Adventures with Julia

September 13, 2017

Doris Grozdanovicova, a 91-year old holocaust survivor.

Today we met Doris Grozdanovicova.  She is a 91-year old holocaust survivor.  What a treat.  She is sharp as a tack, highly educated and still tours around the world giving lectures.  In her younger years, she was trained in the printing business, and got involved in printing books for people who would later became famous writers.  She knows many important people and loves to talk about her experiences, including her time in the Terezin Concentration Camp, 45 minutes north of Prague.  She is close friends with our guide and was happy to join us on our visit to Terezin.  She reminded me of my mother, who was quite spry at 91 too.  Before leaving the hotel, I asked her what we should know about her and she told us she has a collection of sheep well in excess of 1000.  I asked her how that happened and she said she was once a shepherdess and would tell us more later.

Born in 1926, Doris was sent to Terezin Concentration Camp in January 1942, when she was 16, along with her parents and older brother.  When they arrived there, her father and brother were immediately transferred to Auschwitz.   She and her mother did not stay in the same barracks, as girls and women were kept separated.  However, they did get to see each other now and then.  Her mother became ill and died from pneumonia after 2 years.  She says she thought she was the only one left in her family, but felt lucky that she was healthy and stayed that way because she had an outdoor job, that got her away from the contagion that proliferated inside the buildings.  Also, she was blond, blue eyed, pretty and did not look Jewish.

Picture of Doris while tending sheep. Taken by a local citizen, who later found her and gave her the prints.

The Czech police assigned to Terezin treated her well and gave her the job of tending sheep in the fields outside the camp.  Often, she was very cold and even got frostbite, but was glad to be outdoors in clean air.  She liked the 70 sheep she tended; milked them and even watched a lamb being born.  That was her job for 3 ½ years, until the camp was liberated by Russians in 1945.  One of the Czech policemen, who had lost his own daughter to disease, felt sorry for her because she was alone and offered to take her to his home and adopt her.  She agreed and stayed with his family a few months.  Fortunately, her brother, who had survived Auschwitz, surprised her and they moved together back to their home town of Brno, south east of Prague.  They both went back to school, finished university and enjoyed successful lives.  She has one son and 2 grandchildren.

Doris pointing to the photo in the Terezin Museum, of her tending sheep.

Terezin had been a garrison town of 7000 people before Hitler converted it into a concentration camp in January 1942.  The citizens did not leave at first and Doris remembers seeing them going about their business as if everything was normal, while Jews continued to arrive.  The local public school was converted to a boys dormitory that is now the museum we visited.  Other buildings were converted into separate housing for women, girls and men.    Factories and work places were also created from existing buildings.  All the houses and garages and small buildings were put to use as well.  Doris told us the camp was governed by the Jews themselves with Czech police guarding the perimeter of the camp, but not bothering the Jews as to their behavior.  Everyone, including the police, was controlled by the 20 Nazis assigned to the camp.

Terezin population from November 1941 to April 1945 – by the numbers.

Everyone was accepting of the situation, even though they were crowded into tiny, dirty spaces in the barracks, lived more like animals than people and had only 20 overlords.  Eventually the citizens left and the whole place was a concentration camp, which at its height held 58,000 people.  As another 1000 arrived, a thousand were shipped to Auschwitz for the final solution.  However, the Jews in Terezin had no idea what happened to the departed.

Enlarged copies of paintings made by people in the camp and then hidden in camp buildings until the 90’s.

In the museum, we saw how the people lived in cramped quarters, tried to keep themselves somewhat clean, kept their few possessions in their luggage, and created culture in every way they could.  Men who worked with printing presses, printed their own books, made drawings and paintings.  Machine factory workers managed to create some sculptures.  Other people created musical instruments.  Classical music was not allowed, but jazz and blues was.  Go figure.

Jewish actors were also taken to the camp and soon started a theater in one of the buildings.  Doris said she got to see a theater program once and liked it.  One famous comedian who performed there and was later killed, was Kurt Gerron.  Maybe one of you will remember him.  I do not.

