“There was this joint on Alexanderplatz where they would meet. There was music, as those ausländers (foreigners) had their music. And the Germans, you know, there was war going on, so they couldn't be having fun, but we were enjoying ourselves and they didn't interfere. But only on Saturdays, on Sundays. Not so much on Sundays, Saturday was the main thing, as on Sunday everyone would be getting ready for work on the next day. So I had a good time.”
“Helena stayed in Germany after the war. She had no family, as she was Jewish and her family had been murdered in a concentration camp. And her mother, as the Germans were taking them to the camp, the Jews, her mother – as Poles were standing on a sidewalk, watching – her mother told her: 'Go, my dear girl, they will take care of you.' And they took care of her. And later, I would just befriend her.”
“I just put my name next to the girls who had joined already. I would just put my name on the list and in the evening I was in Berlin. In the afternoon, there was this train going to Berlin, and they would take us there. They didn't find it weird that my name was on the list, so I ended up in Berlin. In a camp. Our camp was on the floor above the cinema, so we would listen to movies from toilets or from the bathroom. As you could hear everything from the cinema.”
Karolína Penkalová, née Kajtochová, was born on November 4, 1925, in Babice, Oświęcim County, Poland. Her father, František, was workng at the railroad, while her mother, Karolína, was a housewife. During the Second World War, she volunteered to go to Berlin, where she was working as a washerwoman at public bath. In Berlin she survived the war, she also met her future husband, Bedřich Penkala, with whom she moved to Ostrava after the war. Karolina Penkalová died in 2014.
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!
