Tired Joy
Michal Flach
So I have survived
Out of my big heavy eyes
I’m looking at the world
And my heart is heavy
Hunger still sucks my strength
My bones still hurt from yesterday’s blows
So I have survived
Survived?
I look back
And someone gives out milk
And someone hands a towel
And no one’s beating me if I can’t get up
And my throat is sore
My throat hurts so much
Wanting to rejoice, rejoice, rejoice, rejoice
And yet
It has too little strength left
Too much of my life has already been sapped
So I have survived
Out of my big heavy eyes
I’m looking at the world
And my heart is so heavy
The poem is taken from the collection of verses titled Looking Back from a Great Distance.[1]
Michal Flach (1920–2009) was imprisoned in the Terezín Ghetto and the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp during the Second World War. He was liberated in the Buchenwald subcamp at Meuselwitz. Flach was a poet and writer.
This article presents reflections on the experiences of the Second World War (1939–1945), including persecution and imprisonment, as well as recollections of the weeks and months following liberation. These reflections are based on excerpts from memoirs, documents, interviews, and publications.
From the recollections[2] of Petr Ginz’s sister, Eva Ginzová-Pressburgerová (1930–2022), written in 1972.
Like many girls of my age (I was fifteen), I kept a diary. Petr was imprisoned in the Terezín Ghetto and died in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.
On May 15, 1945, I wrote: ‘Yesterday morning, I came home from Terezín. Petříček was not at home, even though I secretly hoped he would be. We now wait every day for him to return or at least to hear from him. I will end my diary here because I only want to include my experiences from Terezín. However, when Peter returns, I will definitely write it down here.”
On April 14, 1947, a single sentence was added at the end of a diary entry: “Petr has not returned.”
However, it seems to me that this sentence, added after two years, does not belong there. The diary truly remained open, and we are still waiting for Petr even today. It’s unbelievable. I feel that the void created by the senseless murder of millions of souls has yet to be filled. I often wonder what my life would have been like if Petr had kept me company as he did until I was twelve. Petr was my more talented and stronger brother whom I admired; he was always an example to me and pointed me in the right direction. The world would be richer and different if the millions of souls who are no longer here were still alive. I believe that human souls are somehow connected and bound to each other. When one dies violently, the other is left to suffer forever; something essential is missing.
This excerpt is from the memoirs of Erika Žádníková (1920 – 2006).[3] It reflects her feelings on returning to everyday life after liberation. Erika was imprisoned in the Terezín Ghetto, then in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, and was eventually liberated in Kurzbach.
I just wanted to go home. I was overjoyed to be alive; I love life very much. However, even years later, when I think back on it all —especially because of my large family, from which no one returned — I feel a deep sense of guilt for surviving while they did not. I remember the children. I don’t want to dwell on my own hardships, as I have always been full of optimism. I kept telling myself that I had to survive it all, but what I had witnessed was truly horrific.
Jytte Bornstein (*1936) was deported to the Terezín Ghetto on the third transport from Denmark in mid-October 1943. A group of “Danish” inmates was taken from the Ghetto to freedom by Swedish Red Cross buses in mid-April 1945.
In her narration, she recalls the situation in Denmark before her deportation, describes the Terezín Ghetto, and shares what happened after her return home. Here are a few sentences from her recollections:
I returned to the class I had left in 1943. One day, our headmaster asked me to come to his office. He put me at one end of a long mahogany table while he sat at the other end, surrounded by all the teachers.
They told me, ‘You are our witness, so tell us about it.’ I felt compelled to answer their questions, but I was horrified. I was back in Terezín, and all the memories flooded back to me as I had to respond.
Suddenly, the headmaster said, ‘Okay, there are still five minutes left until the next lesson; you can go and play.’ I stepped outside and looked at my friends. I leaned against the wall, observing them, and thought, ‘How can they laugh? How can they jump and play?’
I couldn’t understand it. Yet, I just wanted to be like them.
As my father later said, ‘It’s something we’ve put aside but never forgotten.’ And that was probably the result of my upbringing at that time. Of course, everyone wanted to return to their “old” life.
