Eva Clarke
I was Born in Mauthausen Concentration Camp on 29th April 1945: Eva Clarke Tells her Mother’s Story
Eva Clarke - I Was Born in Mauthausen Concentration Camp on 29th April 1945: Eva Clarke Tells Her Mother’s Story
- Anyway, good evening everyone. I am very, very pleased to welcome Eva Clarke. You may recall, those of you who listened to William’s lectures, that two weeks ago, when he was talking about Mauthausen, Eva posted a note on the chat line that she was born there, and William, as he said, was totally shocked, and totally humbled. Obviously, I knew of Eva, but through a close friend, I managed to find her number, and she has agreed to present to us tonight. She’s going to tell, obviously, her mother’s story because as you all know, she was born on the 29th of April, 1945. That is the day that Hitler wrote his testimony, and the day before the monster finally committed suicide. She and her mother were the only two members of their family to survive. 15 Of them were murdered at Auschwitz. In December, 1941, her parents were sent to Terezin. Her father was then sent onto to Auschwitz and Eva’s mother volunteered to follow him by the spring. She was already pregnant. And by the spring of 1945, as the Germans were retreating, their monstrous dream of wiping the Jews off the face of the earth, in the end, I would go as far as to say, became more important than winning the war. So, they are forced back on a train to Mauthausen in Austria. And it’s there that Eva was born, on a cart. Her mother had no assistance. And her mother weighed 35Ks, and Eva weighed one and a half. She survived, they survived. They returned to Prague, where in February of ‘48, her mother remarried. They then immigrated to Britain, lived in Cardiff, and Eva married an academic lawyer, which took her to Cambridge. She has two sons, she has grandchildren. And for many years, she’s been enriching the education and lives of young students by talking to them about her mother’s experience. And the work that they’ve all been doing, there’s a wonderful group of survivors, not just in Britain, but in many of the countries, which are represented on the chat today, they do incalculable work actually through their humanity, giving the students a glimpse of hell in a world where we hope we, we just hope that people come to their senses. So, Eva, it’s such a pleasure to have you here. Welcome to Lockdown University.
- Thank you very much, Trudy, and thank you to everybody who has tuned, Zoomed in on this presentation. I feel it’s a great honour to have been asked to give it, and I, I can assure you, my mother would be so pleased. So, as you’ve already heard a bit, I’m here today because I’m a survivor of the Holocaust. I am a survivor, but only just. Because, as Trudy said, I was born in the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria, but that was right at the very end of the war, and that comes right at the very end of my story. And I’ll start the story with this map, which is one of Sir Martin Gilbert’s maps. And it shows the main concentration camps and death camps that existed in Nazi-occupied Europe during the Second World War. It doesn’t show all the camps by any means because there were hundreds. What it does show, are all the death camps, the red ones. Everywhere where you see the swastika, the Nazi emblem, there you see a name, and that name indicates either a transit camp, a slave labour camp, a concentration camp, or a death camp. And apart from Mauthausen, before Mauthausen, my parents were in Theresienstadt, or Terezin, which is in the former Czechoslovakia, now the Czech Republic, and in Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland. There’s a second reason why I use this particular map, and especially for British students because I like to point out the insert in the circle in the top left-hand corner where you can see a map of part of the British Isles.
And there you can also see a swastika. The swastika is over the Channel Islands, over Jersey and Guernsey, and Alderney because they were invaded by the Germans. There were Jewish people living there, and they were either imprisoned on the islands, or they were sent to concentration camps in Europe. So, that shows how closely the whole thing came to mainland Britain. Next picture, please, Lauren. Now, because I’m telling you a family story, it comes naturally to me to show you family photographs. And this is a photograph of my German family. My father was German, German, but Jewish. It is, it was taken in an interesting place outside Berlin in the summertime at a family gathering. Those gatherings took place every year. And the next picture, Lauren, please. It’s the same photograph, but it shows a few people highlighted. And the adults in the background were my grandparents with their three children in the foreground. And my father is the little boy on the right hand side. Now, in 1933, when Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany, all those three children, by then, were grown up. They were all grown up, and they all realised that it would be advisable if they could get out of Germany. Next picture, please. And the first one to leave was my Uncle Rob. He left Germany, and first he went to live in Holland where he met and married a Dutch lady who was also Jewish. And when the Germans invaded Holland, they managed to escape to Switzerland. And Switzerland was a neutral country. And there, my uncle joined this particular army. And I’m sure that lots of you will recognise the uniform. After the war, he was very proud of this photograph. He would say to us, you know, “Look at me in GI uniform, in front of,” in quotes, “my Jeep.”
So, they were safe. Next picture, please. My father’s sister, Marga, she and her husband, and their son, they left Germany quite late in December of 1938, but nevertheless, they managed to get on the ship that was headed for Sydney in Australia, so they were safe. My cousin was about five years of age at the time, but I don’t happen to have a photograph of him at that age. Here, I think he was graduating from medical studies at Sydney University. Next picture, please. Now, I like to think of this as being my star photograph. I hope you might agree with me by the time you’ve seen them all. This is a photograph of my parents on their wedding day. They were married on the 15th of May, 1940, which was already under Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia. My father had left Germany in 1933, and he managed to get to Prague, the capital of Czechoslovakia. He thought that was far enough to be safe. It wasn’t. But if he hadn’t have come to Prague, he wouldn’t have met my mother, and I would not be talking to you today. He had been an architect and interior designer, and when he first came to Prague, he managed to get a job working for a furniture manufacturer. And initially, he was employed to build film sets at the Barrandov Film Studios, which are still there. My mother had been a law student at the Charles University, but when the Germans invaded, they closed all the Czech universities. Nobody was allowed to study. So, she decided she was going to try to find a job that had more sort of immediate, practical use. And she decided to become apprentice to a milliner. Now, I imagine, I guess, lots of you might know what a milliner is. When I speak in schools, very, very few students know. A milliner is a hat maker.
And I always have to explain to them that that was a very sensible idea because in the 1940s, women always wore hats even if they just went down to the local shops. They’d be properly turned out, and it was the same in this country as well. Now, because I normally speak in schools, I must apologise if I give you lots of information that you already know. For example, I will be brief, when the Germans invaded any country, they immediately imposed various rules and regulations upon Jewish people. And they all come under the general heading of the Nuremberg Laws. I will tell you just a few, to give you a few examples. First and foremost, Jewish people immediately lost their citizenship. They were no longer allowed to vote. No intermarriage was allowed between Jewish people and those of other faiths. Jews were immediately thrown out of the professions. They could no longer be doctors, lawyers, teachers. There was a curfew. Jews were not allowed to go out in the evening. They were only allowed to go to the shops at certain times of the day, invariably the late afternoon when there would’ve been as little fresh produce available as possible. Jewish people were… Yes, I’m talking about the shops. Think, Eva, think. What comes next? Yes, Jewish people were no longer allowed to keep animals. They had to hand them in. They were no longer allowed to keep their cars, or their bicycles. They were no longer allowed to keep their radios, or their telephones. There were no televisions then. They were also forbidden to go to parks, swimming pools, theatres, concerts, cinemas. All those things were forbidden. Their lives were meant to be more and more restricted within their own communities. But because none of these restrictions, in itself, at least initially, was life-threatening, so people tended to think, you know, “Well, if this is the worst it’s going to get, we can cope with this, we can live with this.”
