Whatever you say about the holocaust, it will never fully express what it was
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Chana Malka was born as Hana on February 21, 1923, in Strakonice to the family of Karel and Irma Fialovi. She lost her younger sister Rena when she was ten a due to her death the marriage of her parents fell apart. She was raised by her mother in the house of her grandparents and her aunt. The Jewish origin of the family on her mother’s part was the cause of persecution after 1939 for all members of the family. Her grandmother died while still in Strakonice when she fell ill with pneumonia and they were not allowed to call for a doctor until it was too late. Her grandfather suffered a stroke and died after two months in Theresienstadt. Her uncle was shot dead by the Nazis in the Mauthausen concentration camp and her mother Hana died in a gas chamber in Auschwitz. Hana was in Theresienstadt, Auschwitz and Oederan, a concentration camp close to the Czechoslovakian border. When the war ended, she finished her secondary school and applied for study at the university in Prague. Half a year later, however, she decided to move to Palestine, where she stayed with her uncle and found a job. Soon she married Meir Malka and had two children with him. Meir was in the military service at the time, Hana avoided military service. The Arab-Israeli wars did not impact the family personally, but the present threat meant a life in permanent fear. Since 1960s Hana has returned to Czechoslovakia with her family, visited the new family of her father, but never regretted moving to Palestine. She has been practicing Feldenkrais’s method and has been lecturing to young people in Germany.
