Overview
- Interview Summary
- Tomaš Šperl, born in 1927 in Czechoslovakia, describes the prewar Jewish community of Velhartice; the expropriation of Jewish-owned businesses; the actions of members of the Hitler Youth (Hitler Jugend); the deportation of the Jewish community in 1942; a Jewish family who gave away their possessions before their deportation; and a local prisoner of war camp.
- Interviewee
- Tomaš Šperl
- Interviewer
- Adam Hradilek
- Date
-
interview:
2014 January 30
- Credit Line
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, courtesy of the Jeff and Toby Herr Foundation
Physical Details
- Language
- Czech
- Extent
-
1 digital file : MPEG-4.
Rights & Restrictions
- Conditions on Access
- There are no known restrictions on access to this material.
- Conditions on Use
- No restrictions on use
Keywords & Subjects
- Topical Term
- World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, Czech. Eminent domain--Czech Republic. Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Czechoslovakia. Jews--Czech Republic--Velhartice. Jews--Persecutions--Czech Republic. Prisoner-of-war camps--Czech Republic--Velhartice. World War, 1939-1945--Atrocities--Czechoslovakia. World War, 1939-1945--Deportations from Czechoslovakia. Men--Personal narratives.
- Personal Name
- Šperl, Tomaš, 1927-
- Corporate Name
- Hitler Youth
Administrative Notes
- Holder of Originals
-
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
- Legal Status
- Permanent Collection
- Provenance
- This is a witness interview of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's Perpetrators, Collaborators, and Witnesses: The Jeff and Toby Herr Testimony Initiative, a multi-year project to record the testimonies of non-Jewish witnesses to the Holocaust. The interview was directed and supervised by Nathan Beyrak.
- Funding Note
- The production of this interview was made possible by Jeff and Toby Herr.
The cataloging of this oral history interview has been supported by a grant from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany. - Special Collection
-
The Jeff and Toby Herr Oral History Archive
- Record last modified:
- 2023-11-16 09:25:23
- This page:
- http://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn77247
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Oral History
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Oral history interview with Josef Výborný
Oral History
Josef Výborný, born 1925 in Hrbokov, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic), describes moving with his family in 1926 to Heřmanův Městec, Czech Republic, where he spent his entire childhood and the war; going to gymnasium in Chrudim, Czech Republic; large Jewish community in Heřmanův Městec and the relations between Jews and non-Jews; his friends who were Jewish; Jews having to wear yellow stars and being restricted from the cinema and having to follow a curfew; not seeing any signs preventing Jews from entering shops or public buildings; the divorces within mixed-marriages; the resistance activities of local Jews; voluntarily working in the electric manufacture of Vilém (Wilhelm) Nessl; working with boys from mixed origin; witnessing the deportation of the Jews form Heřmanův Městec in April 1942; how the Jews were sent from Přelouč to Pardubice, Czech Republic; seeing the rabbi direct the Jews during the deportation; and people moving into the vacated houses of the Jews after the deportation.
Oral history interview with František Psota
Oral History
František Psota, born 1927 in Topolany, Czechoslovakia (now part of Olomouc, Czech Republic), describes growing up in a multicultural society of Germans, Czechs, and Jews; the numerous mixed families in the Olomouc region; his uncle’s work as a keeper of the synagogue; his Jewish classmates; the lack of tensions between Jews and non-Jews until Hitler’s speech in September 1938 n how the Germans living in Czechoslovakia are being oppressed; seeing the vandalism of a Jewish-run factory in Hamburg, Germany; witnessing the burning of the synagogue on March 15, 1939 and its further destruction over a month’s time; Jews having to wear yellow stars and being restricted from restaurants; the gradual implementation of anti-Jewish measures; the barring of Jews from certain shops; the disappearance of his friend and classmate Neumann as well as other Jewish children from his school; the lack of discussion over the disappearing children; the disappearance of the director of the school Eduard Talafan, who was Jewish; the German Nazis who moved into the apartment that had belonged to Jews; his father having to prove three generations back that he had no Jewish ancestors; only knowing one Jew in Topolany who survived (Henry Zehr); doing forced labor in Germany along with many members of his family; how at the very end of the war there were rumors that Russian Army was approaching Olomouc and people went out to the streets with flags and were killed by Germans; his father’s death on May 8, 1945 during a bombing that destroyed his family’s house; and the partisans in Nová Ulice (now part of Olomouc, Czech Republic) who killed numerous Germans.