Terezín remains deeply etched in my mind. I’ve come to terms with it to the point where I can honestly say that I couldn’t imagine being without it. It has shaped my life in such a way that I would not wish to live without having experienced it. If I hadn’t been in Terezín, I would never have met Jirka (Jytte’s little Czech friend in the Ghetto) and I wouldn’t want to miss that connection.[4]
Zdeněk Ornest (1929 – 1990) discussed his experiences during the war in an interview with Marie Rút Křížková, published in the book “Je mojí vlastí hradba ghett?” (Is the Ghetto Wall my Homeland?).[5] Zdeněk was imprisoned in the Terezín Ghetto, then sent to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, and ultimately liberated from the Dachau camp.
So much has been written about the horrors of concentration camps that many people have some idea of what those experiences were like. However, in my case, there was a unique aspect: I found myself caught in the midst of the most horrific cruelties during a crucial period of adolescence. I was agitated, feeling helpless and even more vulnerable than the adults around me. During those years, I had to confront death and suffering in all their most brutal forms. I witnessed stronger and healthier individuals succumb to death, I saw fellow prisoners beaten, hanged, and tortured. I went through rampant epidemics, including spotted fever, and endured lying in a wagon for several hours among the dead. In the most desperate moments of hunger, I even had to conceal the death of a friend lying next to me for as long as I could, hoping to gather enough of his food rations to last me a few days. We went through all of this during the years when we first fell in love, started taking dance classes, read lyrical poetry, and played football. The memories of life in Terezín, in the Ghetto (editor’s note), became a beautiful dream that vanished, even though that seems paradoxical.
Eva Herrmannová (1929 – 2017) was imprisoned in the Terezín Ghetto, from which she was liberated in May 1945. In her book,[6] “Poslední Herrmannovic holka” (The Last Herrmann Girl), she recounts her experiences. The following two excerpts describe her journey from the Ghetto on May 9, 1945, and her arrival home a few days later.
I began packing early in the morning. It was May 9, high time to leave, before the quarantine was tightened due to a spotted fever epidemic, which had reportedly been detected as early as April 24. Several “Aryan” mothers and fathers had already come by car from Prague to pick up their “half-breed” children. I knew that no one would come for me. Most people had to accept that they would have to stay in Terezín for the time being, and their departure would not be easy. They had nowhere to go. However, I had somewhere to go, and I tried to leave as quickly as possible before the barriers closed for good due to the quarantine. And in the end I managed to leave.
I packed only the bare essentials, yet there was still plenty in my bag. In addition to my diaries and various cherished belongings, I managed to squeeze duvet and my fleece coat into my backpack. My mother had sewn fabric-covered “buttons” onto the coat before leaving for Terezin, each button hiding a rolled one-thousand-crown note.
Getting out of Terezin was surprisingly easy. As we were leaving the Ghetto behind the Hamburg Barracks, a Czech gendarme stopped us and asked where we were going since a quarantine had been announced. I shouted at him that I had been here alone for two years, healthy as a fish, and that I wanted to see my mother before I caught anything here. The gendarme turned around, and when he realized that no one was watching, he told us to scram.[7]
[…] And so I arrived in Prostějov, to Svatoplukova Street, where years ago I had accompanied my grandfather and grandmother to Terezin with my father. Now, my mother and father lived here with a distant aunt. When I arrived, my aunt was home but also seemed scared of me, taking a long time to recognize who I was. I can only imagine how I looked at that moment, so it surprised me that she even opened the door. She told me that my mother was at my father’s hospital, where she often spent the night. I left my backpack with her and headed straight to the hospital. It was a beautiful spring day, but even here, it felt as if everything had died out, and there was no one around.
Hospital pavilions were scattered throughout a large park. When I stopped in front of the main entrance and looked around, I noticed several people sitting on a bench under a large chestnut tree. Next to them was a hospital cart with a dozing patient. As I continued to look around, I suddenly heard a terrible cry, and someone rushed toward the main gate. It was my mother, and the patient in the wheelchair was my father.
It was Sunday, May 13, 1945 — Mother’s Day.[8]
In his book of memoirs, “Poslové oběti. Z Terezín do Terezína se zastávkou v Osvětimi-Březince a Schwarzheide” (Messengers of the Victim. From Terezín to Terezín with a Stop at Auschwitz-Birkenau and Schwarzheide),[9] Pavel Stránský (1921–2015) recounts the circumstances of his departure from the Ghetto shortly after liberation and his return to Prague.
