“We drove in a cattle truck already from Theresienstadt. They put us to cattle wagons, there was a bucket for shits in one corner and otherwise nothing. We drove all day and night I think, in the morning the train suddenly stopped and the secret police opened the wagon doors and began screaming, the dogs barking as crazy and everyone had to get out: ‚Los, los, alles raus!‘ We did not know what was happening. Then right there at the Auschwitz station, they divided us, separated men from women, and I was fortunately counted as a woman. So we went together with mom.”
“They put us under the showers and gave us some clothes. Then took everything from us, luggage and all, so we had just bare hands. They changed our clothes to some stripy clothes and I even got a coat; one sleeve black and the other one beige. So that we could not run away, they dressed us like that. Finally they took us to a room, where they tattooed us one after another.”
“There we didn’t do anything, we were just lingering, you might say. My mom was so bad off, that I thought she would not survive. She got fever and had a very good friend from Louny, and always, my mother's name was Olga, she said: ‘Olga, come on! You survived the war, and now here you´re whining?!' That how she encouraged her because we all really heard the army that they must have been coming. Gun shots, we've heard it all before. So we knew that liberation must come any day.”
Hana Tvrská, née Weilová, was born on April 24, 1928 in South-Bohemian Protivín in a Jewish family. Weils owned a general store and before the WW2 broke out, little Hana attended elementary school. After the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia anti-Jew regulations began to apply, the Weilovs lost their shop and on April 18, 1942 the whole family was transported by Akb to Theresienstadt ghetto. The witness stayed in Jugendheim L 410 and was working there. In December 1943 she was transported together with her parents to a concentration camp in Auschwitz, where her daddy died. Hana Tvrská with her mum survived until June 1944, when they were transported for clearing work to lagers Freihafen and Neugraben (branch lagers of Neuengamme). In April 1945 she was moved together with her mum to a concentration camp Bergen-Belsen, where they were both liberated on April 15, 1945 by the English army. In June 1945 they went back to Czechoslovakia, the witness finished school and then worked in a diary and a shop with perfume and bijou. She lived in Czech Budweiser. Hana Tvrská died on 1st May 2021.
