Pavla Glazarová-Fröhlich

“Roubicek comes to the rabbi and says: ‘Rabbi, I cannot stand it anymore. Two-room apartment, I live there with my wife, two kids and now my mother-in-law has moved in.’ Rabbi says: ‘You know what, buy three pigeons and move them in your apartment.’ Okay. So Roubicek does this, a week later he is back to see the rabbi and says: ‘Look, it’s unbearable. Two-room apartment, family, two kids, mother-in-law, three pigeons shitting all over the place.’ Rabbi says: ‘Roubicek, buy also two goats.’ Roubicek buys the goats, puts them in the apartment. One-week later Roubicek returns and says: ‘Rabbi, it’s insufferable, family, two kids, mother-in-law, three pigeons shitting everywhere, goats stink, I can’t open the windows because of the pigeons. Insufferable!’ Rabbi says: ‘Roubicek, go home, let the pigeons out, put the goats away.’ Roubicek comes back and says: ‘Rabbi, my apartment has never been bigger!’”

“My brother and I were driving our dad to Prague on the 19th, he had a panic attack on the way and back then I didn’t understand what was going on. We arrived in Prague and brought him to the Jewish retirement house in Janovský street, I cleaned and I said to myself that I’d put everything that reminded him of mum on the side. I bought all the things he liked. The next day we woke up early in the morning, he was still in his nightclothes, in a dressing gown, with slippers on. I told him we were just going to drop-in to visit some friends in Pradubice and that we would be back early in the afternoon. Well and we left. When we arrived there, Libuška took me in her arms and said: ‘Dad jumped out of a window.’ So, we drove back. They didn’t show him to us at all, I don’t know what they had done with his wedding ring, it just disappeared. I later learned what had happened from Irka, his cousin. Dad, which was completely out of his character – he never ever left the door untidy – he left the ground floor where his rooms were in the dressing gown and slippers, went to the elevator and rode to the fifth floor to see Irka, for breakfast, he said. She was just mopping the bathroom floor and told him, Richard, Pavla had bought you everything, you have it all downstairs, I’ll just finish up mopping this little piece here and will come down to join you for breakfast. Dad said OK, left her apartment and instead of going to the elevator, he walked half-a-floor up and jumped out of a window. And back then, I didn’t understand him.”

“(During the lecture, father) said: ‘A transport came. And we had to walk the older people, who couldn’t walk that fast anymore, to get them shot. And when I was walking with one old lady, I was wondering what I’d do if they brought my grandmother here.’ I still don’t understand how could my father had processed all that he had lived through there, because he was an amazing father.”