“I remember the end of the war. It was in May 1945, we were in Vidlák and there were summer cottages in the Vidlák recreation area and Germans sent families of German soldiers to stay there in the last months of the war, near the pond, because there was an airport in nearby Zbraslavice where airmen were being trained, and the Vidlák area came in handy. I was in our garden with my friend, and my mom found a Czechoslovak flag and we raised it on a flagpole. A German soldier with a rifle was walking by. It didn’t occur to us at all that he could take his rifle and do something. He was looking for some group of his soldiers, but Vlastička and I walked to the fence and we told him: ‘Well, you know, the war is over, so get out of here right away!’ We were stupid, because he could have shot us on the spot. But immediately after we could already hear the roar of tanks that were already arriving on the roads.”
“Dad was taken away in 1942, in June. He lived in Poděbrady, but he went with the transports from Kolín. He went to Terezín and at the end of September 1944 he went to Auschwitz. Grandma remained in Terezín and in May 1945 my brother brought her from Terezín to Kolín. They did not want to let her go due to the infections in Terezín, but he eventually took her with him. I remember that my other grandma, my mom’s mother, then sent me a message to go to the hospital in Kolín immediately, because my grandma was there. So I went with grandma Sychrová to the hospital, and that was the last time that I saw grandma. I was not allowed to go to her directly due to possible contagious infection. Grandma died two weeks after she had returned from Terezín.”
“I did not attend the fifth grade in Vidlák, because the school principal was a member of the Vlajka organization and my mom did not let me go to the school. Then I passed an exam in Kutná Hora and I was admitted to the Kutná Hora grammar school for three ears. Then they kicked me out when I was fourteen, because I was a person of mixed race, first degree. When they expelled me as a fourteen-year-old, I then worked in a chocolate factory Lidka, Koukol and Michera in Kutná Hora. One entire department of that company was to supply the German war front and I was peeling potatoes there, thirty kilos of potatoes every day.”
“I had a great childhood until 1938, until the occupation of the Sudeten region, and until 1939, when all of our country became occupied by Germany. That was when great pain started not only in our family, but in all families. I remember that I was a nine-year-old girl and I was standing on the balcony with our maid and it was on March 15, 1939 and I told her: ‘Pavlenka, I would rather be an old woman or a baby so that I would not see this.’”
“We had a special position, because we were part of the air force. The airmen and their whole organization was strongly Anglo-Saxon. We lived in Yaffo, where the headquarters of Machane avir be-Yaffo was located as well, and Yaffo was Arab. But there were Jewish shops, too, and there were people from Hungary, Russia, Rumania. They spoke Yiddish and the Rumanian Yiddish was the only one that I was not able to understand. But I could speak Russian and German and so I could communicate well and I did not have any problems. But there were problems if one asked in Hebrew where to go, and they would then confer in English or Czech and decide how to say it in Hebrew. These were the problems in 1948, at that time people on the streets did not speak Hebrew as they do today, it was something different.”
Ishka Lichter was born on August 5, 1930 in Kolín as Jindřiška Žofie Roudnická in a mixed Czech-Jewish family. Her father Jan Roudnický came from a Jewish family, and he owned a coal business, and her mother Anna was a Christian. Both her parents were not practicing their respective faiths, and they raised both their children in the similar manner. They had daughter Jindřiška and son Ivan, who was five years older. In 1938 the mother had her children baptized by a pastor of the Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren and in summer 1939 the husband and wife agreed on a separation. The father moved to Poděbrady and Jindřiška with her mother and brother lived in the village Vidlák, where the family had their summer house. Their father was deported to Terezín in June 1942 and after two years spent in the ghetto he went to Auschwitz in a transport in September 1944, and he subsequently died there. Ishka Lichter attended the grammar school in Kutná Hora until 1944, and after she had been expelled due to her mixed Czech-Jewish origin she worked in a confectionery factory in Kutná Hora. After the liberation she studied at a trade academy in Prague and in summer 1948 she decided to leave Czechoslovakia. In order to be able to leave the country, she married American flight instructor Georg Lichter and in spring 1949 she went to the United States. In 1949-1951 she lived with her husband in Israel, where he was in charge of training Israeli pilots. Later they returned to the USA where they raised three children. Ishka lives in the city Boulder in Colorado. Since 1990 she has been regularly visiting the Czech Republic, especially her native town Kolín. Eighteen years ago she started a tradition of concerts in Kolín which commemorate the Jewish citizens of the town.
Hrdinové 20. století odcházejí. Nesmíme zapomenout. Dokumentujeme a vyprávíme jejich příběhy. Záleží vám na odkazu minulých generací, na občanských postojích, demokracii a vzdělávání? Pomozte nám!
