Helga Smékalová

“I suffered terribly. I really liked going to school, and I liked being with other children, classmates and the such. I really enjoyed learning. I would come home and say: ‘Mum, why doesn’t the teacher choose me to answer? I raise my hand and he always picks the children who don’t know it, instead of choosing me.’ Mum explained me that the teacher has to pick all the children. When I was kicked out of school at the beginning of the fourth year, then nowadays we would say I fell into depression. I suffered terribly at the time. And I also started being frightened of going out. Soon after we began wearing the star, and one time German children chased me around the town. So from that time I was afraid of going out.”

“Grandmother’s flat had its windows looking out into the street, so my parents were badly shaken when the Germans did their marching parades. We lived in Štefánikova Street, what’s now May Day Street, and that was one of the main thoroughfares of Olomouc. They held a big marching parade there. I can’t remember exactly when it was, but I know that we watched it happen and that my parents were badly shaken by it.”

“I had my satchel, which contained a handkerchief and a slice of bread, and I went to Prague to a villa in Střešovice. They registered us there, but then they sent us off to Hagibor. There were wooden houses there, and we were supposed to stay there until the February transport to Terezín. I didn’t even have spare panties with me because we had reckoned that I was going for just the one day and that I would be back home by evening, like Mum. It was an awful shock for me.”