Věra Čeňková

"Here we were dreaming about the train leaving Terezín. I got this picture for my birthday from my boyfriend. He left with one of the transports in 1944 and never came back. He probably didn’t draw it by himself but he had it drawn for a piece of bread, so he could give it to me as a memory. We’re throwing all Terezín stuff away and we are imagining we’re on the train ride heading back home. But he, the poor boy, he was on the death train. These pictures were original in different folder... He drew these for our anniversary. I used to put my pictures into my memory book. I also used to have some leather jewelry which I have exchanged for a piece of bread too. Someone was good in drawing; someone knew how to make things out of steel. We had these kinds of presents."

"There were a few things that we were absolutely afraid of. The worst one was probably to see the people who were coming here from other concentration camps - the walking dead bodies. People covered with skin only, sick and full of lice. That’s where the typhus was coming from. They were lying all around the barracks; dozens on each bed, because there was not enough space for all of them. That was really an awful experience. We didn’t know where the transports were going to. They always came back bald headed, wearing nothing but the striped clothing. That was one of the terrible feelings. That was the time that we realized that almost none of our relatives would return."

"I’m not sure if you want to talk about it, but I can imagine it must have been difficult to meet the opposite sex in Terezín camp." "It was absolutely impossible from the very beginning. But he was the head of gardening there. He was from Židenice village, near by Brno. He wasn’t allowed to study, therefore he learnt to be a gardener and become the head gardener in Terezín then. He was responsible for the greenhouse. We set up a time for our date for 8pm. (...) at the beginning I functioned as a call-girl and later I worked in gardening. We started to date in September 1942. Sometimes he spent a night in the garden house. We began to meet there. We could stay out for a little longer, until 8 or so. Unfortunately he was put on one of the October transports in 1944. He never came back. He was nice young man; little older than me. We were seeing each other for two years."

"When did you see him (your father) for the last time?" "I saw him one day before he died. By coincidence he got a job when he was pulling the barrow around the whole camp. There were female and male barracks separately at that time and nobody was allowed to go out anywhere. His job was to look for the dead ones and collect whatever they left there - clothing or luggage. And then he was supposed to take everything into some storage. This way he could stop by in our barracks. He was there in the afternoon, the next morning he was dead. He died of pulmonary edema; basically he suffocated before the doctor arrived. When the doctor came he could only note the death. My father has been buried in some mass grave. When he died there was no crematory yet in Terezín, so the people have been buried in unknown places. My mom was 38 and I was just 16."