IV: Today is Friday, July 20, 2012.
We are in Weiden in the Upper Palatinate in Hotel Admira.
My name is Michael Aue from the Medienwerkstatt Franken.
And we are now conducting this interview on behalf of the Flossenbürg concentration camp memorial with Hanna Dori, who comes from the Czech Republic.
And who during the time of the camps was in Oederan.
And who now lives in Israel.
HD: Good.
So my name in Hana Drori, born Polak, or Polakova.
Born in Prague on November 4, 1931.
I spent my childhood in a small town where my parents had an estate.
We were sent away from there in the beginning of the German...
IV: Occupation.
HD: ...occupation.
And then we went to Prague.
Because many people, many parts of our famly lived there.
And I was first went to my aunt, who had children around my age.
And one could still go to school there.
So I went to school with a...my...cousins.
Then they left, emigrated, immigrated to Palestine, today's Israel.
And I went... because my parents were divorced.
And my mother lived in Prague, too.
And had built a nice villa with her sister in Prague.
And when this aunt left with the family for Palestine, I went to my mother.
Since the villa was already built.
But then the SS saw that it was a Jewish villa...and it was perfect for a high-level officer of the SS:
So...his name was Karl Rahm and later became commandant of the Terezin Ghetto. Theresienstadt.
And then I went back to my uncle, but he died.
Then I went to my last aunt.
And that is where I stayed until my father...was sent to Theresienstadt.
With a group of young people to built the ghetto.
And after six months I arrived with my aunt and uncle in Theresienstadt.
I was there for two years until fall 1944.
And then the ghetto was almost completely liquidated because ... the German army had already ... already known that war...that the war was not going to continue.
And that they no longer need this ghetto.
And then we were sent to...to Auschwitz. To...
IV: May I ask a quick question?
What had happened to your mother by this time?
HD: Yes, my...my mother had been deported with the first transport of...Jewish transport of ...of Jews from Prague to the LItzmannstadt Ghetto, Lodz.
And I never heard from her again.
I have tried my entire life, to ask someome.. all the people who were in Lodz.
Someone who may have known here.
But I never found anyone.
My father was with me in Theresienstadt.
He was responsible there for the distribution .... bread distribution in the ghetto.
And through this I was... he was protected from the transports to Auschwitz., and I was protected through him.
That is why we stayed there, until... so long.
Because many other people had been sent away earlier.
IV: Could you describe the living conditions during these two years in Theresienstadt?
HD: Yes, I can tell you about this too.
So... since the children were not allowed to live with the men...I couldn't live with my father.
And he knew this.
And he arranged a spot for me in a children's home.
In a girls' home, I should say.
And that is where I was the entire time.
In the beginning it was in the women's barracks.
They were called Hamburger Kaserne.
And then after a few weeks I fell ill.
I caught Scarlet Fever.
And I had to go to the hospital.
And when, after six weeks, I was able to leave there, a different girls' home was... uh made.
IV: Established.
HD: Established.
In a building that had once been a headquarters on the plaza, it was called L410.
And it was for girls who spoke Czeck of all different ages.
But there it was not like the...in the first one we were all together.
Big and small, maybe fifty girls.
But now in this L410, uh...there were rooms.
And in each room there were children of the same age.
Because they wanted us to be able to learn something.
It was strictly forbidden, learning.
The SS, there, had strictly forbidden it.
And we knew this.
We knew that if there was an inspection, that we had to quickly hide the papers and pencils and all our things.
And we had to sit down and do something that was allowed.
But the youth care agency, it was a...Theresienstadt had a Jewish administration.
It was called Elders Council and it was made up of many different parts.
And one part was the Youth Care.
And they really did everything in their power to ensure that we remain human.
That we keep the moral, that we maintain morality.
And that we learn something.
And...we didn't learn, not like in school.
We didn't have any books and no workbooks.
And not even pencils or uh..
Each one of us had to find, had to find what they could.
A piece of paper and a bit of pencil perhaps.
And so, even with the teachers it was not so easy.
