"There were big preparations for the visit of the Red Cross. All the old people moved away to the chances of being nowhere to be seen. We were painted to look healthy, got a steak for lunch and had to scrub the sidewalks with a brush. I remember that very well, everything had to be perfect. The commission was kind of weird because it didn't try to find out anything at all. They only went where the Germans led them, showed them something, but did not try to find out anything themselves or talk to anyone. They didn't ask where there were any old people, how come there were only young people. That was for naught. We made a lot of promises since that visit, but it was completely useless. They just came, they looked at what they were shown, otherwise they didn't ask anything, it was simply useless."
"The first year in Terezín was very bad. We were in the Hamburg barracks, there was nothing in the room but straw on the floor and then the luggage that everyone had with them. There were about thirty of us there, in a room that was about forty square meters. We were crammed in there. We were in the barracks for a year. The worst thing for me was that there was nothing to do. What was one supposed to do there all day? There was terrible hunger because we got very little food, mostly turnips, half-rotten potatoes and half a loaf of bread for a week, we made dashes for each day, but sometimes we couldn't stand it and ate the bread that day and then we had nothing left. So there was hunger, terribly crowded people, it was quite terrible. The only relief for me was when I found a book to read somewhere. Most people took at least one book with them when they went on the transport, so did we. People then borrowed those books from each other. That was the only time I had a book, so I didn't care. I was an avid reader, so when there were books, nothing bothered me, neither cold, nor hunger, nor heat. Those books ran out, it didn't last a year, but I read everything I could."
"Then a very nice incident happened. When we had to wear the stars firmly sewn on the dress and when I went out with the star and went on the tram for the first time, I had mixed feelings. I didn't know what was going to happen, how people were going to react. It was not pleasant to be labeled like that. But it turned out very differently, because when the guide saw me, he said: 'Let's see, a princess with a gold star has come to us.' It was amazing, I must say. That still touches me today when I think about it, because he captured exactly what my feelings must have been. It was very nice of him. Then I wasn't afraid anymore. After that, there were more people who had stars, but the first time I showed up with a star, the guide's behavior was absolutely amazing and he made it so easy for me."
"Dad was fired from his job. I had a friend named Marta, her family was very poor. When the Germans came, her dad joined the Germans, and because of him we were one of the first to go to Terezín. As soon as he joined the Germans, they were already doing well. My dad could no longer find work in his field, he was an engineer, so he took a job with a coal company. That Marty's dad ordered coal from that dad's company, but they delivered it three days later. He then reported dad. That is why we went to Terezín in January 1942 as one of the first. Terezín had been there since November 1941, but there were no transports there yet. We then went in one of the first transports to Terezín because of this information."
"Mom survived it all with me. Once I heard two guardians talking about her, they thought I was sleeping. They said to each other: 'You know, Růženka - that was my mother's name - she doesn't even know how to pack her suitcase, but if they lead the SS through the attic and there is a radio, they won't find her.' They were actually looking for a walkie-talkie, she was so amused that they just couldn't find the walkie-talkie. If they found her, it would cost her life, and other people too. So that was pretty important. But she did it, which no one would ever say to her that she is that brave and that she can handle such a situation. That was incredible."
“They had a network of people and places where they could turn for help. I don’t know how it happened, but we somehow got included in that list. My mom had worked for the left front already before the war, and for this reason she apparently became included in this list of reliable persons. This Mr. Rajk thus went directly to us. He did sleep in our flat, really, I saw him. (And when was it?) It was sometime in the 1950s, I don’t remember the year. The problem was that he wrote a letter to his friend after the war in which he described his illegal activity, and apart from other things, he mentioned that he had spent a night in Prague with such and such people. My mom found this letter herself, because she worked in the archive of the ministry at that time, and she discovered the letter herself. She had a great boss, and she showed the letter to him and asked him: ´What shall we do about it?´ He said: ´Well, we’re in trouble, then.´ That was because Rajk had become an unfavourable person, and he was later executed.”
“The issue of school was thus solved, but we had no place to live, no money, nothing. We were sixteen, and well, so what? We spent a couple of nights in the railway station, and some nights on benches in the park, because there was such a chaos at that time, people were returning from the various camps and so on, and it was therefore nothing unusual, but still this could not be a permanent solution. Then my friend’s mother came back and she was given an apartment, and I thus stayed with them for some time, but the apartment was small and when my friend’s brother returned, it was no longer possible for me to live there, and I thus remained alone in this predicament. On weekends I was going to Terezín to see my mom, and she unable to understand why I was so sleepy all the time, because during that time I actually never got a good night’s sleep.”
“German officers were standing there in a semicircle, and they were watching everything - the people being pushed into the train cars. One of them held a list in his hand and my name was apparently on this list. He said in German – I could speak German - ´If her name is written here, then she must stay here.´ He was talking about me. My mom has probably saved the lives of both of us at that moment by her conduct, because she was to leave and I was to stay there. But she didn’t move a muscle and the SS man was looking at us what would happen, but mom didn’t show any emotions and she probably somehow felt it, she didn’t even kiss me good-bye. She took my hand and said: ´There is nothing we can do about it, you have to stay here. Go to the people we know, I have to go.´ And she went. She had already stepped on the train car stairs, but the SS man who was standing on the edge of this semicircle just winked at the soldier who was pushing people into the cars, and this man pulled her down from the stairs. He grabbed her hand, he grabbed me, and he led us out of the railway station. This was the last transport, and we thus remained there in the ghetto until the end.”
Raja Žadníková, a doctor of medicine, née Engländerová, was born on August 25, 1929 in Tel Aviv, where her parents met and lived. Both parents were Jewish. The mother came from Vienna, the father from Prague, where the family moved after a short time from what was then Palestine. In January 1942, the Engländer family went to the Terezin ghetto. In the autumn of 1944, the father was transported from Terezín to Auschwitz and later to Dachau, where he perished. Raja Engländerová and her mother avoided the transport from Terezín and were liberated here. Mother stayed in Terezín for some time and helped place orphans in families. In the summer of 1945, Raja and a friend left a medical stay in a sanatorium in Štiřín, returned to Prague and tried to return to school. She lived on the street in Prague for several months, after her mother‘s return from Terezín they lived together. After matriculation, she graduated from the Faculty of Medicine and worked for fifty-three years at the Institute for Mother and Child Care in Podolí, Prague. In 1968, she went to work in the United States with her husband and son, after a year they returned to Czechoslovakia. The life of children in the Terezin ghetto became the subject of the play I Never Saw Another Butterfly by the American author Celeste Raspanti, who consulted the script with a witness. MD Raja Žadníková was married twice and raised two children. She died on December 17, 2020.
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!
