Jiří Diamant

“I know Fredy Hirsch very well. He was my instructor in Brno, I knew him there already. Last time I met him in Birkenau where he was our trainer in the children section. We trained The Snowwhite and the Seven Dwarfs and such. He was a very brave, nice and children-caring man.”

“We arranged with our mother-in-law, who came to help us with packing in our flat, that if we failed to pass through then we would stay in South Bohemia and would let her know. If we went through we would send her a message from Vienna. We came to the border with two small children. Then some customs officers, who collaborated, came. ‘Where are you going?’ - ‘To Yugoslavia.’ - ‘Well, you are well packed to Yugoslavia.’ My wife: ‘Mum gave us winter coats over the pieces of suitcase and the children were sat on four sleeping bags.’ The customs officer told us: ‘You see, don't be cross but I have to inspect you, the Russian major is watching me.’ They knew what was going on and so did we. All of a sudden the officer left and one of the children cried out. ‘Oooh, we're on the border, where is my doll?’ We deluded the children that we were going to see our ill auntie in Uherský Brod. My wife: ‘We wouldn't go through. Míša's school teacher was a Communist Party member. Just imagine she would be telling her something like that. We said then we were going at auntie's. The customs officer came back and wished us a safe journey. We went under the bars. There was a long queue of cars on the other side. They were on their way back to Bohemia and all worried they asked what it looked like in Prague.”

“One of my reasons (for emigration) was that I didn't want to repeat the mistake of my father. By his vacillation he caused the ruination of our family. I could not do that. I had to leave for the sake of my children. It also played its role. My wife got necessary passports. We went by car. We didn't buy our car for my clinic salary but because I went to study to the US for a year in 1966/67.”

“It's also important to say that before our departure to the concentration camp my father was informed about the chance to send children to England. The transports ended up at the man (Nicolas Winton), who saved a few hundreds of children. My younger brother Tomáš and I had everything ready. Our passports were sent off and so were the ‘lifts’ to England that ended up in Belgium then. In the last-minute my father canceled the journey because he didn't want to split the family into two – children and parents. Of course it became fatal for us.”

“As boys we used to secretly climb over the fence and breaking the ban we went to the workers in crematory. I found a Polish Jew there whose surname happened to be Diamant as well. He quite took fancy of me and he told me his life history, by the way including sending his wife and children to the gas. The people were so traumatized that they spent whole days drunk. They could keep everything, gold, jewelery, watches. They were giving it that way and we were given bread. They didn't enjoy their lives as they know they would be killed in a few months. Dead marching I saw a prisoner who wanted to cut off somebody else's rucksack. When he spotted that and started shouting, it was in the evening before sleeping over, he stabbed a dagger into his back. You saw such things in your puberty. Our meeting death was almost immediate.”

“I was chosen to go to the basic camp in Auschwitz in December. I worked there with horses and I stayed there till January 23rd, 1945. We always left early in the morning, after five, at half past six. I actually almost never saw the camp. We went through snow till we got to the places with the stables and horses. We returned at dark. We went out on January 23rd and we got a command at midday that we would not come back to our camp but would go for a death march instead. They went also with the animals to nearby Loslau (?), we heard cannon shooting at the background. Eventually the SS men decided they would put us in coal wagons. We went through Germany, first to Gross-Rosen. There was a famous concentration camp which everybody was scared of. Luckily there were no more capacities so we followed to Buchenwald.”

“When we got to the University we were shocked. There were Lenin, Stalin, Mao Ce-tung, Marx, Engels everywhere, even in the lifts. All five apostles. And sickles and hammers. So we said to ourselves, o my God, where we fled to. First of all, we thought we would have to pack our things and carry on.”