Because there were constantly transports leaving for the east.
We knew that.
We didn't know where the transports were going.
And that is why we didn't always have the same teacher.
So we learned in pieces.
Sometimes it was a teacher of, say, mathematics, and then they sent him away.
And then they found another one, who taught us Latin.
And that's how we learned.
But we did learn.
And I think we even learned well.
Because after the war when I attended Gymnasium in Prague, I entered the class after, after...
I had to take an exam and I passed it for the class of my age group.
We had caretakers there.
And they looked after us.
We sang together a lot.
And in the beginning there was a lot of quarreling, too.
You see, it was a room that was not very big.
Amd we had, had bunk beds over three levels.
And we were about thirty or maybe even more girls in this one room.
So it was not that easy.
But one of the caretakers, she said to us:
"It can be done differently.
If one wants... it is possible to understand the other girls better.
Even when they don't have the same opinion or the same...when they are different from you, for example...when...
It is possible to accept people who are different and to live amicably together.
And then there wouldn't be such pandemonium with constant quarreling.
And we had the art in Theresienstadt as well.
They brought Jews from all over central Europe to Theresienstadtand and later from Holland and Denmark too.
They brought them all.
Even the artists and scholars.
And that is why...in the beginning the Germans forbid them from having concerts and lectures...
And it was...
That had to be done outside.
They had to stand at the gate, and if someone came...They had to stop.
And then they recognized that might help them.
Because in the world it was being said that the Jews...that the Germans were treating...the Jews
IV: ...treating.
HD: treating them very badly.
And maybe even killing them.
And they wanted to show the world how good the Jews were doing.
They had concerts, they had lectures and so on.
So it..they thought it could help them.
And so there was a lot, very much ...mostly music.
A few operas, just singing.
Of course there was no stage and all that wasn't there.
Because we didn't have any...the things that were needed, we didn't have them.
But there was singing.
And there wasn't any...orchestra.
So they accompanied on whatever they could find.
There was an old piano there.
And some people who had brought a flute or a violin with them, hidden among their things.
And so they played what they could.
And it was always very nice.
I recently heard...the Requiem von Verdi in Jerusalem
They played it...so
It was in memory of the...concert...the way it had been played in Theresienstadt.
It was done wonderfully.
One of my... of our caretakers, her name was Ella Polak.
We called her Tella, which was an abbreviation for Aunt Ella.
She was a musician.
And she played the accompaniment sometimes at rehearsals for the Requiem and also for operas...The Marriage of Figaro, for example.
And sometimes she took us children from the home so that we could turn the pages.
IV: Turn.
HD: Turn.
And so we...I...
These, yes, and the rehearsals, they were in our cellar.
There was a room there and there was an old harmonium.
She accompanied on that.
She and also Gideon Klein, the musician Gideon Klein. And others.
And so I heard it many times and it...
I know, I have to say that since then I know almost the entire Wedding of Figaro and the Requiem too.
And I love these two pieces.
And there was also the children's opera.
That existed in Theresienstadt, you may have heard that.
IV: Yes, I have heard about that.
HD: Yes...it was called Brundibär.
And the children who could sing and wanted to sing were a part of it.
I was in it too. I was in the choir.
And since they were never really certain who would remain and who had to go, they had many different children learn the solo parts.
So that if...if one couldn't be there, there would always be someone else who could sing.
So I learned the solo part of the dog.
There were three, three animals there.
A bird -a sparrow- a cat and a dog.
And the dog, that was a part for alto, that is my voice.
So I studied that.
And I also sang it once.
Because the other one ..wasn't there.
I was dog number five.
This time the first one couldn't be there, and the second one too, and the third one and the fourth one.
Don't know whether they had left on a transport or were sick...
Once I sang...this role, the dog.
And otherwise I sang in the choir
And this is how the time in Theresienstadt passed, and...
IV: How was the food situation and everyday life?
HD: Very bad.
IV: Hygiene situation?
HD: Very bad. Very bad.
Because we were there during the time when the most people were there, we were almost 60,000 people on one square kilometer of the city.
