Věra Jílková

“To begin with in Terezín there was the option, if a person wanted to work, they could apply for it. So I went straight away to apply to what was called the Kinderfürsorge, that means they cared for children. I was allocated to the children’s home immediately. We lived in the Hamburg Barracks, and this small, but very good children’s home was in the ground floor of these barracks. It was for about a hundred girls from ten to twelve thirteen years old. We had to care for those from morning till evening. In Terezín it was still possible to teach the children. I did all that, albeit secretly, with the Jewish children who were not allowed to go to school any more, so I applied for that, which was right and good. I was there in the children’s home from morning till evening, we even had night duties, we had to be there for them day and night, even when there was some small illness, we had to deal with that too. There were six of us carers, mostly they were all great women. Having the opportunity, I must mention the name of Doctor Truda Sekaninová, who I became close friends with and whom I loved dearly.”

“Fredy Hirsch thought he would save the children. That didn’t work out. And when he saw that he wouldn’t be successful, he got very nervous. So he requested, I think, it’s said, an hour to consider things, because all the adults expected that... The war was still far from end... He tried to form some group of people who would protest somehow, who would defend themselves even, because when the last transport was there, in the camp, we expected that we would also be told that we would go somewhere and that we too would die in the end. Everyone thought that the person who’d lead some kind of resistance would be Fredy Hirsch. And when he saw that he wasn’t having any success, because he could see that already, he asked for an hour to consider things. Whether he’d take it, or whether he wouldn’t. When he saw it wasn’t going to work, then what he did - he ate the pills. So he didn’t save the children, all the children died. Unless something extraordinary happened, all the children died.”