Pavel Hoffmann

„My first memory was how we were standing in the rain, in inclement weather, in darkness and for very long and that I was terribly scared. At that time, I was alone. Later on, I learned what it was. It was a muster. Someone ran away from Terezín and they had all those fifty thousand people stand for 24 or 30 hours in one of those valleys. People thought they would be shot. When you think of it, I was four or five so that fear got stuck in my mind.”

„Testimony of one of the inhabitants whom I visited only when I was twenty. The Gestapo arrived, they checked her whole office. I don’t know why but in any case, they took the camera away, allegedly dad told them to give it back. Maybe he should not have done that. In any case, they took him away and within three days, my mother got a letter in German that said that according to the martial law, he had been shot. He was the first dead in our family. Three months later, my grandma and grandpa who lived in prague were deported. I need to note that my grandfather had been treating German patiens because in Mimoň, there were about 90 percent of German inhabitants and only ten percent of Czechs. And he was the so-called town physician. He was deported to Terezín, then two days later, to Auschwitz, and then the whole transport went practically right away to the gas chamber. So now three of my family members were dead by then.”