So there was no hygiene.
There were good doctors there but they didn't have anything with which they could heal us.
And food...this is how it was with the food.
Every day it had to be reported...to the commanders's office how many people were in the ghetto.
How many had died and how many had left on transports.
And then they were given a certain amount of food.
And the, the SS made it easy for themselves.
They told the Council of Elders:
"This is the food that you have for today."
"We don't care how you distribute it."
"As far as I'm concerned," the commander said, "you can keep all the food for yourself and the others don't get any."
Of course that is not how they did it.
But they did it so that the young people and the children got a bit more than the others.
But even that tiny bit more was very, very little.
And it was very, very bad food.
And very little.
We were hungry the whole time.
But the poorest, they were the old people.
They were really, really unhappy with the...
They were so hungry.
They were always...when the people came to the kitchen to pick up the food, they always stood on the side and asked the people:
"Should you not want the food could you get it for me?"
And then the, the empty large pots were on the side.
And then they scraped it out with a spoon.
Maybe there is still something to eat.
They were really...that was terrible to see.
And there were also many diseases.
Because the hygiene was so terrible and there were so many people living so close together.
And many people died there from hunger and disease.
IV: OK. Why don't you tell us how you left Theresienstadt.
HD: Ok. So in the fall of '44 in October...my father left.
Because the SS knew then that they didn't need anyone anymore in Theresienstadt.
Not even the man...who distributed the bread.
He was sent away and I so yearned to go to him.
Because I hoped I would meet up with him again there.
And 14 days later we also left on a transport.
My father had married Tella, our caretaker, in Theresienstadt.
Her name was Polak too so... she didn't have to change her name.
My first...first mother was also born Polak.
She didn't have to change her name either.
So we went on the transport with Tella.
And I was overjoyed.
And at that time the tracks went all the way to Theresienstadt.
When we arrived in Theresienstadt, the train only went to the town about three kilometers from Theresienstadt, Bohusovice.
We had to walk from there.
But now it was already {clears throat}...
the train went all the way to Theresienstadt.
And they put us into wagons, cattle cars.
There were about 80 people in each wagon.
With the luggage, everyone was allowed to bring something...a suitcase or a rucksack, whatever he had but not more than 50 kilo.
That was a pile of...stuff.
And then the 80 people together.
It was dark because there were no windows in these...wagons.
There was a grid above so that a bit of air came in.
And that is how we traveled.
I am not sure how long.
It was probably around two days.
And we didn't know where we were going.
Because no one told us.
The SS knew that if they said we were going to a death camp there might be a revolt, a revolution or something
They told us we were going to the east.
And to a work camp.
But then, suddenly, after a long journey, the train stopped during the night.
They pulled the doors open screamed.
"Out, out!
Leave your things inside.
Men on one side, women and children on the other side.
Stand in rows."
And we went to a crossing.
I was with Tella.
And with another girl who had been with us in the same room, in Room 28 in Theresienstadt in L410.
We went together and my aunt was there too.
And as we approached the crossing, there was a woman in front of us with a girl.
And she was qustioned by the man...the SS man who stood there.
And it was, we didn't learn this until later, that it was Dr. Mengele, it was his shift.
There were...always different people standing there.
And he asked this woman whether the child was already 14 years old and whether she was healthy.
And when the mother said yes, he sent them both to the right.
Tella heard that.
And we didn't know what left meant and we didn't know what right meant.
But she knew... she just wanted us to stay together.
And so she didn't wait to be asked.
Right away she said that I am already 14 years old and am still healthy.
Both were not..were not true.
I wasn't even 13 years old.
And I had gone through all the epidemics that had been in Theresienstadt.
But I was big and it was night.
One couldn't see very much.
And it probably wasn't that important to him.
He sent us both to the right.
And he asked the aunt how old she is.
And she said 51.
And he sent her to the left.
And then, when we were together with Tella on the right side, she said:
"You know what?"
Maybe that was a...that is too bad that I said that you are older.
