“We arrived there shortly before being liberated. We were there about ten days. At first they didn’t have beds or bunks for us, and then after about ten days they moved us into some barracks, probably which had previously been used by the German soldiers who’d left. Then there was something of a power vacuum. By that time they’d brought us something warm, say, some soup or black coffee. Then, when the Germans left for fear of the encroaching American army, they disappeared completely, there was this power vacuum, everyone did whatever they wanted to, if they had the strength to do it. I still see the dead bodies lying next to the live ones, rotting faeces, the hideous stench, lice crawling over everything. Those were the body lice, which transmit this disease [epidemic typhus - ed.]. Those are perhaps the worst memories I have. In my whole life I never experienced anything as ugly as those few days in Bergen-Belsen.”
“I couldn’t quite say which soldier I spotted first, but the Brits drove up, one was on a tank, one on a lorry. When they saw us, they were horrified because that was something incomprehensible to them. Piles of dead bodies and gaunt figures sitting, picking out lice from their clothes. That was a popular sport, the only one I guess, that you stripped down, searched for lice, and killed them. It was hopeless because they were everywhere. Mum was deteriorating, she had a high fever... the soldiers weren’t allowed to come close to us, because there was a danger of spreading infection. I remember they drove off somewhere, probably for some equipment, which they then brought back with them... in the fever I saw some large heads, they had some protective gear on, so as not to be infected... I still see it at night, quite often, these big heads, white helmets, nothing visible except just the eyes. I still see it, like a ghost. One soldier, seeing what state we were in, threw us a tin, I guess with good intent... Mum ate most of it. We couldn’t eat it somehow, it was really greasy, fat, which was a big mistake because it made things worse for Mum... it was a terrible load on the stomach, which wasn’t used to that kind of food... When she ate it, things got really bad.”
“We were closed up in a barn very near to Dresden. The barn was constantly literally lifted into the air, and it didn’t have windows, it was a simple, plain structure. We were warm inside, we slept next to each other, but the sound and the images were horrifying because although the barn didn’t have windows, you could see flashes of fire as Dresden burnt... I know we were completely terrified because we didn’t know what was going on. It was close, the awful booming and thundering, flashes of light. Then we found out it was the attack on Dresden.”
Eva Macourková, née Sachselová, was born on 27 January 1931 in Pilsen to Alfred and Růžena Sachsel, who already had a five-year-old daughter Hana. On 1 September 1939 the Gestapo arrested her father. He died in Auschwitz in 1942. In January 1942 the rest of the family was deported to Terezín, where they remained until December 1943. They were subsequently taken to Auschwitz. She passed selection after half a year, the witness and her mother and sister were transferred to Christianstadt. With the war coming to an end, they had to undertake a lengthy and exhausting death march to Bergen-Belsen. Her mother died after they were liberated by the British army. The sisters had to recover from epidemic typhus. After the war Hana married and moved to Ústí nad Labem, and the witness engrossed herself in the study of English at the Faculty of Arts in Prague. In 1955 she married Jaroslav Macourek, and the following year she gave birth to their daughter, Eva. The marriage ended in divorce. The witness worked as an interpreter and translator for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, she spent a year in Berlin and Vienna. She later worked as a translator for the OIRT - International Radio and Television Organisation. She has translated several books. Eva Macourkova lived in Prague untill her death on 22 June 2017 close to her daughter, a granddaughter, and a great-granddaughter.
