"I mean I had to go all the way to Prague to these Nováks. Novák was the name of the man who lived in Hloubětín. They would give me say a big box of goods for [the Terezian Jews - ed.]. I went by train, alone, they put me on the train. I sat a bit further away, in case someone maybe... then it wasn't mine. It also happened to me once that I got out at Roudnice instead of Nové Kopisty, and the conductor said: 'But this isn't Nové Kopisty!' So he even helped me with it, and I got home at midnight, that's how it was. I mean I was twelve, thirteen years old."
"My parents went off somewhere, and I stayed home alone with [the escaped Yugoslavian prisoner - ed.]. He didn't stay in the house over the day, we had the pig sty for that. Dad white-washed it, cleaned it out, he had a straw bed there, a mattress of sorts, and a place to do his business. So that the younger children wouldn't know, they weren't allowed to know. They had to go to bed early. He was with us for two months... I knew a few words in German, so I asked him if he was hungry. He pulled of his clothes, and it'd make you cry. I won't forget that. He was just a skeleton. And how he was beaten! And flea-bitten..."
"Dad shouldn't have done it... Hard to say. He got some sort of advantage when he had the option to. There were three of us, so he wanted to provide for us. Then he fell ill, it was kind of... I'm not judging him. But I pity Mum more, that she had to suffer pointlessly. But that wasn't his fault. If he had lived, he would've got the full deal." (Q: "He died still a strong communist...") "And the communists didn't even put a flower on his grave!"
"She was sent to Šaľa in Slovakia. And before it all was all wrapped up here, I went to visit her several times. And I begged them to let me go visit Mum. They refused. I went down on my knees, begging, and they did let me in. I went to see her several times, and I always gave her something. Even the commanders in Slovakia said: 'Why did it happen? Why didn't you rather threw it all away?' [Meaning the valuables the family was punished for selling - ed.] I have letters here..." (Q: "And did even those commanders know she was unjustly convicted?") "They knew... They put her out on the fields, and she said that she even had a mouse on her, she didn't know and she put it on with her clothes. And so in the end they put her in the kitchen. She went to bed at eleven, and got up at three. And she made everything for them. And one lady was - I wouldn't say nasty, just a bit harsh on her. And the commanders themselves called Mum to their office and said that Mrs. Kubicová, I think that was her name, was nasty at her. And Mum said: 'No, she's not.' - 'Oh we know very well how it is!' And Mum went shopping out among other people. They [the wardens - ed.] didn't even go with her. And when they had a celebration, they would buy poultry, say, and Mum would cook it all for them and she would have to join in the meal with them."
"I remember how one time I went to Terezín from school. I only went there one year, I had five years in Kopisty, and then we went to the primary school in Terezín, but that was already when the Jews started coming in. We were passing by the Sokol Hall [Sokol (Falcon) sports society gym hall - transl.], and there were Jews working on the field close by. And there was one girl there, I thought to myself, if Dad were here, I'd have to take her with me. She had a pale blue dress with kind of ruffled, curly hair. Bread was crisp as anything! We didn't have a thing, or we'd have given here some. And her mum on the field with turnips and vegetables... So I reckoned that maybe she mustn't give her anything. Dad would've taken her straight off, that girl! But in the end, others would do so too, that child..."
"When Dad had some sort of trouble in Terezín, he would wake me up say at midnight. And I had to drive with him to the outskirts of Terezín. I took the bike, and Dad went ahead on his own."
Vlasta Rypáčková, née Košvancová, was born in 1931 in Nové Kopisty near Terezín, the eldest daughter of Karel and Marta Košvanec. Her father, a railwayman from the station at nearby Bohušovice nad Ohří, and a strong communist, was an eye-witness of the deportation of Jews into the Nazi-built ghetto of Terezín during the war. He decided to aid them actively, and throughout the whole existence of the ghetto he supplied the imprisoned Jews with food, cigarettes and other goods, despite enormous risks. Then twelve-year-old Vlasta helped her father on his trips to the gates of Terezín, by herself she also transported goods by train from Prague. Towards the end of the war the Košvanecs built an underground hide-out by their house in Nové Kopisty. They hide an escaped prisoner - a Yugoslavian officer - in the former pig sty for two months. After the war the family faced accusations of unjust enrichment, these suspicions were later refuted thanks to the testimonies of the saved Jews (the Löbl family, Eva Roubíčková, and others). However, the hardships involved in the night-time forages into Terezín took their toll on the father’s health. Karel Košvanec died on the 28th of April 1950, one day before Vlasta’s wedding. The family moved to Liberec during the ’50s. Vlasta bore two children, she worked as a clerk at TESLA. In 1957 Marta’s mother sold some valuables to the state enterprise Klenoty [Jewellery - transl.]. Based probably on information from one neighbour from Kopisty, the whole family was arrested and charged with the crime of speculation. Vlasta was released on parole after three weeks of detention, but her mother Marta was sentenced to two and a half years of jail in Šaľ, Slovakia. Apart from that the family was stripped of their property, and the valuables (gifts from saved Jews) were demonstratively displayed as evidence of the family’s “flamboyant lifestyle”. The accusations were cancelled in their entirety by a court decision in 1994, but the Košvanecs were never given any recompense for their hardships or for their lost property.
