"About that school, I won't forget it in my life, and the teacher, well, I won't forget it either, so to speak, that one day she just came and in front of the whole class... We were, I think, three girls who were Jewish there, yeah, and I don't think the other one was there then because she was sick or something, they just were… And she said in front of the whole class that this time we just have to leave because we're Jewish and we can't attend school with them. That's how she told me that in front of the whole class. I will never forget it to her in my life, to the teacher. And I thought I was going crazy. I thought I was going crazy back then. I was completely, I cried like crazy. I ran home, I fell down twice. I thought the world had gone wrong when she told me that in front of the whole class, I hated her my whole life.”
"I kept asking where we were because we didn't know. Well, so we just ... we were somewhere for three nights too ... I remember, I thought, 'Well, guys, I'm afraid to knock on someone´s door like that and there will be kids or like that and God knows what disease we have and we can spread it around.' So, I always said to them: 'We are from Terezín and we would ...' They used to have such houses and God knows what they had upstairs. So, I said, 'We'll be upstairs in the hay, but leave us over here, somehow, so we can sleep.' '' Yeah, yeah, yeah.' And they were bringing some things upstairs to us and they were very happy that we didn't go into their apartment. And I said, "No, we can't do that to those people because I didn't know what disease I could have."
"Then they started saying that people have to walk to Terezín one next to each other. Which was a disaster, especially for the old ones, it was terrible. Well, and then, after all, I had to go too. My mother did what she could, and she was very good at all sorts of things, that she wanted to get therere with someone for example, and I don't know what else, but I had to go to Terezín, and they, the old people, they very quickly. ... they couldn't stand it and they were just ... We didn't even know, actually we still don't know exactly where they are buried."
Eva Herrmannová was born on July 22, 1929 in Vienna, but she grew up in Opava, where her father ran the Herrmann & Vogel wholesale store. After signing the Munich Agreement, the Herrmanns had to run away from the border area because they had Jewish origin. They settled in Prostějov. In 1943, Eva was called to the Terezín ghetto, where she was until the end of the war. In 1945, she escaped from the ghetto and walked home. After the war, she graduated from a secondary grammar school in Opava and went to Prague to study musicology. She worked at the Theater Institute and since 1991 has led the opera of the National Theater. Eva Herrmann died in February 2017.
