Hana Utitz-Raz

“There was peace in Europe, but fighting was still going on in Japan. It was in 1945. It was called Peace E. I went to see a film in the cinema, and they would always show news before the film began. Suddenly I saw heaps of corpses. I screamed and I darted out of the cinema. I realized: They have not survived that! It was a horrible shock. Then we learnt that mom went to the first death camp where they didn’t know yet that there was gas. They turned on the showers slowly; they expected that water would flow, and they suffered the most. The others already knew it and they turned on the faucets fully open so that death would come quickly at least. That was in Chelmno. Daddy died in Łódź either as a result of typhoid or hunger. We do not even know, but we have the data.”

“We were listening to the radio when I suddenly heard it: ‘Where did they say was this war, in Palestine? And they will have their own state there?! Jews will have their own state?! I am going there!’ The Communist Party at the university then summoned me: ‘How come that you want to go away?!’ I was standing there at the podium and I had to explain why I was not happy in this wonderful Communist Party. I don’t even know what I told them. I think that I aced it when I talked about the kibbutz. They liked that. And I probably said that my parents were there. The Prague police then came to count our things and they registered every single handkerchief. It had to be taken away immediately so that we would not put anything extra in our luggage later. Half of it then got lost, anyway. We thus decided that since we didn’t have anything there, we would go to sleep in a hotel instead. The day after we left, my sister, who then got stuck in Czechoslovakia throughout the whole period of the Communist regime, asked the caretaker about our leaving and the woman told her: ‘How lucky they were! Police came there in the evening looking for him; they wanted to put him in prison.’ That was because my husband worked as a volunteer for Americans and all people who were doing something pro-American were spies.”

“When we learnt that it was my turn, my mom went with me to the Wilson Railway Station. She was standing there alone because dad was not able to take a leave from the factory. Germans were making him stay there, they treated him horribly. My mom was standing there alone. I remember well that except for her, there were whole families who were saying good-bye. Mom was saying to me: ‘You will get to know new people, new places…’ But she wrote to my sister, who had already been in England for some time: ‘Hanka left today. That’s terrible! Why have I sent her? Perhaps she would survive it here.’ I learnt about this only many years later. Before she died, my sister had sent me the letters which mom had written to her at the same time. I was very touched by it, by her strength to encourage me.”