But by the same token, sometimes some people would test these restrictions. It’s a very common human frailty. I’m sure you’ve all experienced it. I know I have. If you are told, you know, you’re forbidden to do something, well, your gut reaction is to go and do it. Whether you actually do it is another matter. And one day, my mother decided that she was going to go to the cinema, despite the fact that it was forbidden. She was sitting in the cinema watching the film when the Gestapo came in, the secret police. They came in, they stopped the film, and they started to go through the audience row by row, looking at their ID papers. And my mother was terrified because she had no idea how they would react when they got to her, and when they saw the large J on her papers, J for Jew. And they got to about halfway through the auditorium and they stopped, but they left the cinema. And they had stopped just one row in front of where my mother had been sitting and boy, did she breathe a sigh of relief. And ever since she told me about this, I was always trying to get her to remember what the hell the film was that made her take such a risk. She also would’ve dearly liked to have known what it was, but it was such a frightening experience, and it was the first. Far worse was to come, but she didn’t know that. It was such a frightening experience that she obviously blanked out that memory, and she never remembered. But what I can tell you, is that when we first came to this country, and when I was safely in school trying to learn English as quickly as possible, I think my mother used to go to the cinema almost every single day.
And that was fantastic light relief for her, after her wartime experiences. She just had this need, it was almost like an obsession, to catch up with the frivolous things of life. Next picture, please. Now, I’m sure you know that one of the restrictions that was imposed upon Jewish people was the fact that they had to wear a yellow star. And although this is quite a dark photograph, you can see the stars on their coats. This is a photograph of my mother’s older sister, Zdena, and her friend, Herbert. And although I’m sure you’ve all seen them in museums and other places, or perhaps you own some, this is a genuine yellow star. It has the word Jude on it, which means Jew in German. And everybody in a family had to wear the yellow star every time they went outside their own front door. You had to buy as many yellow stars as there were members of the family, age six and above. And my mother distinctly remembered what she was wearing the first time she ever had to wear one of these. She was wearing a tan suede jacket, a hat, gloves, and she was going to the shops. She said it actually didn’t look that bad on the suede jacket, but nevertheless, she was very, very apprehensive about how people might react to her. But every time my mother went outside wearing the yellow star, nothing ever happened to her. People just ignored it, and that was the best possible news. Nobody pointed at her, nobody laughed at her. Nobody was rude to her, nobody spat at her. All those things happened to other people, but it never happened to my mother. We speculated as to why not. And all she could think was, you know, she was a young woman, she was full of self-confidence, and she wasn’t going to be cowed. She wasn’t going to be bullied by anybody. And I think the fact that she wasn’t a bad looker must have helped. There’s a second reason why I use this particular photograph and that is simply to show you that they are smiling. They are smiling because they were out for a walk, obviously before curfew. They were engaged to be married.
They were happy. And I assume at the instant that the photograph was taken, they had forgotten that they were wearing the yellow star with any implication that it might have for them in the future. And I will tell you about them later on. Next picture, please. My mother had another sister, and her name was Ruze. Ruze means rose. And this is my Aunt Rose with my cousin Peter, when he was about five. And the next picture, please shows Peter a bit older with a photograph of his father, my Uncle Tom. And my Uncle Tom is wearing the British Army uniform. And the reason for that is, in 1939, he managed to escape from occupied Czechoslovakia. He got to the UK, he joined the British Army. He also managed to get a visa for his wife and for his child, but tragically, my aunt refused to come. And the reason she, she refused to come was because it was a very unhappy marriage. And she said to her husband, she said, “No, we’ll be fine. We’ll stay with my parents,” with her parents, my grandparents. And that was the attitude of an awful lot, I would say, the majority of Jewish people in occupied countries because initially nobody had any idea that they might be sent away anywhere, let alone to something called a slave labour camp, a concentration camp, or a death camp. They had no idea. They just thought if they kept a low profile, more or less stuck to those rules and regulations, they’d be okay. That is human nature. You hope for the best. Yes, some people escaped. Yes, some people were hidden, but they were by far in the minority. And again, I’ll tell you what happened to them later on. Next picture, please, Lauren.
Now, this is an aerial photograph of this place called Terezin, or Theresienstadt. It is about 40 miles outside of Prague, and before the war, it was a garrison town where Czech soldiers were stationed. But when the Germans invaded, the Czech army was disbanded, and the Germans turned this base into a ghetto and concentration camp. And Jewish people from all over Europe were sent there in their thousands. And when I was growing up, and I was asking my mother, you know, how she was taken prisoner, because I had various images in my mind, I’d read, “The Diary of Anne Frank,” I’d seen films, I’d seen documentaries. And I had this image in my mind that perhaps, you know, the middle of one night, three o'clock in the morning, there would’ve been soldiers banging on the doors, soldiers with guns and dogs, dragging people out of their beds. And I said to her, you know, “Is that what happened to you?” and she said, “No, nothing like that.” She said, “We received a card in the post. And the card said that on a certain day, at a certain time, we would have to report to a warehouse in Prague, near one of the mainland railway stations.” And that’s what happened. At the end of November, the beginning of December of 1941, my father received his card, and he left. You were told you could take a small suitcase. You were advised to take warm clothing. You were also advised to take a few pots and pans, which indicated to them that they were going somewhere where they’d be able to cook, they’d be able to look after themselves. And they assumed that they were being sent to some sort of labour camp. And a few days later, my mother received her card, and she left. And not only was she carrying her handbag and her suitcase, she was also carrying a large cardboard box.
And I said to her, “What on earth did you have in the box? Didn’t you have enough to worry about, enough to carry?” And she said, “Well, I think I had between two, or three dozen donuts in the box.” And I said, “Why donuts?” And she said, “Well, your father liked donuts.” And it was a very sensible thing to do. As she had no idea where the next meal was coming from, so she was bringing food. Just happened to be donuts. And I said to her, “And did they get to him?” She said, “Yes, they weren’t terribly fresh anymore, but they were perfectly edible, and he was pleased.” Now, my mother had to spend three days and three nights in that warehouse with hundreds and hundreds of other people. They weren’t given much food, or water, they had to sleep on the floor, and at the end of those three days, they were march to the railway station. And the route was lined with young German officers, 18, 20-year olds. And there was one young German officer who knew he had a bit of power, and he wielded it. He didn’t harm my mother physically. He was just a bit sarcastic with words. I will say what he said in German; I would then translate it. I apologise for the swear word, but it’s what he said. This soldier could see that my mother was having great difficulty, not only carrying her luggage, but mainly carrying the box with the donuts. Because after three days, the moisture from the donuts was making the cardboard soften, and the whole box was coming, adrift, it was coming apart. And he said to her, , which means, “I couldn’t give a dot, dot, dot if that box goes with you, or not,” implying that it wasn’t going to do her much good where she was going. Now, he couldn’t have had any idea whatsoever what was going to happen to her. All he knew was that it wasn’t going to be anything good and metaphorically, he just wanted to twist the knife. But she ignored him. She got on the train. She arrives in Terezin. Next picture, please.
