大象传媒

PRISON
Well from that moment on I was somehow resigned to the thought that I shall not be able to get out of this. But one didn鈥檛 think any further, whether one is going to die or what鈥檚 going to happen. I only knew that I was caught and that I鈥檒l never be able to tell them anything that would save me. All I was hoping maybe was that when my father will find out that maybe he could bribe somebody with some lawyers with a lot of money or something like that. But not really, not really. So I was taken that night into the prison building, which I passed by almost every day in my little grown up life and knew it was the prison but never ever had thought that I would actually be in there.
I was taken there and all my clothes and everything was taken from me and I got prison clothes on and a Gestapo women took me along a long corridor, as one sees it in films, and the footsteps were making a noise as we walked along. And she had a huge ring with keys on it and she took one key and unlocked, with a lot of noise, one huge heavy door, which she pulled open and just took me and threw me in there. In there, there were about 6 or 7 other women, who all immediately got up and came round me, two of whom I knew from Brno, and immediately asked me, 鈥淲hat鈥檚 the situation with the war?鈥� because by then the war was on, and how far were the Germans, how soon are they going to be destroyed by the allies鈥�, (the English and the French) and unfortunately I had to tell them 鈥渨ell I鈥檓 afraid it doesn鈥檛 look very good at the moment鈥�. So they asked me lots of questions. 鈥淲hat it鈥檚 like outside鈥�. I was so upset myself that I didn鈥檛 know what to do and what to say and then they showed me there was a sack of straw on the floor, which was supposed to be my bed, and I just sat on it. Then the Gestapo woman came and put the light out, which consisted of a little light bulb. Everybody was going to sleep and I was lying there and I was shattered. Completely shattered. My whole life was a question mark and what was going to happen and no more freedom. I was shut in a little cell, which was all dark, with 6 or 7 other women. And of course I couldn鈥檛 sleep for a minute all night I was memorising the things I had said at the interrogation because I was told that the next day I鈥檓 going to be interrogated again. I was memorising, memorising what I had said.
So anyway I wasn鈥檛 interrogated the next day. I can鈥檛 even remember when it was the next time. Probably a week later. I don鈥檛 want to go into details about food or anything. It was just the usual water and bread and that was all. I started to become part of the 7 others, who all were in the same boat with me and had been there, some of them, a very long time, some less long. We were talking and talking a lot and of course all the sanitary arrangements were very, very primitive and terrible and I slowly got used to it and I more and more could see that there was no way out. There were also bugs there. I think that was the thing which bothered me most of all. I don鈥檛 think they exist in this country but they did exist a lot on the continent. And it was full of them and in the daytime you don鈥檛 see them and they come out at night and they bite you and sting and suck the blood out of you. Also, as the prison was in my home town and my father was well known there, naturally all the prison guards knew about me and had great pleasure in giving me all the worst jobs. We had to keep our cell clean and all that so I had to do the dirtiest jobs.
Life there was pretty terrible and there the inmates of my cell were changing every so often. Some were taken away, nobody knew where. Some were shot. Some were taken on transports to concentration camps. By then I got to know about concentration camps, which I didn鈥檛 know of before. I knew that Jews were taken away before I was arrested and I did see off quite a lot of friends who were taken by big transports to nobody knew where. Mainly to Poland, but one didn鈥檛 know yet exactly what it was all about. These people were taken away eventually to concentration camps or they were taken out and we heard that they were shot. There were quite a few taken out and shot who were helping Czech parachutists who were dropped over Czechoslovakia who came from England, because in England they were planning an overthrow and sent parachutists to Czechoslovakia in order to organise it. And these parachutists had to be hidden wherever they went, by ordinary people. And every so often they were caught and all these people, sometimes just peasants who helped them, were taken to prison. In my cell there was also one peasant girl who just was the daughter of a peasant where such a parachutist spent one night and she was taken out and she was shot. Of course we knew all that, and always waiting when our turn was going to come. But somehow one becomes resigned to the fact that sooner or later something like that is going to happen and just rely on fate and just live from one hour to the next.
Of course, there were always new prisoners coming in again and again and then I was behaving as those who behaved the way they behaved when I came, was a newcomer, and I immediately asked what is the situation and is the war going to be finished soon and so on. Actually we had a tiny little window in the top corner of our cell, as there are in most cells, with little bars across it and we were climbing one on top of the other on the shoulders and looking through this window and noticed that opposite in the courtyard there were male prisoners. We found out that they were ordinary prisoners, not Gestapo prisoners, not political prisoners, but ordinary thieves or whatever, and they had worked in the prison. They could go out of their cells and they had to help in the offices or wherever it was. And they, of course, knew all about the political situation. So we started a telegraph system and I was the telegrapher and was standing on the shoulders on somebody else and with hand sign language they gave us the news about the war and all together about what was happening in Brno and so on. So from then on we were informed. After 6 months, one day it was my turn when the door opened. Every time when the key was turned with a lot of noise in the lock, all our hearts stood still because it meant somebody has to go or somebody is coming, when it was outside the normal times when we got our water and bread.

