The fearsome tidings were conveyed to the protectorate in a special broadcast. My father’s colleague and friend Jaroslav Strańský urged Czechs and Slovaks to do whatever they could to assist the Jews who remained in their midst. “All the help and relief that you grant them will be for your honor and glory.” Ripka warned doctors not to cooperate in Nazi medical crimes such as the forced sterilization of Jews. More generally, Beneš himself vowed that “every crime, every act of violence, every murder committed by the Nazi henchmen in Czechoslovakia . . . must and will be revenged and atoned for a thousand times over.”
The words of these men were passionate because time was short, the tragedy was unfolding in the country each called home, and the crimes—though indeed beyond imagination—were real.
18
Terezín
In February 1997, my sister, Kathy, and brother, John, visited the Czech Republic to research our family history in light of the revelations concerning our Jewish ancestry that had appeared in the Washington Post. With the help of friends, they were able to verify much of the information, but one important piece remained elusive. The Post story had mistakenly identified the first name of our maternal grandmother as Anna, instead of “Rose,” or Růžena. The records kept by the Federation of Jewish Communities in Prague showed that several Anna Spiegelovás had been sent to Terezín from the area around Kostelec nad Orlicí, but no one named Růžena Spiegelová.
The puzzle remained until John remembered seeing, years earlier, a picture of me as a toddler with a middle-aged woman whom he had not recognized. Scrawled on the back of the photo was the name of an old spa town south of Prague, famed for glassmaking. By coincidence, John had previously visited the town without being aware of any connection to our family. Now he suggested to Kathy, “Why don’t we look to see if Grandmother came from Podĕbrady?” And so they did.
ON JUNE 9, 1942, the day that Heydrich was buried and Lidice destroyed, Růžena Spiegelová boarded a train in Kolin, near Podĕbrady, en route to Terezín. Years earlier she had been a shopkeeper assuring customers that her family’s coffee was the finest in all Bohemia. At the time of my birth, she had helped to care for me and was the first to call me “Madlen”—hence the picture that John had remembered. In the frightening days after Hitler’s invasion, she had taken me in again while my parents moved about Prague, devising a plan for escape. She had been with her husband when, in 1936, he had died and also with her daughter when, five years later, Máňa had lost a battle to kidney disease. Aside from photographs, I have no memory of Růžena; I was too young. When growing up, I rarely thought of my grandparents; on the occasions I did, I imagined them being very old. As an adult, I had the opportunity to see my father and mother play with my children; that made me visualize someday becoming a grandparent myself. I understand now that, when she arrived in Terezín, she was but fifty-four, not old by any means—in fact, five years younger than I was upon becoming secretary of state. I have also remembered a detail: as a child, I loved to swim in cold water. When I did, my mother used to exclaim, “You are just like your grandmother.”
I only wish that her fortunes had more closely resembled mine.
The train that carried Růžena Spiegelová to Terezín and—a few days later—farther east was one of three directly linked to Nazi vengeance for the assassination of Heydrich. Precisely what happened to the passengers at the end of their journey is not known, except that there was no evidence of survivors. Almost certainly, the train stopped in eastern Poland, where its occupants were taken off and executed. Terezín records suggest the location as Trawniki, the site of a forced-labor camp established in 1941. The facility was used by the Nazis to teach Soviet and Ukrainian prisoners of war how to become concentration camp guards; as part of their education, the students were required to shoot other captives.
Růžena Spiegelová
Pedro Mahler
FOR MY PATERNAL grandfather, Arnošt Körbel, the fruits of a lifetime’s labor were now forbidden. Thrust prematurely into retirement, he had no income and his bank account ceased to draw interest. Since September 1941, those identified as Jewish had been required to wear the infamous six-pointed yellow star, with the word “Jude” inscribed in black. Their ration books were stamped with a “J,” which meant no meat, fish, fruit, or dairy products. They were not permitted to have telephones or radios or to travel around the country. For Arnošt this meant no more excursions to the Dalmatian coast, where he had loved to vacation not so much with his wife, Olga, but with his beloved dog, Drolik, so named out of fondness for France and the French word drôle, which also means “little man” or “buffoon.” While Arnošt was at the seaside, Olga would take her granddaughters Dáša and Milena to the mountains. Such trips, too, were now forbidden.
My father adored his mother, but Olga and her daughter-in-law Mandula did not always get along. Perhaps it was because they had never had a chance to know each other well; my parents had spent much of their married lives in Belgrade or London. It was family legend that one day my mother made a mistake in knitting a sweater that Olga agreed to correct. My mother, watching, couldn’t summon the nerve to tell Olga to stop until the entire sweater had been unraveled.