I’m now going to show you two drawings of Terezin because I think they are more evocative of the sort of place that it was at the time. These drawings were done secretly by professional artists who themselves were prisoners. And after the war, they were discovered quite by chance. They were discovered buried under the floorboards, and in cracks in the walls. And I use this particular one to try to give you the impression of a very crowded place because before the war, when it was a Czech garrison town, there would’ve been a few thousand soldiers stationed there. But during the war, when it was a ghetto and a concentration camp, there were thousands, and thousands, and thousands of people cramped into very, very crowded conditions. Next picture, please. And on the inside, it looked like this. People basically lived on bunks. They would try to make a niche, a den for themselves with a few personal belongings that they had been able to bring. Now, when families first arrived in Terezin, that is the first time that those families would’ve been split up. So, men were sent to one part, women to another part, elderly people to another part, children to yet another part. They were able to meet up sometimes during the day, but to a large extent, they led separate lives. And when my mother arrived in Terezin, she was fortunate enough to be given a job. The jobs weren’t paid, or anything, but life was a bit easier if you had a job. And her job was working for the man who had the responsibility for sharing out the food. There wasn’t much food there, but what there was, they tried to share out in a fair fashion. And that meant that she had access to food. And when I say she had access to food, she would steal. She would steal a potato, a carrot, an onion, just something with which to make a more substantial soup.
And that was literally of vital importance because at one time, my mother had the responsibility, every single day, for trying to find food for 15 members of her close family. Every single day, that was her main worry, how on earth was she going to find enough food for all those people? And that was quite apart from the greater worry as to on earth was going to happen to them all in the future. Next picture, please. And amongst the people she was trying to find food for were her parents, my grandparents, Ida and Stanislav And the next picture, please, shows my father as a young man with his mother, Selma. And the next picture, please, shows his father, my grandfather, Louis. Now, my grandfather, Louis, was the only one of my four grandparents to have survived the war. And we believe there is a specific reason for that, although we don’t actually have any proof. I told you at the beginning, that my father was German. His father was German. In the First World War, my grandfather was in the German army. In the First World War, he was given the Iron Cross First Class. That is the highest military honour that the Germans bestowed upon their soldiers. What happens to him in the Second World War? He’s thrown into concentration camp, and most of his family is killed. My grandfather was not sent East. To be sent East was a euphemism, another way of saying you’re going to be sent to the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp. He remained in Terezin throughout the war, and at the end of the war, he was found to be alive, just about. And via the Red Cross, contact was made between him and my uncle and aunt, who by that stage had returned from Switzerland to Holland. And one day, there was a knock on the door and there was my grandfather in the rags that he stood up in, and he lived with them for the rest of his life. And when I was a little girl, we used to go and visit them quite often.
And it was very sad because I would come into the room and my grandfather couldn’t see me because he had been blinded by the gas in the First World War. And he couldn’t speak to me because he spoke German and Dutch and I only spoke Czech and English. But nevertheless, I’d come into the room and give him a kiss and I’d say, “Hello, Grandfather.” And he knew that I was the only surviving child in the family. Oh, now I’m thinking, what’s next? Next picture, please. Now, I’m sure this photograph is very familiar to all of you. It shows you the gateway to the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in Poland. But before I start that part of the story, I have to tell you about two other things that happened to my parents in Terezin. To a large extent, Terezin was a transit camp for the death camps because there were various categories of people who would’ve been sent to Auschwitz quite quickly. And amongst those groups of people would’ve been the old, the sick, mothers with children, pregnant women, the mentally disabled, the physically disabled. They would’ve been sent away quite quickly. But because my parents were young, strong, and well-capable of work, so they remained in Terezin for three years. That was a remarkably long, a very unusually long period of time. And my mother said luck had an awful lot to do with it. But at the end of September of 1944, their luck ran out because it was on that day that my father was sent to Auschwitz. And incredibly, my mother actually volunteered to follow him the very next day. And the reason she volunteered to to follow him was because she had no idea where he’d been sent. And being the eternal optimist, she thought, well, as they had survived three years up to that point, she thought, well, nothing could get any worse. Little did she know. But she thought nothing could get any worse. They would survive. But in fact, she never ever saw my father again. And she heard from an eyewitness, a friend, quite soon after the end of the war, that my father had actually been shot dead on a death march near Auschwitz, on the 18th of January, 1945.
And as you know, Auschwitz was liberated by the Russian army on the 27th of January, 1945, a week later. And that is why we commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day on the 27th of January. Now, the other thing that I have to tell you about what happened to my parents, you will appreciate, is pretty important because it concerns my brother and his conception, me and my conception. I told you that when families first arrived in Terezin, the sexes were segregated. Well, in 1943, my mother discovered that she was actually pregnant. And when I was a very curious teenager, I said to her, “So, how come you got pregnant with my father?” And she replied in a very clever way, she said, “Well,” she said, “it was very, very, very dangerous, but your father and I got together secretly as and when we could, and to hell with the consequences, end of story.” But it was not the end of the story and it had very, very serious consequences because to become pregnant in a concentration camp was considered by the Nazis to be a crime punishable by death. Because they were trying to annihilate, they were trying to murder every single member of the Jewish people. They couldn’t prevent women coming into the camps pregnant, but the reason for the segregation was so that they could not become pregnant while there. And when the Nazis discovered that my mother and four other women were pregnant, they made these five couples sign a document that said, that when the babies were born, they would have to be handed over to be killed. Except they didn’t use the word, kill. They used the word, euthanasia. My mother had never heard the word, euthanasia. She had to go and ask somebody what it meant. In the event, the other four babies were born. We don’t actually know what happened to those families.
We assume they all perished in Auschwitz. When my brother, Jiri; Jiri means George. He was born in February of 1944. He was not taken away from my parents, but he actually died of pneumonia two months later. And his death meant my life, and my mother’s life, which is a very strange thing to say, but true, because had my mother arrived in the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp holding my brother in her arms, she would’ve been sent straight to the gas chambers. But because she arrived in Auschwitz not holding my brother, and although she was pregnant again, this time with me, nobody knew. She knew, but nobody else knew and it didn’t show because it was very, very early on. So again, she lived to see another day. Now, I’m not going to talk an awful lot about Auschwitz because I’m sure you are all very well versed in the history. I would just mention the fact that I’m sure you have seen images of how people transported there on trains that consisted of cattle trucks. They were given no food and no water. There was hardly any air, and sometimes these journeys took several days. There were no toilet facilities. There might have been a bucket, which would’ve been totally inadequate very quickly. So, by the time the trains actually arrived in Auschwitz, invariably the people inside them would’ve been in a very poor mental and physical condition, especially the elderly and the children, because they had the least resistance, the least stamina. And yes, again, I’m sure you know that Auschwitz itself consisted of several different camps. Auschwitz I was brick-built, and that is where all the Polish prisoners were sent. And that is where, today, it is not only place of memorial, but also a museum, where you have the collections, the collections of luggage, the collections of shoes, the collections of spectacles, collections of pots and pans. All those things are in Auschwitz I. But this, Auschwitz II, Auschwitz-Birkenau, this is a place, purely, of memorial. This is where all the Jews were sent, and all the Roma and Sinti.