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Oral History
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Oral history interview with Jan Weiser
Oral History
Jan Weiser, born 1919 in Loštice, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic), describes growing up on the Jewish street in Loštice and knowing all of the 10 to 11 Jewish families in Loštice personal; the relations between Jews and non-Jews in Loštice; how until the 1930s, the Jews were perceived as strongly pro-German by the Czechs; his Jewish friends; his father receiving a loan with no interest from a Jewish friend, Eckstein, in 1928; the families he knew in Loštice and their fates, including Eckstein, Weis, Langer, Kneppelmacher, Klein, Weiser, Ehrlich, Ottakar Lőw, Hirsch, Emil Fischer, Wischnitzer, and Appel; being told that after German occupation, many Jewish men went on forced labor to the village of Kozov, where they were building a road; Jewish women being forced to sweep the streets in Loštice; Jews having to wear yellow stars and follow a curfew; the German military administration warning Czechs against meeting Jews at the town hall; continuing to meet with Jews despite these warnings; how the Czech police behaved ambiguously unless the Germans were watching; a local military administrator named Biener, who moved to Loštice in 1935 and wore a SS uniform after he occupation; the moderate German factory owner, Bruno Hauch, who became mayor in 1939; hearing about Hitler Jugend marches through Mohelnice, Czech Republic; the gradual repressions against Jews, which were announced publicly; local Jews hiding property with trusted neighbors; his father hiding two suitcases of items for his friend Eckstein; being in the army in Vyškov as a pilot between 1937 and 1939; returning home at the end of March 1939 when he was released from the army; doing forced labor in the German aviation factory Letov in Olomouc, Czech Republic in 1941 when the Loštice Jews were deported; Germans taking over the property of the Jews; and the return of the Eckstein family after the war and reclaiming their home.
Oral history interview with Slaviboj Kuchta
Oral History
Slaviboj Kuchta, born June 29, 1923 in the village of Žebrákov, Czechoslovakia (now part of Kovářov, Czech Republic), describes descending from a peasant family and graduating as a doctor in legal science; going to the Czech town of Terezín at the end of the war to help fight the typhus epidemic with the International Red Cross; arriving in the evening at a small fortress in Terezín that had a sign reading “Arbeit macht frei” (a German phrase for "Work sets you free" that appeared at the entrance some Nazi concentration camps); seeing women packed in a courtyard who had sores and lice, and prisoners packed in tiny rooms; the prisoners who were primarily Czech, Hungarian, and Polish; may prisoners having diphtheria, scarlet fever, and typhus; a sanatorium that was set up in Čížkovice for people who were helping in Terezín; and local Czech police raping German girls who were working at the sanatorium.
Oral history interview with Ladislav Naprstek
Oral History
Ladislav Naprstek, born in 1927 in Kamenné Žehrovice, a village in the Central Bohemian Region of Czechoslovakia, describes his father as Aryan and his mother as Jewish; growing up in the small Czech village of Čelechovice (now part of Stochov, Czech Republic); joining the military at the border line and training in the town of Dolný Kubín, Slovakia; his mom having to wear a yellow Jewish star and trying to cover it with a scarf; beginning apprentice training in 1942 at age of 15; going to a concentration camp in Bystřice in Czechoslovakia that had five barracks and was guarded by the SS; someone escaping from the camp and being punished with blows from a cane; secretly exchanging letters with his parents from the camp through a supply deliverer; the military loading him and others on an SS military truck and letting them go in the village of Čerčany shortly before the end of the war; and having a bad stomach and eye problems after leaving the camp.
Oral history interview with Pavel Kohout
Oral History
Pavel Kohout, born in 1928 in the town of Sedlčany, Czechoslovakia (now in Czech Republic), describes his mother as Jewish and working as a chief financial officer for a food and beverage company in Sedlčany, where his father also worked as a production manager; his parents moving to Prague to start a company; his father dying from a stroke at age 49; not being registered as Jewish when he was born, which likely saved his life during the war; going to a synagogue in the Prague neighborhood of Žižkov with his mother once or twice a year; hearing about other children in primary school cursing him for being a Jew in the late 1930s; the Gestapo visiting their home and interrogating his father; his mother having to wear a star then getting arrested and locked up for two months; his school requiring students to state if one of their parents was Jewish, after which he was expelled with two other students; receiving an order to go to Bystřice concentration camp in July 1944 on the same day of an assassination attempt on Hitler; and after the war, witnessing the public execution of Prague mayor Josef Pfitzner, a Nazi supporter.
