“When children in schools today ask me about hunger or about what we were eating, I always ask ´Where?´ For there was a huge difference. In Terezín we were getting three quarters of a loaf of bread for three days. There is even a song about it: ´For three days you get three quarters of bread, it lasts for a day, or for two if you need.´ This means 250 grams of bread per day. Plus we were receiving lunch everyday. Partly rotten potatoes, in skins, but it did not matter, what mattered was that there were some. Two, three potatoes. A little bit of soup, thickened with something. Today, when my granddaughter says that she is cooking millet, I can smell the stinking, mouldy millet which they used for soup there. But my mom used to say that millet smelled good. I cannot imagine that. But it was so. And in the evening, there was this quarter-loaf of bread, per day. And sometimes, packages were allowed. If somebody received a package, of course he did not keep it, but he always shared it with his roommates. This was about food in Terezín. In Auschwitz I have never seen a piece of bread, never. And in Mährensdorf, this was my last camp, where I worked very hard for 14 hours a day in a factory, we were getting 70 grams of bread per 24 hours. That’s why I think there was an enormous difference, and I always say to these children. ´When you get home, just try to weight 70 grams of bread, to see how much it is.´ So this was Terezín, we laughed about it, it was nicknamed ´Terezín spa resort,´ and ´the town which Hitler donated to the Jews.´ There was propaganda about it. There is another song about it. And we thought we were doing really badly. Well, it was not good. But compared to other camps it was really like a spa resort.”
“And even the Germans and the Gestapo knew what President Masaryk signified for the Czech nation, and how Czechs revered him. Therefore on President Masaryk’s birthday anniversary in 1944, there was the largest mass execution of Czech Jews in Auschwitz, when almost 4000 people were to be gassed. They had already been living in Auschwitz for half a year, so they knew what awaited them. And in front of the gas chamber, these people sang our national anthem ´Where is my home.´ At that time, the Auschwitz Sonderkommando, those who were to get the people to the gas chamber, revolted and they refused to force these people in there. And the SS men themselves stood in shock for a while, but then they began shooting into the crowd and forced these people, including the Sonderkommando, to the gas chamber.”
“I was beaten many times, which was really rough, because I had told them I was a Czech, instead of reporting as a Jew. So they tried to beat this out of me. And once, but only once, I cleaned shoes for SS women. Only once! Because the SS woman explained to me, this was vaseline for the boots, for the army boots they wore. And she had only one pair of court shoes, for which she used a special shoe polish. She was explaining this to me, so that I would not confuse it, asking me if I understood German, if I could understand her. Of course I nodded my head, and of course I put the vaseline on her court shoes, ruining them. I knew I would get a beating, but what mattered was that the SS woman was now without her court shoes. I probably would not do it today, I would not get myself beaten for such trifles. But then, I was fifteen, sixteen. One has a different character at that age.”
“Then the transports for Terezín began. In November 1941, end of November, there was the first transport for Terezín, 400 men. It was called AK1 (Arbeitskolone eins). The second transport carried 1000 men, only men, it was on December 1st. This was AK2, and the men actually went there to prepare the barracks for us. That’s why these were men-only transports. My brother was in this AK2 transport. As soon as you received the call for transport, you lost your name and from then on you were only a number. My brother had number 303 – AK 303. Because most of these transports were up to one thousand people. Terezín was chosen because it was a town surrounded by walls, there were many barracks, meaning plenty of space they could cram people in. 6000 people had lived in Terezín before, and so is its present-day population. But when Czechs had to leave Terezín and Terezín was turned into a ghetto – ´the town which Hitler donated to the Jews,´ there were up to 60,000 of us instead of 6000. People lived everywhere. In attics, in basements, simply everywhere. Bunks were everywhere and we stayed there as we could. People lived wherever it was possible. If you can call it life, that is. But today I know that Terezín was indeed a beautiful place when compared to what awaited us. But, thank God, we had no clue about it yet.”
“And the three of us, those two sisters Dáša and Irena Roubíček, whose mother had lived in the Žižkov neighbourhood, set out to Žižkov. We came to their house. There were some people sitting there. Dáša asked them whether they knew who they were. At first they said they did not know. Then, when they saw our shaved heads, they said: ´Aren’t you the Roubíček girls?´ And Dáša replied: ´We are.´ They lived on the ground floor. Before she could say a word, somebody was already banging at the window, and there was a cry: ´My children have come back!´ Meanwhile, some of these people were saying that there was some man living there but that he was not their father. That Mrs. Roubíčková had been hiding this man since…We did not know since when. When I saw Dáša and Irena, embracing their mother in the window, I naturally envied them, I cried. But then I realized they said: ´Some man.´ So I went inside the house and rang the bell. And this was something amazing, because the one who opened the door for me was my brother. So at least I had my brother. We already knew our parents were not alive. But the next day I had to go get a doctor and take my brother to the Bulovka hospital, because he suffered from typhus. So I was alone again. Since I was sixteen, under our law I was not allowed to submit any petitions or to request a flat. I was a child. It was a beautiful and warm May, so I slept outside, I often slept on a bench in a park. Sometimes, people invited me to sleep over in their homes. Then somebody advised me to submit a petition in my brother’s name, who was six years older, and so I made a request for a flat. At that time, there was really an abundance of flats in Prague. But I asked for a stupid small flat in Žižkov. The reason for it was that I was going to that house to some people, who let me sleep there from time to time. And from the staircase I could see the pantry of this flat, and there was plum compote. And I wanted it so much, because I haven’t eaten plum compote for years. That is why I asked for this small stupid flat. When I then told it to my brother, he said: ´It doesn’t matter, when I get well, we will take a bigger flat.´ Which did not happen, because when he returned from the hospital, there were no flats available anymore, so me and my brother stayed together in this tiny flat – a room and a kitchen, in Žižkov, two really small rooms. We even continued to live there after my brother married, and after I married, so there were four people living there. Then my brother got an offer from somebody to sublease a flat somewhere else, so he did, because, as he said, I was a girl and mother had been saving for my dowry. Thus my brother let me have this flat.”
Marta Kottová was born February 22nd 1929 in Černovice u Tábora to Robert and Gabriela Lašová. Her brother Viktor was six years older. They had been living in Černovice till Marta was three, then the family moved to Prague. Since she was five, Marta was an avid scout and Sokol member, and as she says, she has had a happy childhood. With love she remembers the First Republic era and President Masaryk. After the rise of Nazism, the persecution began, which Marta experienced most poignantly when she was forced to surrender her dog. Then there came the transports to Terezín. On December 1st, 1941, her brother Viktor boarded transport AK2, and half a year later, Marta and her parents followed in transport AAR. At first Marta stayed together with her mother in the Hamburg barracks, but then she was moved to a so-called children’s house L410. The worst was however yet to come. On October 6th, 1944 they arrived to Auschwitz, where both Marta’s parents eventually died. Before Christmas of the same year Marta got to Merzdorf via Gross-Rosen, where she worked in a flax-processing factory and also performed jobs like opening frozen wagons with a pickaxe. After the liberation in May 1945 and her adventurous return to Prague, she was reunited with her brother Viktor under very emotional circumstances. He has miraculously survived the Nazi horrors, even though he was one of those, who were sent from Terezín to bury the men of Lidice, and thus he was to have been exterminated afterwards. Today, Marta enjoys an abundant life, she is a great-grandmother, and she visits schools, telling children about her experiences, she is also the head of the Historic Group Auschwitz. On October 28th, 2008, the President decorated her with the State Medal for Merit in the field of education. Marta Kottová passed away on June, the 18th, 2017.
