We thought that more trains would arrive from Terezín to Switzerland. But none came...
Renata Alžběta Chotaš (who used the name Renate Elizabeth in Germany) was born on 14 November 1932 in Prague. She was raised by her divorced mother Květuše Fialová, an amateur photographer. Being a Jew, at the age of ten, Alžběta was deported to Terezín with her mother and brother. Probably thanks to her mother‘s relationship with a man who held a prominent position in the ghetto hierarchy, the family avoided transport to Auschwitz. In February 1945, on the other hand, Elisabeth, her mother and brother were among the 1,200 prisoners selected for transport to Switzerland, where they found refuge. There they lived to see the end of the war. After the war, Alžběta studied at a grammar school and an art school, and held various jobs. In 1951 she tried to escape with her fiancé and friends across the border to the West, but they were detained and Alžběta was imprisoned for a year in Pankrác. She then worked at Koh-i-Noor. She married three times, her second husband being the writer Theodore Wilden, son of a Czechoslovak diplomat in Greece and author of spy novels. Alongside him, Elisabeth led a bohemian life in Prague, socialising with artists and personalities from all backgrounds. Thanks to his Greek citizenship, she was also able to travel to the West. Apparently, in the late 1960s, they emigrated to West Germany and Elisabeth settled in Hamburg, where she managed to obtain financial compensation from the German state for her imprisonment in Terezín. Her daughter Barbara was born. She divorced Theodor Wilden and married the Czech actor Norbert Chotaš, whom she had known before her emigration. She was interviewed by Memory of Nations in Hamburg in 2018.