Eva Žárská, roz. Lukášová

* 1935

  • “There were five of us back then, so Dad said, why couldn’t there be six of us... So Ilse found herself with us, and of course she was accepted as a member of the family. She didn’t speak with me much, I was ten and she was sixteen. I was fabulously fascinated by her fate. I saw her at Korábka. I saw a lanky little girl holding my mum by the hand and looking insecure. But she fitted in, she had an optimistic nature. She became a part of the big group that got together at Korábka for the summer, and she experienced something as it was before the war.”

  • “A poverty the likes of which young people today couldn’t imagine. Paid maternity leave was for six weeks. There was nothing in the shops. When we wanted to knit a sweater, we had to unravel socks. There were queues for butter, for oil, for eggs. I’ll never forget the eight-hour queue for meat, which I waited out before some holiday feast with two small children. I earned myself a slab of meat that butcher wouldn’t dare put on the counter today.”

  • “She survived the selection with Doctor Mengele. She found out it was him afterwards. Her life was saved by a prisoner who leant close to her and whispered that she should say she was eighteen. She was hardly fourteen. She wasn’t sure she should listen to him. Because in the Terezín ghetto the Jews tried to make life as easy as possible for the children. But in the end she said eighteen. If she had said less, she would’ve gone to other side, which meant straight into the gas.”

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Vsetín, 28.09.2013

    (audio)
    délka: 40:51
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Soutěž Příběhy 20. století
  • 2

    Zlín, 04.04.2014

    (audio)
    délka: 35:20
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Memory of nations (in co-production with Czech television)
  • 3

    Zlín, 04.04.2014

    (audio)
    délka: 01:20:43
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Memory of nations (in co-production with Czech television)
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

I do not want the suffering of the Jewish girl Ilse to be forgotten

svatební.jpg (historic)
Eva Žárská, roz. Lukášová
zdroj: Paměť národa

Eva Žárská was born on 1 July 1935 in Vsetín as one of five children of Lydia and František Lukáš. Her father owned a construction company and was responsible for the creation of several noteworthy buildings in the Vsetín area. Her family was friends with the Jewish Eichner family who were sent to a concentration camp during World War II. Of them all, only the daughter Ilse had survived, managing to escape during a prisoners‘ march to work. After the war, the Lukáš‘s sought to find her and succeeded, accepting her into their family. Eva later initiated the publishing of the book ‘Through the child‘s eyes‘ written by Ilse based on her war-time diary. Ilse lives in the United States but remains in contact with Eva. After the end of WW II Eva faced persecution because of her father being a businessman. Despite him taking part in the resistance and building a secret bunker for partisans, the communist regime considered him an enemy because he owned a company of 125 employees. His firm was expropriated from him. Eva fell ill with tuberculosis and was not admitted to university. For a year she worked at the railways, later as a clerk and eventually she had done a follow-up study, working for the rest of her life as a hygienist. She got married to Radomír Žárský who descended from a family of Czech National Socialists and was active with the Protestant Church. For this reason, they kept running into trouble with the regime. In 1989 the Žárský family was among the first in Vsetín to join the counter-communist demonstrations and the establishment of Civic Forums. At  present, Eva contributes to a regional newspaper, organizes lectures for students and makes sure the dramatic fate of her Jewish friend Ilse is not forgotten.