Never Forget Your Name. Alwin Meyer
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saying ‘No Jews allowed’. After August 1940, Jewish children were not allowed to attend state schools.68 Six to eight children now met in the Steiners’ home and were taught by an unemployed teacher. Some time later, they were able for a short time to attend a semi-official Jewish school.
In 1941, the family were evicted from their apartment, but were lucky enough to find other accommodation. ‘The day after we moved into this apartment, Jews were forbidden from moving into new apartments.’
A year after the Germans arrived, around 5,000 Jews were deported from Prague to the ghetto in Littmannstadt (Łódź), in quick succession on five transports on 16, 21, 26 and 31 October and 3 November 1941. The third transport included 130 children and juveniles aged under 18 years, followed by a further 112 in the fourth transport. The ghetto proved to be a transit camp on the way to murder in Kulmhof extermination camp in Chełmo nad Nerem 70 kilometres away. Of the Jews deported from Prague in 1941, only 277 survived.69
Hagibor [‘hero’] was a Jewish sports club in Prague. And, as the freedom of movement of Jewish children became more and more restricted, Jiří and Zdeněk went increasingly to the club. It was now only a small playing area next to what used to be the larger Hagibor sports ground.70 Three times a week, the Steiner twins got up early in the morning to walk to the sports ground 4 kilometres away. Activities for children were organized there in summer until 6 p.m. Because of the curfew, they had to be home by 8 p.m. at the latest. Jiří and Zdeněk would like to have gone to Hagibor every day. This wasn’t possible because there wasn’t room for everyone. So many children wanted to go there. On other days, they passed the time at the New Jewish Cemetery in the Žižkov district, where Franz Kafka was buried.
The Hagibor children and juveniles stuck together: ‘We spent a great time there and made lots of friendships, some of which were maintained even in Theresienstadt and Auschwitz.’
The children were supervised in Hagibor, above all, by Fredy Hirsch, a young German Jew from Aachen. Like many other Jews, he had fled to Czechoslovakia after the promulgation of the Nuremberg Laws on 15 September 1935.71 Jiří And Zdeněk were to meet up with him again several times. During the German occupation, Hagibor was one of the few distractions. ‘We weren’t allowed to go to the theatre or cinema anymore.’
Later, a camp was established on the sports ground for women and men in ‘mixed marriages’, as they were called by the Nazis, who had refused to abandon their Jewish spouses.72
Dáša Friedová When Dáša and her sister Sylva, three years older than her, were no longer allowed to go to the regular school in Prague, they also met for illegal lessons in private homes.
There were five children of my age. An unemployed woman teacher taught us all kinds of things. My sister went to a different home for lessons.
The fear grew incessantly. We didn’t like going outside anymore, even before Jews were prohibited from doing so. For example, I found it degrading no longer to be allowed to walk on the pavement but only in the gutter next to it. And fewer and fewer non-Jewish friends visited us.
The Fried family had to move three times. ‘Ultimately, we lived with two other families in a three-room apartment. We now had one room for four people with almost no room to play.’
Contact with non-Jewish family friends broke off almost completely. But there were still ‘courageous people’ who ‘hid food under their coats and brought it to us’, which was strictly forbidden. When Jews were ordered to wear a yellow star, from mid-September 1939, Dáša began to realize for the first time that ‘we are different, although we look like everyone else’.
‘People we knew’ were among the 5,000 Jewish children, women and men deported in October and November 1941 to the Littmannstadt (Łódź) ghetto. ‘They were only allowed to take a few personal effects and had to leave everything else behind. We didn’t know at the time where they were being taken. But we quaked with fear. What was to become of us?’
While in exile, Franz Werfel, the Jewish writer born in Prague, wrote the poem ‘The City of an Emigrant’s Dreams’:
Yes, I am right, it is the well-known street.
I’ve lived here thirty years without a change …
Is this the street? I’m driven by a strange
Compelling force there with the mass to meet.
A barrier looms … Before I can retreat
My arm is roughly seized: ‘Please show your pass!’
My pass? Where is my pass? In a morass
Of scorn and hate I move with faltering feet.
Can the human soul endure such anxious fear?
Steel scourges that will strike me whistle near.
The last I know upon my knees I’m flung …
And while I’m spat on by an unseen crowd,
‘I have done nothing wrong’, I scream aloud,
‘Except I spoke in your own tongue, my tongue.’73
Lydia Holznerová fell sick a few days before the arrival of the German troops:
I got diphtheria on 10 March 1939 and was admitted to hospital in the district capital of Náchod. Even as I child, I already knew that the Nazis were somehow dangerous. And when I woke up early on 15 March 1939, I heard people saying that the German army had entered Náchod. My mother visited me in the hospital that afternoon. I was in an isolation ward and visitors weren’t allowed. We spoke through a closed window. I remember screaming and asking my mother: ‘Are the Germans in Hronov?’ And my mother started to cry.
She was only able to finish Year 4.
But as my father was well known in Hronov, the headmistress of my school helped. There was an unemployed teacher in the town whom she recommended to my father. She gave him the school curriculum. The teacher came to our home and gave me lessons. My father paid him, which was illegal, of course, and risky for us and for the teacher.
Her sister Věra was able to complete her schooling at the Jewish grammar school in Brno. She could not be issued a proper school-leaving certificate, only an ‘ersatz certificate’.
From June 1939, all Jewish assets were secured. German trustees were installed, especially in profitable companies like Emil Holzner’s textile wholesale business. He was no longer allowed to go there.
He purchased a weaving loom and wove fabrics at home. ‘Soon two other families moved in with us. There was very little room left for us. Then the trustee wanted to live in the house. We had to move out. Acquaintances in Hronov took us in. Now we had just one room for four people.’ The family were still relatively fortunate. They had sufficient savings to survive for two years after the business transfer. They were even able to help relatives who had fled to Prague by giving them small or larger amounts of money. Contact with non-Jews in Hronov remained intact.
The woman who had worked as a housekeeper with the Holzners helped where she could, ran errands and brought a few items that made day-to-day living at least a little easier. Other friends hid furniture and clothing for the Holzners, because, after 1939, Jews had to declare their assets. Valuables and securities had to be surrendered.74 A German business friend in Dvůr Králové, also in eastern Bohemia, kept Věra’s trousseau. One of Lydia’s uncles had married a Christian who refused to divorce. ‘Whenever necessary, we called her to take care of things.’
Lydia continued to play with the neighbourhood children, even in the evening, although it was forbidden for Jews to leave the house after 8 p.m. ‘It was possible because our house and the neighbouring houses had gardens in the back. We children climbed over the fence and played together after 8 p.m. The neighbours did not object, although it was risky for them.’
Lydia Holznerová never forgot one day in early