Hanuš Bor

“At that time, there was a freshly opened exhibition in one of the barracks where they set up a room showing what it looked like when people lived in the ghetto. Mom got in there, I have to say, she was trembling. Then, when she calmed down, she said, 'It's absolutely perfect, that's exactly what it looked like.' There were three or four levels of bunk beds, blankets, suitcases, some personal belongings. Mom said, 'It's absolutely perfect, only one thing is missing. Stench and dirt. When eighty people live together, maintaining any hygiene is a problem. I used to go to work in the office, but the other girls went to fields, for example. And in autumn, as they walked from the field, mud up to their knees, some took off the shoes outside, or knocked the mud off the shoes, but some of them got in and didn't care. ' She said, 'We kept cleaning to keep things tidy.' She also pointed to a bunk bed and said, 'Over there on the second level, where I slept, we spent the last night with my husband before he went to the transport.' This was done commonly. ,Girls used the blankets to create separated space for us to have some privacy. I spent the last night there with my husband. I couldn't turn him down, but I didn't enjoy it. I knew all the girls were listening. Because I'd experienced it many times being on the other side, as a listener. 'It's hard for anyone to imagine.”

"After the [Jewish] stars started to be worn, and everything was getting worse and worse, it was at that time that my mom responded to a lonely hearts ad and met her groom. That made her mother happy. A rich groom! His name was Egon Gut, his family had a factory in Dvůr Králové nad Labem. I don't know how many times they met before the wedding. He was much older. Today it is quite normal, but, actually, then it was as well… It was quite common for older well-off men to marry younger women. My mother was nineteen or twenty, he was forty. He was a young man, from today´s point of view. After all, I got married again when I was forty. They agreed, it was arranged. My mother went to Dvůr Králové nad Labem to get married. But at that time the Jews were no longer allowed to travel anywhere, they had to wear a star, they were not allowed to get married without permission, and so on. What my mother told me about it, I may feel it even more intensely being an artist, but it is quite clear what a strong moment it was for her. She got up at four o'clock in the morning, in tears saying goodbye to her mother and brother, who had not been allowed to go to the wedding. She got on the train and went by train to Dvůr Králové nad Labem. And which way does the train go to Dvůr Králové nad Labem? Via Kolín. There, her father was waiting for her at the bus stop. She said: 'We were standing in the train aisle for ten minutes and we were crying because he had to get off at the next stop in Kolín, he also didn't have the permission. And I arrived to Dvůr Králové, got married, and then we all met again in Terezín. '"

"They came up with such a thing. There was a custom, internationally recognized, which probably still exists today, that a country in whose coastal waters a ship is wrecked is obliged to accept survivors. So they figured out that they would make the ship crash, the ship which was standing there. They smuggled explosives there, perhaps with a load of coal, and wanted to immobilize it. But because no one was aware of the ship´s condition, or the explosive charge was too large ... It happened on the morning of November 25, 1940 around 10 o'clock. There was an explosion on the ship. My dad was still sleeping below decks when it exploded. He told me that he had been woken up not only by the shock, but primarily by a drum falling on his head. There were so many Jews on the ship that there were musicians enough for three bands. He saw something was happening. The ship tilted, he was a young boy, he had no problem to climb up some hot pipes onto the board, he saw the terrible confusion, the hysteria. He saw that the ship was tilted. It was about 15 meters from the deck into the water, as it had been then on the railway bridge. And because he was a great swimmer, so he swam to the shore only in pants. [He had always been a good swimmer] until his death, half a year before his death we bathed together in the Vltava river and even then he dived into it."

During the war, father and his brothers sailed on a boat full of Jewish refugees "Dad always told me that when they were sailing through the Black Sea, the steamer was so overcrowded that – though it was a large ship - it was still leaning to the left or right, and the English-speaking captain roared in a strong voice: 'To the left, to the right! ' to level the ship so that it wouldn´t overturn. They were sailing, it would have been a wonderful journey, they saw Troy, Cyprus from the ship, they watched Piraeus, but they were refugees and didn´t know what would happen to them. When the ship stopped, they weren´t allowed to get out of it. And the ship stopped only to replenish coal and supplies. There was an awful lot of people from all over Europe on the ship, there were Jews speaking various languages, very young children, very old people who, unlike my father's mother, embarked on this adventure for various reasons. In fact, they were the smarter ones, or the luckier ones, if they weren´t unlucky and didn´t get drowned later. Because those who didn't make it, who stayed at home, had a very low chance of survival - and they didn't know yet what they were in for."