And when the trains first arrived in Auschwitz and when the people had to get off the trains, that is the first time they had to go through, what was called, a selection. And selection always meant life, or death. And my mother, my mother manages to get through a selection because she was still considered to be strong enough for work. And this was, you know, despite the fact she’d been somewhat malnourished the previous three years in Terezin. To give you an idea of my mother’s physical strength, when she was 14 years of age, she was school’s junior backstroke swimming champion of Czechoslovakia. So, that gives you an idea of her physical strength. And she always said that if this whole experience had to happen to her, she was at the right age, not only physically, but psychologically, and emotionally. She was in her mid-20s, she was tough, she was strong. So, she gets through a selection. Now, this photograph shows you the gateway. Next photograph, please, Lauren, that shows you what it looks like today behind that gateway. This is a vast area, right back to the tree line that would’ve been filled with wooden huts, such as you can see in the foreground. But because Auschwitz-Birkenau is not preserved in any way until many years later, most of those wooden huts just disintegrated, or the wood was stolen as firewood after the end of the war. But what you can see in the distance makes for a very poignant, a very sad memorial, accidental memorial, to all those thousands, and thousands, and thousands of people who died, who were killed there. Because those uprights you can see in the distance, they are brick chimneys.
They are nothing whatsoever to do with the crematorium, but they are brick chimneys because inside each hut, you would’ve had two of those chimneys, and they would’ve been joined together by a brick tunnel. And there was a grate at either end. And the idea was that you’d have fuel that you’d burn in the grate, and the heat generated would pass along the tunnel, thereby giving warmth to the hut. But of course, they weren’t given any fuel. Their lives weren’t meant to be at all comfortable. So, as I say, it is a very poignant memorial because there are so many of those brick chimneys. So, my mother gave… Oh yes, the selections I’ve, I’ve, yes, the selection, I forgot to mention that if people got through a selection, then various procedures happened to them. First of all, they were told, if they’d managed to bring any luggage with them, to put their suitcases on the ground, to write the names on them, that they would be reunited with them later. Of course, they weren’t. They then were sent into real showers. Well, at this stage, they had absolutely no idea that anything other than a real shower existed, gas chamber. They then were given that sort of striped uniform, and a pair… Oh no, before that they had all their hair shaved, then they were given that striped uniform, and a pair of shoes if they were lucky. And then, they were tattooed with a number on their arms. And after that, they were sent into these huts. Next picture, please. And on the inside it looked like this. These huts were incredibly crowded. Some of them, before the war might have been stables that would’ve housed, say 60, or 70 horses. But at the time that I’m talking about, they housed hundreds and hundreds of people, 500, 800, even up to 1000 people. And when my mother and her friends arrived in a hut like this, they were so frightened and so bewildered, they just couldn’t work out what this place was. And they said to the women there, “What goes on here? What happens here? When will we see our families again?”
And the women actually laughed at them because they couldn’t understand that anybody arriving in Auschwitz would have no idea what went on there. And they said, well, “We’ll all go up in smoke and you’ll never see your families again.” And in that instant, they knew what went on there. People were given hardly any sustenance on a daily basis. They were given a black, oily liquid in the morning, which is called coffee. And they were given another liquid in the evening, which is called soup, and if they’re very lucky, perhaps they might have been able to dredge up the odd potato peeling from the bottom of the bucket. And they were given one piece of bread. That is all they were given. So, an awful lot of people just died of starvation. And you would often wake up in the morning to find corpses on either side of you. Now, apart from the selections, the other thing that happened, at least twice daily, was called the Appell. Appell means registration. Sounds like a very mild sort of word, doesn’t it? You’ve all registered into this Zoom tonight. What it actually meant was that every day at four o'clock in the morning and six o'clock in the evening, everybody would have to stand outside their hut to be counted. And if the numbers didn’t tally, they would just have to stand there until they did, or until there was some sort of explanation. And my mother said it was very, very hard to stand stock still for hours and hours on end, regardless the weather. And you tried to keep as low a profile as you could because you had no idea how the Nazi might react to you if for some reason you drew attention to yourself. And my mother actually fainted several times during these Appells, and that could have been very bad news for her.
But she was always so relieved to find that when she came round, to find that she was actually being held up by her friends on either side, which meant that she hadn’t slipped to the ground, she hadn’t drawn attention to herself, and again, she lived to see another day. Next picture, please. Now, this is a selection. In the far distance, that long row of people, they are walking to the gas chambers to their deaths, but they don’t know that. In the foreground, the longer row of people are men, the shorter row are women. And they are walking towards a group of Nazi officers where they will be selected for life, or for death. And my mother distinctly remembered one of these selections where Dr. Mengele was presiding. Dr. Mengele, as I’m sure you all know, was one of the most notorious Nazi officers. He was a medical doctor who specialised in horrendous experiments upon sets of twins, upon pregnant women, upon babies. And my mother remembered hearing him say, which means, “This time we have very good material in front of us.” Not people, units of slave labour. They did not consider the people in front of them as being human beings. Now, all the rest of my family, except for my one grandfather and my parents, so my three other grandparents, my two aunts, my cousin Peter, and most of the other members of the extended family, they were all sent to Auschwitz a long time before my own parents were. And when they arrived there, none of those initial procedures took place. They were able to keep their clothes, their luggage. They weren’t shaved, they weren’t tattooed. And they were sent to, what was called, a familienlager. That meant a family camp. All it meant was that there were one, or two of those huts that had families together. And there was just one very cynical reason. And that was why. And that was so that they could be forced to write postcards home. Next picture, please.
And my aunt, the lady wearing the yellow star in that earlier photograph, she wrote this postcard to her cousin, who still happened to be in Prague. Next picture, please. This shows you the, the text of the postcard. I’m sure some of you can read it. The postcards had to be written in German, so the Germans could censor them. I will read you the English translation. You can see the date. It is the 20th of October, 1943, and it starts off with the words, , “My dear ones, I’m here with my husband, my sister, and my nephew. All are well and in good health. My husband received a parcel yesterday from our housekeeper, and I would ask you to confirm this to her. Please also thank Gerdie. Could you greet Petr Schmidt for us. I hope you’re well and happy. Your parents were very well at the time of our departure. Write soon. Peter looks well and looks forward to receiving news from you. Greetings, greetings and kisses, yours, Zdena” Now, I imagine that you will agree with me that that sounds like, you know, “Having a wonderful time. Wish you were here.” And my aunt was desperate to get a message out in code. She got the message out, it was understood, it was acted upon, and some of you may have already spotted it. Next picture, please. In the top left-hand corner, you can see the sender’s full name, Sidonie Isidor. She’d married that man in the first photograph. Underneath that, is her birthday, 21st of March, 1904. Today is the 21st of March. Underneath that, it says, Birkenau, but where the address is, the first line says, Frau, Mrs, but where her name… Her name was Olga. The word Olga does not feature. And I’m sure lots of you know what the word is. The word, Lechem, is neither Czech, nor German.
