Hilda Arnsteinová, roz. Sommerová

“My father felt bad that my mother and I had a hard time adjusting to Prague. (In Karlovy Vary) we liked the surrounding woods , the nearby mountains and the possibility to make trips to the countryside. Because he felt bad, he didn’t send me to a Czech school. Now I think it was a mistake but I understand that at that time he didn’t want any more dramatic changes.” Q: “So you learnt to speak proper Czech here in Prague?” “I think in 1945 I still didn’t speak proper Czech. Only now do I speak good Czech. Now I speak well, don’t I? But my daughter always called me a hopeless case.” “But the most important thing is that we understand each other.” “I was really trying hard but when I heard that Czech has seven cases I was scared that I would never learn it properly. So I didn’t study, I only repeated what I heard. And I used to hate it later when my German students were doing the same.

Q: “Do you believe in God.” “I do, but I do not need to be a part of any church for that. I do not need a church or a synagogue or prayers and chants. I believe that my life is one big miracle. It was I miracle that I survived Theresienstadt. It was a miracle that my first husband didn’t move with the whole family back to Vienna and stayed in Prague with the children even though he must have known what situation he was in.” Q: ”In that case you would not have gotten your children back or it would have been much more complicated.” “I had already spoken to a lawyer in Theresienstadt that promised to help me find his address in Vienna. I didn’t really expect that I would meet him here with the children. I came back with tuberculosis and I was recovering for three years. My mother helped me to look after the children and I had to take care that nobody in Vienna would find out about my health state. They would have another reason to take the children away again. I had to think about all those things.”

“Are you interested in the food rations we were getting in the camp? In the morning, they served the so called coffee. Of course it was chicory. The food rations were served in every quarter separately. I had to go there in the morning to get the coffee while it was still warm. Everybody was given 170 grams of bread for three days. I drew marks on the bread to see how much I was allowed eat every day. Then we got 100 grams of sugar for 10 days. I had a sack where I kept the sugar and I would always dump wet bread in the sugar and that was my breakfast. In the afternoon we had plain potatoes, about five to six potatoes. It is not much if you don’t have anything to go with it. It’s merely just water. In the evening we had a potato soup. We were lucky that it was the Jews who cooked. They were able to cook something good out of the little they had. So there was a sauce in the afternoon and a soup in the evening. And once a week we would have dumplings.”

“I lived in one of the big infantry barracks. The Hamburg building was for women, Hannover building was for men, Dresden for elderly and there were other buildings I do not remember. I was placed to the Hamburg building with twelve other women. I had a warm blanket that I took with me. In the summer I slept on it and in winter I slept underneath. They were dying cloth there so I got three of four duvets colored. Then I slept under it so it was at least a bit clean. Otherwise there was a lot of vermin. I was young. I was around 30 so I didn’t really mind so much, I had no troubles sleeping at night.” Q: “And did you have any friends there?” “Yes of course. First they were colleagues from work. First I was placed into the cleaning unit. After a few days I became the head of the unit. But we had to work out in the cold so I immediately caught pneumonia. I was cured and then I caught it again. You know, we had brilliant doctors there. The whole pharmacy from the Old town square was moved there. The owner, Mr. Freund, took all the medicine with him. So we had all the necessary medicine until the end of the war. Concerning that, we were really lucky.”