In 2022, the Terezín Memorial added to its collections, in addition to other items, two documents that had belonged to Irma Jílovská, incarcerated in the Terezín Ghetto on racial grounds during wartime Nazi occupation of this country. These include her identity card and her summons to a transport from the Terezín Ghetto to the East.
Irma Anna Jílovská was born in 1917. Prior to her deportation to the Terezín Ghetto she lived in Brno at 17 Cejl Street, as recorded in the transport list to Terezín.
She had been assigned to the transport to the Ghetto together with her mother and brother already late in March 1942. The abovementioned identity card, issued by the Police Directorate in Brno at the beginning of February 1940, bears a stamp saying ‟Evakuiert am 27. März 1942” (evacuated on March 27, 1942). That was the day Irma Jílovská had to leave her home and had to report at the assembly point in Brno, which was then situated in the school in today´s Merhautova Street (originally this was a school for female professions). They travelled to the Ghetto by transport codenamed Ae on March 29, 1942, Irma´s transport number was Ae 871.
In Terezín Irma was placed together with her mother first in the Hamburg Barracks where they had to sleep on mattresses in a large unfurnished room. Bunk beds were installed only later. The inmates were constantly plagued by lots of vermin – fleas and primarily bedbugs. Sometime early in 1944 Irma was moved to the object known as the Kavalier that provided yet worse living conditions. In the fall of 1944 she was again accommodated with her mother in the building Q 311, the so-called Badhausgasse, staying there until the Ghetto´s liberation.
While in the Ghetto Irma passed through different labor deployments. For instance, she worked in the farming sector where she sometimes could secretly eat some vegetables, thus improving her otherwise inadequate and low-quality diet.
During her incarceration she was assigned to transports to the East on several occasions. But she always eventually managed to stay in the Ghetto. She might be protected by her job in the farming sector as well as by the position of her brother who was employed as a maintenance worker in the building yard (Bauhof). The Terezín Memorial obtained one of the many summons to a transport she had received. This one indicates that Irma Jílovská was expected to come to the “Schleuse” on October 7, 1944. The summons came complete with instructions for packing one´s luggage. A strip of paper glued to the upper part of the summons carried personal data of the inmate: the number assigned to her in the transport, the number of transport to the Ghetto, her name and year of birth and address in Terezín (Badhausg. 11 refers to the designation of the building Q 311 within the system of street names in the Terezín Ghetto).
After the liberation of the Ghetto Irma Jílovská joined the activities of the Repatriation Commission. But she fell ill with typhoid at that time and so she could return home only in the fall of 1945.
As early as in 1981 the recollections of Irma Jilovská had been recorded in a written document, which is now kept in the archives of the Terezín Memorial and which had been personally donated by her as part of her personal archive from the time of the Nazi occupation. The documents donated in 2022 come from her close relative. Eva Němcová