I have long forgotten the details of our escape from Terezín, partly due to the natural aging of the human brain and partly due to a futile attempt to free my mind from the memories of the suffering we experienced. It was only many years later that one member of our ‘triumvirate’ reminded me of the details of our departure from Terezín and confirmed that another member (both of whom live in Israel) believed I was the one who conceived the ‘brilliant’ idea that allowed us to escape before the quarantine was declared.” To this day, I am still not sure if it was true, although I feel flattered. […]
In our provisional ID cards, there was a note written in pencil: “Suspected of typhus.” When the gendarme at the gate saw this, he immediately sent us back. What could we do? Then, it was me, my friends recalled, who got the sudden constructive idea. It was enough to slightly modify the note on the ID cards to read “Not suspected of typhus,” and the gendarme at another gate didn’t question our wish to leave the town.[…]
I returned to Prague before mid-May 1945 and stayed for a while with one of my “Aryan” aunts. However, it was not for long. Of her three sons, only one returned, and I accidentally overheard her complain to my uncle about fate: “How unfair this fate is! Someone will return for whom no one is waiting, while the mother who is waiting for her three sons will have only one come back!” But it wasn’t quite true about me. I was still waiting for my wife and believed she would return to me. While I could understand the pain of a mother who lost two children, it affected me deeply. I eventually moved in with a second “Aryan” aunt, who was childless.[10]
Anna Hanusová (Flachová) (1930 – 2014) was imprisoned in the
Terezín Ghetto and liberated in May 1945. In her recollections,[11] she describes the impact of her imprisonment in the Ghetto on her life:
Throughout my life, I have consistently put in a great deal of effort. I have approached everything with thoroughness and strived to act fairly. […] I did this not just for myself but for an entire group of people who were oppressed, regardless of their individual qualities. They were unjustly classified as belonging to a certain racial group. This advocacy had a significant and profound impact. I have always aimed to do more and to do better. Unfortunately, even in the Ghetto my fellow-inmate […] approached me with a troubling question about rumors suggesting that Jews were responsible for the deaths of those children at Easter. […]
I have learned the value of friendship, and I can say that I have many friends and strong friendships. Perhaps I wouldn’t have been capable of forming such connections if I hadn’t been in Terezin. Our girls from home No. 28, even though we met after forty years, felt as if we had just been apart yesterday. We share the same way of thinking and the same attitude to life. The leadership we experienced there was so profound that we were shaped not by our parents at that age, but by the life we lived together.
Hana Greenfield (1926 – 2014)[12] reflects on her return home to Kolín after being imprisoned in concentration camps, sharing her thoughts on life after the war. Hana was held in the Terezín Ghetto, the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, and was liberated in the Bergen-Belsen camp.
On June 10, 1945, I returned home. But it was no longer home. […] I came back to Kolín exactly three years to the day after I had left it on June 10, 1942. You know, all those years in the camps, I longed to go back – back home.
What is one’s home? Home is mother, father, family, house, and friends – things we all recognize. These thoughts lingered in my mind, and they motivated my will to survive.
The next morning, I got up and went to our house. In my naivety, I hoped that Grandma would look out of the window and that our maid would come downstairs to open the door.
I knocked, and a stranger answered, “Yes, what do you want?” At that moment, I realized that it was no longer my home.
This was how the war ended for me. However, the consequences and effects of the Holocaust continued to manifest throughout my life. They haunted me in memories of my family’s loss, the unfamiliar world I encountered, and the painful process of growing up, which included discovering the catastrophic events that befell the Jewish people. All of this is history today.
Viktor Heller (1912 – ?) was arrested on September 13, 1944, in Lysá nad Labem by the Gestapo for distributing illegal magazines. He was imprisoned in the Police Prison in the Small Fortress from March 1, 1945, to May 6, 1945. In his recollection[13] from April 1968, he looked back at the moments spent in the Small Fortress during the announcement of the approaching end of the war. He was in one of the cells in the Fourth Courtyard.
[…] There was a deathly silence in the cell. I climbed the steps to the bunk where Franta Strašil used to sleep, but he had already been transferred to a typhus cell. I turned to my friends and said, “Hey, boys, Zeinecke,” (one of the guards in the Small Fortress – editor’s note), has just told us that…” […] Deutschland is kaput. So, we are free; we must stay in our cells and wait for instructions. […]
What happened after I spoke those words is difficult to describe. It was a moment that none of us who survived will ever forget. Almost all of us got down on our knees, embracing and kissing one another. Tears of joy flowed like raindrops; there was not a single dry eye in the cell. Some knelt and prayed aloud, but everyone was hugging and kissing each other. There was no jubilation, no shouts of enthusiasm, but at that moment, fear and horror lifted from us, and the star of hope, the star of life, the star of freedom began to shine. Then, a group of fellow inmates kneeling in the corner of the cell started to sing “Where is my home”! I think I will never again hear that unusual tone my friends set that day. It was more than just a song; it was an inner voice given expression through music. More and more joined in, and soon the entire cell was kneeling and singing our anthem, “Where is my home.”
