table, and we sat down, two prisoners in the middle, an overseer on each side and the man sitting across from us.
And we drank a beer together.
And that was when I knew that the war was over and that we had managed to survive.
And then we went back to the train.
And then the girls gave us that beet.
And then we traveled south for about an hour.
And a woman, the cook, the main cook who was with us, she knew this area, she was from Teplice, and she knew the area.
And she said something to the head overseer woman.
And some of the overseers walked away.
And there was no one left to watch us.
But we couldn't walk away.
We could have, but we didn't want to because we didn't know where to go.
And she said, "Look, we are very close to Theresienstadt.
Maybe they will take us in."
And then the overseer, I don't know how but she drove to Theresienstadt.
And they said, yes, she should bring us to Theresienstadt.
And the Red Cross was already in Theresienstadt.
And somehow...I don't know...where we were, but then we went by foot to Theresienstadt.
And when we got there we were one of the first transports.
And the people who had remained there, they formed a kind of column.
And they knew that girls who had been in Theresienstadt had arrived.
A friend of mine was there, she took me home with her.
And some of the others.
And then we saw, when we saw the other transports, we knew that we had had it good in Oederan...
It...we..in Oederan we had always thought that it was the worst that there was.
But in Theresienstadt we also saw that it could be even worse.
And these other transports were not let free.
They were locked in the barracks.
Because they were sick and they were all half dead and some were totally dead in these wagons.
And then in Theresienstadt...I was there until 8... I'm not sure exactly, I think we arrived in early May.
And by then we had heard on the radio in the Kommandantur that...I don't know who it was, not the Red Cross.
We heard radio there, in Prague they were still fighting.
And then we knew, that that was the end.
And then on May 8 the Russian Army arrived.
And they arrived and we were standing outside and there were these fences.
Once couldn't...and they came along the path and we stood behind the fence.
And then I...I don't remember, but my friend told me that I came to her in the room and I left her a note.
"We'll meet in Prague."
And then I went over the fence and got on a...Russian tank and left Theresienstadt.
And the tanks couldn't go all the way to Prague and I had to get off along the way.
And then I went part of the way in a Russian officer's car.
And then he couldn't go any further...they couldn't go to Prague either.
And then the last...I traveled on a truck to the beginning of Prague because the Russians weren't allowed to enter Prague then.
And then I walked to the old town.
There were already people there who...I was not the only one, many people had come there.
And they took care of us and the war was over.
IV: What did you feel at that moment?
You were probably sick and exhausted and...
HM: I don't know. I...I...think, one was very...
You asked what I felt, I think I didn't feel anything.
Because I remember, I don't know, if you know Prague, there is this Letná, Letná Park, it is on this mountain.
And you go down it.
And I was there, I went down the mountain across a river.
And there were German soldiers there that had been taken captive.
And one of them couldn't walk anymore, he had fallen down.
And a man shot him in the head and everything came out.
And I walked by, I wasn't...I think if I would see something like that today, I would faint.
But at that time one was so used to...I don't know how to say it but...it didn't bother me.
I just wanted to go and survive and I...sleep somewhere and eat a little and..
And then they gave me an apartment.
And a little money to...
And then I was in Prague, there weren't any trains in the Czech Republic either.
And when trains started running again, I went to Strakonice where my father was.
I came to him there.
And I should have gone into the Quinta there, back then I had had to leave school in the fifth grade.
And my class was already taking their final exams and I was given a booklet.
And I read that the class that just took its exams still had 10 or 15 people who were like me...
They were Czechs who had been in ca---had worked somewhere in Germany or I don't know.
Had been in prison or something.
And they put the ten of us in this class that had taken their exams.
And we had to take the exams.
But of course we didn't know anything.
We promised that..