“I think the worst part was when we returned and found out we were alone. That all of our relatives were gone. From the big family of ours only my mom, my sister and my cousin survived. This cousin lost a husband, her parents and her sister. She simply returned just to be on her own. When we found out we moved together and tried to stick together. Our grandfather had also returned. He survived Terezín and was ninety-six years old when he died in Poděbrady in a Jewish old peoples’ home. He outlived his three sons in Terezín.”
“When we left the familienlager, there was a selection. That meant we had to walk in front of doctor Mengele who waved his hand and thus sent people either to death or to life. I was lucky enough to be waved in the direction of life. And here I am. But just by waving a hand he decided on lives and deaths of thousands and thousands of people. He was a very handsome man I have to say, he looked very nice. But in my opinion he was a human monster.”
“I realized where we were as soon as they opened those railway cars. They immediately started shouting at us. We were thirsty and hungry and I remember that it was raining just as we got out of those cars and my dad saw eaves from which water was dripping and he wanted to go get a drink there, only to be horribly punched in the back. But this was not done by an SS-man, it was a prisoner, some commander. I just saw my daddy being hit, being beaten and this is unforgettable. And such shouting, dogs barking, children crying… I cannot describe it. Just telling this to you sends shivers down my spine. This was simply the first moment in Auschwitz – me seeing them beating my dad.”
Eva Lišková, née Poláková, was born in 1929 into a Jewish family of a store-owner Emil Polák in Luž in eastern Bohemia. Here she had spent an undisturbed childhood until December 1942 when her family received an order to board a transport to Terezín concentration camp. There she spent a whole year with her family before all of them were transferred to Auschwitz extermination camp in December 1943. The Polák family was placed in a so-called familienlager where they stayed for several months. Unlike the previous familienlager transports they did not end up in gas chambers but instead were sent to labour camps in the spring of 1944. Eva Lišková went through a camp in Stutthof and survived two death marches. She lived to see liberation by the Red Army on Polish territory. She got married after the war and raised three children. Eva Lišková died on 10 October 2021.