Arnošt was kindly, but the dog did arouse his passion. Dáša never forgot the afternoon she decided it would be more fun to read than to take the aging, wobbly-legged fox terrier for his daily walk. She tied Drolik to a doorknob and opened her book. When Arnošt returned and came across the scene, he was furious. Without a word, he secured the leash to a table and put the other end around my cousin’s wrist, then took the dog for a very long run. “Let that be a lesson,” he told her later, “of what it’s like to lose your freedom.” But soon all was forgiven. For her eleventh birthday, Dáša received from Arnošt an eight-volume set of the Encyclopedia Masaryk, a compendium of information about everything; seventy-two years later, the books still occupied an honored place in her apartment.
IN 1940 OR 1941, Arnošt and Olga were forced to move into a tenement shared by other Jewish families. Month by month, the community was being squeezed. Venturing outside, they were blocked at every turn by the sign Juden nicht zugänglich (No Jews allowed). As their liberties and property were taken away, Jewish families had little to do but remain in contact with one another and wait for their names to come up. Terezín? Everyone had heard rumors, but no one knew with confidence what life there would be like.
Arnošt Körbel with Drolik and Alena Körbelová
Alena Korbel
For my grandparents, the waiting ended on July 22, 1942, at 9:45 a.m. The summons was delivered by the Jewish community leadership. Arnošt and Olga had a week to put their affairs in order. My grandmother wrote immediately to her daughter, Greta:
I have to get used to the thought that we are actually leaving. I am going to wash my hair . . . do some shopping and . . . clean the house. In the evening, I will prepare dough for the bread to bake in the morning. . . . I hope that once I get [to Terezín], I will calm down. I am not calm right now. In fact, I haven’t been calm for a long time. . . . I would like to ask you, my dear Gretichka, not to waste your strength worrying about us. You will need it for yourself. I promise that I have a very strong will to survive. Somewhere, in some foreign land, we will meet again.
She added that she hoped to be able to work with children but only as a supervisor, “because otherwise it would wear me out.” Arnošt had been ordered to take Drolik to the pound, where the pets of Jewish families were being collec
ted. “Father will have a heavy heart,” she wrote. “He will be miserable, but it also makes me very sad.”
My grandparents did all they could to prepare for the new chapter in their lives. They received a steady stream of farewell visits from friends, including some who expected to be fed dinner. Allowed to take about a hundred pounds of luggage, they chose carefully, trying to pack as many items of warm clothing as possible. The day prior to departure, Olga wrote again to Greta:
We have had visitors all day long. It is now 10:30 in the evening. There is chaos in the apartment. I have taken care of everything. . . . Gretichka, my only daughter, keep healthy. I bless you, my dear Rudolf and Milena. Remember, my first and last thoughts will be with you, my children. I am strong and believe that somewhere we will meet. I kiss you warmly, your Mother.
There was one last-minute sliver of good news: the dog was safe. A neighbor who had been taking Drolik for walks after the Jewish curfew had sworn to authorities that the animal was his.
THOSE SUMMONED TO Terezín from Prague were instructed to assemble in an old military barracks within a fairground, six blocks from the train station. There they were put through a bureaucratic ordeal that lasted, typically, two full days or more. The deportees, young and old alike, slept on straw mattresses when they weren’t standing in line or filling out forms. Clerks ordered them to hand over their identity cards, house keys, ration coupons, and valuables.
On the morning of July 30, the train designated “AAv” pulled away from the station in Prague. There were 938 people on board; Olga’s number was 451, Arnošt’s 452. The journey from one universe to another took two and a half hours past fields of hops, lines of fruit trees, and the round-topped Mount Rip, where long ago the mythical Father Čech had promised his people “a land wet with sweet milk and honey.” The passengers arrived at Terezín in a pouring rain, gathered their belongings, and trudged two miles to the ghetto entrance.
The prison experience began with more bureaucracy: further paperwork to fill in and also more hands probing through luggage in search of contraband and other objects of value. Eventually housing assignments were made. Grandfather Arnošt was sent to the old military barracks along with other men. Olga was to find space in a house, L-304, that was set aside for women. Moving in must have been traumatic, for their lodgings were impossibly crowded.
Throughout the summer, trains had been arriving—a few from the protectorate but many more from Germany and Austria. The German-speaking passengers included those whom even the Nazis could not kill without having to answer inconvenient questions—Jews who were acquainted with prominent members of the Reich, who had names that were known in business, the arts, and the professions, or who had earned medals fighting for the Fatherland in the Great War. Among their number were former government officials, barons, countesses, singers, actors, the granddaughter of Franz Liszt, the younger sister of Franz Kafka, the son of Oskar Strauss, and the former sister-in-law of Thomas Mann. The rush of new arrivals swelled the prison population from 21,000 in June to 51,000 in August, ten times the camp’s reasonable capacity. The influx also increased the average age of the population by fifteen years.
