Jarmila Halaburtová

"Children are very sensitive and they notice what is happening around them. And there are things stuck somewhere inside me even nowadays. It's related to Jevany again, it happened every now and then that they came to pick my mother to take her to an interrogation. The Gestapo used to drive her to Prague. They wore those iconic leather coats. There was a garden gate and the door bell and where there was a man in a leather coat standing... even today, I feel uncomfortable about it because every time, it meant something bad, if nothing else. So they took my mother away and I was not sure whether she will be back or not, and I stayed with that strange lady who was that much of a stranger because I liked her. We stayed there all alone, the two of us, then, in the abandoned house which was half a kilometre away from the village, and in the woods, a secluded house."

„Jeden naprosto jednoznačný důvod byl ten, že moje matka byla Američanka. V roce 1952 to byla katastrofa. Svým způsobem se to táhlo až k mému synovi. Ten tedy vystudoval, a když šel potom na rok na vojnu, tak šel k pétépákům. Taky kvůli tomu, že měl příbuzenstvo v Americe. A navíc měl tetu v Kanadě, když v roce 1968 utekla. To byla tedy jedna věc. A zadruhé, já neměla dělnický původ. Můj otec byl právník. V roce 1952 to byl tedy štempl absolutně nikam.“ "The one absolutely clear reason was that my mother was an American. In 1952, it was a disaster. In a way, it dragged along and it influenced even my son. He managed to get to the university and graduate and when he went to serve in the army, he was assigned to the Auxiliary Technical Batallion. For the same reason, he had relatives in the U. S. Moreover, he had an aunt in Canada who emigrated there in 1968. That was one thing. The another, I was not of a working class origins. My father was a lawyer. In 1952, it was a road to totally nowhere."

“And then, there were all sorts of Saturday community work. This voluntary community work. It was judged, of course – whether parents take part or whether they don't. It was done for the sake of those children. My son's class teacher, she was a fervent Communist, took an issue with it. I went to have it out with her. I told her that she advice me how do I do that when there's six day workweek, I have a working Saturday at school, working Saturday in the block of flat and moreover, working Saturday at work. Am I supposed to be quartered or what then? Luckily, both my son and my daughter did well in classes so they could stick to their grades but to nothing else because their recommendation letters were negative. So, when, later on, the boy was in the 8th grade and wanted to go to a high school. But that was yet another issue because there were more recommendation letters to be written.”

„Osvětim byla vyhlazovací tábor. To je dnes známá věc, že tam šla dennodenně spousta lidí do plynu. A to skutečně šli, to není nějaká fáma. Můj otec tam šel s transportem, kde bylo 2000 lidí, a vrátil se on sám z těch 2000 lidí. Takže to bylo asi štěstí. Dovedete si tedy představit, jak to tam vypadalo. To v tom Buchenwaldu nebylo. Samozřejmě se o něm taky mluvilo, ale táta sám říkal, že to byl nebetyčný rozdíl. Vůbec se to nedalo srovnávat. V tom Buchenwaldu byli vězni pokládáni za lidi, kdežto v Osvětimi se s nimi nezacházelo ani jako se zvířaty. Lidi byli předměty k použití, a když už nebyli k použití, tak se strčili do plynu.“ "Auschwitz was an extermination camp. Nowadays, it is widely known that every day, many people were gassed. And they really were, it's not an urban legend. My father arrivd with a transport of 2000 persons and out of those two thousands, he was the sole survivor. It was probably sheer luck. So, you can imagine how it looked there. This did not happened in Buchenwald. It was talked about as well but dad himself said that it was an enormous difference. That it was incomparable. In Buchenwald, the prisoners were considered humans whereas in Auschwitz, they were not treated even as animals. People were items to be used and when they were not useful any more, they were just thrown in the gas chamber."

"There was a lecture by Anežka Hodinová-Spurná. I remember that one. She was a nasty crone. She started talking about something and she slandered the First Republic, [President] Beneš, the Americans and what else. I was so shaken that, how I sat at the desk there, I just started crying there. I just collapsed. I remember that one of the teachers, she was such a kind one, dragged me outside, walked with me and reassured me that it will be okay, it will settle down and improve."