When the war was over, the transport from mum' s camp to Bohemia and all Czechs who were there could leave. But I did not say that my mummy was working in the camp factory. They were producing guns, amunition. She made a mistake, broke a knife or something so she was on the death list. A German, a kind of a camp leader came to her and told her she was very similar to his wife, who was not alive anymore. And as mum was indeed a very lovely and kind woman, he might have fallen in love with her. He simply crossed her off the list and she survived. When she came back from Bohemia she reunited with the father through the Red Cross. When they met again, my father also survived the concentration camp, they went to get me in Zelow to the medic. That was the happiest moment of our lives.
When the Warsaw uprising started on 1 August we had a cover for partisan on our garden in Warsaw. Mum reported that she wanted to help them, to become their connection. So she told me a bit about it, when I was two years old, she ran through the streets with me in her arms to deliver some important messages, information, documents, that she also got hurt once on a way. When the uprising began, we were in the villa, in our family home mz father' s brother lived, her wife and father' s sister too. So when Germans started to bomb Warsaw, we hid in a cellar of the house and on 8 August the gestapo rushed in there. They started to throw hand granades. Also other relatives were there with us, some of them wounded. The Germans left them where they fell. Some were already dead. Only a few of us remained. I, mum, uncle and aunt. Others fell right there in the cellar. My daddy was not there, he got lucky as he went away the day before to the village to get potatoes. So he later told me how he was hiding at his relatives after all that. Still he got captured and sent to the concentration camp in Germany. And we, who survived, were taken into the streets. The Germans lines us into a single row, a kind of a march. And we marched over dead bodies. That was just terrible. As the Germans were marching along the left and the right side of us and shot anyone who fell down or diverted anyhow. They were shooting without any hesitation. So we were stepping over their bodies too.
Mum was holding me so tight not to stumble, not to divert from the line, but I still heard that a German shot right next to my ear. But luckily nothing happened to me, only he shot one of my long pony tails off. But that was nothing, only I got dead on one ear from all the shooting. It was a terrible loud sound and I got really scared, that I could not remember nothing from my own past from my birth right to that moment. It only starts from the moment of marching over dead bodies in Warsaw. Until today I remember nothing at all from my life before that.
Elżbieta Grosseová was born on 4 November, 1937 in Warsaw in a Czech-Polish family of the Hampls. During WW2 they got envolved in the resistance. On 1 August, 1944, when the Warsaw uprising broke out, the whole family was hiding in the cellar of the family house. She witnessed the gestapo rushing in and killing several relatives on 8 August. Together with her mum she survived and was taking by the soldiers out and saw the killing in the streets of Warsaw. They too her and mum to a segregation camp in a Polish Pruszkow. She managed to escape with an assistance of a medic, who was hiding her until the end of war. Her father was also captured meanwhile and taken to a concentration camp same as her mother. They reunited after war and moved to Prague. The witness studied Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw and graduated in 1966. In 1973 she returned to the Czech Republic. She got successful ceramic and a sculpturer. Her works are exhibited and intalled in various countries of the world, she gave lectures at prestige symposiums and is a holder of many awards for her work.
Hrdinové 20. století odcházejí. Nesmíme zapomenout. Dokumentujeme a vyprávíme jejich příběhy. Záleží vám na odkazu minulých generací, na občanských postojích, demokracii a vzdělávání? Pomozte nám!
