Overview
- Interview Summary
- Hana Maria Pravda, born in January 29, 1918 in Prague, Czech Republic, describes her family; her childhood in Prague; the history of Jews in Czechoslovakia; her education; the reaction to the Munich Agreement in 1938; Czech patriotism; the attitude towards the German speaking population of Czechoslovakia; the reaction of the Czech population to the German invasion in 1939; the confiscation of her family home; moving to a village with her new husband; being betrayed to the Gestapo by a neighbor; her arrest by the Gestapo; the attitude of Czechs to the German occupation; Czech collaboration with Germans; being an inmate of Theresienstadt concentration camp from 1942 to 1944; the journey to the camp; her attitude towards the prospect of imprisonment; conditions in the camp; her sense of optimism; the medical care; entertainment in the camp; punishment for those who tried to document their time in camp; a visit by the Red Cross; relations between German and Czech inmates; medical problems; volunteering to leave the camp; being an inmate in Auschwitz concentration camp from October 1944 to 1945; the cattle truck journey to the camp; advice given to new arrivals by inmates; the selection procedure; the attitude towards Germans; showering and head shaving; not receiving a tattoo; receiving clothes; her knowledge of the gas chambers; the reaction to the Allied bombing; survival techniques; her selection for work in the Krupps factory; the nature of her work; treatment by German guards; the German use of dogs; the execution of an escapee; health problems and lice; relations between inmates; the death march away from the camp in 1945; conditions during the march; the killing of her friend by SS guards; escaping from the march on January 29, 1945; betrayal by Hitler Youth after escaping from march; how she was allowed to escape from the march for second time by an SS guard; receiving aid from Russian forced laborers; being advised to go to Poland; taking refuge in a school; delousing organized by Russians; returning to Czechoslovakia; the impact of her experience on her religious beliefs; and why she and not others survived.
- Interviewee
- Hana M. Pravda
- Date
-
interview:
1985 October 10
Physical Details
- Language
- English
- Extent
-
3 sound cassettes (90 min.).
Rights & Restrictions
- Conditions on Access
- There are no known restrictions on access to this material.
- Conditions on Use
- Restrictions on use. Permission to copy and/or use recordings in any production must be granted by the Imperial War Museums.
Keywords & Subjects
- Topical Term
- Concentration camp guards. Concentration camp inmates--Intellectual life. Concentration camp inmates--Medical care. Concentration camp inmates--Selection process. Death march survivors. Death marches. Escapes. Forced labor. Holocaust survivors--Great Britain. Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Germany--Personal narratives. Jewish women in the Holocaust. Jews--Czech Republic--Prague. Women concentration camp inmates. World War, 1939-1945--Deportations from Czechoslovakia. Women--Personal narratives.
- Geographic Name
- Czechoslovakia--History--1938-1945. Poland. Prague (Czech Republic) Terezín (Ústecký kraj, Czech Republic) World War, 1939-1945--Campaigns--Poland.
- Personal Name
- Pravda, Hana Maria, 1918-2008.
Administrative Notes
- Holder of Originals
-
Imperial War Museum
- Legal Status
- Permanent Collection
- Provenance
- The interview was conducted by the Imperial War Museum as part of their retrospective oral history interview program. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum acquired a copy of the interview with Hana Maria Pravda from the Imperial War Museum in February 1995.