The girl in this drawing was of a friend of Doris’s while in the camp.

Mark in front of a garage and a door to a hidden synagogue.

Inside a hidden synagogue.

We came upon a garage and found a hidden synagogue.  Apparently, there were seven so well hidden inside Terezin that they went undetected for many years after liberation.  People kept not only the synagogues quiet, but they hid their art, poetry and writings in walls and under floors.  Many things did not come to light until after Communism fell in 1989.  According to Doris, no one even talked about the concentration camps until then, including herself.  She did not even tell her children until the 90’s.  Then she became a flood of information even until now.

We learned the story of the Red Cross visit to the camp in April of 1944.  For weeks the camp had been cleaned and painted and made to look pleasant.  People were given nice clothes, toys were brought in for the children, movies were shown, exercise activities performed, better food served, even a play performed by camp members – all to impress the Red Cross visitors.  Doris said it was awful.  There were many obvious questions that could have been asked and signs noticed, but were not.  Things that could be ween, but were overlooked.  When they left, they were so pleased with their experience that they chose not to look at any other camps, including Auschwitz.  Doris believes that they were corrupted.  She did not know what country they came from, but she hated their lack of conscience.

Terezin Cemetery for the 37,000+ people who were killed in the camp. The stones represent trees cut prematurely.

Anyway, as soon as they were gone with their movies of the pretty camp, everything nice thing was removed and life went back to the way it had been, except that people soon started being transported to death camps in large numbers.  By then a crematorium had been installed and was in use there as well as Auschwitz.  We found it near the cemetery.  Doris chose to stay in the car when we were there.

Crematorium in the Terezin Concentration Camp. Originally part of a glass blowing factory. Doris did not talk about it.

Doris has long since stopped weeping.  She seems to be on a mission to tell her story, to get the world to know, understand and remember.  So she keeps lecturing and taking people like us to the camp.  She has a lot of work yet to do.

Mark, Doris and Julia in Terezin Concentration Camp. She comes here often to share her story with people.

Back in Prague, we stopped at the New Jewish Cemetery where Franz Kafka is buried.  It is a very spacious place with many trees and plants and beautiful black tombstones, although Kafka’s is a granite obelisk.

Franz Kafka’s grave in the New Jewish Cemetery. Also, his sister and other relatives.

Soon we were at the hotel and saying good bye to Doris and Kamila.  They both added greatly to our appreciation of Prague and what it means to be a Jew in the Czech Republic.  Mark gave them each a nice tip.

Approach to Charles IV Bridge.

Then we walked toward the Charles IV Bridge again to the clock tower to watch the mechanisms do their thing when the clock strikes the hour – in this case, 7pm.  On the way we were entranced by two figures in a meditative pose with one of them in the air.  How do they do that?  We think we figured it out.  Can you?

Street performers, with one levitating over the other. Pretty convincing.

Once in front of the clock, I found the movement so small and far away that I could not make it out.  Fortunately, Mark took a video and I saw it that way.  Must say, it was not worth the trouble. It seemed to me, that the hundred or more people watching it with us, felt the same.  Much ado about not much.

Clock tower with figures moving in little windows. Could not see other figures shaking their heads or the cock flap its wings and crow.

We walked back to the Augustine, which we have finally learned how to find with its small entryway that is barely marked.  Mark went to bed while I worked.

Keep forgetting to mention that the weather here has been clear, but on the cool side – 52 to 65 at most.  Only a tiny bit of rain.  I hope it warms up as I did not pack for cold temps.  We are drinking tap water everywhere and eating everything we want, including greens.  Tomorrow we leave Prague and drive through the countryside to Krakow with a planned stop in a small town called Olomouc.  I would enjoy another couple of days in Prague, but am sure we will have seen enough impressive buildings long before we get home and we will be hard pressed to remember which is which anyway.  So we press on.  Poland here we come.