Marie Poláková (1912 – ?) was arrested in October 1942 and imprisoned in the Police Prison in the Small Fortress from 1942 to 1945. In her recollections,[14] she looks back at the last days of the war in the Women’s Courtyard of the Terezín Prison.
On the evening of May 4, the first transport of women went into quarantine in the town of Terezín, still guarded by SS men. However, on May 5, buses adorned with our national flag came for us. Jökl and the rest of the guards, particularly Malloth, and Wachholz (the commander and guards of the Small Fortress – editor’s note), were still shouting and raging, trying to assert their control over the Fortress, but no one paid them any attention anymore. On the morning of May 5, we refused to go to the roll call, as ordered by the Commander, and none of us went to the Reinigungskommando either. Instead, we were under the supervision of Red Cross nurses, who deloused and bathed us. Each of us had a tricolor flag secretly sewn onto our clothing, which we quickly attached. We lined up in front of the gate of the famous Frauen-Abteilung, and instead of commands like “los, los Mensch, hau ab,” our national anthem was played. At that moment, Wachholz was standing at the SS Wache, unable to do anything but watch in disbelief as we rode out of the gate of the Small Fortress in Terezín toward freedom.
Emilie Schiffnerová (1898 – ?) was arrested in May 1944 in Košice for attempting to help a Jewish family. She was imprisoned in the Police Prison in the Small Fortress from December 17, 1944 until liberation. In her recollections,[15] she looks back at the end of the war and the following months.
On the morning of May 4, Mende, the woman guard, told us that we would go to Terezin at 11 a.m. for a medical checkup with the International Red Cross, and that the healthy ones would go home. We were in Terezin until the evening and then I went back to the Fortress. We already knew that the war was over. The next day, the Germans were getting ready to leave. […]
We all gathered at the main gate, and the men brought a radio set from the canteen which was just broadcasting a call for help from Prague. I will never forget that moment – how we felt hearing “Where is my home” on the radio. Those who had families and homes felt immense happiness, knowing they had somewhere to go after all the horrors. As for me, I had neither family nor home. I stayed at the Fortress, where there was plenty of work to do, especially in the Fourth Courtyard. Eventually, I took over the canteen, where I prepared meals for the local unit of policemen and for volunteers. On August 1, 1945, I said goodbye to the Small Fortress and found a new home in Kamýk.
Václav Dřevo (1901 – ?) was imprisoned in the Police Prison in the Small Fortress from February 7, 1945 until his liberation. In his recollections[16] about the end of the war, he describes how he contracted and fought against spotted fever.
On May 5, the sun of freedom shone over the Small Fortress. I was lying in fever, and I vaguely remember sensing that something had changed. Then, someone helped me out of the bunk bed. I recall being bathed, changed, and carried on a stretcher. I woke up on May 12 to find a self-sacrificing, smiling Dr. Brada and nurses. I was saved.
When we first stepped out of the cell, which had been turned into a hospital room, and into the Small Fortress Courtyard as free men, our eyes filled with tears of joy. We, who had become acquainted with the interrogation methods of the Gestapo and endured the blows of the SS men with clenched teeth […], wept with happiness because the dream we had cherished throughout years of subjugation had finally come true.
Miroslav Kubík (1925 – 2021)[17] shared his recollections of those who helped imprisoned students survive during World War II. Slávek was part of a group of 84 high school students from Roudnice who were arrested on June 20, 1942 at their school following the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich. The arrest was triggered by reckless remarks made by a seventh grader at the Roudnice high school in the wake of the assassination. Slávek was initially interned in the Terezín Police Prison in the Small Fortress, then moved to the Auschwitz I concentration camp, and was eventually liberated from the Dachau camp.
It should be noted that our ability to return was largely due to the efforts of our parents, who sent me food packages for nearly three years – specifically, two and a half years. Sending food packages was permitted in November 1942, and my parents managed to send me a total of 860 kg of food. This situation also caused significant financial strain on the family budget because they could not receive food stamps on our behalf; instead, they had to purchase everything on the black market, which was difficult to navigate during wartime.
