Hana Utitz-Raz

“When we learnt that it was my turn, my mom went with me to the Wilson Railway Station. She was standing there alone because dad was not able to take a leave from the factory. Germans were making him stay there, they treated him horribly. My mom was standing there alone. I remember well that except for her, there were whole families who were saying good-bye. Mom was saying to me: ‘You will get to know new people, new places…’ But she wrote to my sister, who had already been in England for some time: ‘Hanka left today. That’s terrible! Why have I sent her? Perhaps she would survive it here.’ I learnt about this only many years later. Before she died, my sister had sent me the letters which mom had written to her at the same time. I was very touched by it, by her strength to encourage me.”

“We were sitting at Liverpool station, each of us with her little suitcase, and we were waiting for them to call our names. Then they announced my name and I went up there. Mrs. Nicholson was there and she kissed me. We walked out, she helped me put my suitcase into the car, and suddenly I noticed: She is driving! In Prague, women were not driving yet! I said to myself: This is interesting! Since that moment I was so curious that I forgot everything else. I am lucky in this respect: I immediately feel to be ‘in my element.’ We discovered right away that Mrs. Nicholson spoke French. I was thus able to talk with her. We arrived to their home, it was in spring and tulips in bloom were lining the path to the house which looked like a castle. How beautiful it was!”

“There was peace in Europe, but fighting was still going on in Japan. It was in 1945. It was called Peace E. I went to see a film in the cinema, and they would always show news before the film began. Suddenly I saw heaps of corpses. I screamed and I darted out of the cinema. I realized: They have not survived that! It was a horrible shock. Then we learnt that mom went to the first death camp where they didn’t know yet that there was gas. They turned on the showers slowly; they expected that water would flow, and they suffered the most. The others already knew it and they turned on the faucets fully open so that death would come quickly at least. That was in Chelmno. Daddy died in Łódź either as a result of typhoid or hunger. We do not even know, but we have the data.”