Marta Kottová

“I was beaten many times, which was really rough, because I had told them I was a Czech, instead of reporting as a Jew. So they tried to beat this out of me. And once, but only once, I cleaned shoes for SS women. Only once! Because the SS woman explained to me, this was vaseline for the boots, for the army boots they wore. And she had only one pair of court shoes, for which she used a special shoe polish. She was explaining this to me, so that I would not confuse it, asking me if I understood German, if I could understand her. Of course I nodded my head, and of course I put the vaseline on her court shoes, ruining them. I knew I would get a beating, but what mattered was that the SS woman was now without her court shoes. I probably would not do it today, I would not get myself beaten for such trifles. But then, I was fifteen, sixteen. One has a different character at that age.”

“Then the transports for Terezín began. In November 1941, end of November, there was the first transport for Terezín, 400 men. It was called AK1 (Arbeitskolone eins). The second transport carried 1000 men, only men, it was on December 1st. This was AK2, and the men actually went there to prepare the barracks for us. That’s why these were men-only transports. My brother was in this AK2 transport. As soon as you received the call for transport, you lost your name and from then on you were only a number. My brother had number 303 – AK 303. Because most of these transports were up to one thousand people. Terezín was chosen because it was a town surrounded by walls, there were many barracks, meaning plenty of space they could cram people in. 6000 people had lived in Terezín before, and so is its present-day population. But when Czechs had to leave Terezín and Terezín was turned into a ghetto – ´the town which Hitler donated to the Jews,´ there were up to 60,000 of us instead of 6000. People lived everywhere. In attics, in basements, simply everywhere. Bunks were everywhere and we stayed there as we could. People lived wherever it was possible. If you can call it life, that is. But today I know that Terezín was indeed a beautiful place when compared to what awaited us. But, thank God, we had no clue about it yet.”

“And the three of us, those two sisters Dáša and Irena Roubíček, whose mother had lived in the Žižkov neighbourhood, set out to Žižkov. We came to their house. There were some people sitting there. Dáša asked them whether they knew who they were. At first they said they did not know. Then, when they saw our shaved heads, they said: ´Aren’t you the Roubíček girls?´ And Dáša replied: ´We are.´ They lived on the ground floor. Before she could say a word, somebody was already banging at the window, and there was a cry: ´My children have come back!´ Meanwhile, some of these people were saying that there was some man living there but that he was not their father. That Mrs. Roubíčková had been hiding this man since…We did not know since when. When I saw Dáša and Irena, embracing their mother in the window, I naturally envied them, I cried. But then I realized they said: ´Some man.´ So I went inside the house and rang the bell. And this was something amazing, because the one who opened the door for me was my brother. So at least I had my brother. We already knew our parents were not alive. But the next day I had to go get a doctor and take my brother to the Bulovka hospital, because he suffered from typhus. So I was alone again. Since I was sixteen, under our law I was not allowed to submit any petitions or to request a flat. I was a child. It was a beautiful and warm May, so I slept outside, I often slept on a bench in a park. Sometimes, people invited me to sleep over in their homes. Then somebody advised me to submit a petition in my brother’s name, who was six years older, and so I made a request for a flat. At that time, there was really an abundance of flats in Prague. But I asked for a stupid small flat in Žižkov. The reason for it was that I was going to that house to some people, who let me sleep there from time to time. And from the staircase I could see the pantry of this flat, and there was plum compote. And I wanted it so much, because I haven’t eaten plum compote for years. That is why I asked for this small stupid flat. When I then told it to my brother, he said: ´It doesn’t matter, when I get well, we will take a bigger flat.´ Which did not happen, because when he returned from the hospital, there were no flats available anymore, so me and my brother stayed together in this tiny flat – a room and a kitchen, in Žižkov, two really small rooms. We even continued to live there after my brother married, and after I married, so there were four people living there. Then my brother got an offer from somebody to sublease a flat somewhere else, so he did, because, as he said, I was a girl and mother had been saving for my dowry. Thus my brother let me have this flat.”

“When children in schools today ask me about hunger or about what we were eating, I always ask ´Where?´ For there was a huge difference. In Terezín we were getting three quarters of a loaf of bread for three days. There is even a song about it: ´For three days you get three quarters of bread, it lasts for a day, or for two if you need.´ This means 250 grams of bread per day. Plus we were receiving lunch everyday. Partly rotten potatoes, in skins, but it did not matter, what mattered was that there were some. Two, three potatoes. A little bit of soup, thickened with something. Today, when my granddaughter says that she is cooking millet, I can smell the stinking, mouldy millet which they used for soup there. But my mom used to say that millet smelled good. I cannot imagine that. But it was so. And in the evening, there was this quarter-loaf of bread, per day. And sometimes, packages were allowed. If somebody received a package, of course he did not keep it, but he always shared it with his roommates. This was about food in Terezín. In Auschwitz I have never seen a piece of bread, never. And in Mährensdorf, this was my last camp, where I worked very hard for 14 hours a day in a factory, we were getting 70 grams of bread per 24 hours. That’s why I think there was an enormous difference, and I always say to these children. ´When you get home, just try to weight 70 grams of bread, to see how much it is.´ So this was Terezín, we laughed about it, it was nicknamed ´Terezín spa resort,´ and ´the town which Hitler donated to the Jews.´ There was propaganda about it. There is another song about it. And we thought we were doing really badly. Well, it was not good. But compared to other camps it was really like a spa resort.”