“I was probably saved from everything, I was baptized in the Czechoslovak Hussite Church, and so was my sister, who was born in 1944. But my dad was not allowed to enter the church. Mom’s midwife was certain Mrs. Citrová, and mom asked her what she should do about it. The midwife replied: ´Screw it, just cover the Star with a hat, and go to the church.´ She didn’t make fuss about anything, and thus daddy could be present during the baptism of my younger sister.”
“At first I was in some huge building, it was probably on the town square in Terezín, in some barracks. I was alone, they separated us. I remember that I slept on the top bunk bed and that there were many adult women around me, which felt unpleasant to me.” Interviewer: “So you didn’t live together with your dad?” – “No, he was in some other place. He found his sisters there; he had three sisters, who worked as nurses there. I don’t remember where exactly he was. Later he had me moved to another house; it was probably done as a favour by somebody. I was terribly thin, they thought I had tuberculosis, and this villa was used for housing emaciated children. Later I was able to locate the house on the outskirts of Terezín I remember him coming to visit me with one of his sisters, they held each other’s arms and they would always bring me a chocolate or something else. I remember that I was standing on the balcony, and to this day I still have this memory of my dad looking at me, his eyes turned upwards at me. Then I fell sick there. I also remember that they were combing our hair and lice were falling from us on the sheets.”
“We got out of Terezín and on the way we picked up certain doctor, a dentist. Grandpa said: ´He is my son,´ and we somehow passed through the roadblocks. Early in the morning, at eight or nine, we arrived to the Prague-Bubny station and we had to get to Nusle, where grandma lived. But the Prague Uprising was underway. From Bubny you had to go down where the Stalin’s statute was, under that hill, and they were shooting there; I don’t know if they were shooting at us or not. But there was shooting going on, I remember it very vividly, and we were running, the four of us. I said: ´Grandma, I need to pee.´ I wore stockings. ´My girl, you cannot, we have to run, or they shoot us.´ She took my pants off, and I peed while I was running. We crossed the bridge, and there was no shooting anymore.”
“Since I was there as a seven-year-old girl, I feel as if I need to give thanks that this will become known… the fact that children, who don’t remember much, have also been there. Not only teenagers, who were fifteen or so, although for them it certainly must have been extremely difficult as well, even more than for the little ones like us. Still, it was not easy for us, either. It would be good if people learnt about these children from three to ten years of age, because it was not easy for these little ones. Normally only the adolescents are mentioned, they could make more sense of it. But there were also many young children, and many of them haven’t got out of there.”
“I didn’t understand it, I was happy that I was going with my father. We lived in Prague-Pankrác, in a building where there were forty-two flats. My birthday is on 8th February, and the order for deportation came just on 8th February. It was strange to me that everyone from our house was coming to us: one brought gloves, another lady knitted a shawl for me; basically, the whole house was fitting us up for the journey. We had to leave on 10th February, two days after. All the people who lived in the house took part in preparing us for the journey where I would go with my beloved father.”
“I was born in 1938, on 8th February, and since my parents married after 1935, children born in these marriages were to be considered Jewish. All the restrictions which went into effect later thus applied to me, too. My sister was born in 1944, she was four months old when we went to the concentration camp. We actually left in one of the last transports, on 10th February 1945.” Interviewer: “All of your family went?” – “No only daddy and I, as Jews, my Christian mother and my four-month-old sister stayed at home. The family got separated. I loved daddy so much, and therefore I was happy that I would go with him; but I didn’t know where.”
“It is sad, but I still haven’t been able to get it out of my head. I kept remembering the dreams after I had returned from there. Shooting, many people, huge rooms. I don’t know what it is inside me. My daughter told me: ´Go to see a psychologist.´ But I don’t want to. I would rather leave the memories alone. I realized it only after, but to this day, every year between March and May I’m ill, as I call it. I cannot sleep, everything inside me is trembling. Then mid-May comes, and as if you cut it off, everything is suddenly all right.”
Mrs. Renata Pavelková, née Götzová, was born February 8, 1938 in Prague as the first daughter in a mixed Jewish-Czech family. Her father came from a Jewish family from Kyjov and he worked as a dental technician, her mother was housewife. Being married to a non-Jewish spouse kept her father protected from deportation to the ghetto, but he could not avoid the restrictions imposed upon the lives of Jews in the Protectorate Bohemia and Moravia, like having to wear the Star of David, loss of employment, restriction of movement, etc. Renata had to wear the Star of David and she was not allowed to attend school. In February 1945, three months before the end of the war, the father and his elder daughter Renata had to board a transport to the Terezín ghetto. In Terezín they lived separately, and they met the father’s sisters while there. Renata’s father contracted typhoid fever and he succumbed to the disease on May 16, 1945. On May 5, 1945, Renata was taken by her grandparents on her mother’s side from Terezín to Prague, where she was reunited with her mother and sister. After the war she lived only with her mother and sister, she studied a nursing school and she was working as a dental laboratory technician for many years. At present she lives in Prague, has two children and six grandchildren, and travelling is her most favourite hobby.