- Special Collection
-
The Jeff and Toby Herr Oral History Archive
- Record last modified:
- 2023-11-16 08:17:26
- This page:
- https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn510839
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Transcripts (3)
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Oral history interview with Odette Hallowes
Oral History
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Oral history interview with Mayer Hersh
Oral History
Mayer Hersh, born in Sieradz, Poland, in 1926, describes his family; education; the orthodox beliefs of his family; his family’s lack of political interest; their loyalty towards Poland; antisemitism in Poland; aspects of being a schoolchild in Sieradz from 1939 to 1940; the reaction to the German invasion in September 1939; leaving their home town; the shooting of Polish civilians by the German Army; living conditions during the occupation; the restrictions on Jews; the execution of a friend by Germans in Otoczna concentration camp in 1940; rumors that Jewish civilians would be transferred to a labor camp; being taken from his family home in March 1940; being an inmate of Otoczna concentration camp from 1940 to 1942; the effects of the lack of food; being beaten by a camp guard; the rations they received; their daily routine and work building a railway line; the suicides of inmates; the possibility of escape; the brutality of Hitler Youth towards his brother in another camp; the attitude of the Polish population towards Jews; the character of Kapos; being an inmate in Auschwitz concentration camp from 1942 to 1944; the selection process under the supervision of Dr. Josef Mengele; roll calls; the construction of a camp compound; selection of inmates for gas chambers; the orchestra playing at the camp gates; the uprising by Sonderkommando in the gas chambers in 1944; the presence of gypsies in the camp and their elimination by the Germans in 1944; resistance in the camp; personal morale; a story of support received from an older inmate during a march in 1945; being an inmate in Stutthof concentration camp in 1944; the presence of his sister in the camp; being moved to an airfield near Stuttgart, Germany, in December 1944; his work duties and contact with German civilians; being an inmate in Gotha then Theresienstadt in 1945; the march to the camp; conditions in the camp and the typhoid epidemic; the death of his friend; liberation of the camp in May 1945; contracting typhoid; his immigration to Great Britain in 1945; arriving in Windermere, England; his attitude towards the work of Jewish organizations; the German medical experimentation on twins in Auschwitz; inmate relations; the discomfort of train journeys; the psychological and physical impact of imprisonment; his attitude towards Germans; the punishment work on Sundays in Auschwitz; medical problems in the camps; an inmate with a sense of humor and rumors about the war’s progress; the degree of religious life in the camps; the impact of his experience on his religious beliefs; and his survival.
Oral history interview with Jerzy Herszberg
Oral History
Jerzy Herszberg describes his background in Poznan, Poland, in the 1930s; Polish antisemitism; his family circumstances; their level of knowledge about Hitler; the arrival of Jewish refugees in Poznan; being in the Łódź Ghetto from 1940 to 1944; conditions in the ghetto; the death of his mother; his job as a messenger; selections in the ghetto in 1942; food in the ghetto and conditions during the winter; his work making parachute harnesses; hospitalization during the typhoid epidemic in 1942; the liquidation of the ghetto in July 1944; hiding in a cellar and leaving with the police deportees; the train journey to Auschwitz-Birkenau and being there from July to November 1944; his reaction upon arriving in the camp; ex-policemen in the camp; the camp guards; the selection process; being moved to Birkenau; rations in the camp; the discovery of a water source; the contrast in diets between the ghetto and camp; morning ablutions; roll calls; latrines; the growing awareness of nature of camp; his method for leaving Birkenau; the train journey to Braunschweig in November 1944; arriving in the camp; conditions in the camp; the infestations of lice; working in a factory and the German master; rations and water supply in the factory; Ukrainian female workers; Allied air raids; the state of his health at that time; the character of German and Jewish Kapos; his will to survive; companionship in the camp and the treatment of dead and sick inmates; the journey to Watenstedt in February 1945; the accommodations and size of the camp; Spanish inmates playing music; the different nationalities in the camp; activities when they were confined to the barracks; why Germans evacuated inmates; being sent to Ravensbrück in March 1945; Hungarian inmates; the visit of a Red Cross representative; being in Wöbbelin from April 1945 to May 1945; the preparations of Kapos to leave and the disappearance of guards; being liberated by US troops; trips into the Russian zone; the relations between the US and Russian troops; going to Poland through Czechoslovakia and the attitude of Czechoslovakians to camp survivors; going to Great Britain in August 1945; Theresienstadt transit camp; the fate of his sister; being a refugee in England; his flight from Prague, Czech Republic to Britain with the group “The Boys”; arriving in Windermere, England; continuing his education; receiving reparations; and his post-war visits to Germany and Poland.
