“Most of the Jews died, and our neighbours were among them. There was doctor Arnstein, a physician, he was eighty-three, and he was deported to Terezín with the other Jews. I was helping them carry the suitcase to the railway station. It was in winter, some time in November, and there was snow. They eventually gave us their sledge, it was theirs, but they told us: ´Take the sledge with you.´ We carried their suitcases, and not only theirs, but we also helped two other Jewish women – Mrs. Pecháčková, who was the wife of the director of the Perla factory, he was the general manager and he had to divorce, because as a Jew she was placed in our house (the building which was transformed into an assembly place for Jews) and there she awaited her deportation. The second woman was Mrs. Chrtková, the wife of the stationmaster, and it was the same: they divorced so that he would be able to keep his job. But both these ladies have survived, they have come back.”
“The chairman of the national committee was professor Vitkovský, who was a honest man; he lived in the same street like us, by the way, but apart from him there were also many questionable persons. Shooting was heard everyday (at the town hall), and everyday a horse-driven carriage full of dead Germans was being taken to the cemetery. Three mass graves, with about hundred persons each, were created in the cemetery. The three rows were visible for a long time afterward, but they have disappeared now and they changed the place into an area where cremated ashes are scattered. These Germans are buried there, about three hundred Germans who lived there, and many of them were beaten to death and killed for reasons I don’t know by those heroes who woke up only in 1945. All this was happening in the months which followed after May 1945, during the summer vacation. I saw it many times, we were watching it with other kids: corpses covered with a tarpaulin, and they were taking them from the town hall to the cemetery, and arms and legs were dangling from the wagon which was covered with that blood-stained tarpaulin.”
“The Neistabels had daughter Eva, she was one year older than me, and they also had a son who was younger than me. Eva and her brother returned, but their parents died there. And the Popper family – they all died there. Those who returned did not stay in Česká Třebová for long: she returned broken, pale, abused, and she was not able to stay here, and therefore they later went to Prague or they moved somewhere else, because they didn’t have anything here anymore. Local people took all their property; you know how Czech people are? I don’t know the details about the returning of the Jewish property, but take the Arnstein family from our house – they had a nicely furnished apartment, the entire floor, they were wealthy people, and they had savings of one million Czech Crowns in the savings bank, can you imagine how much money it was at that time? That was worth several buildings, you could buy at least twenty houses for one million. The Arsteins still believed that they would return, and therefore they gave all this money to various people to keep it for them so that it would not be taken by the Germans. But when they returned, the people denied everything. That’s how Czech people are: they are no innocents, but they are a nation of rogues and villains.”
Ing. Miloslav Tesař was born in 1929 in Česká Třebová where he also spent his childhood. He lived with his parents and one brother in a tenant apartment house close to the town square, which was owned by the Jewish family Arnstein. In 1942 the spacious flat of the Arnstein family was turned into one of the two assembly places for the Jewish inhabitants before their deportations to the ghetto in Terezín. Unlike most of the people in Česká Třebová, the family of Miloslav Tesař was helping the Jews - they were going shopping for them, sending letters, etc. Miloslav Tesař helped to carry the luggage for some of his Jewish neighbours before their transport to Terezín. On May 5, 1945 he witnessed the arrival of three German armored vehicles instead of the Red Army soldiers whom the town was awaiting. The Red Army reached Česká Třebová three days later. Miloslav also experienced the retaliation against the Germans immediately after the war, such us the rampage done by the revolutionary guards or taking the bodies of people who were killed without trial to the cemetery. Miloslav studied an industrial school after the war, and later he continued studying while doing a full time job. With his wife Marie Tesařová they raised four daughters. Miloslav Tesař lives in Česká Třebová.