ON THE MOVE
So one day that happened again and my name was called out and I had to go with others from other cells. That was a terrific sensation when we came out of the building and all of a sudden saw daylight. It was a glaring, terribly strong light and our eyes hurt. We were put onto a train, first in a lorry probably, which was covered up, and then a train where the windows again where there were shutters put down. But still there was light coming and we could see countryside. And when we saw the green it was like ten times as strong as one normally sees green or any colour. We didn鈥檛 know where the train was taking us but it took a long, long time. Again, with hardly any food, just with bread. We eventually stopped in a town in Germany, in Dresden.
We were taken straight into the prison in that town, Dresden, to stay overnight there. Then the next day we were taken again out of there, escorted to the station and people looked at us with sort of funny eyes because they could see we were prisoners. But of course they didn鈥檛 know we were political prisoners. They thought we were thieves and criminals, which was a terrible feeling, which I still can remember well. And put in a train again and went on again. Eventually got out in a very small town, where we were put on to trucks and went through from the outside of town into the countryside, which was very beautiful and the sky was blue and it was a lovely summer鈥檚 day and our hearts were so happy to see that beautiful countryside and by then we knew that we were going into a camp. We arrived, we were taken through gates which were heavily guarded and then we saw the barbed wire, which of course we never knew existed, and went through the Gestapo control there and were taken into a building which was like a sauna.

CONCENTRATION CAMP
There immediately we saw lots and lots of women, all in striped dresses, most of them with bare heads, meaning no hair. I was very lucky when I opened my mouth when I was asked where I came from because by then we were already quite a few, we were two or three trucks full of all sorts of nationalities, and when these women heard I was Czech they immediately took me aside and took me into a sort of bath place where I was washed and cleaned. All my clothes were taken away, and we were given the striped dresses, but nothing else, and clogs. A dress and clogs. No underwear. Nothing. And they said I just shouldn鈥檛 open my mouth and they鈥檒l look after me because if I keep with the others my head is going to be shaved. So they were supposed to see whether I had lice in my hair or not and that鈥檚 why all the heads were shaved, in order to keep down the influx of lice, which of course they couldn鈥檛 because the whole camp was walking with lice. So I was very lucky that my hair was never shaven off, which was a terrible thing for a woman, to have her head shaved. So I was lucky that there were Czechs working in this delousing and cleaning so I was lucky that I escaped that.
Then I was put in an arrival block, as it was called, and I could see then that the camp consisted of lots and lots of enormous long huts which were spread out away from a large, large road. You can鈥檛 call it a road, it鈥檚 like the Red Square. And along the sides these huts fanned out. That was called the Lager Strasse in the middle and these huts were called blocks. So I was put to the arrivals block where all nationalities when they arrived were put there for the first few weeks. Which was a terrible thing because it was not organised at all yet and you didn鈥檛 know what it was all about. Everybody was new, nobody could tell you what to do. Every day in the morning and in the afternoon or evening there was a roll call when all the prisoners in the whole camp were counted and the inmates of each block had to stand together in a block in rows like the military. There was a Gestapo woman in charge of each block and she had to count her block and then came the Lager F眉hrer, the biggest shot of the whole thing, who came and took the numbers from each head of each block and that鈥檚 how they kept exact count of us all. Not that one could escape much because of all the security arrangements, as one knows by now.
So there I stayed. During the day I had to work building roads for the first week or two, I can鈥檛 remember that anymore, carrying heavy stones and carrying these, wheelbarrows with stones and things. Then I was put into a factory within the camp which was making uniforms for German soldiers and where we were sewing on a conveyor belt in shifts, day shift and night shift. I remember in that particular job sitting at a night shift along the conveyor belt doing always just the one little bit of my work, being terribly, terribly tired, hardly being able to see. Terribly, terribly hungry. Terribly, terribly dirty because there was no sanitation. I mean there were about 5 toilets for about 200 people, so you can imagine what that looks like and what the possibilities were to ever reach it. One night I remember that I was so tired and sitting there and looking at all these terribly tired faces, each face coming from a different country, from all these occupied suffering countries, like dead faces there. Haggard, colourless, just looking into nothing and their hands doing automatic work. One day I felt hard hands on my back, one night, and the Gestapo woman who was watching us during our work, you know, whatever you did you always had at least one Gestapo woman watching, and I thought well now something is going to happen to me. And she said, 鈥淒on鈥檛 turn round. Go on working. I have been watching you, you are working very well, but I can see that you have been doing other work and that you are an intelligent person, and I鈥檓 going to do my best to transfer you to more satisfying work for your kind of intelligence.鈥� And I didn鈥檛 turn round and I said, 鈥淭hank you very much.鈥�

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.