Lilly Štěpánová

“We did not respond to it (to emigration). We said that as long as the family was together, everything was all right. One brother later decided that he would like to go to Israel, and he applied for it somewhere. The other brother had a girlfriend in England, whom he had dated before. He thus wanted to go to England. He went to the railway station to buy the ticket, and that very day the possibility to emigrate ended. The other brother didn’t get to Israel either, because it all ended by that certain date. We thus stayed together. When the transport began, we decided that we would arrange it so that one young person would go with every family. We still had many relatives. Both my brothers married, and each of them thus went with the family of his wife. First brother went with our parents, and the second brother with the family of his wife. We thought that this way everyone would be taken care of, that they would thus be able to help each other.”

“We learnt that (what Auschwitz was) only after some people began arriving to Prague. They were telling us what was beyond. That there was Auschwitz over there. We had had no idea about it. Trains from Terezín were indeed leaving straight for Poland, but we didn’t know what Auschwitz was. At that time they were transporting 3000 young men. They were going into the unknown. We, their wives, remained in Terezín. We thus went and said that we wanted to follow them, that they were building a new camp and we wanted to be there with them. Fortunately our leader was such a wise woman and she told us: ´Don’t be crazy, you will never see them again.´ We thus did not request to be transported there and we remained in Terezín. Some of us. Some women who still had their parents or relatives went with them. We have never seen them again. Then there was a group of 100 girls who were to replace those men. We were thus ordered to do the work which would have been normally done by men.”