Irena Nosková

* 1956

  • "She was in Auschwitz for a long time. She left Irena, the only one left, alone in there; she was eleven. My mother remembered that they went to the train and there were female SS women standing there. Irena, nicknamed Rena, shouted at our mother (my mother's nickname was Kakha, I don't know why they called her that): 'Kakha, don't leave me here, take me with you!' It was horrible. Mom said she turned around and wanted to run to Irena who was behind the fence. One SS woman pulled her back and gave her a heavy slap. That was the only slap she got in all those years, she was never hit other than that. 'Get on the train now!' Mother said, 'I saw my little Irena standing there.' She cried so much remembering that. See, they left old people and children behind. The able-bodied were relocated. My mother had untreated scabies. She only found out when she was quarantined in Ravensbrück where she was in hospital for two months. Then she was transported from Ravensbrück to Svatava."

  • "She gave birth to a baby boy who died three months later. She had no milk, couldn't feed him, and he died. She suppressed the trauma or else it would drive her insane. It was terrible for her. She told me later how many of them lived in that house - a lot. I actually saw the barracks with my own eyes; some of them are ruins now, some are still upright. I shot a full reel in Auschwitz; we were there for two days and slept in a hotel in Katowice. She remembers they picked up stones on the other side of the fence and her arm got paralyzed, and they could hear the SS singing from afar. When the sirens were going off, they weren't sure which barrack they belonged to. There was a period when the guards used to open every other barrack and take the prisoners out; by then, they had already heard they were going to the gas chamber, then to be cremated, and gone. Mother told me that when the sirens started going off, the women in the barracks went crazy because they never know if their barrack's door would open. They knew they would go away and never come back. Their house never opened."

  • "They went straight to Auschwitz. My mother knew the train was halted during the day and only moved at night. Those were cattle cars. Mom and Dad cried all the time; they didn't know anything. When they came for them at night - mom doesn't know if it was the Gestapo or the SS; they were just soldiers yelling at them, and Mom was eighteen - they were only allowed to take the most important things. Gold, if any, documents, and essential clothes up to a certain weight. I don't know more details. For instance, my mother had no idea the transport went via Czechoslovakia. We didn't find out until 1995 when my mother, my husband and I came to Auschwitz and were given all the paperwork that the Germans didn't manage to destroy. Apparently they kept amazing records, because the papers included the date her daddy died, just everything."

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Mariánské Lázně, 18.05.2023

    (audio)
    délka: 01:46:53
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

Her mother lost most of her family in Auschwitz, and typhus ate away her sister‘s face

Irena Nosková in 1965
Irena Nosková in 1965
zdroj: Witness's archive

Irena Nosková was born on 25 February 1956. Her mother Erika Stephan came from Germany. Irena‘s grandfather Ferdinand Stephan was imprisoned by the Nazis over resistance activities and her mother‘s entire family was sent to concentration camps. Both her parents and three of her siblings perished in Auschwitz. Erika Stephan was transported to the Svatava concentration and labour camp where she stayed until the end of the war. Only two of her brothers, Robert and Ferdinand, survived, but Ferdinand perished in the French Foreign Legion soon after. Her mother refused to return to Germany after the war and stayed in Czechoslovakia. She gave birth to two children in her second marriage. In the wake of 1968, Irena Nosková wanted to emigrate to West Germany to visit her relatives, but she did not receive an exit permit because she had refused to join the communist party. Together with her mother, she always took part in remembrance events, and they visited Auschwitz together in the 1990s. She was living in Loket in 2023. The witness‘s memories were filmed and processed thanks to the financial support from the Karlovy Vary Region and the Municipality of Svatava.