大象传媒

NINA ORSTEN
Memories of the War

Recounted to her son Anthony on 8th January 1974

BEFORE THE WAR
I was living peacefully and very happily as a member of a large family. I had a sister, Litzi who was older and a brother Ernest who was younger than I and we were living with our parents just outside Brno, which is the second largest city in Czechoslovakia and which is situated in Moravia, which before 1918, before Czechoslovakia became a republic, belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
There was quite a large number of German speaking people or former Austrian people living in that part of Moravia and my father鈥檚 family belonged partly to that section of the population. He had a textile mill just outside Brno in Obran and we lived nearby in a house with a beautiful large garden just on the banks of the river Svitava and had a lovely time. We were young and had lots of fun in summer in the water and skiing in winter in the nearby mountains and had lots of friends around. So everything was very happy and everybody minded their own business.
But, like in Germany, Hitler started to become more and more popular. The Germans in that part of Czechoslovakia, Moravia and the Sudetenland which was the border between Czechoslovakia and Germany, started to make trouble and there was a lot of propaganda going on that it should become German having been Austrian and German speaking before Czechoslovakia was founded.
Hitler started to become well known and more and more powerful in 1933 in Germany. He founded his party - The National Socialist Party of Germany the Nazis - in 1933. So things got worse and worse in these border countries in the Sudetenland and Moravia and the Germans started to become very politically minded and tried to sabotage things and pick fights with the Czechs and vice versa. Historically, Hitler tried to change Germany completely and make it the 鈥楳aster Race鈥� and wanted to expand his German Reich and wanted all Germans in neighbouring countries to be annexed to Germany. Naturally, all these countries wouldn鈥檛 have it but the German citizens in some German groups, little groups, in these countries were working internally towards that end as well. And so in 1938 Hitler marched into Austria and occupied it and, of course, in Austria everybody was German speaking and he immediately used all his political talk to promise the Austrians everything they were always wishing for.
So once he was settled in Austria he wanted to press on to the next neighbouring country, which was Czechoslovakia, and in March 1939 he invaded Czechoslovakia. Now by then we had already feared that something like that would happen and Czechoslovakia tried to mobilise all their little Army. I was 21 years old at that time.
So in spite of all the efforts and preparations of the Czech Army and the Czech people, Hitler marched in and occupied Czechoslovakia with not only his troops but also his political agencies, like the SS and Gestapo. And then life really became quite intolerable because you couldn鈥檛 trust anybody because they were all over the place and they, after a while, closed the Czech universities and nobody was allowed to study anymore.

TROUBLE STARTS
So at first I was working in my father鈥檚 factory in the book keeping department and then I worked for a while in a hospital because I wanted to help and learn a little bit, but there I was antagonised by the German 鈥楩raus鈥� who had taken over the hospitals, so I went back into my father鈥檚 factory and worked there. Naturally everybody in Czechoslovakia who were good Czech citizens, tried to do what they could to make life difficult for the Germans and to save those people who were persecuted by the Germans, like the Jews and so I did quite a bit of that. One of those was the mother of my fianc茅, who was taken hostage by the Germans because her son had gone to England to join the RAF and fight against Germany. I tried to get in contact with the police who were guarding the camp where all these people were taken. When I got in contact I sent parcels with food and whatever to my fianc茅鈥檚 mother and then reported by letter via an anonymous address to my fianc茅e in England. I got the letters from my fianc茅 and his brother, who fled from Czechoslovakia to England with the help of an underground organisation and this courier was employed by this underground organisation to take all sorts of messages to and from Czechoslovakia. This courier went through Liechtenstein, which was a neutral country. So I kept this correspondence up for quite a long time, giving information about my fianc茅鈥檚 mother, where her camp was situated and how it would be possible to help her to escape. I never knew that this went through an underground organisation.
One day I got a letter from my fianc茅鈥檚 brother without any 鈥榮ender鈥� on the envelope and with a Czech stamp on it, where he explained that I should use, in spite of it all, very careful language, possibly a code, which we would in time get to know, and that鈥檚 what we did. He wanted to help his mother and other people in that camp to escape from there. So in time we got our codes for certain expressions and were corresponding and everything was fine but nothing had been arranged yet for his mother鈥檚 escape. It must have taken about half a year.

