September 1938, Czechoslovakia. Adolf Hitler, the chancellor of Germany, threatens to unleash
a European war unless the Sudetenland, a border area of Czechoslovakia on which the ethnic German
population lives, is ceded to Germany. The leaders of Britain, France, Italy, and Germany hold a
conference in Munich between the 29th and 30th of September 1938 and agree to the German annexation
of the Sudetenland in exchange for a pledge of peace from Hitler. The Czechoslovaks are not even
invited to this conference and less than 6 months later on the 15th of March 1939, in violation of
the Munich Agreement, Nazi Germany invades and occupies the Czech provinces of Bohemia and
Moravia. Adolf Hitler himself arrives in Prague and on the 16th of March 1939, by a proclamation
from Prague Castle, establishes the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. More than 118 000 Jews
living in the protectorate find themselves under Nazi domination. One of them is Edith Polachová.
Edith Polachová was born on the 12th of July 1929 in Prague, then Czechoslovakia. Edith was
the only child of Elisabeth and Hanuš Polach and who nicknamed her “ Dita”. The family,
who spoke both German and Czech, lived in a rented apartment in Prague together with a maid.
While Dita’s mother Elisabeth was a housewife, her father was a lawyer working for the State
pension institute. His work included traveling to the courts in many cities of Czechoslovakia,
where he represented workers‘ interests. Dita’s grandfather, Johann Polach,
was a member of Social Democratic party and became a senator of Czechoslovak National Parliament.
Dita had a happy childhood. She enjoyed going to school,
walking in the park as well as playing with her friends.
When on the 30th of January 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany by the German
President Paul von Hindenburg, Dita was only 3 years old. The Nazi regime quickly began to
restrict the civil and human rights of the Jewish people and less than 2 months after Hitler became
a chancellor, the first concentration camp – Dachau – was established in March 1933.
Thousands of Jews fled from Germany. Among them were friends of Dita’s parents who came
to Prague and told the Polachs about what was happening to the Jews in Germany. Until then,
Dita did not know that she and her parents were Jews as her family was secular and not religious.
Dita could see how worried her parents became and she could often hear them
saying words such as “Nazism”, “Adolf Hitler “, “ Persecution of Jews “ or the “ Nuremberg
Laws “ which became the legal basis for the racist anti-Jewish policy in Germany.
Things changed for the worse in Czechoslovakia in late summer 1938,
when Hitler annexed the Sudetenland where ethnic German population of Czechoslovakia lived.
This border area of Czechoslovakia also contained the Czechoslovak
Army's defensive positions in the event of a war with Germany.
Dita’s parents started to think about emigration as they feared that Adolf Hitler
was not interested only in the Sudetenland. However, very few countries accepted Jewish
immigrants and emigration became even more difficult when on the 15th of March 1939,
less than 6 months after the annexation of the Sudetenland, Nazi Germany invaded
and occupied the remaining Czech parts of Czechoslovakia establishing the Protectorate
of Bohemia and Moravia which by contrast to the Sudetenland, consisted mostly of ethnic Czechs.
Immediately after the Nazis started to occupy the whole country, they passed new anti-Jewish laws
which were designed to exclude Jewish people from society and restrict their livelihood.
Their accounts were frozen, and they were forbidden to sell companies and real estate
which were confiscated and taken over by the Germans. In all, the Germans seized about a
half-billion dollars’ worth of Jewish property in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.
The Polachs were not an exception. 2 German officers came to their home situated in
a modern building in Prague and ordered them to move out. Another blow for Dita’s
family was when her father, a lawyer, was dismissed from work as Jewish teachers,
lecturers, army officers and doctors were dismissed from government jobs.
Dita’s life changed completely, too as the Jews were banned from entering certain streets,
squares, parks, woods and other public places.
From the 1st of September 1939 when the Second World War began,
the Jews were not allowed to stay outdoors after eight o'clock in the evening.
From August 1940 onwards, Jewish children were banned from attending public and private schools.
Because Jewish parents wanted their children to continue studying, they created private
study groups of 5 -7 children, who were taught clandestinely by a Jewish teacher.
Since being evicted from their home, the Polachs lived in one room of a two-room apartment,
which they had to share with another family.
From November 1940, new laws, decrees, guidelines,
and regulations increasingly restricted the civil and human rights of Jews in the protectorate.
Jews were not allowed to leave their municipalities, even temporarily, without
special permission. They were not allowed to visit libraries, theatres and cinemas, pubs or cafés,
swimming pools, and other sporting and entertainment facilities.
Jews had their radio sets taken away and were not allowed to keep pets.
When travelling by city public transport or trains, they were confined to standing in the
last carriage. The Jews were even limited in their choice of food and shopping times
for them were limited to two hours twice a day and later two hours once per day.
However, there was still an oasis of fun and hope in a desert of oppression,
where Jewish children of Prague could meet - Hagibor.
It was a playground which consisted of tennis courts, volleyball courts
or running track where Jewish children could play games and participate in competitions.
