Lilly Štěpánová

“We learnt that (what Auschwitz was) only after some people began arriving to Prague. They were telling us what was beyond. That there was Auschwitz over there. We had had no idea about it. Trains from Terezín were indeed leaving straight for Poland, but we didn’t know what Auschwitz was. At that time they were transporting 3000 young men. They were going into the unknown. We, their wives, remained in Terezín. We thus went and said that we wanted to follow them, that they were building a new camp and we wanted to be there with them. Fortunately our leader was such a wise woman and she told us: ´Don’t be crazy, you will never see them again.´ We thus did not request to be transported there and we remained in Terezín. Some of us. Some women who still had their parents or relatives went with them. We have never seen them again. Then there was a group of 100 girls who were to replace those men. We were thus ordered to do the work which would have been normally done by men.”

“It was not that they (the kapos) would hurt somebody. They only interned me. It happened when my husband was to board the transport, and from our barracks’ windows we could see the railway station where the transport trains were being dispatched. I wanted to see him one more time, and so I opened the window and I was calling him. The kapos down there heard me and they came up for me and warned me that I was not allowed to do it, and I began fighting them and arguing that they let me be because I wanted to see my husband one more time. They took me and put me in prison. But it was nothing, I spent just about one night there. Then they released me, but I have been there. I knew what it looked like.”