Perhaps if you had gone with your aunt, mayber on the left side there is a children's home and it might be a bit..."
But one of the women who was with us who had been in Auschwitz for a long time...
had been in Auschwitz-Birkenau of course,, that was the city where we were.
She heard us and said:
"No, you shouldn't do that.
You should not say that she is 14 years old either.
Say that she is 16 years old.
And she didn't explain why.
Then we went into a building, called...in Birkenau they it was called the sauna.
And in the sauna they took our clothes away.
And they took our hair away.
And then...they forced us into a shower, a cold shower.
And there weren't any towels and it was cold.
It is very cold in Poland in October.
And I was one of the last ones in my group.
And when I came out of the shower I saw:
There were these creatures sitting on the side, I didn't have any idea what that was.
I thought maybe they were monkeys.
Without hair and so strange.
And I became hysterical.
I started to cry terribly.
And I always say, it is a miracle that I didn't go crazy then.
And then one of our caretakers came over to me and said:
"Why are you crying?
It's just us.
We don't have any hair, but we are the same people who you know."
And she calmed me down.
And then they threw us clothes from...
Of course they didn't measure to see what fit.
And they sent us into a block.
With three level bunks, too.
But there were double beds there.
And there were six women on each double bed.
With a...without mattresses.
Just on a board.
And with one blanket for all six.
And when someone wanted to turn over, because it was really very hard, and after a while it was uncomfortable.
One of them wanted to turn to the other side.
Becasue it was pressing.
Then everyone, all six of us had to turn too.
It was like sardines.
But we didn't lie there a lot.
Because there were the roll calls.
Early in the morning, very early, and in the evening we had to stand outside for hours.
And they counted us.
I don't know why.
They probably didn't know why either.
It was just to make life a little more difficult.
All we had to eat...in the early morning we were given a black water.
It was a bit warm, that was at least something.
And in the evening we received soup.
We asked why we were not getting bread.
They said:
"You go to work.
And you are only staying here a week.
That is why you don't get any bread."
And after a week they really did send us to a different camp.
Showered again, gave us different clothes.
And put us on a train, in the cattle cars.. uh wagons.
But they gave us bread.
And then we traveled.
And we arrived in Oederan.
And in Oederan we were....the train stopped...stopped and so.
We marched right into the factory.
And we stayed there for half a year.
Lived and worked and holding roll calls again...we were there all winter.
I celebrated my 13th birthday there.
IV: Was Nella still with you and the others from your group?
HD: Yes. Tella was with me and Helga, who...the other girl, who had come with us to, to Auschwitz, was also with us.
And she...she is my good friend.
She lives in Vienna now.
She had planned to come here but she was u able to at the last minute.
She didn't feel well or something.
Uh...so we we worked there in the factory.
It was a factory where cartridges were made for I don't know what.
That was not...were...about this big.
And they were supposed to be filled and used in...the war.
But they probably weren't able to use...many of them.
Because it was already near the end of the war.
And since the American front was very close and we couild hear the canons...we thought:
"Oh! Just a few more days and then we are free."
But they found enough Hitler Youth and who knows who else in Oederan.
They escorted us back to a train.
This time an open....train, the kind used to transport potatoes and so.
And we were on our way to Mauthausen.
We were even given a piece of bread.
And there was a soldier in each wagon.
They were probably the pensioners or people who had been wounded in the war.
There was a soldier from the Wehrmacht in every car.
Uh to make sure that we didn't run away.
And the, the one with us was a good man.
He really tried hard, when the train stopped the first time and we were so thirsty, we didn't have any water.
And he always tried to find a bit of water.
And to give it to a few of us at least.
Or to find a potato in a field and give it to someone.
He was really a good man.
And we traveled for about two days...to the area near Mauthausen.
But Mauthausen had already been liberated when we arrived nearby.
And they looked for a different camp where they could leave us.
And destroy us because it was clear that they wanted...the Nazis wanted to kill as many Jews as they could before the war ended.
Because they knew that it would not continue after the war.
But they couldn't find any place for us.
