Irena Marvanová

“We were employed in agriculture, and we were going up there to the so-called ramparts where vegetables were grown. We had to dig with a spade because it was not possible to bring any machinery there. We had to use a spade so that some vegetables could be planted there.”

“When the war ended, we left. There was mom’s younger brother, he was about thirty. We walked to the railway station, and each of us had a few things packed in a bag. We thought that we would return for the remaining things later. The conductor didn’t want to allow us to board the train because we didn’t have tickets, but we didn’t have any money. There were six of us. Eventually somebody sold a briefcase, and we got tickets for six people for that, but only tickets to Prague and not further on. We arrived to Prague, where my dad had acquaintances in the Rott company, where he had been supplying his products. He went there. I don’t know if he had money there or if he borrowed from them, but we were thus eventually able to travel all the way to Kolín.”

“We were learning a bit of mathematics and Czech. There was some professor, and she was very knowledgeable and I think she had travelled a lot, and she was talking about it in a very nice way and she was teaching us geography. It was interesting. We could not write any notes, because the teaching was being done illegally. We were ready to pretend that we were mending something in case the Germans came in. Since it was not possible to write things down, when we were together, we would be repeating what each of us remembered so that we would be able to practice a little bit.”

“At the beginning they (SS men) were not separating families. When somebody contracted some contagious disease, the other family members were ‘reclaimed’ as it was called and they did have to leave (in a transport). Only then, at the end of the war, families were being separated. We avoided that. My father was sick with erysipelas at that time, I remember that his ear reached almost to his shoulder. It was a contagious disease, and we thus did not have to leave. Then my brother had scarlet fever and one more disease, I don’t even remember what it was.”