“In Czechoslovakia we had lived happily and well. Unfortunately this came to an end when Hitler got the Sudetenland. On March 15th they occupied Bohemia and Moravia. We knew this was the end, but we had not expected it would end this way. I was lucky. There were three of us children in the family. Me and my older brother were lucky, we got a visa and we were allowed to come to Palestine as students. Entry to Palestine was very difficult, because the English normally did not allow it. They were afraid of the Arabs; the number of permissions was very limited. From Czechoslovakia there were about one hundred young students, travelling there to study at Hebrew University, at Technion in Haifa and also at the art academy in Jerusalem. It was a miracle that Hitler let us leave Czechoslovakia. On September 1st 1939 he invaded Poland; we were afraid we would not be allowed to leave. But we got the permission, even though it was during the war time. Italy was not in the war yet. So they let us go. It was a miracle. From December to January 1940, hundred students from Czechoslovakia, we went from Prague by regular train to Trieste and from there by ship to Haifa.”
“You see, the memories are very sad. If you come to Hradiště, there is not even a cemetery there. The Germans have not done anything, they only burnt the synagogues down. The Communist were those who destroyed the cemeteries. It was not because of anti-Semitism, but because they wanted those gravestones. Like in Moravská Ostrava, My grandmother died a normal death, but there is no grave. Now there is some park in that place. This is sad.”
“We have been in the Czech Republic four times with my husband. Two times we went with our grandson. He is thirty now, lives in America, and he has finished his PhD. and MD. So we went with him and one more granddaughter. My husband’s family is from Moravia, we travelled in the Uherské Hradiště region. Uherský Brod, Napajedla, Holešov. And it was very hard for us, it is as if you were travelling to some cemetery. Not even half of the Jewish population survived, and there had been many interesting Jewish communities there before. So we went there two times. We also showed them where we had lived, he in Vienna, I in Brno, where I had lived and gone to school. We showed them our…well, you can say roots. We have been there twice. And we have two more granddaughters, who have not gone yet, but we do not plan to go there anymore. And afterwards we went two more times just by ourselves.”
“I worked in a hospital in First Aid. There were many dead in Jerusalem. They were attacking us with rockets. We could not celebrate. We only hoped it would be the last war. We regarded it as some sort of a miracle. We had nothing and all the Arab armies attacked us. And still, we won. We hoped that our children would not have to experience something like this. It was sixty years ago and there is always some war once in a few years. It is difficult. When you work in the same profession like me, you see what is happening. This is our country, we have nothing else. There will be celebrations after all, we have accomplished something. We hope there will be peace one day. I do not believe we will live to see it, but hopefully our children will experience life in peace.”
“This is the way it is. My grandfather was seventy-six when he was sent to Treblinka. We have it all recorded. If you go to that institute in Terezín, you can find out all the data. My aunt Anna Steinerová was a director of a large female Jewish organization called Vico. She could have left, but she wanted to stay with her Jewish nation. So she went to Terezín and then later to the gas chambers in Auschwitz. This is our fate.”
“I was teaching for about three years, and then from 1944 till1989 I was working as a nurse, then as a teacher of nursing and later I became a director and dean of a school for nursing personnel. In 1983 I retired here in Jerusalem; afterwards, I was a director of one small nursing school in Tsfat (Safed) for six years. In between, I have experienced everything that happened here. All the wars, all that we have built here. When we started, there was a lot of fighting in Jerusalem, but we have survived, we have built this state. When we came to Palestine, there were five hundred or six hundred thousand Jews. Now we have about six million.”
Judith Steinerová-Freudová was born in 1919 in a Zionist Jewish family in Brno. She also attended a Jewish grammar school there, with classes being taught in Czech. She was one of the first Czech class students; before, German had been the only language used at Jewish schools. She was selected as one of about a hundred students who were allowed to leave the Protectorate for Palestine in autumn 1939. In December 1939 she sailed from Trieste to Haifa. Soon after her arrival she married Eli Freud, who was later to become a professor of music, composer and conductor of chamber music orchestras. She studied a nursing school in Jerusalem. The study of the nursing profession also shaped her future fate. Between 1944 and 1989, Judith Steiner worked as a nurse, a teacher of nursing, and later became a director and dean of a school for medical personnel. Since 1989 she has visited the Czech Republic four times. In 1996, she spent a short time in the Czech Republic in Brno, where she lectured at a nursing school. The Freud family now lives in Jerusalem.