CAUGHT BY THE GESTAPO
One day I got a letter which requested that I come to the Gestapo at a certain time to be interviewed. I arrived at the Gestapo and nobody knew what it was all about and I was sent home again. So I was hoping that this was maybe a mistake but I fortunately had found out in the meantime, through auntie Vilma鈥檚 friend, who knew somebody who was working at the Gestapo, that they wanted to interview me about an underground organisation, which I was supposed to be helping, and my actual crime was 鈥榟igh treason鈥�. So I knew immediately it must have something to do with these letters which I was writing and so I was a little bit prepared by then as to what it was all about.
Three days later our local policeman arrived at the house. We were living still in our house outside Brno, which was called Obran. By then I had already burned everything that could be used against me. The policeman came in. I asked him, 鈥淲hat is it all about?鈥� and he said he had no idea. All he knew was that he was supposed to escort me to the Gestapo. So I said goodbye to everybody at home and I went with the policeman with the tram to the Gestapo, which was a very long way away, and was taken into a room. There was a man sitting and a secretary with a typewriter and he had a heap of papers lying in front of him and immediately started to ask me questions.
I don鈥檛 know exactly how he started it, but he told me that all this heap of papers in front of him were all photocopies of letters which I had been writing and receiving for the last 6 months. So, of course, I immediately knew now what it was all about. He took one letter after the other, which I wrote and I had to explain every sentence in that letter, what it meant. Of course, I started to build a terrific web of lies which I had to adhere to through all the questioning. And in-between these sentences of mine which he was quoting to me he always put catch questions in and through these questions I found out that they thought that I was a member of the underground organisation and that the man through whom they found out about me had been caught. He had my address on him and that鈥檚 why they had started to watch me.
These Gestapo interrogations were not rough at the start because they wanted to get it all out of you first quietly and nicely because that鈥檚 how they get it out much easier. Only if you don鈥檛 want to say anything or you don鈥檛 want to answer at all then they start to torture you. But I answered his questions all the time, telling him a lot of untrue things. Because, as I was writing in a lot of code language, he didn鈥檛 really know a lot about it and I could start to build up a story, which I did. Which was terribly difficult and very worrying. It took hours and hours and I had to remember exactly what I was saying all the time because he always came back again with questions referring to previous letters. Right in the middle of it he said, 鈥淎ll right, we鈥檙e going to leave it now. We are going to go home to your home and we鈥檒l see what鈥檚 happening there.鈥� And so they took me to our house to Obran, where, fortunately, as I told you, I had destroyed everything that could harm me.
I found out after the war that they had been to my house while I was being questioned and had gone through everything. So I don鈥檛 know exactly why they took me home again. They thought maybe I would breakdown there, seeing my home again and seeing my mother there and seeing auntie Litzi there. And I remember exactly when we were just at the stairs and leaving again, auntie Litzi came and asked me, 鈥淎re you going to be home for dinner?鈥� And the chap didn鈥檛 give me a chance to answer and he said, 鈥淚 don鈥檛 think so.鈥�
Anyhow, he went on questioning me again when we came back until late into the night and always came back again, and again, and again to the same questions. Who is the man who I met in Prague on my frequent visits to Prague? And all that wasn鈥檛 true but he asked me that all the time because he wanted to get some more names out of me because he got my name from the other chap. So as he couldn鈥檛 get anything further out of me he said, 鈥淲ell we are going to take you now to prison and we are going to call you again for interrogations.鈥�
All I can say my reactions were, while I was sitting there being questioned for so many hours, it was in March, it was a lovely sunny day and I must have been on the third or fourth floor of the building and the window was open, and I was wondering all the time, should I dash to the window and jump out. Because I could see I鈥檒l never get out of there again. And then I thought, well, I鈥檒l see how it goes. I didn鈥檛 know at all what鈥檚 going to happen to me but I knew I鈥檇 never come home again. It was March 1943 and before that there were already a lot of people arrested and never came back again.

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