Journey to Terezín
Jewish Museum in Prague Photo Archive collections
Many of the German newcomers had been lured into signing contracts guaranteeing them admission to “the spa,” where they were promised a life of comfort, ample meals, and rooms with a view. Instead they were greeted by shouting guards, robbed of their luggage, fed swill, and packed into barracks crawling with vermin. In a matter of weeks, rooms for four people became warehouses for twenty, then forty, then sixty. Triple-decker bunks stretched from wall to wall and floor to ceiling, with two inmates sharing every mattress. When the supply of habitable rooms was exhausted, prisoners were jammed into windowless attics, cellars with dirt floors, and dust-ridden supply closets and storerooms. The shortage of eating utensils was more than matched by the lack of food. In July, the sewers backed up. There was not nearly enough clean water. Privacy was nonexistent. The living conditions created an intense physical strain and psychological burden, especially on those already weakened by age, illness, or despair. Organization gave way to chaos.
Sleeping quarters at Terezín
Terezín Memorial (Franktišek Mořic Nágl, prison sleeping quarters, PT 6728, © Alexandra Strnadová)
Gerty Spies, the daughter of a prosperous Berlin merchant, arrived at Terezín on July 20, ten days before Arnošt and Olga Körbel. She wrote:
After they looted our hand luggage, we were led through the village. Incredible! Where was the senior citizens home, the residences of which they had spoken to us? Where were the clean houses, where everybody would have their own well-furnished room? . . . They took us to our quarters. But we could not live here! It was a shed in the back of a courtyard. . . . There was nothing in the shed. No furniture. No oven, no stove. . . . Each person was allotted a living space about two feet wide . . . enough to sleep with bent knees. For this large community there were two toilets.
The ghetto’s Jewish Council of Elders had decided early on that food rations and housing assignments should favor the young, thinking it best to tilt the odds of survival in the direction of those whose potential future contributions were greatest. The decision was defensible, but the death toll among the older population was high. The overcrowding caused contagious diseases (pneumonia, typhoid, tuberculosis) to spread rapidly. There were no gas chambers at Terezín, for it was not an extermination camp. It was a killing ground still, for the deaths from supposedly natural causes were due to the unnatural conditions. Burial space was limited, and so was wood for coffins. A crematory was built and became operational in September; from the beginning its four large black ovens were kept busy. Ashes were retrieved, labeled, and stored at first in wooden urns, then in cardboard boxes.
The crematory at Terezín
Terezín Memorial (the interior of the crematory, FAPT 6283)
Autumn arrived. The foliage in the surrounding Bohemian countryside turned crimson and gold. The air cooled, beginning to hint at the bitter chill to come. Inside the prison walls, Terezín’s population had—on September 18, 1942—reached 58,491, more than on any other day. This was also the date on which the most prisoners died, among them my grandfather Arnošt Körbel. At the age of sixty-four, he succumbed to bronchial pneumonia. A funeral service was almost certainly held, but it would have been a memorial for the many, not for Arnošt alone. If Olga wrote to share the sad tidings with her daughter Greta, she would have been allowed but a single postcard and a maximum of thirty words, written in block letters and in German.
ONLY THE NAZIS would think to improve their public image by establishing a concentration camp. Terezín was a prison disguised as a town. In addition to the post office, there was a coffeehouse with a band called the Ghetto Swingers, but the “coffee” was made from a blend of herbs and turnips. The one food consistently available was mustard. There were shops, but most of the merchandise had been confiscated from prisoners. The joke went round that Terezín’s boutiques were the world’s finest, because only there could you buy a shirt that already had your own personal monogram. In an era when nicotine addiction was commonplace, cigarettes—although supposedly prohibited—were used for bartering everything from slices of bread to kisses on the cheek. The Germans even supplied the ghetto with its own currency, featuring a caricature of Moses holding the Ten Commandments.
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p; Administering the ghetto was a nightmare that the Nazis were pleased to leave to the Jewish Council. The elders had to cope with a population that was divided between Zionists and assimilated Jews, Communists and democrats, young and old. The Germans and Czechs, in particular, did not always get along. The Czechs resented the German Jews for being German; the Germans were upset with the Czechs for their prejudice. Both accused the other of haughtiness. Adding to the mix was a significant minority of practicing Christians, who petitioned successfully for the right to hold services.
Because the Nazis delegated so much, they were able to direct the fate of Terezín with a contingent of just two dozen Germans. These were assisted by 150 Czech gendarmes under the command of Theodor Janeček, a sadist who bullied inmates and reported every infraction to his bosses. The typical Czech guard, however, refrained from gratuitous cruelty; fourteen were imprisoned for smuggling contraband to inmates or for illegally taking letters out.
To supplement the German and Czech security forces, the Jews formed a police unit of their own, the Ghettowache. These officers had the authority to arrest and punish prisoners for minor offenses, including stealing and slander. More serious violations were passed to the Czech police or ultimately to the Nazi overseers. The Ghettowache was also responsible for ensuring that every inmate was accounted for each night. Especially in the early months, escape from Terezín was relatively easy—one could rip off the yellow star and catch a bus. But to where would one escape? In the north was Germany, to the south occupied Bohemia. About twenty men did leave to join the antifascist resistance, but most saw no better option than trying to wait out the war in Terezín.
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