Oral history interview with Stephanie Hessel
Oral History
Stephane Hessel, born in Berlin, Germany in 1917, describes his family moving to Paris, France in 1924; his parents; his education; his attitude towards the Nazi regime and his reaction to the Munich Crisis in 1938; his conscription into French Army in 1939 and being an officer; the retreat after May 10, 1940 and the morale in the French Army; his attitude towards Fifth Column; reaction to the Dunkirk Evacuation and Mers el Kebir; escaping from France to Great Britain in 1940-1941; being an officer with Bureau Central de Renseignements et d’Action (BCRA) in England from 1942 to 1944; his initial training as a navigator with the Royal Air Force from 1941 to 1942; being recruited to intelligence service; his role and duties; aspects of operations as officer with the BCRA in 1944; parachuting into France in March 1944; his role organizing resistance communications; being captured by the Gestapo and interrogated; being sent to Buchenwald concentration camp in October 1944; arriving in the camp; his change of identity; working in a German factory; escaping from the camp and being re-captured; being sent to Dora concentration camp in February 1945; living under threat of execution; conversations with V2 saboteurs; escaping from a train near Luneburg, Germany in April 1945; joining US forces near Hanover, Germany; his temporary capture by SS; the comparisons between Buchenwald and Dora concentration camps; control by ‘criminal’ inmates in Dora; working on V-weapons; sabotage attempt on V-weapons; his own Kommando at Dora; the arrival of victims from concentration camps in the east; the use of limited power by ‘political’ inmates in Buchenwald; the divide and rule tactics employed in concentration camps; the attitude towards Russian inmates in Buchenwald; memories of Wing Commander F F E Yeo-Thomas; his opinion of misconceptions about concentration camps; the Nazi attitude towards camp inmates; his contact with Jehovah’s Witnesses in the camps; the behavior of ‘mussulmen’; possessing an escaping mentality; Rottleberode work camp; the degree of breakdown in Germany in the spring of 1945; the effects of his experiences on personal attitudes; the achievements of the resistance in France in 1944; and his observations on the British during World War II.
Oral history interview with Piet Ketelaar
Oral History
Piet Ketelaar, born April 7, 1921 in Haarlem, Netherlands, describes his family and educational background; the invasion of Holland by Germans in May 10, 1940; war work; witnessing dogfights over Bennebroek; the arrival of the Wehrmacht and the attitude of the Dutch population towards the arrival of Germans; the impact of the occupation on the standard of living; rumors regarding the fate of Jews; collaboration and resistance in the Netherlands; his resistance work in Holland from 1940 to 1944; being a resistance leader; resistance groups; listening to the BBC; distributing newsletters to Dutch people; supplies dropped by the Royal Air Force; acquiring and concealing weapons; organizing weapons training; sabotage; types of people that joined the resistance, including a female courier that gathered information on V2 sites; members of his group; German attempts to capture resistance workers; helping Allied airman; being arrested in December 1944; the fate of his brother; being interrogated; the journey to Neuengamme, Germany; being interned in Neuengamme concentration camp; the procedure on arrival; his first impressions of the camp; Appells; privileged Norwegian and Danish prisoners; various types of inmates; relationships between inmates; security in the camp; medical problems in the camp; his recollections of being aboard Cap Arcona, leaving Neuengamme and the air attack on the ship; illness and hospitalization; travelling to Brussels, Belgium; contracting typhus; and the attitude towards the bombing of Cap Arcona.
Oral history interview with William Dillon Hughes
Oral History
William Dillon Hughes describes being the senior medical officer with Royal Army Medical Corps at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp hospital from May 1945 to July 1945; taking Royal Army Medical Corps staff to Belsen; conditions at camp on their arrival; conditions of the inmates; diseases to be treated; the influx of Russian forced labor workers suffering from tuberculosis in late June 1945; the use of DDT (AL 63) to kill typhus spreading lice; uncooperative attitude of the leader of the Russian group; visitors to Belsen inmates; the sanitary situation in the camp; relations between medical personnel and camp inmates; handing over the camp to the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Association in July 1945; and the role of British nurses in the camp.
