I trained as a cook so I would never go hungry
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Edgar Krása was born on 9 February 1924 into the family of a Jewish textile merchant. His father came from Příbram, from where he moved to Vienna at the age of 16. There he worked in a textile factory. He managed to have a successful career, during which he achieved solid financial security. When World War I broke out, he was called to manage a hospital in Karlovy Vary, where he later settled with his family. In the following years, however, his financial situation deteriorated and he became an ordinary textile merchant, which was for him very difficult to cope with. The household in which Edgar grew up was run primarily by his strongly religious mother, with whom the boy spent most of his time. She taught her only son strict discipline. In the early 1930s, due to the rapidly deteriorating social status of the Jews, the entire family moved to Prague. There Edgar trained as a cook in the restaurant U Rozvařilů. He then worked briefly in hotels and canteens and in the autumn of 1941, he left for the Terezín ghetto as part of the first transport. He did so because his friend told him that he could secure a better position in the future for his parents, who immediately afterwards ended up in Terezín as well. Edgar was to take care of starting and then running the catering facilities in the ghetto. As a cook, he had access to food supplies, which made his internment a little more bearable compared to the regular ghetto inhabitants. In Terezín he met the conductor Raphael Schächter, under whose direction he sang several operas, including Giuseppe Verdi’s Requiem. It was the Requiem that was then presented in June to high-ranking members of the SS and to a delegation from the International Committee of the Red Cross. In the autumn of 1944, Edgar Krása did not escape deportation to the Auschwitz extermination camp. His next steps led to the camp at Gleiwitz, where he worked on repairing railway cars. At the beginning of 1945, he managed to escape the death march and return to Prague. He subsequently emigrated to Israel. In the 1960s he went to the USA, where he owned a restaurant. Edgar Krása died in 2017. RECORDING SOURCE: https://www.ushmm.org/collections/the-museums-collections/about https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn514104