The word, Lechem, is Hebrew, and it means bread. And my aunt was telling her cousin that they were starving. Her cousin understood, her cousin sent a parcel, but the contents of it would’ve been stolen long before it’d got anywhere near them. And I’m afraid I have to tell you that even before the postcard was sent from Auschwitz to Prague, they were all dead. All of them. I’d also like to tell you that a few years ago, I donated this postcard to the Imperial War Museum for their new Holocaust exhibition. Now, because my mother was still strong enough for work, she was sent out of Auschwitz. Next picture, please. She was sent to a slave labour camp, to a place called Freiberg, in Germany, near Dresden, where she was working on this. This, as I’m sure some of you recognise, this is the V1, the unmanned flying bomb. In the UK, it was nicknamed the doodlebug. And when my mother and the other prisoners arrived in the factory, the very first impression they had was one of bedbugs. The place was crawling, on the floor, on the walls, on the ceiling, and they were delighted. And I imagine some of you can guess why. They were delighted because it meant there was some food there. Not much, but there was some. It also meant there was some warmth there. Again, not much, but it was better than nothing. And they very quickly ascertained that there were no gas chambers there. After a few days, they weren’t quite so pleased when the bugs started to bite them, but after what they had been through in Auschwitz, it was negligible. Unknown to my mother, she was to spend the next six months in Freiberg, which is from October of 1944 to the end of March, the beginning of April of 1945. And the end of the war in Europe was the 8th of May. And during those six months, she was becoming progressively more and more starved, and more and more obviously pregnant, which was very, very dangerous for her.
But fortunately, none of the Germans realised she was pregnant because had they done so, they might well have sent her back to Auschwitz, at least before Auschwitz was liberated. But they only found out after Auschwitz had been liberated, so they couldn’t send her there. We do know of cases of pregnant women who were sent back before liberation, and Mengele took the most unspeakable revenge on them because he felt they’d got away with it. Now, during the six months that my mother was in Freiberg, that is when the allied bombing raids of Dresden took place. I’m sure you all know about the Dresden raids and about the controversy that has raged ever since. But I hope that you’ll appreciate that in this particular context, I’m talking to you from my mother’s very, very personal perspective. And from her perspective, the raids were just fantastic. What happened when the air raid started was, the prisoners were locked in the factory. the Germans retreated to the basement, to the air raid shelter. And the prisoners, even though they knew the next one could fall on them and kill a lot of them, nevertheless, they were very pleased because they realised it was the allies, and they hoped and prayed that it wouldn’t be too much longer before they were actually rescued. Next picture, please. And this is where my father-in-law comes into the story very, very indirectly. My father-in-law, Kenneth Clarke, he came from the Welsh Herefordshire border. He was in the RAF. He was a navigator. He was in bomber command, and he was on the Dresden raids. And after the war, when he met my mother, well, long time after the war, when my husband and I became engaged and the two families got together, and when he heard my mother tell what had happened to her, he was absolutely devastated at the thought that he could have actually killed her, which he could have done. Next picture, please.
This shows the front cover of his log book, Royal Air Force Navigator’s Air Bomber’s and Air Gunner’s Flying Log book, Flight Lieutenant Clark. Next picture, please, will show a page from his log book. And the next picture, please, Lauren, will show a line highlighted from that same page. And it reads, “On the 13th of the 2nd, '45, the 13th of February, 1945, 17:40 hours,” 20 to 6 in the evening, the Lancaster, that was the aeroplane. And on the right hand side, you can see the word, Dresden. So, he really could have killed her, but he didn’t. At the end of March, the beginning of April of 1945, this is when the Germans, realising they were losing the war, this is when they began to evacuate the camps. They were trying to empty the camps of living witnesses as to what had been going on inside them. And this is when the notorious death marches happened. My mother wasn’t on a death march, but she was put on yet another train. But this time, it didn’t consist of cattle trucks. This time, it consisted of coal waggons, open to the skies and filthy. Next picture, please. And it would’ve looked something like this. My mother was on a train like this for 17 days, with no food and hardly any water. And after the war, when similar trains were discovered and opened up, they were discovered to just have piles of corpses in them. And during this 17-day nightmare of a journey, the train was stopped, the doors were opened, the dead bodies were thrown out, and a farmer walked by. There were over 2000 women on this train. And a farmer walked by and he saw my mother, and he had such a shock. She always said she could never forget the expression on his face. She described herself as looking like the scarcely-living pregnant skeleton. My mother weighed five stone, 35 kilogrammes, and she was nine months pregnant.
And this farmer brought her a glass of milk, but there was an Nazi officer standing near her, and he had a whip. And he raised this whip to shoulder height as if to beat my mother if she accepted the glass of milk. But he didn’t. He lowered his arm and he let her have the glass of milk. She maintained that saved her life. Who knows, perhaps it did. And the train went on. Next picture, please, Lauren. And it eventually arrived in this place called Mauthausen. Mauthausen itself was a beautiful village on the banks of the Danube in Austria near Linz. The concentration camp was up the very steep hill behind the village. And when my mother saw the name Mauthausen at the station, she had such a shock because as opposed to when she’d arrived in Auschwitz, not knowing what that was, this time she knew because she had heard about this appalling place very early on in the war. And she said that she always felt that the shock of seeing the name possibly, probably provoked the onset of her labour. And she started to give birth to me on that coal waggon. She had to climb off the coal waggon unaided. She had to climb onto a cart because the prisoners who were not strong enough to walk up the hill to the camp, they had to get onto carts, and they were pulled up by others. She had people lying all over her, people with typhus and typhoid fever, and she proceeded to give birth to me. And there was another Nazi officer who saw that she was in the midst of child labour and he said to her, , which means, “You can carry on screaming,” 'cause presumably she had been. And she always said that she was screaming, not only because she was in labour, but because she thought this was her very last minute on this earth.
She thought she was about to die. But we both survived the experience. I was born, I didn’t move, I didn’t breathe. Incredibly, the Germans allowed a doctor to come to my mother, a doctor who was also a prisoner. And presumably, they allowed it because they could hear some guns in the distance. And there are three reasons why we survived, and the first is a very chilling one. On the 28th of April, 1945, the Nazis had run out of gas for the gas chamber. Well, my birthday is the 29th. So presumably, had the train arrived on the 26th, or 27th, again, I wouldn’t be talking to you today. The second indirect reason why we survived is because on the 30th of April, Hitler committed suicide. But the last and the best reason why we survived was because on the 5th of May, the American Army liberated the camp. My mother reckoned she wouldn’t have lasted much longer. They think I weighed three pounds. A three-pound baby nowadays, is put straight into an incubator. There were no incubators. Or perhaps I had the best incubator. My mother just held me all the time. The Americans arrived. They had food and they had medicine, but as I’m sure you know, it is very dangerous to give starved people food because their bodies just cannot take it. And my mother spoke fluent English, and she tried to tell as many of the soldiers as possible, I mean, of the prisoners as possible, who did not speak English, what the Americans were saying. And they were saying to eat very, very slowly, and very small amounts. But you can imagine, can’t you, that if you’ve been starved for months and years, and suddenly you’re handed an American chocolate Hershey bar, well, you tend to scoff the lot. And an awful lot of people, at that stage, collapsed and died. But one hopes that perhaps some of them, a few of them, might have realised that they were actually free. Next picture, please.