So after a week in the train they let us out in, in...Au...Leitmeritz.
That was already in the Czech Republic.
They called it "Tschechei" then.
Not far from Theresienstadt.
And we marched back to Theresienstadt.
And we were happy.
Because that was not far from home.
And we thought we might find a few friends there with whom we had been together in the children's home.
And that really did happen.
There were three girls from our room who stayed in Theresienstadt until the end.
And when they heard that we had arrived, they came to us and...welcomed us.
They...we were in a quarantine because we had not eaten anything the entire week, after we had eaten the bread on the way to Mauthausen...we had not eaten anything.
So the doctors said we have to be in quarantine for two reasons:
First, we might have diseases that are not in Theresienstadt.
Uh...although this was unlikely since all of us from the death marches had come to Theresienstadt
with typhus and with all kinds of things.
But the second reason was that they said that after we hadn't eaten anything for so long we weren not allowed to eat everything.
We had to start eating again very slowly.
So that we didn't... get sick and even die.
Because we were not used to it.
That the stomach was not used to eating.
So we were still in Theresienstadt.
After we were able to leave the quarantine...
IV: Do you remember approximately when that was?
What month, or the date?
HD: Yes, yes, that was at the end of April '45 that we arrived there.
And we...the Red Army liberated us on May 8.
They just passed through on the way to Prague.
But it was liberation.
It was not a ghetto anymore.
It was...the Red Cross came and examined us.
And the healthy ones were given an ID so that they could leave, so that they could go home.
So we went home.
We got on a train, a normal train, and traveled to Prague.
And I was jubilant.
I thought, now we are going to Prague.
And we will be home and everything will continue they way it had been before the war.
But of course it was nothing like that.
When we arrived in Prague, I..I saw: where is my house?
Because they had taken our property away in 1939.
Who knows what is there.
They had taken the villa away from us in '40.
Who knows who is there now.
So we were given, Tella was given by the Jewish community or some municapality of Prague...I don't know who..
A small apartment and a piano, because she was a piano teacher.
So that she could work and earn money...so that we had something to eat.
And I started going to school.
And we wrote everywhere, in newspapers and to the community and everywhere we could.
We said...and asked, who knows or who has seen or who has heard something from our relatives and friends.
And what our address was so that if someone...knew something they could find us.
But no one came.
Not mother, not father, not aunts,, not even cousins.
No one came.
So my entire family, all that I had left was the family that had gone to Palestine.
And two relatives that were not from the first...from the immediate circle of the family but who were cousins from my mother.
They were left.
The cousin, he was a famous conductor.
He conducted before the war and in Theresienstadt.
He immigrated to Canada after the war in 1968 during the Prague Spring.
And conducted throughout the world.
He also went to Israel.
And I saw him the first....after many years I saw him again.
And he gave a concert in Haifa, not far from us.
We had tickets.
And we said after the concert, perhaps he could come to us in the kibbutz and we could talk a bit...hear about his life.
And he can hear about ours.
But he fell ill and so in the middle of the concert we went behind stage to greet him.
And he said he was sorry, he wouldn't be able to come because he did not feel good at all.
He had to conduct the concert to the end and didn't have any strength afterwards.
And after he returned to Canada, after a few months he died.
And the aunt, I had no idea that she was even alive.
This cousin of my mother.
She turned up one day in Israel with her son.
And she was, we kept in very close contact up to her death.
She was almost 100 years old when she died.
She was a wonderful woman, but now she is dead.
And so...we were in Prague with Tella until 1949.
And I...when it was getting dangerous, that the border would close, that one couldn't leave with the communist regime.
And I have to say, I was a communist.
And I believe I still am today, what people made of this great idea is terrible.
That is not communism...was not communism.
So I knew that i would leave.
And with Tella too, we lived together and we loved each other very much.
But we did not get along well in normal life.
Because she wanted, she wanted me to somehow make up for the three lost years.
I was supposed to just study and study and study.
I wanted to catch up too.
But I wanted to catch up -- i wanted to go to the cinema, be with friends.
