Evelina Merová was born on December 25, 1930 to Ilse and Emil Landa. Although the Landas had Jewish roots their family was well integrated into the community. During the Nazi occupation, in June 1942, Evelina was deported with her parents to the Terezín Ghetto at the age of twelve. She spent most of her imprisonment in the girls’ home L410 in dormitory No. 28. In December 1943, the Landas were put on the list of a transport destined for the East. This transport headed to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp, specifically the so-called Terezín family camp, where Evelina’s father died. In July 1944, Evelina and her mother were saved from death when both were selected as fit for work. They passed through the Stutthof, Dörbeck and Guttau camps, where they had to dig anti-tank trenches. Evelina’s mother died as a result of hard work and overall exhaustion. The Soviet Army liberated Evelina from the Guttau camp in January 1945. She was subsequently adopted by a Soviet doctor and lived in the Soviet Union. She graduated, got married, and had two children: a son and a daughter. She came back to Czechoslovakia for the first time in the 1960s. She returned more frequently until she settled in the country permanently in the 1990s.
After 1989, she joined the newly established Terezín Initiative, which brings together former inmates of the Terezín and Łódź ghettoes from the Czech lands (and their direct descendants). She collaborated with the Terezín Memorial’s Department of Education, engaging in discussions with Czech and German youth and teachers.
Evelina Merová passed away on February 8, 2024.
Naděžda Seifertová
