In September 1938, Adolf Hitler threatened to unleash a European war unless the Sudetenland, a border area of Czechoslovakia inhabited by ethnic Germans, was ceded to Germany. Between September 29 and 30, 1938, the leaders of Britain, France, Italy, and Germany met in Munich and agreed to the German annexation of the Sudetenland in exchange for Hitler's pledge of peace. The Czechoslovaks were not even invited to the conference.
Less than six months later, on March 15, 1939, Nazi Germany violated the Munich Agreement and invaded and occupied the Czech provinces of Bohemia and Moravia. Hitler himself arrived in Prague, and on March 16, 1939, by a proclamation from Prague Castle, he established the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. More than 118,000 Jews living in the protectorate found themselves under Nazi domination.
One of them was Edith Polachová, born on July 12, 1929, in Prague. Edith was the only child of Elisabeth and Hanuš Polach, who nicknamed her Dita. The family, who spoke both German and Czech, lived in a rented apartment in Prague together with a maid.
Dita's mother Elisabeth was a housewife, while her father was a lawyer working for the State pension institute. His work included traveling to courts in many cities of Czechoslovakia, where he represented workers' interests. Dita's grandfather, Johann Polach, was a member of the Social Democratic party and became a senator of the Czechoslovak National Parliament.
Dita had a happy childhood. She enjoyed going to school, walking in the park, and playing with her friends. When Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933, Dita was only three years old.
The Nazi regime quickly began to restrict the civil and human rights of Jewish people. Less than two months after Hitler became chancellor, the first concentration camp, Dachau, was established in March 1933. Thousands of Jews fled Germany, and among them were friends of Dita's parents who came to Prague and told the Polachs what was happening to Jews in Germany.
Until then, Dita did not know that she and her parents were Jews, as her family was secular and not religious. She could see how worried her parents became and often heard them saying words such as Nazism, Adolf Hitler, persecution of Jews, and the Nuremberg Laws, which became the legal basis for the racist anti-Jewish policy in Germany.
Things changed for the worse in Czechoslovakia in late summer 1938, when Hitler annexed the Sudetenland. This border area also contained the Czechoslovak Army's defensive positions in the event of a war with Germany. Dita's parents began to think about emigration, fearing that Hitler was not interested only in the Sudetenland.
However, very few countries accepted Jewish immigrants, and emigration became even more difficult after March 15, 1939, when Nazi Germany invaded and occupied the remaining Czech parts of Czechoslovakia. The Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, by contrast to the Sudetenland, consisted mostly of ethnic Czechs.
Immediately after the Nazis began to occupy the whole country, they passed new anti-Jewish laws designed to exclude Jewish people from society and restrict their livelihood. Their accounts were frozen, and they were forbidden to sell companies and real estate, which were confiscated and taken over by the Germans. In all, the Germans seized about a half-billion dollars' worth of Jewish property in the protectorate.
The Polachs were not an exception. Two German officers came to their home in a modern building in Prague and ordered them to move out. Another blow came when Dita's father, a lawyer, was dismissed from work, as Jewish teachers, lecturers, army officers, and doctors were dismissed from government jobs.
Dita's life changed completely as Jews were banned from entering certain streets, squares, parks, woods, and other public places. From September 1, 1939, when the Second World War began, Jews were not allowed to stay outdoors after eight o'clock in the evening. From August 1940 onward, Jewish children were banned from attending public and private schools.
Because Jewish parents wanted their children to continue studying, they created private study groups of five to seven children, taught clandestinely by a Jewish teacher. Since being evicted from their home, the Polachs lived in one room of a two-room apartment, which they had to share with another family.
From November 1940, new laws, decrees, guidelines, and regulations increasingly restricted the civil and human rights of Jews in the protectorate. Jews were not allowed to leave their municipalities, even temporarily, without special permission. They were not allowed to visit libraries, theatres, cinemas, pubs, cafés, swimming pools, or other sporting and entertainment facilities.
Jews had their radio sets taken away and were not allowed to keep pets. When traveling by city public transport or trains, they were confined to standing in the last carriage. Their choice of food was limited, and shopping times were restricted to two hours twice a day, and later two hours once per day.
There was still an oasis of fun and hope in a desert of oppression where Jewish children of Prague could meet: Hagibor. It was a playground with tennis courts, volleyball courts, and a running track where Jewish children could play games and participate in competitions. It was all organized by Fredy Hirsch, a German-Jewish athlete, sports teacher, and Zionist youth movement leader.
Because the Nazis had forbidden Jews from traveling by public transport by the time Hagibor was functioning, Dita had to walk for an hour to Hagibor and back.
