“My memories of the fascists are still terribly vivid even today. Imagine that my mom was just lying there helplessly, and the fascists forced the maid, who had been working for us and living with, to stay behind the door in the kitchen and they did not allow her to be with us. I was eight years old at that time. An SS man with a submachine gun stood over us, probably in order so that we did not do any harm to him or run away, and other SS men were searching our apartment. They were arresting daddy. He was not even allowed to say good-bye to us. There was an awful mess after they left, but it does not matter. When they left the apartment, my mom suffered a nervous breakdown. She was terribly sick and she cried. I was so confused that I didn’t even realize how tragic it was.”
“A miracle happened and dad showed up in my aunt’s home on May 3rd. Later we learnt from him that he had had typhoid. And we also learnt that it was a Czech informer who had gotten him into the concentration camp, and that it was a fellow German prisoner who had helped him get out of there. Since that time, I am thus speaking about fascism, and not about nationalities. Because unfortunately, fascism can flourish anywhere and it does not necessarily have to be in a German nation. Father told us that he had gotten a bit better when he was sick with typhoid thanks to a German prisoner who worked in the infirmary, and that the German man secretly helped him and two other prisoners to get into a train which was sent to the West. There were cargo wagons, and prisoners from Terezín who were sick to death were thrown in them, and in between them there were wagons with stolen goods and valuables of the fascists.”
“What was terrible was that there was no discussion at home, or that I had not been involved in any discussion. Dad was expelled from the Party in 1953 and I was a grammar school student in 1954 when I was accepted into the Party. When I joined the Party, daddy gave me a painting of Lenin speaking to Russian peasants. It was at that time when dad had already been expelled… And this is the reason why I gave permission for my testimony to be published - because if one does not receive information thanks to the freedom of speech, one can then be so easily manipulated.”
Eva Střížková, née Kyprová, was born December 25, 1935 in Jihlava to Ela and Pavel Kypr. Her father worked as an editor of the culture section of a Jihlava newspaper, and her mother, who was of Jewish origin, was a teacher of French and German. Pavel Kypr was arrested by the Nazis in 1939 for his anti-fascist stance, but after three months he was released. Eva‘s mother suffered a nervous breakdown during his imprisonment. As a result of the subsequent burning down of the synagogue in Jihlava and the death of her Jewish relatives, she developed multiple sclerosis. The family moved to Prague, where Eva‘s father was arrested in 1944 for the second time for his resistance activity, and where Ela Kyprová died three months later. Pavel Kypr was imprisoned in Terezín and Eva, who was nine years old at that time, was taken care of by a family friend, with whom she spent the last year of the war in Ostroměř in the Podkrkonoší region. Eva‘s father, who was sentenced to death, managed to escape from a train and on May 3, 1945 he arrived to his daughter in Ostroměř. Pavel Kypr joined the Communist Party after the war and in 1953 he was expelled, but it did not have any consequences for him. Eva became a member of the Party in 1954. She studied to become a teacher of Czech language and history. With her second husband Antonín Střížek she moved to Ostrava, and she joined the restoration movement within the Communist Party in 1968. She was expelled from the Party in the subsequent political purges and she lost her job. She then worked as a labourer in the Metrostav construction company. In 1989 she founded the Civic Forum in the village Staré Křečany. Eva raised four children. Her son Antonín Střížek is a successful painter and photographer.
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