As a complement to Miroslav Kubík’s recollections, we would like to include quotes from a letter written by Adolf Ambrož,[18] the headmaster of the town school in České Budějovice. He was imprisoned for some time in the Dachau concentration camp, where he had the opportunity to meet and stay with three Czech high school students from Roudnice nad Labem, one of whom was Miroslav Kubík. After the war, on June 26, 1945, he wrote a letter to the headmaster of the Roudnice high school, recalling the behavior of these three young men in the harsh environment of the Nazi concentration camp.
I returned after four years from the concentration camp in Dachau. During my time, I was in five different camps, where I endured significant suffering and gained a deep understanding of the miserable lives and characters of the imprisoned individuals. Alongside some truly honorable political prisoners, there were also many scoundrels. We would joke about them, saying they served their time during the German era and would inevitably end up in prison again in the free republic.
That’s why the three students from your institute ‒ Svět, Kubík, and Štěpán ‒ stood out even more among the other inmates. I had the privilege of sharing a room with them for nearly two years. During that time I have not heard a single harsh word from them, and none of them, on the other hand, has shown the slightest sign of weakness or despondency. They behaved as exemplary Czech students, as we used to look at Czech students about 40 or 50 years ago. By their abilities and self-confident demeanor, they were able to win such places in the camp that they themselves could render useful services to others. And they didn’t help like others for cigarettes or bread ‒ they did so simply out of willingness and because they respected decent people who didn’t have the opportunity to help themselves. A number of older people, including me among them, owe them gratitude for their help. […]
I think you may be pleased to read such a well-deserved praise of the pupils of your institute, and perhaps this news may have an educational effect on other students who were so happy to be spared what your three pupils, Svět, Kubík and Štěpán, had to go through.
Selected by Naděžda Seifertová and Sylvie Holubová
[1] Milan FLACH, Ohlédnutí z velké dálky (Looking Back from a Great Distance), Prague 1997 (in Czech).
[2] Marie Rút KŘÍŽKOVÁ – Kurt Jiří KOTOUČ – Zdeněk ORNEST, Je mojí vlastí hradba ghett? (Is the Ghetto Wall my Homeland?), Prague 1995, p. 70. (in Czech)
[3] This recollection dated October 24, 1996 is kept in the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History
Archive under No. 21,383.
[4] folkedrab.dk
[5] Marie Rút KŘÍŽKOVÁ – Kurt Jiří KOTOUČ – Zdeněk ORNEST, Je mojí vlastí hradba ghett? (Is the Ghetto Wall my Homeland?), Prague 1995, p. 113 (in Czech)
[6] Eva HERRMANNOVÁ – Jan DEHNER, Poslední Herrmannovic holka. Cesta do Terezína (The Last Herrmann Girl. Journey to Terezín). Prague 2020 (in Czech)
[7] Eva HERRMANNOVÁ – Jan DEHNER, Poslední Herrmannovic holka. Cesta do Terezína (The Last Herrmann Girl. Journey to Terezín). Prague 2020, pp. 168-169 (in Czech)
[8] Eva HERRMANNOVÁ – Jan DEHNER, Poslední Herrmannovic holka. Cesta do Terezína (The Last Herrmann Girl. Journey to Terezín). Prague 2020, pp. 173-174 (in Czech)
[9] Pavel STRÁNSKÝ, Poslové oběti (Messengers of the Victim). Prague 1999 (in Czech).
[10] Pavel STRÁNSKÝ, Poslové oběti (Messengers of the Victim). Prague 1999, pp. 44-45 (in Czech).
[11] This recollection dated May 16, 1996 is kept in the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History
Archive under No. 15 045.
[12] This recollection dated January 1, 1997 is kept in the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History
Archive under No. 39 837.
[13] APT, A 4084. Recollections of Viktor Heller.
[14] APT, A 3806. Recollections of Marie Poláková.
[15] 15 APT, A 3823. Recollections of Emilie Schiffner.
[16] APT, A 3880. Recollections of Václav Dřevo.
[17] Miroslav Kubík’s recollection is kept in the Archive of the Terezín Memorial.
[18] Recollecions ‒ Roudnice students in the Dachau concentration camp, Terezín Memorial, A 5376.
