Erika Hrochová

* 1928

  • „Uncle Emil kind of disappeared. First he was living out of Prague and finally got lost. The family reported him missing, and officially he didn’t exist. Aunt Kateřina was officially divorced, but Emil was at home all the time, they were hiding him. It was quite dramatic. The family had its ring tone code, which was announcing someone from the family is coming in. As soon as the code was different, everyone got stiffened and uncle was put under the sheets in bed. Back then there were kitchen beds; underneath sheets were put and on top a working table, a kind of a table-bed, and each time they went to open the door, they put him in the sheets. It was all trained as a kind of a rally, it was all in hurry that before someone got to the door, our poor uncle was already in the bed with all the sheets upon him… Minimally for three years he was hiding this way. Luckily it all ended up well. Actually no one knew it, not even friends, just the closest family. Many times we were sitting around there and the poor uncle was lying in bed with sheets upon him. And that´s how he survived.”

  • “When I attended the first or second grade (school year 1939/1940 – editor´s note) we got a form with various questions. How, who, from where, where we were born, to prove our Aryanship. I was meant to write in my relatives from both sides, their names, to the level of my father, granddad and great granddad. So I stopped with Roubíček and knew I could not write it as it looked too suspicious, and was thinking hard about Stross, so to be sure I changed it to Štos, and Roubíček to someone totally different, completely undoubtedly Aryan so that the family tree looked wonderful. I put crosses to all of them and no one cared to doubt it as it was all Aryan names and crosses. Our director didn’t ask for any ahnenpass. They had to have them in other places. It was a confirmation from magistrate or municipal office regarding your origin. He asked no proves, that was true, he simply believed that a ten year old cannot think of another name to change for Roubíček… That way I denied the great granddad and my granddad too, in order to save the rest of my family. I am wondering myself how I was able to do that at such young age.”

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    Nám.Přátelství 4, Praha 10, 10200, 26.04.2016

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I knew I could not fill in my family name Roubíček

Erika, 1944
Erika, 1944
zdroj: rodinné album

Erika Hrochová, née Bichlerová, was born on January 15, 1928 in Austrian Salzburg as a single child of her parents. The father was Austrian and the mother a Czech Jew. Her childhood and the first school years she spent in Austrian countryside near Salzburg. In 1936, after her mother´s death, she was put in care of mother´s sisters. She moved to Prague, where she received all care and family support and background. She continued her education and studies at German elementary school and since 1939 studied German gymnasium, where she renamed her Jewish ancestors in a form she filled in, in order not to be expelled from school. In 1940 her father died. In 1941-1942 ten members of the family were deported to Theresienstadt and then some of them to concentration camps Auschwitz and Trawniki, where seven of them died. Two of them were hiding from deportation. Her caring aunt avoided deportation by so called treuhänder, a German company administrator of the husband´s employer. After war the witness apply for exemption at the Ministry of Education and gained a permission to continue studies at the church gymnasium of the St. Voršila in Ostrovní street, where she successfully graduated in 1947. Then she went on to four-year studies of the High School of Commerce finished in 1952 by unpleasant delays the second state exam due to political reasons. Straight after school she began her first employment, married a year later and started a family.