Věra Schiff

"We had all kinds of diseases - typhoid, black fever, these diseases. Death was the daily scenery of Terezín. And unfortunately none of the old men, none of us, had the strength to get these corpses to the crematorium anymore. Because that meant bringing them on trolleys to the crematorium, there was no one there anymore. They sent them all away and there were only a few of us who were still walking, not lying on the ground and not sick. Terezín was one picture of misery and suffering. Corpses everywhere. The only thing that moved vigorously were lice. We were all covered in lice. And one fine day I remember, it was desperate, the way the bodies were decomposing and there was no disinfection, of course. So it looked like we were all going to die there in that situation, it didn't look like there was any escape. And we didn't know what stage the war was in, how it was going to end. And one day in May, a beautiful day, but we were all desperate, we heard some noises on the road near Terezín. So some people who had courage went closer to the walls of the fortress and nobody shot at them, yet it was forbidden. As prisoners, we were not allowed to go near the gate. And that day nothing happened, nobody shot at us, people went closer and closer until they got completely to the walls. Somebody took out bricks or whatever it was made of and a few people went through the hole and still nobody did anything, still nobody shot. So we thought, there's something going on here that's not everyday. Normally, if you went near the walls, you'd get shot. I also went through the hole and there was a road that led to Prague. In the distance you could hear the engines of a unit approaching. The big question was, who is it?"

"One night I was working and I hear footsteps. It was usual that he came from somewhere to check on his patient who had problems with intraocular pressure or whatever. So I didn't even wonder. But this night, when he came in, he was carrying something in his arms, a package, and he walked past me and said, 'Come on, Věra'. He went to the corner where we had some boxes, and he put the package there and said, 'Look, this is a newborn baby.' So I lifted up the blanket and saw a really pink newborn. So I was amazed and delighted. It seemed like a miracle. Because Terezín was a place where you always expected death, where you didn't expect life, new life. It was like something from another world. Now I see the child there, a normal child. Then Stein quickly said to me, 'Vera, cover it, the baby cannot live, because it was born tonight, but not officially.' Because when the woman came to Terezín and she was pregnant, she was marked 'SB', sonderbehandlung [special treatment], which meant the next transport to the gas. When a child was born, or a woman got pregnant in Terezín and didn't find out in time because the monthly bleeding stopped in Terezín, some women didn't find out they were pregnant until they were in their fifth or sixth month. Even then the doctor tried to abort it because the continuation was certain death to both of them. To the child and to the woman. When they managed to abort, the woman had a chance to survive. So that was the philosophy. And now this unfortunate newborn. I didn't ask any questions, and Stein says, "His mother is a friend of mine, and I don't want her to die. And he pulls a syringe out of his pocket and he's holding it in his hand and he says, 'Věra, this baby needs to be injected and it's over.' So I said, 'You're the head of the department.' And he says, 'You're going to do it!' I said, 'No no no, I don't know this lady and I'm not going to do this to her!' And to contradict Stein, that was very brave. Because he was very autocratic. The doctors in Terezín, it wasn't as democratic then as it is today, it was like a general in the field, you didn't contradict him. And I said, 'Doctor, I won't do it, I can't do it. Why don't you do it? That's your friend, not mine.' He says, 'Věra, you don't understand, I'm bound by the Hippocratic Oath, which commands the doctor to take care of life. Our whole career is about improving and sustaining life, and this is interrupting life.' So I thought he was crazy. Because we were in Terezín where death was multiplied at every corner and suddenly he's telling me about the Hippocratic Oath. I figured he must have gotten it mixed up in his head somehow. So we stood there looking at each other. I didn't want to, and he wasn't in the best mood anymore, apparently, that I was contradicting him. So he said, ‘Let's do it together!‘ He took the syringe, put it in my hand, linked his hand over mine, we pushed it down and he pushed the plunger. And the baby started crying. He put some kind of blanket over his mouth and then he threw some kind of rag over him and said, 'When the body snatching squad comes, make sure they take this. And it doesn't have a name. It never entered the Terezín statistics, because if it had, it would have gone to the gas chamber. But as long as it's anonymous and nobody knows she gave birth here, she has a chance of surviving.' I never found out who it was. And I didn't want to know. I didn't want to go and see a woman who I would have to say, 'Your baby had to die, maybe you'll have a chance to live.' But I know that the pink newborn a minute before suddenly started... She made a couple of these screams, started convulsing. And it died."

"Those people, it was crazy! Those people didn't look human anymore. Not just the terrible emaciation and the vacant look in their eyes and covered from head to toe with lice and disease. But those people - it was so horrible! - they didn't react like humans anymore. They just wanted to eat, they wanted to find something to eat," he says. The following memory is also connected to the survivors of the death march: "I had a bread crust in my pocket. And one day he walked by, he looked like an acquaintance who had been deported from Terezín only six months before. I reached into my pocket and said, 'Leo!' And he said, 'No no no! The dehumanization, the destruction of human nature, that's a sin. Hunger and human suffering changes the human focus. People lose interest in everything, and they care if there's a piece of bread or a piece of grass or something to eat."

"The transports kept coming. Transports were coming, transports were leaving. They were leaving and you didn't know where they were going. There were rumours among the people that in fact there was nowhere to go, that death was at the end of this journey. But you know, you hope until the last moment. And the last thing that dies with you is hope. We didn't want to believe for a long time. Personally, the first time I believed that there really was an end was when I met Siegfried (Vítězslav) Lederer, a refugee from Auschwitz who was hiding in Terezín in the corridors below the surface. He said, 'Věra, there is no other camp here. But until then, I was still hoping. And if I was the idiot who hoped, so was everyone else. People were hoping that there was a chance of survival somewhere. You can't live with the idea that it's the end, and go on with your miserable life, getting that soup or potato peelings, when you know it's all for nothing. In Terezín we made an enormous effort to deny ourselves that truth. The death that awaited us. Because you can't live with it without committing suicide. Because if you know that it's all pointless, then why should you suffer all the horrible suffering that was in those camps."