The systematic deportation of Jews from the territory of the protectorate started in October 1941 with transports to the Lodz Ghetto in German-occupied Poland. By November 3 of that year, 5,000 Jews had been deported to the ghetto. One of them was Dita's beloved uncle Ludwig.
Soon after his deportation, the family received a card announcing his death. Only 277 out of the 5,000 Jews deported to the Lodz Ghetto survived. Uncle Ludwig's widow, aunt Máňa, who was not Jewish, did not obey the law forbidding non-Jews to have contact with Jews and kept helping Dita and her parents, bringing food and other necessities.
In November 1941, Reinhard Heydrich, the Nazi architect of the Holocaust, established the Theresienstadt Ghetto in the fortress town of Terezín, in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. The first transport of Czech Jews arrived the same month.
At that time, Dita's father was employed as a clerk in one of the departments of the Jewish Community Center. Another department had the task, ordered by the Nazis, of making up lists of people to be deported. Thanks to her father's job, their own deportation was delayed for a few months. However, their grandparents were deported to Theresienstadt in July 1942, and Dita and her parents followed them in November the same year.
Because the Nazis had taken everything from them, the Polachs came to Theresienstadt with some clothes, a blanket, a pillow, metal dishes, and some non-perishable food. When they arrived, the ghetto was so overcrowded that they had to sleep on the floor inside the ramparts.
Grandmother Polach found them there. She had sad news: grandfather Johann Polach had passed away only three weeks before.
Conditions in the camp were harsh. There was a lack of water and electricity, overcrowding, bedbugs, fleas, and lice, and above all no privacy. Food was distributed to all inmates from the central kitchens. It consisted of a portion of soup, usually made of lentil powder, and some potatoes or a dumpling. Never fruit or vegetables.
A quarter loaf of bread for two days and a spoonful of jam were distributed in the rooms. The prisoners were hungry, and many were sick. Two hundred inmates were dying daily, and diseases were rampant.
Men and women lived in separate barracks. They slept in three-tiered wooden bunks. There were also several separate homes for girls and boys, with rooms that usually contained a table and a bench in addition to the bunks. Prisoners spent their waking hours either at work, queuing for their meal, or on the bunk.
All prisoners aged 14 to 60 or 65 had to work. Most were involved in war production for Germany or in the vegetable gardens. However, the vegetables they produced were not for the prisoners but for the Nazi personnel. Dita was one of those who worked in the vegetable gardens.
Those who did not work, mostly the elderly, received 60 percent less food than heavy laborers. Ninety-two percent of deaths were among those over sixty, and almost all elderly prisoners who were not deported to extermination camps such as Auschwitz died at Theresienstadt. Younger people did not face starvation, although many lost weight and were often sick.
The ghetto was administered by the Jewish Elders, among them Fredy Hirsch, who was Head of the Children and Youth Department. His intention was to keep the children somewhat insulated from the harsh conditions in the ghetto so that they would not succumb to demoralization. It was he who managed to find better housing for them in the so-called Heims.
Although education was forbidden, the prisoners, many of them former professors, scientists, and artists, continued to clandestinely teach the children in the Heims. While Theresienstadt initially served as a ghetto for Czech Jews, in June 1942 the first German and Austrian Jews arrived. Dutch and Danish Jews came later, at the beginning of 1943.
On October 26, 1942, less than 48 hours after the arrival of the last transport from Theresienstadt to Treblinka, the SS dispatched the first transport to Auschwitz, carrying 1,866 people. Upon arrival, SS officials selected 247 people, mostly men, to be registered as prisoners. The remaining 1,619 were killed in the gas chambers.
In order to convince the German population that deportees were bound for resettlement, most Jews from the German Reich itself were dispatched to the east by passenger trains. Jews in the German-occupied east fared far worse. German authorities generally did not give deportees food or water, even when the journey was long.
The victims had to wait for days on railroad spurs for other trains to pass. Packed into sealed cattle cars and suffering from overcrowding, they endured intense heat during the summer and freezing temperatures in the winter.
The Polachs were selected for deportation "to the working camp in the East," as they had been told, in December 1943. The transport was so overcrowded that men, women, children, and elderly people could not sit and had to stand for about two days until they reached their destination: Auschwitz.
Aside from a bucket, which was overflowing within a few hours, there was no sanitary facility. The stench of urine and excrement added to the humiliation and suffering of the deportees. Lacking food, water, and proper ventilation, many deportees died before the trains reached their destinations. Armed police guards accompanied the transport and had orders to shoot anyone who tried to escape.
When they reached Auschwitz, they did not know that the worst was yet to come.