“Next door to us on our landing there lived a Jewish family. One Mrs Švelbová, she had a son, Zdeněk, born in 1924. And that Mrs Švelbová married a Jew, and she didn’t move out, nor did she pretend to divorce like we did, and so their flat was regarded as a Jewish one, and they took them all. Then there was old Mrs Štainerová, she was Mrs Švelbová’s mother, she also went by transport, each went at a different time, and no one came back.”
“And that Mrs Studničková, she had chicks, and we were down in the cellar when the revolution broke out on 5 May 1945. We all had to go into the cellar, it was whitewashed there with benches. People brought some things, we kept cooking ersatz coffee, we had potatoes, so we wondered how long it could last, the end must come. But the end wasn’t in a hurry. The blasts got so bad that the cellar shook all around us. And Mrs Studničková said: ‘I’m going upstairs for those chicks, so it doesn’t kill them.’ My mum said: ‘Mrs Studničková, don’t go, it’s booming so loudly, they must be above Prague now.’ They were in Nuremberg and the blasts were so strong here. Mrs Studničková said: ‘I’m going up, nothing will happen to me, if there’s a god in heaven, he won’t allow it.’ And Mum said: ‘Mrs Studničková, and you’re an Evangelical? To speak like that? Don’t go up.’ As soon as she climbed out, there were Germans on the watch on Vítkov, on the hill, and when they saw some movement down there, they lobbed a long-range grenade, and it killed her outright. The chicks were plastered on the wall, just a smear of blood. And the whole of the Studničkas’ flat was in splinters. You’ve never seen anything like it, you couldn’t make it like that even if you tried. And in our flat all the doors were wide open, all the doors in our flat, the cupboards were wide open, the dishes twisted like this, you’ve never seen anything like it, really, you couldn’t do it no matter how much you tried. It was the pressure, the pressure.”
“And so when President Masaryk died, on 114 September 1937, we were the first to see his dead body. Because at the time it was somehow permitted for former legionaries to stand guard at the coffin. So Tony (my sister’s boyfriend) said: ‘Marta, you and Annie go.’ It was the first room, and the president, when they brought him there on the carriage from Lány, they put him there in the coffin, with candles around him, and all of the bells in Prague tolling for the last time. But that was something, we had goose bumps all over. We walked across the courtyard of the Castle with the bells ringing, from the Vladislav Hall to the coffin. Tony was already standing by the hearse, so we were the first to see the president lying in the coffin. He had a flag draped over him, we could only walk quietly by and keep on going. There were already kilometre-long queues of people in Prague waiting to be allowed in the following day to bid the president a final farewell. So I witnessed that.”
“Our daddy was called very suddenly to the transport, probably instead of some Jew who bribed his way out, because he was already signed off the register at the Jewish community. And he was a baptised Czech Brethren Evangelical, Daddy was. He read to us every day, when we were bigger already, he read some book, and one time he read us Alois Jirásek’s Temno [Darkness, about the Recatholicisation period in Bohemia] and he said: ‘Well, Mum,’ he said turning to our mummy, ‘look what those Evangelicals endured for their faith, it must beautiful to have such a faith.’ And he went and had himself baptised. So Daddy was a baptised Jew, but he was sent very suddenly to the transport, probably instead of someone who bribed themselves out. I was lying badly ill with my stomach, but also with my heart. I had cardiac ischemia and myocarditis, and I don’t know what else with my heart. Mummy was up all night sewing a rucksack for Daddy. Marta and Jirka accompanied him to the palace. The Germans summoned the people to the transports at night so that the public wouldn’t see what they did to them. And so Marta and Jirka went with him to give him a farewell, all the way to the palace; I wasn’t even able to go out in front of our house, I was seriously ill with my heart.”
“Daddy’s sister Marta, she lived in Linz, she’d wooed herself an Austrian, one Josef Schmidtmeier. And she lived her whole life in Linz with him. He was an avid Hitlerite, he’d gone to school with Hitler. And when I visited them, he told me: ‘Hitler didn’t have the patience to study anything, he wasn’t anything, he didn’t even have grammar school. During the breaks he would always go to the stand, he kept speaking with his arms, he always spoke with his arms. Some people watched him like some pious messiah, how clever he was.’ He was something of a yammerer. He never completed anything, no studies, and he ended up learning upholstery. And my uncle, Josef Schmidtmeier, who married Auntie Marta, Daddy’s sister, he journeyed all the way to Berlin with his family to visit Hitler and to ask him if he might forgive him for marrying a Jew and if they might not have to divorce. Auntie said: ‘We’re not even Germans, we’re Austrians and we didn’t want the Anschluss.’ And Hitler said: ‘Well, I’ll consider it, Josef.’ [Q: He actually met with your uncle?] And then he said: ‘You’ll be the only Austrian married to a Jew who didn’t have to be deported.’ ”
Anna Kopsová, née Ledererová, was born on 15 March 1922 in Prague into a mixed Czech-Jewish family. After completing town (primary) school he attended the prestigious business academy of the Committee of Prague Merchants, but this was closed when the Nazis arrived, and so Anna was prevented from graduating. Her elder sister helped find a holiday job at Prague Castle before the outbreak of the war, and after that she began working in E. F. Burian’s theatre D34. Anna’s father was of Jewish origin, and although he relinquished his faith when he married, her parents were forced to formally divorce at the beginning of World War II. The father thus saved his family from being transported to a concentration camp, the fate he himself suffered. In 1942 Anna’s father was taken to Terezín, and later to Auschwitz, where he was sent directly from the train to gas chambers. During the war Anna suffered from severe health problems, which helped her avoid forced labour. Her brother Jiří was drafted at sixteen years of age and ended up in labour camp Klettendorf (now Klecina, a district of Wrocław). He managed to escape, but he was arrested in Prague and sent back to Germany, where he fell gravely ill. The hardships of the war caused his premature death. More than thirty of Anna’s relatives from her father’s side died during World War II.
