profesor Jehuda Bauer

"I'll never forget this. I went to a seminar at school in Beer-Sheva, you know, eighteen-year-old youngsters. One young man sitting in the last row stood up when I was talking about the gas chambers and concentration camps and he asked: “Where was our air force?” In the year 1943. Without thinking. This is the reaction of a traumatized society.

„Můj tatínek byl inženýr, ale moc se mu to nelíbilo, tak byl úředníkem ve firmě v Praze. Matka vyráběla pásky pro šaty žen, byla to nová móda. Oba rodiče pracovali, měl jsem slečnu, která se o mne starala, ta mluvila jen česky. (…) Rodiče uměli oba jazyky, otec mluvil víc česky. (…) Mezi sebou mluvili většinou německy, na mne česky i německy. Tak se to střídalo.“

„Jmenuji se Jehuda Bauer, narodil jsem se v Praze v roce 1926 a opustili jsme Československo v březnu 1939, ještě mi nebylo třináct let. Chodil jsem do šesté chlapecké školy na Vinohradech, první roky jsem měl české vyučování a je to moje mateřská řeč. To je tak vše, co se může říct na začátku.“

"On March 14, 1939, in the evening, we were not the only ones in the train. The whole train was full of Jews with papers of immigration to Palestine and Cezch and German social democrats who were afraid that the Germans were going to march into the country. One of the people was a friend of my father, his name was Max Brod. On that night the Germans occupied Bohemia. We had no idea about it, of course. When we got to Moravská Ostrava, on the border to Poland, Germans entered the train. They had svastika on their uniforms, probably the SA. They went through the train, back and forth, checking the papers of the passengers. There was a Czech train dispatcher, they had these swatters with green and red sides. He put up the green side and the locomotive started to move. It crossed the border and stopped a couple of hundred meters behind it. The Germans had to get out (prematurely). We continued.

First of all there are living documents. Lots of people gave their testimony after that. That’s equally important as documents, because documents are often produced in order to mislead, to tell stories that never happened. So you have to check both very carefully - oral interviews as well as the documents. I can give you examples of documents from that area that are completely made up. Oral documentation is not accurate; you have to be careful with both sources.