“In November 1945 I also arrived and we got to it: planting onions and all. I always say that it was dangerous in there. There were just some ten tents, a shack, we then started erecting a fence all around. In the vicinity there were some five Arab villages. Especially with one of them we used to have good relations. They would come over in the evening, play their musical instruments, we would play on mandolins, sing Arab and Jewish songs. We had good relations. But still, it was dangerous. Even though it was one of the most beautiful times of my life. I haven’t felt the danger back then.”
“(We went) through Finland, all the way to the Arctic Circle, and then via Russia, Leningrad, Odessa – just look, what a journey it was. Then we crossed the Black Sea to Istanbul, and via the Asian part of Istanbul and Turkey, Syria and Lebanon we travelled to Eretz (Land) Israel. (…) March 2nd to March 21st, 1941. We arrived to Palestine on the first day of spring, and for all these years I have been convinced that this date was symbolic. (…)”
“During those four hours no reinforcements arrived after four hours the kibbutz was conquered. Meanwhile, there were plenty of dead. Nineteen combatants including one woman were killed in the battle plus nine soldiers who had by chance just been in Gezer. Their garrison was somewhere nearby and they were in Gezer. Some of them came over to have a decent shower, some of them were visiting a doctor, so they fought on our side. Nineteen people fell and most others were captured.”
“The next day I went to the place where mother and children were evacuated. From the bus I walked through an alley where I met Shlomo. And of course, the first thing I said was: ‘What is up with Itzik?’ He repled: ‘What, you don’t know about it?’ So I learned that he was not among the living anymore. I haven’t returned to Gezer and didn’t attend the funeral. There is a mass grave in Gezer. This happened as we were held captive. But on the seventh day we came over. I then stayed there with the mothers. And in January I gave birth to a girl which was a bit of a consolation.”
“We used to exercise in Maccabi. I wasn’t a big sportsperson but then again they weren’t asking all too much from me. Once a week there was a collective exercise. In Maccabi Hatzair we would have a weekly meeting which was partly fun, singing, sometimes dancing and partly either lectures or discussions and studying. They also spoke a bit in Hebrew with us so that we would learn it. But I think that for us it was most of all a social occasion. I don’t remember participating very often but usually on Sunday’s they organized short trips. We would take the tram towards the outskirts of Prague and then go to the woods.”
“Half a year later the Germans occupied Czechoslovakia – on March 15, 1939. (…) We were in school and at noon when school finished we walked to the tram stop and we saw German armored vehicles and German flags. We began to understand. My cousin and I came home and uncle and aunt were still at work. The maid, who was very kind to us, was at home. (…) She told us: ´Children, go down and buy some fresh pastries in Mr. Růžička’s shop, and I’ll make chocolate. We’ll have pastries with butter and chocolate, for God only knows for how long you will be able to enjoy them.´ Even now I can still remember this.”
“I don’t remember how many of us were there in our centre, perhaps twenty or thirty. There were quite a lot of Czechs. But only three of us went (two girls and one boy). We still do not know why they chose us. It is true that they hoped that another group would follow two months later. That was in March 1941, and the Germans attacked Russia in June. We had passed through Russia. But now this route became blocked, too.”
“Shortly before the German occupation of the Sudetenland my uncle offered to my parents that they could send me to Prague to live with them. Daddy had some health problems at that time, and uncle just wanted to make it easier for my parents, and thus they sent me to Prague. My uncle was a Zionist. His wife, my aunt, registered me for Maccabi HaTsair and for the Maccabi sport club right the first week, and there I began to breathe in this Zionist atmosphere.”
“As I told you, I was not much of a Zionist when I arrived to Israel. (…) Only during the two years in the boarding school in Ben Shemen I became a Zionist. My following life convinced me that our place is here (in Israel) and that we must try to keep a good and honourable state with all our strength – ´tzedek´ in Hebrew – so that all can live well.”
“I hear from my friends that when they arrive to their native towns, they do not have anything and anybody there and they feel alien there. But I feel at home in Rajhrad. Mr. Dobrovolný, whom we visited in 1990, sent me a letter in 1991, during the Gulf War when Israel was bombed, and he wrote: ´You know that I have a place for you in my house, come here.´ This is one of the few letters which I have kept.”
Judith Shaked escaped the holocaust by leaving for Denmark. She was born Zdenka Stiastná in 1924 in a Jewish family in Rajhrad near Brno. In 1938 she moved to her aunt and uncle’s who were Zionists living in Prague. In 1939 she was selected by the Youth Aliyah movement for a journey to Denmark. In 1939-1941 she was living in a “foster” family in the Danish countryside and preparing for her “aliyah.” In March 1941 she left Denmark and she travelled in a group transport to Palestine via Sweden, Finland, the USSR and Turkey. She also met her future husband during the journey. She was one of the founding members of kibbutz Gezer near the city of Ramla and later she became a Hebrew teacher at an elementary school in Ramla. For the past few years she had been living in Haifa in northern Israel in order to be closer to her children. Judith died on 6th October 2022.
