May it never happen again!
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Alfred Ševčík was born in 1935 in Ostrava into a Jewish family. He grew up with his parents and his younger brother. His father worked as a travelling salesman - he sold cloth. Up until 1939, the family led a peaceful life, but when in 1939 Germans occupied Ostrava, the persecution of Jewish citizens began. His father died in 1942 due to the harsh cruelty of Gestapo interrogations and an illness (tuberculosis) that he contracted in prison. The wife and her children were then ordered into a transport to Terezín. His mother managed to hide the younger brother at the house of a strange lady, where he remained till the end of the war. The elder son, Alfred, was taken to Prague with his mother. From thence they were supposed to be transferred with other Jews to the Terezín concentration camp. In Prague, thanks to one German soldier and a certain lady, he was displaced from the group of Jews. They hid him in a monastery in the village of Zašová near Valašské Meziříčí. When the German army passed close by Zašová, Alfred Ševčík had to remove himself to an estate far from the monastery, where he hid together with four Roma children for the rest of the war. After the war he met his mother in the monastery, and thanks to the Red Cross they also found the younger brother. They returned to Ostrava. Alfred Ševčík started school, he then went into an apprenticeship, and in the end was drafted into compulsory military service. He served at Psáry, not far from Prague. He met his wife there and settled down. He worked at several power plants. Unlike his co-workers, he did not receive permission for working trips abroad. It was not until after 1989 that he could travel - he started visiting his relatives in Israel.