"Positive thinking is terribly important. I wasn't as positive as I am now when I was young, but my mother taught me that. She always told me - I like to give this as an example - I was still in school and it was Saturday, Sunday and I wanted to go to the dam to swim. And of course it was raining like hell, pouring down. So I'm mad that I can't go anywhere. Mum looked at me and I said: 'Damn, it must be raining again on Saturday, Sunday!' So my mom smiled and took my hand, she opened the balcony and said, 'Come here, Sašenka.' So I went up there, a grown-up but still this little Sašenka, and she said, 'Take a breath. Take a breath and listen. Be quiet for a while and just listen to the rain - can you hear the rain? And breathe in - the smell of the earth. The earth needs moisture too.' So that was my mother. So immediately I took this positive stance. Suddenly I didn't mind the rain."
"I grew up here with these two amazing women, I loved them more than anything and they loved me. But they raised me in such a way that they more or less raised me to be neurotic. They were so pathologically worried about me, that something would happen to me. They were afraid that everything would happen again, and that's why my mother had me baptized, because she thought that another Hitler might come and repeat what had happened. I couldn't defend myself as a baby. When I found out, at the age of 18, I went to a Roman Catholic parish. I told them what kind of family I came from, who I was, and that I felt very strongly about Judaism, that simply blood is not water. I thanked them for allowing me to be with them for some time, and then I converted to where I belonged and where my mother was, which was the Jewish religious community."
"Then in that elementary school, in the fourth grade, the teacher told the kids I was Jewish. How did she find out? My mother was so protective of me! How did she find out? She didn't even have the proper education to be a teacher, she was a former postmistress who did some postgraduate degree or took some exams and started teaching at the elementary school. Well, she started bullying me. In such a horrible way! Like, she told me she'd put me in the back of the classroom, that she couldn't look at me, that I was so black and ugly. That I reminded her of a gypsy. I would just look at her, I just didn't get it. Then she drew on the blackboard for the kids what a Jewish star looked like, and they drew it on my briefcase and yelled at me: 'Jew, Jew!' - and I didn't know what it was. My mother never told me, she really tried to protect me in every way possible. I came home and I cried and I said they were calling me a shrew. As I got it all mixed up. Mum said, 'Come on, what do they say you are?' And I said, 'Well, a shrew. They call me a shrew!' And my mother said, 'Do you know what a shrew is?' I said, 'Well, I don't know.' She explained it was a rodent, and then she said, 'Don't they call you a Jew?' And I said, 'Yes, they call me a Jew.'"
Alexandra Strnadová, née Orná, was born on 10 November 1949 in Brno. Her mother Ella, née Spiegel, later Ornstein and Mach, was born into a large, cohesive and also a quite affluent Jewish family. However, all was lost during the Second World War – family assets were confiscated and almost all her relatives perished in the whirlwind of the Holocaust. Ella, her mother and her husband managed to survive only thanks to the outstanding courage of a few residents of Štěpánovice in the Tišnov region, who hid them in their garden for three years. But even the end of the war did not bring peace - Ella’s husband was murdered and she herself was imprisoned for two years for no reason. After her release from prison, her only daughter Alexandra was born out of wedlock. She grew up in an incomplete family, with just her mother and grandmother who both developed an unhealthy attachment to the child, becoming overprotective and hiding the knowledge of her Jewish roots from her. As a result of this upbringing, Alexandra became anxious and neurotic. She suffered from what psychologists described as the transmission of the Holocaust survivors’ trauma to their children’s generation. Nevertheless, Alexandra Strnadová lived a full and fruitful life. She raised one son, worked for many years in the health-care sector, and after spending almost twenty years in Germany, today (2023) she lives in Brno. She is proud of her Jewish roots and is an active member of the Brno Jewish community.
A chapel in Štěpánovice where - thanks to the help of the Mach family - the witness' mother, Ella, had been hiding with her mother, Ida, and her husband, Richard Ornstein
A chapel in Štěpánovice where - thanks to the help of the Mach family - the witness' mother, Ella, had been hiding with her mother, Ida, and her husband, Richard Ornstein
The Nágls with their friends. Sitting: František Mořic and Vlasta, standing: their children Věra and Miloš (wearing glasses). The family was murdered in a concentration camp
The Nágls with their friends. Sitting: František Mořic and Vlasta, standing: their children Věra and Miloš (wearing glasses). The family was murdered in a concentration camp
Ella's cousin, Ota Strebinger, next to his wife, Dvora Strebingerová, next to her Ella Ornsteinová Machová, behind her Alexandra Strnadová. A photo was taken in a botanical garden in Kotlářská Street, Brno, during Otto's visit in 1966 (he had been living in Israel)
Ella's cousin, Ota Strebinger, next to his wife, Dvora Strebingerová, next to her Ella Ornsteinová Machová, behind her Alexandra Strnadová. A photo was taken in a botanical garden in Kotlářská Street, Brno, during Otto's visit in 1966 (he had been living in Israel)
