Hana Kende

"I found out about my grandparents earlier. It must have been after the visit of the uncle from America here. I knew there were only the photos and no grave. I knew that my classmates had gone to maybe my grandparents' grave, but those graves didn't exist, so I had a vision, like at that time, that those grandparents were waiting for us under a tree in Poland. I didn't know that Auschwitz was in Poland at that time, of course, or even what Auschwitz was. So I don't know how I came by that, but I added to it, I guess, what I heard somewhere. So I was bugging my mom like crazy. I didn't think I was bothering, but I guess my mom thought I was, so she took me to the Pinkas Synagogue at the time, where the names of all the people who died were written, but at the time it was still written all over the walls all the way down, whereas now it's just on the ceiling because the synagogue was flooded, so they had to rewrite it all over again. Well, when I saw the names there, I understood that they were not waiting anywhere and that they were really dead. So I knew that, I might have been twelve or so at the time."

"My mother took it hard that [her brother] Ruda died, because she felt that she, as the elder, should die, and he, that he should live. So she didn't talk much about him. I basically found out more about him when we went to Terezín with my parents at that time, because my mother believed that Ruda died in the mine. I don't know what the name of the mine was. There's a memorial in Terezín to that mine... So all she told me was that he was strong. He worked in a bakery in Terezín at the beginning. There's a cut on it [meaning probably a woodcut]. Someone carved him as sitting on bread in that Terezín, we still have that. And then as a young man he left, my mother believed he went down there. Whether it was Rudolf too, I don't know. And she thought he died there, because she always said, 'He was so strong.' Mom had a theory that it was the weakest who survived because the weak were used to having someone help them, while the strong were used to helping others. So the strong were the first to go because they were always helping someone else. So she felt that Ruda died because he was always helping someone. What she never found out, fortunately, her brother found out when he went to Israel and there he met somebody in a Czech kibbutz who went with Ruda on the march. I don't know from what concentration camp in Germany they signed up to go to Terezin, because it was at the end of the war, because they were hoping to find some survivors there. So he was beaten up on the way by some kapo for his coat. So he must have died sometime in April forty-five. But again, fortunately, my mother never found out."

"But I remember visiting him because he was a different, tall man. He dressed differently, he smelled differently. Everything was different. And I know he and my parents locked themselves in a room and we weren't allowed in there as kids. And then when they came out, then we were allowed in. And I know the only thing I remember from that is that my uncle asked my dad at the time what caused them to survive. And Dad said, 'Luck.' That's the only thing I remember about that whole visit. Well, then I started asking a little bit, 'What does it mean to survive?' Dad was more willing to say something after that. Mum, in her experience, basically the only time she said anything was to correct Dad, 'It wasn't like that.' To say something herself, no. It wasn't until I was 16. I must have been sixteen. That was the first trip of the Jewish community to Terezin. So we went there, and that was basically the first time my mother also said something, but very little. Dad was more willing to talk about it than Mom."

"I think I might have been six, seven years old at the most. I remember him as someone I didn't want to go near because I didn't know how to treat him. But what I remember is that he had a very beautiful voice and very kind eyes. And that my dad was angry at the time that I didn't want to go to him... He would have been much more understanding. He didn't mind. I had a feeling that he understood why I didn't want to go to his place. Unlike my dad, who thought that of course I should go."