Susana Urbanová

* 1933  †︎ 2020

  • “The beginnings after the war were pretty much horrible. I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere except for this street and the Jewish cemetery. Besides that, everything was separated. I couldn’t go to the swimming pool, to town, nowhere. Thank God that there was at least the river, where I would go to bathe. So my childhood consisted more or less of bathing and swimming in the river and that was about it.”

  • “The only one who saved his life was uncle Julo. He was in the army at that time. He came back to Třebíč in 1946 and my mom left at the same time. So there we were, two little girls, and because Mr. Smrž didn’t have any kids he became our ward and took care of us because they didn’t have any children.”

  • “I wasn’t the only kid that didn’t go to school but since my mom was German, she didn’t speak Czech and thus couldn’t teach me at home. At least I could count because numbers are the same in both languages. So my uncle basically saw that there was no way for me to support myself so he became my ward. Then little Honzík was born but they kept me anyway. Then I got married but there was a big communist functionary, the director of the West-Moravian power plants living in my house and it took me 12 years of struggling to get back into my own house.”

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    Třebíč, 02.12.2015

    (audio)
    duration: 02:58:50
    media recorded in project Stories of 20th Century
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Nothing moves me anymore

susanna as a child
susanna as a child
photo: vlastní

Susana Urbanová, née Benešová, was born on October 6, 1933 in Třebíč in a mixed family as the older of two daughters. Her father, Arnošt Beneš, was Jewish, her mother, Ingeborg, originated in a German family in brno. Susana began to attend school in 1939 and after she had completed first grade, she was dismissed from school on racial grounds (for being a mixed breed). Her father was deported to Auschwitz where he died on March 5, 1943. Most of her father’s side family perished in Theresienstadt or in Nazi extermination camps. The only one to survive was her uncle Julius Pächter, who fled to England before the outbreak of the war. After the liberation, her mother married for a second time to Slovakia and renounced both her daughters, Susana and the younger Hana. Susana was adopted by the childless spouses Smržovi from Třebíč. The younger Hana was adopted by her uncle Julius, who took her to London. Susana Urbanová grew up in the Smržovi family and completed an apprenticeship for a seamstress. She later married and gave birth to two children. She only saw her sister Hana again in 1966 during a brief trip to England. After 1989, she regained her family property, a house in Třebíč, where she still lives today. Susana Urbanová is one of the last surviving witnesses of the ghetto in Třebíč. Since 2013, her father is commemorated by a memorial stone, the so-called Stolperstein in Třebíč.