The main form of torture in Mauthausen, was the fact that prisoners had to work all daylight hours in the stone quarry. And those are people on the left hand side. They are carrying large blocks of stones that they’ve had to dig out of the quarry. And again, you have to remember, these are not young, strong, able-bodied people. These are prisoners who have been starved and tortured for months and years. And so many of them died, or were killed on those steps that the prisoners themselves nicknamed them, The Stairway of Death. They are very steep. I have seen them, I have even been on them. And the next picture, please, Lauren shows after liberation, when some of the prisoners who were strong enough, they’re pulling down the Nazi emblem, the eagle with the swastika underneath. Now, after about three weeks, when my mother was strong enough to travel, the Americans asked her if she wanted to be repatriated to Prague. She did. And so, we were put on yet another train, an ordinary train this time. We arrived back in Prague, it was at night, and it was dark. And my mother said that was the worst moment of her three-and-a-half years incarceration in camps because up to that moment, she’d never allowed herself to think as to what had probably happened to all the rest of the family. She just never let herself think about it. But you know, arriving at your home station, you wonder if there might be anybody there to meet you. And of course there wasn’t. But nevertheless, she still had a vestige of optimism at the back of her mind, and she thought that if any other member of the family had survived, there was a chance that it might be her cousin, the lady who received the postcard. And indeed, she had. My aunt had come back from, from Terezin, the first camp, a few days before we came back from Mauthausen.
And my aunt had even heard on the grapevine that my mother had survived, and that incredibly, she had a baby. My mother asked somebody to give her some money to go on the tram. We arrived at my aunt’s flat. And my mother was a very practical woman, and the first words she said to my aunt were, “We haven’t got any lice.” Well, we were riddled with lice, and we had scabies, but she didn’t think we had. And the second thing she said was, “Please could we stay for a few days to recover?” Well, we actually stayed for three years. I get emotional over the happy things as my mom did. We stayed for three years. And because my mother was given closure quite soon after the end of the war, when she was told of the death of my father, so three years later, she was able to consider a new life, and a new marriage. And this is where my stepfather comes into the story. And I’ll try not to break down again. Next picture, please, Lauren. My stepfather, Karel Bergman, he was also Czech and also Jewish, but like my uncle, he’d managed to escape from occupied Czechoslovakia. He got to the UK, he joined the RAF. He was too old to be trained as a pilot, but because he was, he spoke languages, he was made an official interpreter. And after the war, he came back to Prague to pick up the pieces of his family, most of whom had also been killed in Auschwitz. And he met my mother, whom he had known as a family friend before the war. And they decided to get married and they also decided to leave because this was now 1948, and that is when the communists took over, and they did not want to live under communist regime. And so, we came to the UK. And although we came legally, I would like to stress, we might have come as refugees, we might have come as asylum seekers, we might have come as migrants.
We arrived in the UK, and my stepfather got a job quite quickly. I think the uniform probably helped. And he got a job in South Wales, and as a result, I grew up in Cardiff. Next picture, please. And guess who? I know I’ve changed just slightly. I don’t have plaits anymore. Well, I do have the plaits, but they’re a different colour. As you can see, this is a very happy picture. We’re on our way to my first school prize-giving where my mother shed a lot of tears. Well, all parents and grandparents shed tears at prize givings, but I think she might have cried a bit more because unknown to her, I was about to receive a prize for reading. And I hadn’t spoken a word of English when we first arrived in the UK. And then people say to me, well, what did she look like in more recent times? So, I wonder if you can guess where we are? Next picture, please, Lauren. We’re on the London Eye. When the London eye opened, I asked my mother what she would like to do as a birthday treat. And she said, well, “Everybody’s going on this London Eye. I want to go,” so, we did. She was then 85.
And the next picture, please, Lauren, shows her 10 years later on her 95th birthday. Not bad for 95. And the next picture, please, Lauren, shows my four-generation photograph. I have two sons and they have three, now four children between them. And my mother could never get over the fact that she’d survived her wartime experiences, that I survived, and that she ended her life with three great-grandchildren. I told you, it’s the happy things. And also because I know lots and lots of people who are watching, who knew my mother. Right. Wait a minute, wait. Yeah, I’ve got to the end, haven’t I? Yeah, I’ve got to the end, except, let me just have a drink.
Ava, Eva, that was absolutely extraordinary. Thank you so much for your courage in telling us the story. Very special. I can see from the comments just how grateful people have been. It’s so important.
Thank you.
Will you take questions, please?
Oh, yes, I will, but Lauren just showed my birth certificate, which people might be interested in seeing.
I dunno if you-
Yes, please.
Yeah, this is my birth certificate and the data on it is three years later because although my mother had another one, it was lost by a lawyer, I believe, somewhere. So, in 1948, before we came to the UK, she had to get a new one, so she applied to Mauthausen and that’s why the date at the bottom says 1948. But what is more interesting, is the third line where it says where I was born, Mauthausen, fruheres Konzentrationslager,
former concentration camp.
Hm.
Yeah. So, that is also in the Imperial War Museum.
Mm.
Okay, yes, of course, I’ll take questions. Oh yeah, these people I have to talk about, but okay, shall I do that now?
Yes, please.
Can I do that now? Okay. Right. Can you all see this book?
Yes.
This is called, “Born Survivors.” It’s by a author called Wendy Holden. And it tells the story of three young mothers, all of whom arrived in Auschwitz, pregnant. All of whom were in the Freiberg slave labour camp for six months. All of whom were on that horrendous train journey to Mauthausen in the most dire of, they all gave birth in the most dire of circumstances in April of 1945. Hannah, on the right, is her older sister. She was born on the 12th of April, still in Freiberg, on the floor, on a table, on the floor, I’m not quite sure which. And can you imagine, the German soldiers were taking bets as to whether it would be a boy, or a girl. Anyway, her mother hid her under her clothes and got on the train. Mark’s mother, Rachel, sorry, Hannah’s mother was called Priska and came from Slovakia. Mark’s mother, Rachel, was from Poland, and she gave birth to Mark on the train, on the, he thinks, on the 20th of April, 1945. And again, would you believe it, not only was it my mother’s birthday, but it was also Hitler’s birthday. And I believe, Mark might correct me, but I believe that when he was born, the, some of the soldiers, or somebody who was helping his mother said, “Well, give him the date of the 20th of April. It could help him.” Even at that late stage of the war, because it was Hitler’s birthday. Anyway, all three mothers gave birth. None of them weighed more than five stones, 35 kilogrammes, none of us weighed more than three pounds and all six of us survived. All three mothers, all three babies, none of the fathers. And… Don’t worry, I won’t do it, but I could take another hour telling you how I take all the credit for finding the two other babies. And my mother met them, which was wonderful. So, I think, yeah, I think we can close on that. And it’s all in this book. It’s all in this book. Oh, you’re going on? Alright, Lauren, this is my stepfather and my mother when they got married in 1948, before we came to this country. And yeah, anybody, the man on the left hand side, anybody in Canada, I think he was called Franta Vilim, and he emigrated to Canada, to Montreal, after the war, where we were meant to go as well, but because my stepfather got a job in the UK, we stayed put. Okay, Lauren, I think we can stop there.
