"They asked us basic things. We were shaved of course and they also shaved the beard of my grandfather which seemed rather ridiculous to us because we had known him for all of our lives with his beard, and suddenly he [was] without it. They placed all of us in one room. I don't remember the number anymore – I'd have to look it up again – but I know that it was next to the kitchen. My grandfather was given the task to peel potatoes in the kitchen."
"[There was a guy] who couldn't take a shovel in his hand. He was consequently bullied and beaten up by everybody. He was being harassed all the time. Finally, he got mentally ill from it and went to Auschwitz, where he ran into the wires. He wasn't able to mentally stand it anymore. We learned that he jumped into the wires. Things like that would happen there. The fact is that when you're eighteen years old, it's much easier to suffer because one can still make fun of it. You can still laugh about it with your fellows. But when I think how bad it must have been for my dad who had two sons, his father and his wife in Ravensbrück. It must have been a huge burden for him then."
"It was a time when we were single-mindedly occupied by the thought if one was going to survive it or not. As a young man, they put me in the infirmary on the third floor. I couldn't eat, was dizzy and was suffering from diarrhea or something else constantly. I had fever, with temperatures often rising above forty degrees Celsius, for over a month. So the course of the illness as I had experienced it was quite consistent with what we were later taught at medical school. It was confirmed ex post [laughing]."
„Tam byla marodka veliká. Tam byl můj děda, na té marodce. Pan doktor Bláha ho kryl tak, že ho ukrýval, když byly prohlídky a posílali dlouhodobě práce neschopné do toho zámku, kde je zahubili, kde je otrávili a nebo jinak poškodili a nebo rovnou zabili. Tak tam ta solidarita někdy přetrvávala… já vím, že jednou si vzal doktor Bláha, který dělal patologii, mého dědu do rakve. Po tu dobu, co byla ta prohlídka, aby určili, kdo půjde do toho zámku. A oni nechtěli, aby se tam děda dostal. Jeden čas byl nejstarší vězeň v Dachau. Bylo mu 81 let, když ho sebrali.“
"I was fortunate not to be a lawyer, an engineer, or something of the sort. They all went to work in the mines. I was assigned to that PTP on New Year's Eve in 1952. The personnel there also included a number of real freaks from the government troops. They were frustrated so they bullied the others and thereby raised their self-confidence."
"That's one thing that got stuck in my mind. After the assassination of Heydrich, Kobylisy became an execution site for those involved in the affair. Heydrich was the reason for all that was committed. I saw that my dad was sweating. It was summer, so it was well visible. He really thought that we were being taken to Kobylisy to be executed. I wasn't that much aware of all the things that were happening at the time. You know, being a youngster, I just didn't care too much for all the laws, regulations or the execution announcements made by the Germans. But my dad knew just too well what was going on in the country. His relief when we had passed Kobylisy was beyond description."
Vladimír Feierabend MD., was born on 7 July, 1924, in Prague into the family of Karel Feierabend, the brother of the national economy expert and exiled minister of finance Ladislav Karel Feierabend. Vladimír Feierabend graduated from a teachers’ college in Prague and began to study at a high school. However, his studies were interrupted by the arrest of his entire family on 1 July, 1942. The only member of his family that wasn’t arrested was his mother, who wasn’t home at the time of the arrest, but she was arrested three days later. The Feierabend family was imprisoned in the so-called “small fortress” of the Theresienstadt ghetto. Then, the male members of the family, including Vladimír Feierabend, were taken to the Dachau concentration camp, while the female members were transported to the concentration camp Ravensbrück. In Dachau, Vladimír Feierabend was imprisoned with his grandfather, father and brother until the camp was liberated by the U.S. Army on 29 April, 1945. After his arrival in Prague, Vladimír Feierabend returned to the high school and quickly completed it, whereupon he began to study medicine. After his university graduation in 1951, he was placed in Bohumín and then in Paskov. However, as soon as in 1952, he was drafted for military service and by the end of 1953 was transferred to the so-called auxiliary technical battalions (pomocné technické prapory – PTP) employed in the Zápotocký and the Nosek mines in the region of Kladno. However, this was not the end of all the hardships the Feierabend family had to endure. In 1952, they were forcibly banished from Prague to Čimelice and then to Dolní Poustevna near Rumburk. Vladimír Feierabend continued to serve in the mines even after the dissolution of the PTP in 1954, but then he found a job in the health service in Prague and at the same time worked part-time at the local medical school. He retired in 1981 but continued to work beyond his retirement age. Vladimír Feierabend died on September 13, 2020.
