Kitty Galdová

* 1930

  • "Well, then school started. And we lived in Kolonka and went to school. First grade, second grade. And then this Hitler, when was this, in '37? There was already talk about him in '30, '31, '32 but no one knew what was going to happen. We went to that school in the colony. And all I know is that the teacher came to the class, and the kids are like, 'We have a Jew here.' And I said I'd be baptized. And the teacher says, 'Even if you were baptized a hundred times, a Jew will remain a Jew.'"

  • "I was there when everyone was crying, hugging, and the furniture was being loaded. And that's how they got into Ivančice. Forty-eight died there, and my grandfather died there, too. He's in the cemetery. They've decorated it nicely. Their name was Grossmann. And you can tell his name was Herman Grossmann. And there are addresses, and it says everywhere what they died of. And then I got here when grandma said she didn't sleep all night, that she was leaving. And that she thought Albert, that was my daddy, that he was coming to say goodbye. That a few people visited, but there's nothing more to be done, it says so – it’s hard to see now. And that's there, it's in German, I'll translate it for you. That she's hugging us and that she's leaving the next day. And then they ended up in Terezin. And there were [relatives] from Vienna in Terezin."

  • "Well, that's how life went, and, I've got confirmation here, I went to fourth grade, fifth grade. And I got a call from the headmaster, and the headmaster was this short gentleman, wearing a blue-grey uniform with a sort-of bayonet. And he said he was informing me that I had to leave the school because I was from a mixed marriage. 'Unfortunately, it's not the children's fault for the parents.' But they got an order that I have to leave school. Because mom is Jewish. And my brother, yes, we both had to leave school. And now I came home, and now there was this teacher, Appel was his name. That's how I remember it. That was fourth grade, so take it, I was 12 years old. And he says, 'I'll sort you out...' And he was a “pflichťák”. Did you hear about “pflichter“? When they had to go on duty. Either someone went to the cattle in the country. Or in a household, a housewife. And he said to me, 'I'll sort you out at Bornemann's.' And Bornemann was the biggest kingpin in Znojmo. And I came home and our mom said, 'Um Gottes Will, so schrecklich, Bornemann?' We'd be in a concentration camp right away. Our father actually saved our lives because he was German."

  • "But we lived down there, in the basement. And all of a sudden... and now it's being bombed. And all of a sudden, they moved into Mrs. Mach's apartment, some room, the SS. And now they came into the basement and said, 'Mrs. Senger, the SS moved in.' And no one said we were Jewish. And now it's been 45 years. And all of a sudden someone comes in, we live in that basement, and suddenly someone comes up and says, 'Mrs. Senger, they're loading bags, SS, and they're in such a hurry.' That means it was already known that the Russians were close. And our mother says, 'Have they left? And we're going home!'"

  • "And then we went back to the Kolonka. We lived on the ground floor and suddenly a car, behind the car many Russians. And by then I was already fourteen and fifteen. Our mother says, 'Yes, but here on the street? We'll have them in the house any minute.' And you know how it goes. So I had to go to sleep on the first floor, to some other people’s place, where the windows were faced the backyard. There was s street called Polská. And there lived this young mother with a child. Six Russians raped her. That's how I remember it. There were houses like this on Pražská, where the German army was accommodated. And then, after the war, they chased all those Germans who went to what they call this Todesmarsch here in Brno, the displacement. And now they've got a gun, a rifle, people, Czechs, and now they're taking revenge. And just, his name was Winter, that's what they said, he was transporting coal to people. He got it, when the militia was with us, something like that, he got it, they gave him a gun. And now he was on a rampage in that camp. And it was from the vicar’s wife, it was a German woman, they cut her hair and put her head in the toilet, and all that happened."

  • Celé nahrávky
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    Brno, 16.01.2020

    (audio)
    délka: 02:08:17
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Příběhy regionu - JMK REG ED
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I wasn‘t drawn elsewhere, my home is here

Kitty Gald with her brother Kurt, Znojmo, 1940s.
Kitty Gald with her brother Kurt, Znojmo, 1940s.
zdroj: archiv pamětníka

Kitty Gald was born on May 22, 1930 in Znojmo into a mixed marriage as a twin with her brother Kurt. Their father Albert Senger came from a German family from Lechovice and mother Marta Grossmannová came from a Jewish family in Znojmo. After the occupation of Sudetenland as a result of the Munich agreement, the Grossmanns and other relatives on their mother‘s side had to go to a refugee camp in Ivančice, from where they were deported through Brno to Terezin in the spring of 1942 and then to other camps. Kitty and her brother Kurt were protected from deportation by their low age and their father‘s German nationality. At the age of 12, however, they were expelled from school because of their partially Jewish origins. For the rest of the occupation, the witness worked in the service of the neighbors, where she helped out in the household. The family hid several times in the countryside for fear of racial persecution. They lived through the end of the war with their neighbors in the cellar on the Lower Square. While most german residents, including some relatives from Lechovice, were displaced, the Sengers remained in Znojmo. Kitty was a seamstress and worked at the companies Vkus and Gala. In 1966 she moved to Brno, where she lived with her son, and later buried her mother there. She worked several professions and worked in the laundry room for the Brno spa until her retirement. Despite her old age, she is an active member of the Jewish community and the German Cultural Association. In July 2020, she was awarded the German Cross of Merit award for her long-standing efforts to maintain German culture in the region and for her contributions to the reconciliation of Czechs and Germans.