Herta Coufalová

“And then, for the most part we were already going wild, although we struggled against it, but that’s how it was. The army, that is, the English came at the last possible moment. The fact is that you saw how terrified those young people were. They gave out, parted with whatever they could. Except the people were hungry and insatiable, and [the food] finished them off. So we, who were already so-called muselmanns, we were in such a bad state that we mostly survived, because we received the necessary care. They were amazingly well equipped, for example, they had bathtubs made out of canvas, [folded] like stretchers. They spread it apart, and those SS men, they were like lambs without their distinctions, they had to bring the water. They bathed us, back then they used DDT, that was effective, they powdered it all over us. And they had nightgowns for everyone, can you imagine? For so many thousand people.”

“The Jewish autonomy in Theresienstadt protected us from the transports, because we were orphans. But the October transports were final and we got on one of them. Theresienstadt was totally crowded at that time so they put us on that transport. My brother went straight to the gas chambers. He was born in 1929 and he was so different from me. I was of a sturdy build while he was rather slim. So he perished. And so did my grandma. She died in May 1945 (in fact, it was more likely in May 1944 as Mrs. Coufalová states at a different place in the text, see below – note by the translator). I made a couple of friends there and they managed to save her a couple of times. She was 66 years old when she died. She was a good person. That was the last transport with old people. Then, they didn’t take old people on the transports anymore. So I was the only one to stay and live. My dad had 9 siblings and all of them perished. So did my mom’s siblings. Everybody died.”

“You were issued clogs or some shoes, they weren’t your size, but that was completely irrelevant. I got a jacket, so I had three-quarter length sleeves and hardly anything to cover my bum with. Scarecrows. It made us chuckle, in a way. We lay on plank beds, there were six of us there. When one turned over, the next one had to as well. There was nothing to do, mostly we stood outside for roll call and they yelled at us.”

“I have to say that I always had fortune in misfortune. Always in the worst possible moment, something changed and it got better. I’m not saying it was good, but it did get better. I was lucky that they liberated us in time, if they had come two days later, I’d have been dead. I had typhus. How much did I weigh? Thirty-two kilos, or thereabouts.”

“So, for instance, the tutor of my brother was the writer Poláček. So if you look at it from a cultural or intellectual perspective, it was extraordinarily interesting and you got to know people that you normally would never meet. If you look at it from this way, Theresienstadt was a great school, if you were interested, of course. You just don’t understand how this could happen. For example, there was this conductor, Karel Ančerlový, who was a significant conductor. He was held in Theresienstadt and he put together a quartet there. They were playing in the vaults of Theresienstadt but I have no idea where he got the instruments from. I was too young to get to see and experience all the cultural activities that were taking place there. Later on, the cultural life was even officially sanctioned in a way. The cultural life in Theresienstadt was extremely rich. It became sort of a school for me because had I not been in Theresienstadt, I would never have gotten to the people that I got to. For example a certain Gideon Klein, who was a young pianist. He perished too. I don’t even know how the piano got in there. Or there was this Rafael Schächter. He was a conductor from the Provincial Theater from Brno. I heard Verdi’s Requiem in Theresienstadt. Well, he had bad luck. Each time he put it together, there was a transport and someone had to go. Of course that the performances weren’t of the sort you expect today. Today, you have all this technology. But for us, it was a small feast each time. The Sold Bride. A German woman was singing Mařenka, she was some eminent German soprano. You got to see, listen to and meet people that you wouldn’t meet in normal life.”

“We were transported to Belsen in open cattle cars. In Weimar, there was a terrible bombing. It happened at high noon. The sky was beautifully blue and the air was crisp, but it was cold. Suddenly, I said to the others: ‘look at those beautiful airplanes. Look at the beautiful sky’. The planes were silver and the bombs started to rain down on us. The Germans ran away and we stayed behind in the sealed cars. But anyway, we hardly run away in Weimer. We were lucky again – we weren’t hit. There were so many of us in that car that we couldn’t sit. We were taking turns sitting down. We were in sealed cars but they were open – the same sort of cars used for transporting coal. The train which stood on the parallel tracks next to ours was hit by a bomb and many died there. The Germans were gone and we were actually happy – After all, we were totally emotionless, we didn’t feel any sorrow that someone had died. We put the dead on a pile and made space for us to sit down. We had become animals, rather than humans. A lot of people were killed there, especially those in the front cars, because the engine standing next to it received a direct hit. I told you: ‘you survived your own death there’.”