[Lauren] Great. And we have a few questions. It’s mostly-
Sure.
[Lauren] just incredibly thankful comments and just people, just who are expressing their incredible gratitude towards you for sharing your story. But question-wise, we do have a few.
[Eva] Okay.
Q&A and Comments:
Q - [Lauren] Someone is asking, “Did you say that Jews were not allowed to use telephones earlier in your lecture?”
A - Yes, that’s right. One of the, one of the restrictions that was imposed upon Jewish people was the fact that they weren’t allowed to keep their radios, they weren’t allowed to, or keep their telephones. All those things were taken away from them because they were trying to make their lives more and more restricted within their own communities.
Q - [Lauren] Another question, someone says that they assume the photos in Auschwitz were from the German archives.
A - Yeah.
Q - What did they intend to do with those photos?
A - You tell me. I have no idea. I’ve no idea. But they did record everything.
Q - [Lauren] A couple other questions. “Since you had such a difficult start in life, were you a healthy child?”
A - Touch wood, yes, amazingly so. I’ve only ever had tonsillitis, measles, and chickenpox. I was incredibly healthy and my mother could never understand it. I mean, the doctors, especially gynecologists, have said, “Yeah well, your daughter took her all her strength from you.”
Q - [Lauren] Robert says that his mother lived in Cardiff and he’s wondering if you remember the Zeidman family at all.
A - Can you spell that name?
Yes. Z-E-I-D-M-A-N.
Weisman. I’m, I’m honestly not sure. I imagine they did, but I’m honestly not sure. Sorry.
Q - [Lauren] No worries. Another question about knowing a family. Someone wants to know if you know the family Rosser from Swansea?
A - No, but I… Is that, I think that lady might be a survivor, or came on the Kindertransport. I’m not sure. I think I have met somebody by that name from Swansea. But it was many years ago.
Q - [Lauren] Someone is asking if you can just hold up the book again.
A - Oh, sure. Yes, and can I tell you the, the author of the book, her name is Wendy Holden, and she is a former journalist. She worked on The Telegraph. She was a war correspondent. She was in Iraq amongst other places. And, you know, at some stage, she had enough of life and death, and she became a biographer. And she’s written over 35 books. And, and yeah. And the book is amazing. Well, I would say that, wouldn’t I? But even though I know the story, it’s a real page turner, and I do recommend it.
Q - [Lauren] Great. A couple people are asking, “How did you find all of your family photos?”
A - Right well, we found the family photographs from members of the family who’d escaped before the war. So, my relatives who escaped to Holland, relatives in Australia. Also had relatives, other relatives who escaped to the States, and some also came to London. So, my mother managed to amass them. But can I tell you a wonderful story about my parents’ wedding photograph? That amazing photograph where, to me at least, they look like film stars. Uh. Well, all my mother’s photographs, her childhood photographs, her growing up photographs, they were all lost. They were all destroyed by somebody who thought they could incriminate her. They couldn’t. But anyway. And my mother, she actually went back to the photographic studio. The owner was Jewish and didn’t come back, but the studio was still there, and the people in the studio managed to find the negative. And if they hadn’t found the negative, I wouldn’t have that amazing photograph.
[Lauren] Incredible.
[Eva] Yes.
Q - [Lauren] Along the lines of the negatives, we have a question from Frank who says, “Are any of the photographs of the Mauthausen concentration camp taken from the negatives? Are those understood to have been later provided by Francisco Boix as evidence of atrocities and crimes at Mauthausen?”
A - I’m sorry, I really can’t answer that question. Sorry, I don’t know.
Q - [Lauren] Do you not understand?
A - No, I-
Q - He’s also wondering if the photos were ever used as evidence of atrocities.
A - Oh, I, I’m sorry, I just don’t know. You would have to find out from, you know, historical accounts of war crimes, trials and that sort of thing. I’m sorry, I just don’t know.
- [Lauren] Uh, Oh, Hannah says, “Brilliant talk and awesome slides. Love and blessings.”
Q - Brenda is wondering if Judaism has any personal significance for you?
A - Right, well, I have to tell you that I don’t come from an observant Jewish family. My parents were not observant, my grandparents were not observant. My maternal grandmother would go to the synagogue and the high holy days, but that was all. My maternal grandfather called himself a humanist. He wouldn’t have anything to do with any religion. So, I didn’t grow up in a, a religious household at all. We feel, my parents, my mother, and my stepfather and I, we feel culturally Jewish, but not in any religious way.
Q - [Lauren] Thank you. And Cosette is wondering if you are able to tell your grandchildren your story?
A - Well, I’ve begun to, but they are a bit young. I mean, they’re a bit older than they were in that photograph. For example, my, my grandson who lives in London, I did speak in his school, in his secondary school. He’s 12 recently, but I didn’t want him to be in the audience because it was, because in the UK, I tend to speak to students who are 14, 15, 13, 14, 15, and he’s only in his first year. But what I didn’t want to happen was that people might ask him about me, or… I didn’t want him to be singled out in any way, either for good, or for ill. So, over the Christmas holidays, when my son and my grandson were staying with us, I told Theo, that’s my grandson, with my son’s help. We sat around the dining room table, and I showed him all the photographs I’ve just shown you. And I talked to him about his great-grandmother. And he actually remembers her He says he remembers her. He was only three when she died, but he seems to remember her. And so, I told him, not all the details, but most of them. And, and also I would… I know everybody always boasts about their grandchildren, but please let me share with you the fact that when I was telling him, he made a connection with Anne Frank. And I thought, “Great! It is, it is going in.” Because he had, he has read an abridged version of that and he’s also seen that a wonderful BBC production. So anyway, so, and the, the ones, my other grandchildren live in Australia and I’m hoping that at some… Well, I have started to tell them because the two older ones, they also remember my mother. But I’m hoping that I, I dunno, I’m still doing it when they’re at the right age in their schools. But I’m very glad my first post-Covid trip is going to Australia at the end of June. So, I might. Well, oh, and what I can tell you, that photograph of my mother, myself, the fathers and the children, when I was in Australia many, many years ago, I was asked to speak in a few schools. And the only comment, when my grandchildren didn’t know anything about it, but they’d seen the book and they’d seen that photograph. And they said to me, they said, “Grandma, will you be talking about us?” And I said, “Yes, of course.”
Q - [Lauren] Did your mother and stepfather have children?
A - No, they didn’t. My stepfather was 15 years older than my mother. And although she offered to have a child with him, but he said no. He felt he was too old. And also, he officially adopted me, and he really considered himself my father, and I considered him my daddy.