Oral history interview with Jack Kagan
Oral History
Jack Kagan, born in 1929 in Novogrudok, Poland (now Navahrudak, Belarus), describes the demographics of the Novogrudok area, including the languages spoken and poverty in the peasantry; his family and education; the relations between Jews and non-Jews; the role of Polish nationalists; Jewish political organizations; the religious attitude of his family; examples of Polish antisemitism; the Russian occupation of the Novogrudok area from 1939 to 1941; the Russian introduction of communists measures; his experiences with the pioneers; the Jews' welcome for Russians and the suppression of antisemitism; opportunities for Jews; the changes in his schooling; the German attack on Russia in June 1941 and the Russian retreat; the German bombing of Novogrudok; the German treatment of Russian POWs and witnessing a German killing a Russian POW; the German occupation of Novogrudok; the Polish collaboration with Germans; his belief that Germany could not win the war; Germans massacring the Jewish population on July 12, 1941; being an inmate in the Piereszeka Ghetto from December 1941 to August 1942; the work regime within the ghetto; narrowly escaping from the German round up in May 1942; the massacre in Piereszeka Ghetto on July 8, 1942; conditions in the ghetto and the rations; relations between ghetto inmates; receiving aid from outside ghetto; being in the Novogrudok labor camp from August 1942 to May 1943; the character of the German commandant; his reaction to Appells and escapes; his own escape from the camp in December 1942; an attempt to join a partisan group; returning to the camp and the amputation of his toes because of frostbite; surviving a massacre on July 5, 1943; an inmate's concealed radio; plans for a mass escape; hearing the news of the Piereszeka Ghetto liquidation in January 1943; the construction of an escape tunnel; escaping from the Novogrudok Camp in September 1943; being with partisans in the Naliboki Camp from 1943 to 1944; life with the partisans, including the supply problems and workshops; the German counter-measures; the attitude of peasants towards partisans and the partisan tactics towards them; the aid given by Russians; camp defenses; relations between his group and the Polish partisans; dissensions amongst the partisans; orders not to disband partisans on liberation; disbanding of his partisan family group in June 1944; the fate of Romanies in the area; the German use of air power; partisan discipline, ranks, and direction; partisan morale; the partisan revenge group; the formation of farmer's family groups; his partisan pension; and inmate morale in the labor camps.
Oral history interview with Martin Hoffman
Oral History
Martin Josef Hoffman, born in 1929 in Prague, Czech Republic, describes his family; his neighborhood; his education and health problems; reasons for his move to live with relatives in the Carpathian Mountains; the Jewish and Russian Christian communities; the Hungarian occupation of the Carpathian region in Czechoslovakia from 1939 to 1940; the effects of the Hungarian occupation; his parents' fate in Prague; the food situation; the confiscation of Jewish businesses; his opinion of Hitler's attitude to Jews; the restrictions on education; his religious life; living in Budapest, Hungary from 1940 to 1944; his failure to emigrate in 1940; support from Jewish community; daily life in the city; hearing stories of German antisemitic atrocities; the German occupation of Hungary in 1944 and the reaction of Jewish community; the contrasts between Hungarian and German attitudes towards Jews; his deportation from Budapest to Auschwitz in early 1944; the journey there and not knowing his fate; the reception in Birkenau and Auschwitz and the selection process; his initial impressions of the camp; being shaved and receiving an uniform; the role of Kapos; avoiding classification as a child; conditions in the camp; being an inmate in Buna Monowitz in 1944; his daily routine and conditions in the camp; the attempted rape by a Kapo and consequences; his efforts to avoid work; being selected for engineering training; the health situation; the medical facilities and the fate of the chronically sick; the lack of hygiene; the mental state of inmates; the guards’ willingness to shoot inmates; the role and nature of Kapos; recreation; rumors of German defeats; the political and criminal inmates; relations with other inmates; the abandonment of religious dietary laws; the loss of faith; mental attitudes; his selection for gate duties and his consequent transfer to Glewitz; his daily routine at the gate; the barrack accommodations; the cruelty of Kapos; the hanging of inmate escapees; varying degrees of brutality of different SS camp commandants; work duties; the story of being given a meal by a German Army officer; the evacuation of camp in February 1945 and the journey from Glewitz to Buchenwald; the death march and the execution of inmates falling out; the varying behavior of German guards; their interval at Gross-Rosen; being loaded into cattle trucks; the effects of hunger; the casualties amongst the prisoners; life in Buchenwald, including the conditions and death rate; being transferred to the main camp for kitchen duties; the German Communist Kapos; his efforts to aid friends; the avoidance of a second death march; staying in camp as after the evacuation; being liberated by United States troops in April 1945; the German resistance in the nearby woods; moving to SS quarters and bartering with US troops; being a displaced person in Czechoslovakia and Germany in 1945; returning to Prague to search for his family; his role as a mascot with a US Army unit in Germany; his second return to Prague; immigrating to Great Britain; the free travel for former inmates; the long term effects of his experience and his attitude towards Germans; his refusal to take reprisals against Germans; and the capture of SS guards during liberation and the treatment of former Kapos.
