Alžběta Dostálová

"I don’t know whether those were ophanages or not. Not at all. I know there were lots of children, and it was not so bad there. But then, when they took us to Theresienstadt: hunger, cold, and memories. We always wanted to go back home.“ Interviewer: "Do you remeber how you were seperated from your mother?“ I do. First, we thought we were going on holiday. But why were there all five of us? We were sitting on the train next to each other. I was holding Pavel in my arms because he couldn’t walk properly. We were in fact going to Theresienstadt. After the war we searched for it. Mr. Kárný wrote to us that he couldn’t remember exactly, but that we had been at the place for Jewish children. Everybody had to go because even Eva, who is now the head of the Jewish community in Ostrava, was going. So I knew some of the people going. You know, we spoke to each other as children.“

"There were about thirty of us in that room. There were bunk beds - three above each other. Here there were the windows and here the beds. We spoke German. There were Polish kids, Slovaks, Hungarian children; all of us together and we couldn't understand each other, some children, not at all. The buildings in Theresienstadt had special names. The little children, toddlers, until the age of one. Our house was for six-year-olds to ten-year-olds. They marked it 410 to 418. Each of the buildings had its own number and according to this number, they knew how old the children were."

"There was the end: the nursemaids had not given us food for two days. We weren’t told by anybody about anything. Then my sister had a great idea: ´Let's leave for Loštice.´ We didn’t even know where we were! Can you imagine such small children walking from Theresienstadt to Loštice? So we escaped. There was a large gate and also a small door which wasn’t locked so we fled. They didn't look for us for two days. Nobody had given us any food. We were hungry and there was nothing to eat. Everybody was crying and swearing. So we left the chaos. We got to the road and went through the park. There were armoured vehicle, tanks and soldiers. We were just standing there and the soldiers were throwing cans and other things to people. We didn‘t pick up the cans, we only picked up biscuits and sweets – that was what we ate for the whole day. But it was a kind of help for us. But then it started to get dark and where should we go? We didn’t want to return, so we went to sleep on one of the benches. We held each other's hand and slept on one of the benches. Imagine, it was May, two small children but nobody took notice of us. Everybody was just looking after themselves. One day, two days and we were very sad. We cried: where we shall go, what will happen to us, who do we belong to? And suddenly a miracle – I still cannot imagine how it was possible; our father had returned from Germany and he had been looking for us and found out we weren’t in any of the buildings. Before he returned they had taken one of our brothers to Olešnice, and Pavel to Česká Kamenice. Pavel, the youngest one, had been adopted. Our father hadn't been able to find us because our names hadn’t been recorded by the Red Cross. When the Red Cross, Swiss and Swedish, arrived, we had already gone. So they claimed we were dead. Nobody knew where we were. And he found us there! After two or three days – crying and dirty, he embraced us and went to find a cart to get away in."

„They were some young boys from Žadlovice. They had white stockings. They arrived in a van and put us in the back, five children and took us away. Mother asked where they were taking us, and they answered: ´We will look after them very well.´ And right – how well they looked after us. The organizer of this explained to us how well they would look after us. They were Czech but had collaborated with the Germans. Young boys. I, a small girl, saw young boys and so I was smiling nicely at them.“

"My father was in Hagibor but he ended up in Theresienstadt. But he was not in Terezin. He was tall and slim and when a transport arrived at Theresienstadt he and other men had to take corpses to the crematorium. So he was in charge of the dead ones when the transports arrived. He said that in each of the transports there were several dead people."