Judy Diamantová

“Then the so-called ‘hungertransporte’ (hunger transports) started to come in. These people came from various concentration camps in the east. They came on foot and many of them died on the way. Theresienstadt was a normal old town so they accommodated them in the old houses. I saw a lot of people lying on the ground floor, where the windows were. It was the people that returned from the concentration camps. They were starved and very sick indeed. I was running around in the search for my aunt. I was aware that my grandma who was old couldn’t have survived this. But I thought that my aunt – who was much younger – might have survived. So I was looking for her as a kid. Whenever I saw someone who resembled her I ran to her. But it wasn’t her. She had long been dead already. She died with my grandma in Birkenau.”

“I was going to school for about a year and a half when the Germans marched to Ostrava on March, 15, 1939. All I can remember is that my mom was very sad on that day. She came back from the office very late and saw the German troops while driving home. It was raining and she could see the helmets of the German soldiers glittering in the rain. She was crying that evening. The next day, we went to school as usual. Our teacher came into the class and told us: ‘Kids, you know, if you don’t want to salute the army that’s marching through the city, you need to hide in a doorway, stay there, and when the troops pass, go home. The Germans very quickly arrested our poor teacher and he was later either killed in a concentration camp or they shot him.”

“Theresienstadt was a very interesting city because it wasn’t an ordinary concentration camp, it was a ghetto, where people were imprisoned. For food, you had to go to these huge garrisons that had been built during the rule of Maria Theresia. We got groats and potatoes. Twice a week we had black bread, margarine and a tiny pack of sugar. There were 32 people in that room, sleeping on bunk beds.” Interviewer: “You were staying in the Kinderheim?” “Yes. There was this elderly lady, a German. Her daughter was married to a Danish professor and that delayed her deportation. She came to Theresienstadt much later. She was our mom there. She was a nursemaid. Her name was Berta Wolf.”

“The old city of Theresienstadt is standing on elevated grounds and behind the city. There is a valley in which the ‘Small Fortress’ is located. They had gardens there and were growing vegetables for the SS. A friend of mine needed a pair of trousers and knickerbockers. You had a checkbook with a certain amount of vouchers and each time you wanted something, you paid with these vouchers. He bought the trousers for the vouchers. As for the knickerbockers, he would always steal some vegetables and bring it to us so that could have some vegetables, especially I as a child. He realized that there was something hard in the waist. His sister opened it and they found a pair of diamond rings sewn into the trousers. He then gave them to someone for delivering our letters home.”

“When we arrived in Theresienstadt, we were taken into a huge hall where they registered us. They then gave me shot for typhus. It was in the belly and it hurt so much. Afterwards, everyone had to go to the showers. I started to cry because I didn’t want to go to the showers. We already knew that they were gassing people in the showers. There was a young Jewish girl that was helping people. She got undressed and went into the shower with me. She held me so I could see that nothing would happen to me. I never met her again. She was young, I guess around twenty.”