„My grandmother was in a cart with another woman and they got friends on the way to Auschwitz, and when they got to Auschwitz – she was what? 58, I suppose, my grandmother, 54, 58, they got off the train, and amongst the horror, the guards, the dogs and everything, the women, one woman went to the left, one woman went to the right, and my grandmother went to the gas chambers. The other woman survived and reason we know this story or how we know this story in in 1947 she turned up at my fathers clinic in Baťa shoe factory, which is where he was working in Zlín, where we all were, i was there too, not in the clinic, but... And this woman wanted to go to Australia but she had really bad TB. My father noticed the number on her arm, and he said: 'Where were you'? And she said: 'Auschwitz.' She said, 'You know doctor Posner, I wanted to ask you what was the name of your mother?' He told her and she said right, she told the story I just told, about being in the same carriage and what had happened to her. He had been searching in displaced persons camps and even thought being told by friends there was absolutely no chance she survived, anything, there's always that tiny glimmer of hope. And that glimmer of hope that day in 1948 was dashed forever."
"We got to Karlovy Vary and the first stop we had was in front of Rossini, and that's where the mood started to darken, because rain was pouring down and my father looked at Rossini, looked at the open door, and said: 'That's what I have nightmares about, Judi. Those tiles on the floor.' And I managed to get him away, saying 'Where're going to next, Dad?' And he said: 'The graveyard, we are going to the cemetery now, because I want to see my father's grave. So off we went, we got to the cemetery and it was complete and utter shambles. It was just headstones knocked over all over the place, complete disrepair, weeds growing all up. And my dad just looked at it and looked at it, and then... This very quietly spoken charming man who never lost his temper, he went completely berserk. Kicked gravestones over, tried to lift them up and saying: 'Where is it? Where is it? My father's grave! It hasn't changed at all. First Nazis, then the communists. And then he looked at me and he said: 'Come on, let's get out of here!'“
„Everybody asked about grandmother at school and I could never answer about my dad's mother. And so on Monday morning I told the story at school, about her being Jewish and how she was killed. And there was silence, the teacher said: 'Come on, play time, out you go'. And I got into the playground and they made a circle around me and I picked the wrong time of the year, it was Easter. So they made a circle around me and started chanting: 'You're a Jew! Get out of here! We hate you!' and closed the circle to beat me up. Fortunately I was rescued by another outsider, a boy with red hair and freckles who they teased mercilessly, and pulled out of the circle. And then letters were written to my... And he threatened to beat them up, all of them. And then letters were written to my parents, because the girls went whine to the teacher, about how this boy threatened to beat them up, didn't admit why he had done this, and I had to admit to my mom and dad, that I told the story at school. So my mother went absolutely frantic, because she was really worried about my father's reaction, she didn't say anything. And my dad just said, 'You know, Judi, just remember: your grandmother would say: Two wrongs don't make right. Don't fight.'
Judi Challiner was born on 7 October 1945 in Epping Forest, a suburb of London in what was then the British Empire. Her father, Erich Posner, a lung disease specialist, geneticist, writer and pre-war social democrat, originally from a bourgeois, German-speaking Jewish family from Karlovy Vary, left the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia illegally after the Gestapo began investigating him for his political activities. He found refuge in Britain and served as a doctor, first in the British Merchant Navy and from 1944 as a doctor in the 311th Czechoslovak Bomber Squadron of the RAF, where his younger brother Hans was also a pilot. His mother Judi, originally from a Manchester typewriter dealer‘s family who lost a considerable amount of property during the Great Depression, worked as a canteen manager during the war and took up professional ice skating. After the victory over Nazism, the family moved to Zlín, where Erich regained his pre-war job as a specialist at the Bata Hospital. After February 1948, the family moved to Britain, first to Birmingham and then to Stoke-on-Trent, where Judi had a lonely childhood and gradually learned of the fate of her grandmother, who, like dozens of other members of her extended family, was murdered by the Nazis. She studied at Keele University and the University of Manchester, and worked as a governess, teacher and lecturer in the predominantly deprived areas of Stoke-on-Trent and Manchester. She has thus dedicated her life to education, theatre, multicultural dialogue, fighting stigma and working to preserve the memory of her ancestors. She got married in 1973 and is the mother of two sons.
