Marie Kuttelwascherová

* 1921

Video Player is loading.
Current Time 0:00
/
Duration 0:00
Loaded: 0%
Progress: 0%
Stream Type LIVE
Remaining Time -0:00
 
1x
  • "At the end of the war I lived in Vrchovina, a village near Paka. I lived in a little house near the Mendlík family and I know that the Russians were chasing the Germans and they got it wrong. There is such a [road] from the main street and then there is one down the hill where the village of Vrchovina is. The Germans thought that there was some kind of an escape, so at the end of the war, as the Russians were driving them, they got into that street. They dropped a bomb like that in front of our house that we were living in, and my dad - I was looking out the window - flew in between there and took the bomb away. Because if they had run over it, the house would have been gone."

  • "They had to go to that square every day, whether it was cold or not... and my brother got pneumonia. And he wouldn't have been then, but he said that his friends in the kitchen, they told him - because he was in that restaurant and he had school, so he could cook - so they told the manager that they needed somebody else to cook for the officers. So they dragged him into the kitchen - and he said he survived it there."

  • "He said he saw terrible things. For example, he saw a Jewish woman come in with two children, and they set the dogs on the one who was walking and threw the little one into the wires. He saw that. And then he ran away with a group, and Dr. Kohn was also there. There were about four of them - and this Dr. Kohn was locked up with my brother. This Dr. Kohn lived in Paka, I know where he lived. He married a nurse who worked for him. He told Emil to go with him. That he knew he had otitis media and needed a doctor. So Emil went with him to the SS man and told him that it... and he told him he was fine. And he said, 'I'm a doctor, so I know.' Well, that morning, he had it done. They killed him in front of Emil."

  • Full recordings
  • 1

    Vrchlabí, 28.03.2025

    (audio)
    duration: 01:18:33
    media recorded in project Příběhy regionu - HRK REG ED
Full recordings are available only for logged users.

My brother saw terrible things in the concentration camp

Marie Kuttelwascherová, 1940s
Marie Kuttelwascherová, 1940s
photo: Archive of the witness

Marie Kuttelwascher, née Dejmková, was born on December 27, 1921 in Ostroměř as the fifth and youngest child of legionary František Dejmek and his wife Marie. After the death of her father in 1930, the family found itself in financial problems and for this reason the witness had to go straight to work as a cook in Nová Paka after graduating from the burgher school. After the outbreak of World War II, her brother Emil was arrested while escaping and trying to join the foreign resistance. In September 1940, he became a prisoner of the Dachau concentration camp. In the meantime, the witness worked in a print shop or as a worker in an armaments factory, where various acts of sabotage were carried out. In 1944, she married Jaroslav Kuttelwascher and four years later they moved to Vrchlabí, where they obtained employment in the automotive industry. In addition to working and raising two children, the witness was also active in sports - she founded a volleyball team and for twenty-five years led the women in local physical education. At the time of filming (2025) she lived in Vrchlabí.