Vlasta Janoušková

“My parents were arrested in August 1943; someone probably reported them. I escaped because it was in August, it was summer, and I was on holiday away from Prague, I wasn’t home. So when the Gestapo came, originally, just to arrest Mum, and because the flat was very pretty, Mum told me that when she came back from the concentration camp in 1945. That she was there when they went through the flat, and the y really liked it a lot; they had originally came to arrest only Mum. But when they had checked out the flat, they went back, and Mum heard them talking, and they said ‘beide’, which meant ‘both’. So this pretty flat was Dad’s misfortune, because they arrested him just because they liked the flat and wanted it for themselves.”

“And in the meantime I always played on the piano, and the officers from the [Soviet] HQ heard it and would come by our place to listen to me play. And one time, that was about a fortnight after the revolution, I was playing on the piano again, and moment later my auntie came into the room and said: ‘Come and see who’s here!’ And I stopped playing, I went to the door – and it was Mum. My mother, who had gone on a death march from the concentration camp in Auschwitz. I’ll never forget that. Whenever I recount that moment, I have shivers all up my spine. When you suddenly see someone whom you’ve almost given up on, and he’s standing there before you, that dear person that you love so much, it’s an unforgettable experience.”