“There was talk that they’re trying some nutrition experiments on us. There wasn’t much food, so they were trying artificial fats on us. At least that’s how it occurred to me.” I had ulcers on my neck so I went to see a body snatcher. He cut the ulcer and told me: That’s from the food they serve here. They’re giving us artificial fats.” When we were driving outside of the camp, we used to spend the nights in former stables. We slept on hay. They gave us a box with powder and told us it will remove the fleas. We didn’t know what it was but later I learned it was DDT. It hadn’t been tested nor approved yet, so they tested it on us. There must have been a million fleas but at least it worked a bit.”
„In August 1944 the employment office ordered me to change my occupation. I was told when to appear at the office and to be ready for travel. The employee of the office gathered some 4 – 5 people, I don’t know exactly how many we were, and bought us a ticket Jičín to Bystřice u Benešova. In Bystřice u Benešova, there was a truck waiting for us, that brought us a couple of miles away from Bystřice to such a fenced off space, it looked like cow-sheds – low wooden houses. It turned out to be some sort of special camp called : “Sonderlager für Jüdische Mischlinge und versiebte Arier”, which means Jewish half breeds and spoiled Arians – the husbands of Jewish women and the like. First of all, we were sorted. I was seventeen years old so I was considered an adolescent…”
„As a county office clerk, my father was charged with the job of a recruitment commissioner. He was charged with the seizure of civilian vehicles for the purposes of civilian war. So the owners of the vehicles assembled with their cars on the Novoměstské square, which is a tiny square in Jičín, and my father would register and count them. I was observing this as a boy out of curiosity. As far as I can remember there were no disputes with the owners – they all accepted it with respect of the situation and quite willingly handed in their cars.”
„I think it was by the end of 1943 or the beginning of 1944. There was a massive nation-wide campaign, the aim of which was to prevent the Czechs from listening to foreign broadcasting. Although the radio sets had the inscription “der Feind hört mit” (the enemy is listening with you) or so, it was strictly forbidden to listen to foreign broadcasts. There came the decision that radio sets had to be adjusted so as to disable the receiving of short waves which enabled the foreign broadcasts. They recruited a lot of electricians including me. They collected the sets. For this purpose I was sent to Prague. That was the first time I was in Prague. We were in a gym of one of Prague’s grammar schools. We were equipped with some working desks and all the radio sets from that borough were sent to that gym. We were supposed to disable the short wave reception in the sets. How we did it? We had a rather long directive for that matter. You had to nip off one short-wave coil and it was ready. For radio enthusiasts it was no problem to put a new one back in. There even was a special term for these coils, „churchillky – čurčilky“ from Churchill, that’s how they called these coils.”
„Should we have defended ourselves? Well, I don’t know, it’s hard to say. I didn’t have the opportunity to observe the conflict of the Czech and the German population in Czechoslovakia. Jičín didn’t have a German element. There was a small Jewish ghetto and some domesticated Gypsies to name all of the nationalities. It seemed to me, that there was quite a harmonies living together by the time of the mobilization. There surely was great enthusiasm for the mobilization.”
„These were the unpleasant moments. But there were also the socializing evenings. It kind of reminds me of Theressienstadt where they also had various social and cultural events. It was organized as a sort of cultural-entertainment events with classical music – there even was a piano in the dining hall. I can’t remember anymore who played the piano. I think it might have been Jára Pospíšil, who was an opera singer. Who else? Otakar Brousek the elder. František Filipovský was singing “breathe deeply” by Voskovec and Werich, because before his stay in the camp he was engaged in the Liberated theatre. Their performances delighted and encouraged us very much. Miloš Kopecký. I didn’t know who he was. He was the same as he was in his movies, he was the same guy in civilian life, even at the beginning of his movie career. The interesting thing is that he was very good in mediating and arranging things. If I, for example, I needed something from home. I then wrote home that a messenger from Mr. Kopecký. It was things like this there. Almost no one of these people is any longer alive today.”
Professor Přemek Neumann was born in Jičín in a mixed Christian-Jewish family. His father came from a Catholic family, his mother from a Jewish family. She formally converted to Catholicism. Mr. Neumann was raised, however, in a non-religious environment. During the war, his mother was subject to the Nuremberg laws, she had to wear a Jewish star. The racial laws affected the young Přemek personally only in 1942, when he was expelled from grammar school. He started an apprenticeship as an electrician, he finished it, however, only after the war. In the summer of 1944 he was placed in a forced-labor camp in Bystřice u Benešova. This camp was designated for Jewish half-breeds and other unreliable Arians. The camp was guarded by German soldiers and was located close to the Neveklov training grounds of the Wehrmacht. Přemek Neumann spent more then ten months in this camp. In May 1945 he walked back to his birthplace Jičín, where he finished his studies at the grammar school and in 1947 he started to study at the Electro-technical faculty of the ČVUT (The Czech Higher School of Technological Studies). Even before he finished his studies, he became an employment offer from the school, which he accepted. He has been working in Dejvice at the FEL ČVUT. As he wasn’t a member of the Communist party, his career growth was blocked. He habilitated in the Prague spring and eventually became a professor in the nineties.