“Then, on January 23, 1945, as the enemy armies were coming closer, they herded us to Gross-Rosen. That was a kind of a gathering place where we were handed out lice-infested rags. We also had to be deloused, although at that point, we didn’t have any lice, yet. We spent a couple of days there. We got really bad rags. They loaded us on open cattle cars and we set out on that journey. We had no idea whatsoever where they were taking us to. Suddenly, they unloaded us in Celle and from there we went on foot to Belsen. That’s where it started to be tough. The journey seemed to take forever. Maybe it wasn’t even that far in reality but you know, we were tired, hungry and very inadequately dressed for the harsh January, February weather. The rags they gave us offered no protection against the freezing temperatures. We were more naked than dressed. And that Belsen topped it all. There were no gas chambers in Belsen, but there was no need for them as people were just passing away by the hundreds. The conditions were murderous. We slept on a concrete floor, we didn’t have straw or the like. There was no sanitation at all. There was no water and just a minimum of food. Belsen was the worst – much worse than anywhere else. It was really bad.”

“Till May 1944, I had always been able to save my grandma. I always managed to do it somehow. I only failed in this effort in May 1944, when the last two transports with old people departed to Auschwitz. They put her on the second one. My brother got on that transport as well. That was a huge dilemma for me, because the person who had been helping us said that this time, he could only save one. I had to make a choice: it was either going to be my grandma or my brother. Can you imagine this situation? It was a sort of a Damocles sword. I said to myself that maybe my mom would come back. She was 39 years old. She died right on her birthday, in January 1942. She was born on January 18, 1902. So eventually, neither one of them survived. If my grandma had been able to stay in Theresienstadt, she would have survived it. She was a very healthy and vital person. She was a very smart woman. Very diligent. So that’s how it was.”

“My grandma left in May and me and my brother, we left together. But I tell you, it was totally chaotic. Of course, today we know that it was their intention to confuse us. It was theater. All that shouting and screaming: ‘Los, los!’ He had white gloves, polished shoes and was master over life and death. He told people to go either left or right. I went to the right. My brother went to the left. Well, it was psychological pressure. You were totally confused and had no idea about what was going on. They drove us into this room where they ordered us to put down all of our clothes. We stood there as God had created us. Then we went into the showers. You know, people didn’t know if it’s going to be gas or water. You never really knew. We only knew afterwards. That’s why those who had been in the camp longer and who had already been through this didn’t want to go to the showers. Because you never knew what’s it going to be. Then they gave us some clothes. They just threw them at us. No one cared if it fitted you or not. But still, it was better than Gross Rosen. We went on the death march just on my 18th birthday. That was a fine present, indeed. That was on that January 23, 1945.”

“My parents were arrested in 1941. In August 1941, my dad went from lunch when the Gestapo arrested him. He was taken to Jihlava and from there to Kounicovo koleje. Unfortunately, it was just in the period when martial law was in place. Therefore, he was taken to Auschwitz right away. In December 1941, we received a telegram from Auschwitz saying that he had died in the concentration camp. My mom was arrested on the second day of the Jewish New Year. It was in September. She was summoned to the Gestapo headquarters in Jihlava and never returned again. From Jihlava, she got to Cejl in Brno and from there to Ravensbrück. In January 1942, she had already been dead. She must have just reached forty. She possibly might have survived it but at that time, the sophisticated gas chambers and crematoria weren’t in place, yet. They just drove them inside of lorries in the midst of the night – it was a sort of a surprise operation – and gassed them inside the lorries. It was no room, it wasn’t that sophisticated, yet. It wasn’t like later in Aschwitz.”

“The aim of that camp probably was to kill us all. It had to be like this because the conditions were murderous. The camp was absolutely unsanitary; there was not even black coffee. You can’t really imagine what it was like. When people talk about it, it sounds much neater than it really was. The reality was incredibly harsh and unimaginable. Everybody who survived Belsen will tell you that it was sort of anarchy. The only place where they bothered you was the Appelplatz. There was nothing to eat there, not even that awful soup. Nothing hot to put in your stomach. Neither was there running water. Nothing like that existed there. When they later opened the storehouses, they found loads of moldy bread. They kept it away from us and let us starve.”