All was organized by Fredy Hirsch - a German-Jewish athlete, sports teacher, and Zionist
youth movement leader. Because by the time that Hagibor was functioning the Nazis had forbidden
the Jews from travelling by public transport, Dita had to walk for an hour to Hagibor and back.
The systematic deportation of Jews from the territory of the Protectorate started in October
1941 with the transports to the Lodz Ghetto which was located in German-occupied Poland. By the
3rd of November the same year, 5000 Jews were deported to the ghetto. One of them was Dita’s
beloved uncle Ludwig. Soon after his deportation, the family received a card announcing his death.
Only 277 out of 5000 Jews deported to the Lodz Ghetto survived.
Uncle Ludwig’s widow, aunt Máňa, who was not a Jew, did not obey the law forbidding non-Jews to
have contact with Jews and kept helping Dita and her parents, bringing food and other necessities.
In November 1941, Reinhard Heydrich, the Nazi architect of the Holocaust,
established the Theresienstadt Ghetto which was located in the fortress town of Terezín,
in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. The first transport of Czech Jews arrived in
the same month. At that time Dita’s father was employed as a clerk in one of the departments
of the Jewish Community Center. Another department had the task, ordered by the Nazis,
to make up lists of people to be deported. Thanks to Dita‘s father’s job, their own deportation
was delayed for a few months. However, their grandparents were deported to Theresienstadt
in July 1942. Dita along with her parents followed them in November the same year.
Because the Nazis had taken everything from them, the Polachs came to Theresienstadt with
some clothes, a blanket, a pillow, metal dishes and some non-perishable food.
When Dita and her parents arrived in the Ghetto, it was so overcrowded they had to sleep on
the floor inside the ramparts. Grandmother Polach found them there. She had sad news,
the grandfather Johann Polach had passed away only 3 weeks before.
Conditions in the camp were harsh. Lack of water and electricity, overcrowding,
bedbugs, fleas and lice, and above all no privacy.
Food was distributed to all the inmates from the central kitchens. It consisted of a portion
of soup, usually made of lentil powder, and some potatoes or a dumpling. Never fruit or vegetables.
A quarter loaf of bread for two days and a spoonful of jam were distributed in the rooms.
The prisoners were hungry, many were sick. 200 inmates were dying daily, diseases were rampant.
Men and women lived in separate barracks. They slept in three-tired
wooden bunks. There were also several separate Homes for girls and boys. In
their rooms there were usually a table and a bench in addition to the bunks.
The prisoners spent their waking hours either at work, queuing for their meal,
or on the bunk. All prisoners aged 14 to 60 or 65 had to work. Most were involved in war production
for Germany or in the vegetable gardens. However, the vegetables they produced were not for the
prisoners but for the Nazi personnel. Dita was one of those that worked in vegetable gardens.
Those who did not work, mostly the elderly people, received 60% less food than heavy laborers.
92% of deaths were among those over sixty, and almost all elderly prisoners who were
not deported to other extermination camps such as Auschwitz, died at Theresienstadt.
Younger people did not face starvation, although many lost weight and were often sick.
The Ghetto was administered by the Jewish Elders, among them Fredy Hirsch,
who was Head of the Children and Youth Department. His intention was to keep the children somewhat
insulated from the harsh conditions in the ghetto, so that they would not „succumb
to demoralization”. It was he who managed to find for them better housing in the so-called
Heims. Although education was forbidden, the prisoners, many of them former professors,
scientists and artists, continued to clandestinely teach the children in the Heims.
While in the beginning, Theresienstadt served as a ghetto for the Czech Jews, in June 1942 the
first German and Austrian Jews arrived. Dutch and Danish Jews came later in the beginning of 1943.
On the 26th of October 1942, less than 48 hours after the arrival of the last
transport from Theresienstadt to Treblinka, the SS dispatched the first transport to Auschwitz,
carrying 1,866 persons. Upon arrival, SS officials selected 247 people, mostly men,
to be registered as prisoners. The remaining 1,619 were killed in the gas chambers.
In order to convince the German population that the deportees were bound for resettlement,
most Jews from the German Reich itself were dispatched to the east by passenger trains.
Jews in the German-occupied east fared far worse. German authorities generally did not give the
deportees food or water, even when the journey was long. The hapless victims had to wait for
days on railroad spurs for other trains to pass. Packed into sealed cattle cars and suffering from
overcrowding, they endured intense heat during the summer and freezing temperatures in the winter.
The Polachs were selected for deportation “ to the working camp in the East “ as they had been told,
in December 1943. The transport was so overcrowded that man, women, children and elderly people could
not sit and had to stand for about two days until they reached their destination - Auschwitz. Aside
from a bucket, which was overflowing within a few hours, there was no sanitary facility.
The stench of urine and excrement added to the humiliation and suffering of the
deportees. Lacking food and water and proper ventilation,
many of the deportees also died before the trains reached their destinations. Armed
police guards accompanied the transport and they had orders to shoot anyone who tried to escape.
When they reached Auschwitz, they did not know that the worst was yet to come.
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