Louise Hermanová

“When I came, the first thing I wanted was to see my father. They made us stay in some basement room. I tried to find out where we were, we were not even allowed to leave the room, but I did go out and without knowing it, we were actually in army barracks in Vrchlabí, and that’s where the sick-bay was, and a nurse told me that in the morning my father – sick with pneumonia and running high fever – was forced to get out of bed and join the transport. She told me that he would probably not survive the journey. I came back to the basement room, I was crying terribly, I lay down on the floor. There was nothing, just a concrete floor and people there. I lay my head on my backpack and I cried and cried. I pulled my coat over my head. The world has come to an end for me. Since I did not have a mother, my father meant everything to me. Suddenly I heard lot of noise and loud voices, and then there was silence, terrible silence, and so I got from under my coat and I saw there was a piece of paper placed on the coat. My name and number was written on that paper. And there was nobody in the room, only four women. I was terribly scared, I got up and walked to them and asked: ´Please, tell me, where did all those people go?´ - ´We don’t know.´ My whole transport, with the exception of these four women… was simply gone. I learnt that only after the war – this entire transport went to Auschwitz and to gas chambers. They probably thought I was dead, they were calling my name and they only saw a bundle covered with a coat.”

“What happened was the same as with other transports. Always early in the morning, 2 or 3 a.m., everything flooded with light from lamps… dogs, shouts,… all the same every time… right, left, and so on. In our group, five hundred of women went to work (from Auschwitz to Christianstadt – ed.´s note). Normally, nobody could get out of Auschwitz. The transport which left Auschwitz was the only transport from a Czech family camp. And we were happy, because we hoped that in the place where we were going there would be no gas chambers. Imagine that, not knowing whether you would still be alive in the next ten minutes. Just try to imagine yourself in such situation. One friend of mine, unfortunately he is no longer alive, was in n. 31…We were together with the children: It was not separated, we were all, me, and also Ruth Bondyová, in one large block with the children, and we had groups of children assigned to us according to their age. Each of us was in charge of his or her group. And this boy, I remember him, after 1948 he was coming to visit me every year. He stayed here for a week. At one moment I told him: ´I still cannot forget that morning, when you, before the work began after breakfast…´ It was early spring, it was cold. That day he walked in front of the camp gate and then came back, I still remember him coming, shivering with cold and chafing his hands: ´Looks good for us, another transport arrived!´ Meaning that we still had a chance, those three days before they ´processed´ that transport. When I reminded him of that, he turned completely pale and asked: ´Lisa, did I really say this?´ That instinct for self-preservation is so strong, that it degrades you to that extent…that we have a chance to live one or two more days. Because new people have arrived.”

“Fredy Hirsch created a department in the council of elders, which was taking care of children and youth. He was a Reischsgerman, from Aachen, and he was a graduate of a physical education university. He was a wonderful man, an athlete, playing sports… I would just like to say that I owe him my survival. We already knew each other from Prague, from a cemetery where sport playgrounds were. As I said, we were not allowed to go anywhere, and therefore on the Jewish cemetery grounds, tennis courts, a soccer field, and a sandpit for children were built. He emigrated from Aachen, believing Czechoslovakia would not be occupied. When he came to Terezín, he began to organize everything. And also later in Auschwitz, which truly saved our lives. He was a German and he knew how to deal with Germans, how to talk with them, and they accepted him. There was even a book in Czech and German published about him. But unfortunately he did not survive. He was a very honest man – he promised those people that he would stay by them, and he enjoyed great authority and trust, because he had influence on the Germans. For instance in Auschwitz, a so called children’s block was set up.”

“We stood a roll call, the Germans were clever when they devised it. They were afraid of revolts, and thus they made roll calls, and we had to stand like idiots in scorching heat for four hours and wait for them to come and count us. And nobody came. All of a sudden an airplane appeared above our heads and my friend said: ´It’s British.´ I replied: ´Are you crazy?´ The plane was circling above the camp and returned and then even I could see it had a British sign on the fuselage. We were girls who had no clue whatsoever about tanks, cannons, and such. But we heard the roaring sound, it carries for several kilometers. We anticipated something, but when you are there… we were on a death march… those who came from Hamburg, Neugraben, places around Hamburg, were doing a lot better. In Bergen-Belsen, there were already corpses lying on the ground, the dying were crawling there and some of them even could not get to latrines anymore, there were excrements of all colours, for there was a typhoid fever epidemic. You cannot ask me anything else, there was nothing left. That’s what the camp looked like. And therefore they brought people from all over there, those who were still alive, so that they would kick off there, too. I have no other words for it… there was no longer any daily regime, there was chaos. When we finally saw that airplane… the Germans made use of the time they left us standing there and they ran away. Only the camp commander remained there.”