Václav Čmuchař

“We’d go to the Reichsbahn in Litoměřice, to the upper station, and from there we’d walk all the way to the Small Fortress. They herded us across the training grounds and had their fun with us as much as possible. If you recall the place, there are mills there. You’d come up from the Litoměřice Basin, which led toward Terezín, round the back of Terezín, and round the mills to the Small Fortress. The mills were on the extension of the road that led from the Small Fortress to the river, where it curved to the right. We walked round that way, and our parents and relatives were waiting for us there. That was the only thing we were looking forward to. To seeing them.”

“I was born in Roudnice nad Labem, which is also where I attended a technical school that had moved there from Chomutov and Most after the border regions were annexed. When we were in the second year, on the twentieth of June 1942, the sixth and seventh years [of the eight-year grammar school], and the second year of the technical school were taken to Terezín for purely hobby reasons. Our activity was [ironically speaking] that we had been drawing the state of military operations on our desks, and so on. But our second year of technical school was pretty much locked up as part of the operation targeting the sixth and seventh years [of grammar school].”

“The worst for us was the first three or four weeks after our arrival. They had us in focus, so they let us feel it. But then, when they split us up into the kommandos, no one knew about the roudnických students anymore.”

“Those they released were not allowed to study any secondary school or university, instead they were required to take up work duties in various [menial jobs], in mines, at steelworks, and so on. I was assigned to civil engineering works with a group of nine other boys at the WIFO factory in Hněvice, near Roudnice nad Labem, and we stayed there until the end of the war. But they didn’t check on us much after a year.”