And she didn't... she didn't want that.
And so... I lied a lot.
I did that but I saw that our life together was not good.
And that if we wanted to keep our love, I had to leave.
And she was a zionist.
And that is why I thought that if i immigrate to Palestine, that she would accept that.
That she would allow this.
And that is what I did.
I went to Israel with my, with a group.
And right to the kibbutz where I still live today.
Ah, well that is... that is another story.
Anyway, I married twice.
I have, had four children and two adopted children.
One son died.
And today we are a large family with our three children and the two adopted sons and their children, no?
16 grandchildren and two, how do you say, the two sons of my grandchildren.
And my cousin, the only one I have left, who went to Palestine before the war.
She always says that was my victory over Hitler, that I have a new family now.
IV: And such a large one
HD: A large one. And a good one. A nice {laughs}
IV: What was that like for you when you went to Israel?
Uh...was what you had experienced there?
HD: Sorry?
IV: When you went to Israel, the things you had experienced before in the camps, was that discussed...did you want to forget it?
HD: No.
IV: Or did you want to talk to other people about it?
HD: No.
IV: How was that?
HD: I...I always wanted to talk about it.
At first in Israel no one wanted to hear it.
There was a time where people who had not gone through it, they felt that we should be heroes.
We wanted, or we should have revolted and...
They didn't understand...that that was not possible.
That only became clear later.
Today I can talk about it.
But in the beginning, that wasn't possible.
The people didn't want to hear it.
But I always spoke about it.
And still today, I am often invited, six or eight times to an organization called Beit Terezín, or House Theresienstadt in Israel in a different kibbutz.
And classes of schoolchildren come there on one day...to hear about these things.
They watch a film and do all sorts of things.
And then at the end someone always comes who had been a child in Theresienstadt and who can talk about what it was like to be a child in Theresienstadt.
And the children sometimes come to me and say:
"You know, it was very interesting to read a book about that and to see a film.
But it is not the same as talking with a person who you can ask questions to about things that are not in any book or film."
IV: That's true.
HD: So I do this.
Because I think that it is our duty.
We are the last with whom they... from whom one can hear first hand what it was like there.
IV: And you also worked in the kibbutz, helped build up the kibbutz?
Perhaps you could speak a bit about the life there.
HD: Well, in the kibbutz..so I arrived in a kibbutz and was there for a few months.
And then my aunt, the one who had arrived before the war and who lived in Tel Aviv, said to me:
"You know what? I am the only relative you have left.
And I have to look after you, that you learn something that you can live from.
Because being a member of a kibbutz is not a...profession."
And I didn't want that but she said:
"Come to us in Tel Aviv, you will learn something."
And she sent me to a...course for looking after children.
That is what I learned.
And after I finished that I went back to the kibbutz.
And I did all sorts of work there.
I always wanted to work with cows.
What I knew from home.
And I like animals very much.
And I was always told:
"That is not work for women:"
But in the end it was work for women.
And I worked for twenty years with cows and I loved it.
And then a different love happened.
SInce my childhood, I had always wanted to go to Africa.
I had...there are those books, "The Jungle Book" by Kipling, and there were also films.
And I was always very impressed by these black people and the colorfulness of Africa.
I always wanted to go to Africa.
I had not really wanted to go to Israel.
I went to Israel because of Tella.
When I was 50 years old, we had the opportunity, my husband and I, to go to Africa and work there.
And it was very interesting - not easy, but very interesting and good years.
And from there we returned to the kibbutz.
And now I am in retirement.
But I still work doing all kinds of things.
I publish a weekly newspaper with a friend.
I published it quickly yesterday so that it would be available as usual in time for the sabbath {laughs}
And on the Day of the Holocaust -- in Israel it is celebrated on a different day then here.
Not in January, but in spring.
And then I organize an evening where i plan a program about it in my...in our kibbutz.
So.
And I have my family, I have children and grandchildren that sometimes need to be fed or taken care of.
IV: So you have enough to do {laughs}.
HD: There is enough to do, yes.
IV: I would like to ask you a few things about Oederan.
