Michal Štěpánek

* 1953

  • "There is one thing that I have perceived in myself, although we have not talked about it. I sensed the horror of what could happen. And I'm more alert when something happens. Maybe I have those terrors in me genetically. I hope nothing like this happens again, although it's hell now too. I have an uncertainty inside me."

  • "The stories I know are not from my mother, but from her friends, because she never talked about it much at home. In Terezín it wasn't so bad at first, until they realized that they were probably there for a very long time. And in 1943 her parents left with her brother Franta. He was about 1924, maybe seventeen or eighteen years old. They left, my mother didn't know where. Then, when she was left alone in Terezín, she learned of horrors she didn't want to believe. All she knew was that they were being taken somewhere east. But everyone already knew it was a big deal. We have documents in which my mother writes that the train is speeding up and that she fears it will go there too. But she still didn't believe the horrors. Unfortunately, it came true. She went to Auschwitz in 1944 and was lucky enough that it was the last transport before the Red Army arrived. The Nazis were already demolishing the ovens and liquidating the horrors so that there would be no witnesses."

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    Praha, 06.11.2023

    (audio)
    duration: 01:01:40
    media recorded in project Stories of 20th Century
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My mother survived Terezín and Auschwitz. It was taboo at home

Michal Štěpánek around 1967
Michal Štěpánek around 1967
photo: Witness´s archive

Michal Štěpánek was born on 13 October 1953 in Pilsen. His mother Marie Ehrlichová came from a local family of Jewish merchants. The Nazis deported her, her parents and her younger brother to the Jewish ghetto in Terezín in January 1942. From there they were gradually taken to the extermination camp at Auschwitz. Marie Ehrlichová was on the last transport before the end of the war and was the only survivor of her family. His father, Zdeněk Štěpánek, who worked as an advertising copywriter, was imprisoned by the Nazis for resistance activities. Michal Štěpánek grew up in Pilsen. In the early 1960s, the family moved to Prague. He graduated from the grammar school there and trained as a photographer. Until the end of the communist regime, he worked mainly as an advertising photographer. At the same time he was employed also as a boiler operator. After the fall of totalitarianism in 1989 he started his own business. In 2023 he was living in Prague and took care of a number of his companies. Among other things, he was a co-owner of the College of Creative Communication in Prague.