Q - [Lauren] That’s great. Barry has a good question, “When your mom got back to Prague, how was she treated by her old neighbours?”
A - Well, oh, wait a minute, because she came and lived with my aunt, so the people round about weren’t the neighbours that she’d had before. And if I tell you that, I’m not sure if it was the very last place where my parents lived in Prague. But they had an amazing apartment apparently at the top of a synagogue, which my mother said was very beautiful, and very sort of picturesque except that it had, it had a sort of a curved mullioned window, you know, with lots of different frames, and it was impossible to put only blackout. So, they tended to live by candlelight, which was very romantic when they were first married. But no, I mean, if I talk more in general that my mother was treated very well by her friends who met up with her again. She had some unpleasant experiences as well when she went back to her own home village. But there was, you know, there were good experiences, and there were bad experience. She was given a lot of things. She was returned a lot of things like jewellery, and antiques, and things, but not all her family photographs, which is what she really wanted. But then, a few people were also quite cruel in the remarks they made, but, you know, but, you know, my mother said that was sort of like water off for duck’s back after what she’d been through. But on the whole, people were very good. And people also, if you’re interested, people were very warm and welcoming when we came to Cardiff, both members of the Jewish community and the non-Jewish community. My parents had very good friends in both, and people were very kind.
Q - [Lauren] That’s nice to hear. Did your mother speak about her experiences at all while you were growing up?
A - Well, yes, that’s why I know the story so well. Because when we, when we arrived here and because I didn’t have any uncles and aunts, grandparents, cousins around the place, I was always asking my mother about her life growing up, you know, her school days, her hobbies, her sports, and about members of the family. And interspersed with those very ordinary family stories, she would tell me quite instinctively of her wartime experiences as she felt that I could cope with the details. So, I can tell you the very first thing she ever did tell me. I was about six or seven. I came home from school and I noticed on the back of the kitchen door, there was a brown suede shopping bag, and it had the initials, A.N. on it. My mother’s name was Anna, or Anka, and her first married surname was Nathan, Nathan, so, A.N. I didn’t have the surname Nathan, because my stepfather had officially adopted me so, my surname was Bergman. So anyway, I said to her, so, “What are those letters?” And she apparently took a deep breath and thought, “Here we go.” ‘Cause I said, I think I said, I was about six, or seven. And all she said to begin with was, “Well you’ve heard about the war. And I indicated, sort of, because it was talked a lot about, in the background, between my parents and their friends. And she said, "Well, you had two daddies. One daddy was killed in the war, and now, you’ve got another daddy.” That’s all she said. And because I was always, always asking a question, she said I was more, or less like a sponge, so as I grew older, so the replies became more and more detailed. And I’m so grateful for, well everything in my life, but I’m so grateful for the fact that my mother told me very gradually because I think if she had never said anything, and sat me down when I was about 12 or 13 and said, “I’ve got something to tell you,” I think it would’ve come as an enormous shock.
[Lauren] Let’s see. Estelle says that your first language was German, but you have absolutely no trace of an accent.
No, no, my- no, my first language was Czech, not German. My first language was Czech.
Still no accent, though. No, well, well I can tell you, well no because… Oh, that’s also interesting. When I was in school, because my parents were worried that I would end up with a continental accent, so they sent me to, for elocution lessons. But what they didn’t realise, and I have realised since, is that children gain their accent, not from their parents, but from their peers.
[Lauren] Ah, that’s very insightful. Thank you.
Hm.
Q - [Lauren] Andrew’s asking if you can please repeat the name of the village that your mother came from.
A - Oh, because I hadn’t said that at all. Right. It’s quite long. It’s called Trebechovice pod Orebem. The pod Orebem means under the, the Orebem, the Oreb is a river. So, Trebechovice in Bohemia.
Q - [Lauren] Got it. Thank you. Phyllis wants to know if you, or your mother received any religious education?
A - No. I didn’t. My mother certainly didn’t. She did very occasionally go with her mother to the synagogue, but I think only a couple of times. I didn’t. I have to say I had more of a Christian religion because I went to a, would you believe I went to a Roman Catholic convent school? So, I do actually know quite a lot more about the Christian faith than I do about Judaism. I’ve, I’ve, I’ve gleaned a lot about Judaism, you know, over the years.
[Lauren] And then, Rhoda has made a wonderful offer. She says that she’s in Montreal and if you’d like, if you give her the name of the gentleman in the last photo that you shared, she can try and find the family for you if you’d like.
Oh, well that’s very kind. His name was Franta, F-R-A-N-T-A, Vilim, V-I-L-I-M. And both he and his wife, whose name I’ve just forgotten, they’re no longer alive, but they had two daughters. I’ve no idea if they still live in Montreal. But also, you might find it interesting to know that of many, many years ago, I was in Montreal because my husband was doing some academic work there. And I kept wandering around the place wondering how differently I might have turned out. And I thought, well, I would speak French better, and I might have learned to ski, but apart from that, I didn’t know.
Q - [Lauren] Great. Did you meet any of the Sherman family in Cardiff?
A - Sherman, that’s, that’s also a name that rings a bell, but to be honest, I can’t remember. Sorry.
- [Lauren] And then just, Lori and Paul, your relatives, they are just saying some nice words. They’re very honoured to be relatives of yours and thought you did an amazing job.
Q - And then, one last question from Maurice is just, he’s wondering if you were compensated by the Germans at all after the war?
A - Yes. Yeah, my mother eventually had a pension from the Germans and also I did, up to the age of 21, I think it was. I did, yes.
Great.
Anyway, Eva, I thanked you once, let me thank you again. It’s been a very, very special evening for a lot of people. And I know quite a lot of young people were listening to you tonight.
Thank you.
So, you’ve told your story in such a wonderful, dignified way, and you still have this incredible zest for life, which is wondrous.
So-
My mother did.
Yeah, it’s obvious. And the way you speak of your mother, that’s also. And what a beauty.
Yeah. Oh yes, that’s right. Can I, can I do one more plug, and then I’ll shut up.
Yes.
People might be interested to know that in 2012, the BBC did a documentary on my mother. It’s just half an hour and it’s called, “The Baby Born in a Concentration Camp.” And she was very pleased with it. Well, we both were. If people are interested, it’s accessible on YouTube.
It’s something that William was saying today, in his presentation, how history is much stranger than fiction.
Yeah. Yeah.
And the events you’ve unfolded to us are extraordinary. So, as we say. And thank you so much.
Thank you.
And goodnight, and goodnight to all of you. And God Bless. And Eva, I believe you regularly listen to Lockdown, so.
Oh, every week, every week. And what is amazing is what an incredible group of people have come together.
Yes, yes, I agree.
A special thing.
I quite agree. Thank you, and it’s been a real honour for me. I do thank you.
Oh, it’s our honour. And thank you so much. God bless.
Okay.
Bye.
Thank you. Bye-bye.
Thank you, Lauren. As ever-
Thank you, Lauren. Thank you, Lauren, very much.
And keeping it all together.
[Lauren] It was my honour, truly. Goodnight everyone.
Thank you. Good night.