Alena Tichá

“We sat on the bench in the lounge. I remember looking at the black, polished floor, a bit afraid because even my aunt who was with me there was a bit of a stranger to me. Suddenly the door opened and this thin, strange man came out. I look at him suspiciously. He gave me some sour sweets, which I later found out he had gotten from the cleaning lady. Around my neck he hung a little heart on a string, which he had cut out of a toothbrush. I wore that for a long time. He himself wore a leather heart with a cellophane cut-through around his neck, where he had a lock of my hair as a talisman.”

“Dad left the concentration camp in Terezín on 9 May. For the most part he walked or hitch-hiked to my grandparents in Prague. He contacted Granddad, who was employed there. The rest of us were in Milovice. He and Granddad then set off to join us in Milovice. I remember how as a five-year-old I sat on the window sill on the look-out for Granddad because it was said he’d be coming from Prague. He was accompanied by an awfully thin, pale gentleman. I went to meet him and called out: ‘Granddad, we were really frightened about you. It’s good that you’re back.’ He said: ‘Alenka, do you know who this man is?’ I said I didn’t. I had photographs of course, and we almost prayed to our father, but I just didn’t remember him at all. But he came home with epidemic typhus, and it was terribly sad for him that his daughter didn’t recognise him at all. Soon afterwards he was in a high fever and they took him to the hospital in Nymburk.”