Helena Glancová

“The reek of mouldy cubes of pea soup, I remember that as a smell, one I’ll never forget. Whenever I smell that kind of mustiness somewhere, I immediately think of Terezín. Rotten potatoes and stale cubes of pea soup, that is the smell of Terezín to me.”

“I took my ten-year-old son to Olšany [Cemetary - trans.] for All Souls Day, and we all knew which grave was the one that referred to Palach, although the name there was Marie Jedličková. Most people knew where it was, and so there were always dozens of candles burning there. It was a paradox in that there was Marie Jedličková there. I stopped there for a bit with my ten-year-old Tomáš, and he did what children do, that he lit the candles that had gone out from the other ones that were still burning. Perhaps he didn’t even really know where we were standing. A spook [undercover agent - trans.] came up and said: ‘Come here, come here...’ And he started dragging him off somewhere. I said: ‘What do you want with him?’ - ‘Is he yours?’ I said yes, that he was my son. ‘Show me your ID.’ There was a population census going on at the time. I told him I had just been filling out the census forms and had left my ID card on the table. ‘Well, then come with me.’ They took us to the closest station, wrote down our statement, and yet all that had happened was that he had been lighting candles that had gone out, more from a kind of childish... so they would burn nicely, seeing that they still had some wick left. I thought, goodness gracious, they won’t expel him from primary school for that, will they?”