HD: Okay.
IV: Because Oederan was a subcamp of Flossenbürg.
HD: Yes, yes, yes.
IV: ...and the details there are always interesting.
Perhaps you could speak a bit about how you were housed there, the living conditions during the time that you were in Oederan.
HD: Good. So first when we came to Oederan from Auschwitz-Birkenau, from the terrible conditions there, ti was like, like...in a way almost like paradise.
Because the factory was heated.
It was winter.
And since it was also a factory, there was central heating in the camp where we lived.
And that was lucky.
And they...the first days we were given a whole bowl of soup.
And we couldn't eat it, after...the time spent in Auschwitz...our stomachs were too small somehow.
But the women who were already there, there were two groups:
There was our group, the Czech group, there was a Polish group and there was a Hungarian group.
And they told us:
"You have to eat it up."
Because if you don't eat it then the people in the kitchen will think that it is too much.
And everyone will receive less."
The work...uh, first the lodgings.
It was again beds...with three levels.
But they were not built together.
They were beds of wood, that were put on top...uh.
IV: Stacked, stacked.
HD: ...stacked together.
And we were two to a bed.
And each of the two who were together were given a good blanket.
And we were given a sack that we could fill with straw or something.
So it was like a mattress.
So all of that was much better than in Auschwitz.
But over the time the food became less and less and less.
So we were hungry there too.
But of course not like in Auschwitz.
And the SS women...in the beginning, there were girls, I once...
I read a book about it, I don't remember from the...I was a small child.
I didn't ask much.
But it was young, young girls, who were told:
"If you are with the SS you will be paid better and have better conditions."
And that's why these girls joined the SS.
Not because they were big Nazis.
And they were really...they were not, not good, but they were also not bad to us.
They did their duty and not much more.
And then the head overseer from Auschwitz was sent to us.
And she was a...a witch.
A terrible person.
We also had two women who were pregnant when they arrived.
And everything was done to conceal that they were pregnant.
Because we knew that, that if they found out it would be bad.
So this one, she saw it and sent them away.
And away they went.
Who knows where to and how.
And we worked in the factory, there were some who worked in external commandos.
I don't know anything about that.
We normally worked for eight hours in the factory.
Ans...when there were alarms, when air raids occurred, they locked us inside the factory, where we were.
The SS went away, into the bunker and left us there.
But the only bombs that fell nearby, didn't land on the factory.
They were about a kilometer away.
But we were still scared.
And the food was bad.
Very bad, I mentioned that.
We were hungry.
Not in the beginning, but very soon it was reduced.
And sometimes...we had to do twelve hour shifts.
And we had two doctors there.
The head doctor was a Russian inmate.
She was a good woman.
And the other was a Jewish Hungarian from the, the Hungarian group.
And she always...bad...was always scared that if she left someone in the sickroom, that the overseer would do something.
Would send her away or something.
And she always tried to send people to work, even when they were sick {sigh}.
What else can I tell you?
We had good relations with the Polish group, good relations.
Sometimes in the evening, after work, when we were back at the place where we lived...sometimes we did something together.
I remember a cultural evening with the..., in the Polish women's room.
There was dancing there.
We had a dancer, two...really two dancers, but I can't remember the other one.
Miss Salus.
But Kamilla Rosenbaum, she had been a...caretaker in, in L 410, in in Theresienstadt.
She came with us and she was a dancer.
And on this evening she said she would dance two dances.
The one was...it was a...worked in a cow stable and milked a cow.
And the second one, she was...I have to say this first.
She was sent to Auschwitz with her son, he was 10 years old.
And with a child that she had adopted in Theresienstadt.
The child was an orphan in the home where she was a caretaker.
And she..adopted her.
She was a year older I believe, maybe 11 years old.
And they tore the children away from her and sent them to the left.
And now when she danced, she said she was going to do a dance, a mother rocking her baby to sleep.
She began but she couldn't continue.
She began to cry and couldn't go on with the dance.
