Eva Salamonová

“Until today I cannot accept or understand that. It still fascinates me, how far one’s hatred and indifference can reach. Such silent majority. That is fascinating for me: you live, have neighbors, and back then the relationships were much closer – everyone knew the name of his neighbor. Back then, the neighbors visited each other, the kids played together and suddenly, from one day to another, those people were willing to shove you into a freight car and send you to gas. I shall never understand this. Moreover, they were ready to take your stuff, your table cloth, sheets, completely intimate things.”

“I just know that in the flat, in the basement, where they were hiding, there had to be Germans accommodated when the army came. People had no choice. They had a house, the Záruba’s family, and just imagine: they were sleeping in the basement and above them, there was an officer sleeping as they were obliged to lodge him. So these people were hiding Jews in their basement and in the house they had a German soldier. It really had to be huge stress for everyone. For example, my grandpa got bronchitis there and it surely is impossible not to cough when one has it. My mom used to say it was awful, that they used to put blankets on him just to muffle the noise, so they weren’t disclosed.”