Czech Survivors Recall Holocaust, 60 Years Later

BRNO, Czech Republic – Sixty years after she escaped from a German forced-labor camp and trudged over mountains back to her native Czechoslovakia, Zuzana Wachtlova, 85, is gripped by the memory of the events that led to the gassing of her parents and her own near-destruction.“I watch every program that comes on the television about the Holocaust, I read every article,” Mrs. Wachtlova, an energetic woman with twinkling blue eyes, whose hands sometimes tremble with age, said.“I can’t free myself from it. In fact, I, sometimes when I watch these programs, I even see all the barbaric things that happened with fresh eyes all over again.”Over the past year, people across Europe have been marking the 60th anniversary of their liberation from Nazi terror: in Rome, in Normandy, in Warsaw, and elsewhere across the continent. Now, as V-E Day approaches, those who lived in the final vestiges of the Third Reich – the last to be freed – take their turn at remembrance. When Admiral Donitz issued Germany’s surrender on May 8, 1945, much of the territory of today’s Czech Republic, as well as parts of Germany and Austria, was still in German hands. Large-scale commemorations are under way here, including a re-enactment of the Prague uprising and a four-day celebration in Pilsen, the western Czech city that was liberated by General Patton’s troops.For Mrs. Wachtlova, a Jewish survivor of the Terezin and Auschwitz concentration camps, freedom came around May 5, when a messenger from the Soviet army arrived at the Marzdorf labor camp where she had been sent to work in a textile factory. Mrs. Wachtlova said the soldier delivered the news simply, with the words “It’s over.” She and her sister immediately set out on the journey back to Brno, their former home and the second largest city in what is now the Czech Republic. Mrs. Wachtlova’s mother and father were less fortunate. Mrs. Wachtlova believes that they were both gassed shortly after the family arrived at Auschwitz in 1944.Karel Holomek, 67, is another of Brno’s survivors. A stout man with a salt-and-pepper beard, he is a retired engineer by profession and a lifelong Roma, also known as Gypsy, activist. Mr. Holomek spent the war in semi-hiding, living quietly with relatives in a rural village to the east of Brno. Under the Nuremberg racial laws, he and his sister were classified as Mischlinge, or racially mixed individuals, because their father was Roma and their mother a non-Roma Czech.“Anyone could have turned me in in that village. People knew my sister and I were there, but they chose not to and I’m grateful,” Mr. Holomek said. The Holomek children’s existence was generally pleasant in a region that was seldom directly touched by the war, but they could not go to school, and were aware from an early age of the need to keep a low profile. When the Gestapo periodically came to town, Mr. Holomek recalls, his mother moved the family to a different village and waited there for the danger to pass.When it comes to anniversaries, Mr. Holomek is more concerned with deeds than with words.“On the 8th of May, maybe I will remember the day with friends. But for me, it is not as important as what I am doing for the awareness of the Roma Holocaust,” Mr. Holomek said. On May 13, he will join a demonstration to demand the removal of a pig farm from the site of the Lety concentration camp, where more than 300 Czech Roma were put to death. So far, the Czech government has refused to meet that demand.Here, as elsewhere, little attention is paid to the Nazis’ Roma victims, believed to number between 200,000 and 800,000. Within the Czech Republic, Mr. Holomek believes that only about 500 of a pre-war population of 7,000 Czech Roma survived the Holocaust. Mr. Holomek’s own family lost about 50 members.Asked if he thinks another mass murder could happen in Europe, Mr. Holomek lifted a newspaper clipping from his desk. It described a May Day 2005 gathering by a small skinhead group on Brno’s main square, Namsti Svobody, or Freedom Square.“It began in a similar way in Germany in the 1930s,” he said. “There was a group of funny people demonstrating, and people said, ‘It’s nothing important; it’s not a danger.’ Within 10 years, they were the party running the government.”A much larger crowd of about 400 turned out at Freedom Square two days later for a “Concert for the Heroes,” which featured a military brass band, a four-woman tribute to the Andrews sisters (also known as the Havelkova sisters), a Marlene Dietrich impersonator, and archival film of the war. Above the bandstand hung the flags of the Czech Republic and the four allies.It was a feel-good occasion attended by many Czechs from the postwar generation and very few who were old enough to remember May 8, 1945, or to remember when big band was big.“This is my parents’ music,” Antonin Dostal, 47, said. “This concert isn’t an everyday event, and I came because there are great singers from all over the Czech Republic here. But for me, the year of the Soviet invasion, 1968, is more important.”Mrs. Wachtlova frets that too few Czechs born after the war are really aware of what it meant. In a country that emerged from communism 15 years ago, memories of Soviet oppression take precedence.“It’s important that they know about [World War II],” she said. “It won’t be long before all of us who experienced it are gone.”This year, she has decided to spend May 8 at home.“I was at Terezin last year, and I’ve been there many times with visitors,” she said. “But this year, I won’t go to the ceremonies, it would tire me out too much.”Still, she said, the day will have profound meaning for her. “For us, May 8 was a birthday. So it’s not a happy day exactly, but it meant the beginning of a new life for us.”

Czech Survivors Recall Holocaust, 60 Years Later

Czech Survivors Recall Holocaust, 60 Years Later

More from the New York Sun

Trump Faces Unappealing Choice: Testify Under Oath on Video or Forfeit $10 Billion BBC Lawsuit

The Assisted Death Clinic That Has Helped Ten New Yorkers To End Their Lives

Melania Trump Secures Ceasefire in Besieged Ukrainian City, White House Announces

‘Woke Insanity’: Scottish Museum Pulls Ancient Egyptian Mummy Citing Inability To Secure ‘Consent’ From Remains

Voting Made Easier for Rikers Island Inmates And 7,000 in New York City Jails

Democrat Blames Loss to El-Sayed on Fake Polling as Wedgewood’s ‘Social Experiment’ Exposes the ‘Pollercoaster’

Trump Says He Told Ramaswamy To Run Ad Featuring Opponent’s Estranged Mother Excoriating Sexually Abused Daughter

Exclusive: Elon Musk’s Employees Lose Enthusiasm for Democrats, Company Donations Disclose

More from the New York Sun

Trump Faces Unappealing Choice: Testify Under Oath on Video or Forfeit $10 Billion BBC Lawsuit

The Assisted Death Clinic That Has Helped Ten New Yorkers To End Their Lives

Melania Trump Secures Ceasefire in Besieged Ukrainian City, White House Announces

‘Woke Insanity’: Scottish Museum Pulls Ancient Egyptian Mummy Citing Inability To Secure ‘Consent’ From Remains

Voting Made Easier for Rikers Island Inmates And 7,000 in New York City Jails

Democrat Blames Loss to El-Sayed on Fake Polling as Wedgewood’s ‘Social Experiment’ Exposes the ‘Pollercoaster’

Trump Says He Told Ramaswamy To Run Ad Featuring Opponent’s Estranged Mother Excoriating Sexually Abused Daughter

Exclusive: Elon Musk’s Employees Lose Enthusiasm for Democrats, Company Donations Disclose