Dana Mihailovici, roz. Horová

“My mother came from a religious family. They kept the Jewish belief very strongly when she was small. She was born in Michalovce, Slovakia, grew up in Žilina, and then married in Prague. She comes from the Landesmann family which went to Slovakia from Moravia at the time of the Familianten Law. (…) During the Second World War she fled from Slovakia to Hungary, but she was captured there. She was transported from Hungary to Auschwitz. Then from Auschwitz to a labour camp in Bernartice. Jewishness was always remembered in our home. My father was remembering his experiences as a soldier. My mother was talking about the war, too – not so much about Auschwitz, but she often talked about how she was crossing the border from Slovakia to Hungary and about the labour camp. They also kept telling me: ‘The reason why you are the only child is that your mother was not healthy enough. She barely gave birth to you, she spent her pregnancy in bed.’ I was never ashamed to be Jewish, I always proudly wore the David star around Prague. I never felt antisemitism there. In Bohemia, that is. In Slovakia it was a little bit different, it was not the same atmosphere as in Prague. In Slovakia they kept telling me I was a Czech, in the Czech lands then that I was a Slovak – my mother had relatives in Slovakia. In my mind I always thought I was neither Czech nor Slovak, I was Jewish. (...) I took Czechoslovakia as my home, I thought I would stay forever, I never considered leaving the country. But everything changed on the day of the Russian occupation.”

“My name is Dana Michailovicz, born Daniela Horová. Everyone called me Dana Horová though – so am I known in the Jewish Community in Prague. My father comes from an old Jewish family, originally from Štěchovice and from Braškov, but from 1848 all his ancestors lived in Prague. He did not come from a religious family but he had Bar-Mitzva. He was very active in sports. He won a prize in the Maccabiade, he represented Czechoslovakia in table tennis. He was a foreign soldier, too. He came to Palestine, he was on the ship Patria which sank, and fought in a foreign army in Tobruk. His name was Jindřich Heitler. The English could not pronounce the name, the boys laughed at him: ‘The Hitler came!” so he applied for a name change during the war. That is the reason why my name is Horová.”