But the evenings after the lights had to be out and everything was dark and we were in bed, we tried either to recite poems
Or...or it was, it was the adults, who began to cook.
What does that mean, to cook?
To talk about what their mothers had cooked and how this and that was made.
Because I think this is very typical of people who are hungry.
One talks about food and thinks that this will somehow fill the stomach.
We had a washroom there.
We had... it was only cold water and water faucets, it was possible to wash a bit.
And one day...they sent a woman to us, a German, non-Jewish woman with those, with the striped pygamas that one...
IV: The prisoner uniforms from the concentration camps.
HD:...prisoner uniforms, yes.
And when she arrived to wash herself and took off the uniform, we saw that her back was sore all over.
She had been whipped because she had slept with some Russian prisoner.
And that was race defilement.
And as a race defiler they had sent her in the end as a punishment to the Jews.
And she was so happy that she was with us.
No one beat her there.
She went with us to Theresienstadt and was liberated with us.
I don't know where she ended up, what happened to her.
But I hope that she had a good life.
She was a good woman.
IV: You spoke about Theresienstadt, that you were also in... that you had a role in the children's opera, as the fifth one.
Do you remember the song that you had to sing or that you sung.
HD: Oh yes.
I...this children's opera exists all over the world.
And whenever it is playing where I am not, I am invited... sometimes I am asked to speak to the children about what it was like in Theresienstadt.
What we sang.
So I do remember and the last song, that is the victory over the Brundibár, that is the evil man who was no less than Hitler to us.
Who was always fought against, but...
In the end Hitler was still alive and we were still in the...ghetto
IV: Could you sing this song today?
HD: Yes, but in Czech.
IV: Could you do it now without accompaniment?
HD: Yes.
IV: I would like that very much.
HD: Ok. Brundibár poražen, jsme ho dostáli, zaviřte na buben, jsme to vyhráli.
Vyhráli proto jen, že jsme se nedáli, že jsme se nedáli,
že jsme si všichni svou písničku veselou do kroku zpívali… and so on {laughs}.
IV: Thank you. Thanks.
Yes, sometimes I think culture also helps to survive.
Or also...the hungry people speaking about food to fill their stomachs, cutlure I believe is the spirit, the will to survive.
HD: Yes...culture...it was very important for ... for both sides.
For the artists too.
To not forget how to be an artist.
And also for the audience that had the opportunity...was given a little time to forget where they were and how bad everything was and not knowing whether and when they were every going to get away.
So I think culture saved us.
And humor too.
One must, one has to know...I think for Jews it is perhaps something that is in their blood.
One makes fun of something that is sometimes quite awful.
But instead of crying, one laughs.
IV: Thank You.
Or is there something else that you would like to tell?
HD: Nothing that I can think of now.
IV: Than I would like to thank you.
I am curious: Did you speak German from the time your birth, was German always spoken in your family?
HD: No, Czech was spoken in my family.
I was even...I had, because my mother was never with us, I always had a nanny.
And I think in 1937 or perhaps...I was given a nanny from the Sudeten so that I could learn German from her.
But I never wanted to speak German.
She learned very good German...uh Czech from me {laughs}.
But I didn't have any... I basically learned German from HItler.
IV: Well if that is the case, you learned it very well.
HD: I have a good...i have somehow...for languages I...
IV: ...a grasp.
HD: ...a grasp, yes. I speak several languages.
IV: And to want it. I think to learn a langauge you have to want it.
HD: Yes. Well I don't speak German very well because I never really studied German.
I speak so...I read German and I can speak.
But it is not the way it should be.
I only speak Lwrit perfectly, and Hebrew and Czech.
The other languages I can speak more or less well, but I speak.
IV: But you also had to learn Lwrit, later.
HD: I never learned it too.
IV: But also from listening.
HD: But I can write in Hebrew and I, I know Hebrew perfectly.
IV: Very good.
Thank you for taking the time to speak with us, still tired from the journey.
And it was very interesting, your story.
But the stories are always sad...
HD: Those of us would very much like...to be a little less interesting, to have had ...a normal childhood.