Oral history interview with Jørgen von Führen Kieler
Oral History
Jørgen von Führen Kieler describes growing up in Horsens, Jutland, Denmark; his family; his education; traveling around Europe frequently with his family; being a student in Germany, Paris, France, and Cambridge, England from 1937 to 1938; attending a Hitler-Mussolini meeting in Munich, Germany in 1937; the antisemitic exhibition; the metro strike in Paris in 1937; the friends he made at Cambridge University; his attitude towards the Nazi regime; learning of the existence of Dachau in 1937; his attitude towards German Danish relations; the neglect of Danish defenses; the Munich crisis in 1938; being a medical student in Copenhagen, Denmark from 1939 to 1940; volunteering for service in the Finnish Winter War at the end of 1939; the German occupation of Denmark in 1940; the appearance of the German Air Force over Copenhagen September 4, 1940; his reaction to the lack of resistance against Germans; joining the Danish Resistance in 1942; his membership in the Free Denmark Resistance group from 1942 to 1944; his resistance contacts; propaganda activities; the controversy over the collection of food aid for inland in 1943; the origins of the Aalborg Resistance in the spring of 1942; the start of the Communist KOPA resistance group (Borgerlige partisaner) in the autumn of 1942; reasons for the change in Hitler's policy towards Denmark in September 1943; the Special Operations Executives' contact with the Danish Resistance (1940- 1943); the arrival of Flemming Muus in 1943; the contrasts in attitude towards sabotage by Danish Communists; the collaboration between Finland volunteers and Danish Communists for sabotage; his decision to start his own sabotage group in Jutland, Denmark in the spring of 1943; the initial sabotage attempt at Horsens; the German attitude towards Danish sabotage; the Danish Government's aid to Germans; the German take over of Denmark in August 1943; the beginning of the persecution of Danish Jews in 1943; the lack of German Army co-operation in antisemitic policy; the role of his group in the campaign to save Danish Jews by removing them to Sweden in 1943; the orders to deny the Danish Navy to the Germans; Germans not pursuing boats taking Jews to Sweden; Danish motives for protecting Jewish civilians; their methods of securing explosives in late 1943; the capture of a resistance leader; the treatment of captured resister by Germans; the orders to stop sabotage in December 1943; moving to Jutland and the sabotage carried out; returning to Copenhagen to sabotage a shipyard; the capture and interrogations by the Gestapo in early 1944; his capture in Copenhagen harbor during the sabotage operation; being interrogated; his sentence for attempting to escape to Sweden; his release and move to south Jutland; being captured by Germans in 1944; meeting with a former group leader in a Gestapo cell in Copenhagen; the execution of the group leader in April 1944; the requirement for him to sign a confession; how a general strike led to his deportation to Porta Westfalica concentration camp; being an inmate in Porta Westfalica and Neuengamme from 1944 to 1945; mining work; stoning because of failure to work fast enough; how being transferred to a job in the camp hospital saved his life; the arrival of Red Cross parcels; his memories of Nikolai, a Danish inmate from south Jutland, and how Nikolai stopped Russians attacking Danes over Red Cross parcels; the death of Nikolai from starvation in the infirmary; the effects of starvation on inmates; how he was the last Danish prisoner to leave Neuengamme on April 20, 1945; reuniting with his mother and a colleague from Cambridge in May 1945; more details on Porta Westfalica, including the organization of camp and the beatings; and the effects of his experiences and his attitude towards Germans.