Eva Krabcová

* 1938

  • "I was such a terribly independent child. When I was about five years old, I found - and I remember this to this day - a cloth, turquoise hood with a fur trim. I don't remember what yesterday was, and I can totally see that hood! And I brought it to the police - that I found it. And one fine day the police rang our doorbell. Mz mother was terrified - she was alone by then - and the policeman said it had been a year since the hood had been there, and he was returning it to the finder, that was me."

  • "I got this little umbrella from somebody, it was brown with stripes, it was probably very worn out by then; it was an umbrella for children and I was very happy with it. And it was raining. The house in Vizovice had a kind of entrance through the yard, where next to it there was a house. There were two gutters, side by side, which made me very happy because there was water and I had a new umbrella, it was wonderful. So I was very happy about that umbrella. You entered this concrete corridor of this yard through a big grey gate - it's the details that you remember. The gate was grey, it had a little gate. And suddenly the gate opened and now I saw my mother, whom I hadn't seen for so long. So I flew to her, and now everybody was crying and laughing and stuff. And I was so excited. And all of a sudden, a man was walking up behind my mom, and he had a mustache. And I didn't know him. And that was my father. And he kept saying, 'I'm your father,' but I didn't recognize him. So then I asked him this test question - what did he do when I ate my first soup. So he had to answer correctly, that he went into the next room with me, took me on his shoulders and called, 'Queen!' So that was just the moment I believed it."

  • "I remember going to that aunt in the hospital and always lying in bed with her. Because she wasn't allowed to get up during the day, she wasn't even allowed to go to the toilet. Because she was supposedly a non-walker. She was only allowed to walk around at night, carefully, so the nurses wouldn't see her. So I would always lie down... I would go through this hole in the fence and I would lie down in her bed and we would always talk there."

  • Full recordings
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    Praha, 10.02.2020

    (audio)
    duration: 01:14:55
    media recorded in project Stories of the 20th Century TV
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She lived without her parents for nine months, she did not recognize her father after the war

Eva Krabcová in 2020
Eva Krabcová in 2020
photo: Během natáčení

Eva Krabcová was born on 12 April 1938 into a mixed Czech-Jewish family. Her father Štěpán Holub ran a clothing store in Valašské Meziříčí. Her mother Hilda, née Steinhardt, was of Jewish origin. In 1942, 36 relatives from her mother’s side disappeared in concentration camps, none of them survived the war. The Holub family, who, as a mixed family, were not initially affected by the deportations, stayed together until early 1944. Then her father Štěpán was interned in a labour camp in Bystřice near Benešov. About six months after him, in September 1944, her mother also left in a transport, first to the internment camp at Hagibor in Prague, then to Terezín. Six-year-old Eva stayed in the apartment of her aunt, Hilda Holubová. This aunt, the wife of her father’s brother, who was also Jewish, was hidden in the hospital in Vizovice by the brave headmaster after she gave birth to a child there. Eva and her newborn cousin were cared for in her aunt’s apartment by a girl who Hilda had previously had as a helper. After the war, Eva was reunited with both parents. She graduated from the Faculty of Education and Philosophy and taught Czech and Russian all her life. Since 1997 she has been a member of Hidden Child, an organization for Jewish children who survived the Holocaust. She was the president of this association from 2018 to 2021.