„We didn’t say goodbye! Dear god loved me I guess or I don’t know what. I know there was my Prague cousin with us and there was holidays or some free time and she wanted to see the Beskydy Mountains. So we, my brother and cousin, Eva Tůnečková, and I, we came here to Frenštát and went to the mountains, up to Radhošť. There we looked around and came back and my father was holding his head in his hands simply told us what happened. And actually my friend told me, who lived next to us. How my father was normally on the shaft, at Ludvík. Well and there no one told him. So he just got to learn what happened, that a car came with several Gestapo men, they stopped in front of our house, and took mummy. I remember he was still in a bedroom, how she changed her dress, and put on warm clothes and I know the other ones remained lying there... they had some kind of a decoration on them and so she cut them off... I don’t know, I don’t know why. And it was lying there, I´ve seen it, and dad would not have think of it. So it was. I learnt all that when he was getting off the shaft. Either he was trying to stop them, or didn’t know what was happening. Someone told him that the gestapo men stopped at our gate and they took mummy with them.“
„Well and my father was worried about me, so he got me transported, so that there was no trace and he didn’t come with me, but my uncle from Kunčice. I do remember that. He to me to my aunt´s to Prague by train, that´s the one on the photo, kneeling down. They had no children so they were quite glad to take care of me. I stayed some time, well for a while there. And because the bombing of Prague began, so her husband, uncle, took me to Slaný again, which is a small middle Czech town and I stayed there until the end of war. I experienced a lot of fears there. I lived with a mother of my aunts in a house, where I was scared in fact, because I found a book where a white lady would appear from time to time and I could get mad by fear. But I had to cope with it somehow. Often I stayed with my aunt Helena, who had a small daughter Helenka, she lived nearby, so they all care about me. They would not let me go to school so no one knew about it, where I was from and why and what my origin was and if I was not Jewish. So that is how I survives until the end of war but they were all really nice to me.“
„Brother could not do it, of course when my father was not a communist... they wanted to devastate our family, so my brother was studying the High veterinary school (...) in Brno. But at the time (...) he was totally appalled of the fact, that he was five years older than me, he was getting more gist of it all, and didn’t want to live here anymore, and he guessed how it is going to end up, so he crossed the borders illegally. (...) And he went to Munich and from there he learnt how to escape (...) he wanted to get the Australia. So he was disgusted from all of it here and didn’t wish to live here anymore and wanted to go as far as possible so he could not return anymore, because people from here would go Germany or a bit further and he wanted to go futher (...) in Prague we met and said good-bye and he went over there to Australia and really he never came back.“
Eva Doleželová, née Tejčková, was born in 1932 in Ostrava. During her early childhood she lived in Karviná, where her father worked in the Honegger mine. In 1938 the family was forced to move to Ostrava-Radvanice, where they lived happily until 1943. The hardest and most painful memories relate to the witness´ mother, who came from a Jewish family. In 1943 Zdena Tejčková was, based on denunciation, imprisoned in Ostrava prison. Despite her father´s attempts to save his wife, she was sent to Auschwitz in November of the same year. A letter informing of her death was delivered to the family in February 1944. Her death was said to have been caused by weakness of the heart. Later that year, Eva’s brother was sent to a labour camp in Poland. After losing his son, Eva’s father hid her with relatives until the end of war. The brother, who was able to return to Poland after war, eventually immigrated to Australia in 1948. Currently, Eva she lives with her husband in Ostrava.
