Ivo Raab

* 1934

  • "I got quite sick, I got diphtheria, burns and a rose, such a strange disease, in my eye. The doctors told my mother to prepare for the worst, and if it worked out, I would probably be blind to that eye. It turned out better because I got over it, I could see fine, I didn't get a blind eye, but I felt kind of poor. The doctors said it would be good if I stayed somewhere in the country. We succeeded under certain circumstances, so we lived in Šumava for about three quarters of a year. And there it was so adventurous, because we had a room rented by such a cottager and he had two cows. A towing one, because the horse was an expensive affair and they needed to pull the carriages. And the other one was intended for milk. He had chickens, geese, rabbits. And I was a city boy, and that I could feed the rabbits was a lot of fun, and they also had a field of potatoes and they were cultivating the potatoes, and the farmer was at the plow and I was leading the cow in that row. Which I really enjoyed, because leading a cow, I thought I was almost an adult. But it was completely normal, the boys even younger came from school, so they went to graze cows, in short, the children were already working at that time. They chopped wood or firewood. It was the kind of work the kids did, so I didn't have to, because we didn't have a farm, but that's how I lived with them. But I went to the mushrooms a lot and we dried the mushrooms and we had the very dry one, and we also lived a little bit of it, because we sent it to Prague and there was nothing during the war, so it was monetized there again."

  • "In Prague, it was such a sad event, because I no longer had a father, my father died of tuberculosis, so someone had to watch over me. And because already in Smržovka my parents had some contact with Jews who fled from Germany and provided them with information here and somehow spent the night with us, my mother was looking for a maid. We had a kind of a maid, a Jewish girl, who was twenty-one years old, her name was Anna Hönig, and she took care of me. I went to first grade, so she accompanied me. But she had a certain principle, the Jews had to be marked by that Jewish star, and she refused to wear it. And to avoid any inconvenience, so when we went to the city or we went to Podolí to Žluté lázně to swim, we spoke German together so that people would think we were Germans, and the Czech police could not legitimize the Germans. So we actually masked it. And she stayed with us for over a year, but then her mother was a civil servant, so they wouldn't let her. Then she was a housekeeper at a factory in Karlín or Hloubětín, but unfortunately she did not avoid it, the expulsion. She got to Terezín and then we never heard from her again. After the war, we contacted the Red Cross and learnt that she had died in Auschwitz. Then, when I was older, I already had children, I have a son, who is in Prague. So I said, 'David, you're in Prague, go ask the Jewish community if we can get any information about Anna.' So we did, unfortunatelly sad news, as she was transported from Terezin shortly to nowadays Belorussia and it was a liquidation concentration camp, where, when they were brought in, the Jews were actually shot there."

  • "How did you spend childhood? You were born, then the war started, what was your opinion?" - "Well, as a child you have no opinion, do you? We lived in Smržovka before the war. My mother worked at the post office as a clerk, and when it was the year 1938 when the border region was taken over, we evacuated to Prague. The evacuation was quite dramatic, because the Czechs who went from Smržovka, were mainly railway workers and postmen, they were government officials and they had to return to the interior. So we evacuated, they assigned us a freight car, there were some pieces of furniture, not much, because there were more families. We took the train to Cologne. It took a long time, they wrapped me in a blanket, pushed me somewhere from the corner, I was four and a half years old, so you don't even remember it that much. And then we lived for a while in Dolní Počernice, and before my mother was assigned a new place at the post office, we stayed in Počernice for a while and then my mother got a place in Prague at the intercity headquarters in Žižkov. Then we moved to Prague and we first lived in Vršovice, where we lived in a new building, it was quite a modern house, and then my mother actually told me: 'You know, the Jews themselves live here in the house', and we were the only ones Gentiles there. I remember when the Jews had to report for transport to Terezín or alike, I remember that they gathered, had some bags and waited for them to come, or they had to take a tram to the Trade Fair Palace in Prague, where they gathered, and then left for Terezín. So I kind of remember this time. And I didn't quite understand why the Jews had to move somewhere. Nothing was explained to children much, because the time was such that it was best when the little ones knew nothing so as not to say something stupid somewhere. That was during the protectorate, as it was after forty-eight years under communism. It was also good not to talk anywhere."

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    Jablonec nad Nisou, 13.02.2019

    (audio)
    délka: 01:18:08
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu The Stories of Our Neigbours
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Her name was Anna Hönig

Ivo Raab with Anna Hönigová
Ivo Raab with Anna Hönigová
zdroj: Ivo Raab

Ivo Raab was born on May 31, 1934 into a mixed Czech-German family. The family lived in Smržovka until their father died of tuberculosis in 1938. After the withdrawal of the border due to the Munich agreement, Ivo Raab and his mother evacuated to Prague. They lived as the only Gentiles in a house intended for the Jewish population. As a child, Ivo Raab witnessed the departure of his neighbors to transports. His mother got him the Jewish governor Anna Hönig, who took care of him and who lived with them for a year. Then he had to join a transport to a concentration camp. The witness learned about the fate of Anna Hönig only after many years from the Jewish community. Ivo Raab and his mother moved to Jablonec nad Nisou after the war, and they were able to move into the house after their father‘s displaced German relatives. After the war, he devoted himself to water scouting, and after banning the scout organization, he and his friends set up a speed canoeing club. Ivo Raab still remembers Anna Hönig and is currently trying to arrange for the so-called stone of the disappeared with her name to be placed on the sidewalk in front of the house where they lived at the time.