Oral history interview with Vladimīr Tuček
Oral History
Vladimír Tuček, born September 20, 1927 in Prague, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic), describes his Jewish mother Anna (born in the small village Bělečko) and his non-Jewish father (born in Prague); his family’s work at the post office; spending holidays in Bělečko; his father’s divorce from his mother in 1939 because she was Jewish and he was trying to protect the family; his mother move to her sister’s house shortly after the divorce; the views on mixed marriages before the war; getting baptized in 1939 when the Germans arrived; his maternal grandmother Matilda Cinerová, who knew how to read Hebrew and taught it to Vladimír; his mother’s two brothers and two sisters Eliška and Berta (both sisters survived the war); attending school; not seeing antisemitic behavior in school before the war; being forced to leave grammar school in 1939 because he was a child from a mixed marriage; the impact of the occupation on his family; having to wear the Jewish star; being denounced many times by a family in Bělečko; the deportation of his mother in 1942 to Theresienstadt and shortly after to Auschwitz, where she died; the deportation of the handicapped sister of his maternal grandmother to a concentration camp, where she died; the deportation of his aunt Eliška in 1944 to Theresienstadt where she caught typhus, but survived; attending a publics school; working in a factory named Blaníček and Malec, which was owned by his mother´s cousins, the Vaníček brothers; working in the factory until 1944, when he was sent to Bystřice to a concentration camp for children from mixed marriages; going by train from Praha-Bubny railroad station to Toršovice, where they stayed for a few days in an abandoned farmhouse; walking to the concentration camp; conditions in the barrack and the men who lived there with him, including Mr. Martinec and the Sýgler brothers; his friendship with the Pelešek brothers, Jára Pospíšil and Kopecký, who took secret photographs of the camp; daily life in the camp; working in a furniture factory; meeting up with his father at one point; staying in contact with his father through notes; witnessing the beatings of people who tried to escape the camp; punishments in the camp; a camp doctor named Sláma; his work at the railway station, unloading boxes of ammunition; his work digging trenches between Benešov and Petrovice; staying in the concentration camp until May 1, 1945; leaving the camp with his friends; working in Neveklov as a driller; witnessing some violence toward the German people after the war; the artists in the camp, including Jára Pospíšil, the dancer Jarský, the pianist Kopecký, the singer Špaček, the trumpeter Victor Tomašu, and the Deuch brothers; a soccer match that occurred in the camp and other recreational activities; and how he was able to cope with being a concentration camp inmate.
Oral history interview with Ludmila Blahoušová
Oral History
Ludmila Blahoušová, born in 1928 in the town of Sušice, Czechoslovakia (now in Czech Republic), describes having a brother and sister and living in Sušice until 1937; her father applying to be a sacristan at a church far away and his family moving to live closer to the church; Jewish families owning textile and clothing shops; boys who were part of the fascist party of Sudeten-German politician Konrad Henlein and wanted to prosecute Jews; Jewish people being restricted to use a laundry house for only one hour in the evening; Jews being assembled in a Jewish community building next to a cemetery; hearing rumors about Jews, such as Jewish people needing blood for Easter celebrations; and her father having more interactions with Jews far more than her generation.
Oral history interview with Karel Blahouš
Oral History
Karel Blahouš, born in 1928 in the town of Sušice, Czechoslovakia (now in Czech Republic), describes having one Jewish classmate in elementary school before the war; neighborhood shops owned by Jewish families; people saying Jews needed Christian blood; Jewish people having to wear stripes on their sleeves; his Jewish classmate disappearing.
Oral history interview with Ružena Höllingerová
Oral History
Ružena Hollingerová, born on February 24, 1924 in Volary, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic), describes attending school for eight years; her mother, who worked for farmers as a helper and cleaned tracks, washed clothes, and cleaned offices and waiting rooms; her father, who was a wood turner; her brother; how during the war her family hid two Jewish girls along with their neighbor, Anna Pek; the demographics of Volary, where most residents were German and others were Czech or Hungarian; the lack of Jews in Volary before the war; the good relations amongst the people of Volary; living with her family in a German community; the changes in life in Volary after the occupation; the spread of typhus in Volary and the death of her four-month-old baby from typhus; the improvements when the Americans arrived; seeing the survivors of the death march to Volary; the burial of the death march victims in the cemetery; a death march survivor, Mrs. Dengler from Poland, who stayed in Volary after she got better; the terrible treatment of the Jewish prisoners by the guards; a woman (Paule) who helped some of the women after they escaped the guards; bringing some of the women food and making a hiding place for them in her attic; how after the Americans arrived the Jewish women were moved to a school, where they were cared for by German women; bringing milk and bread to the women; the Americans forcing everyone in the city to look at the corpses of the death march victims in order to witness what the Germans had done; the men from Volary who were sent to work in Moscow during the war and never returned; and relations with the German citizens in Volary after the war.
Oral history interview with Marie Kotrbáčková
Oral History
Marie Kotrbáčková, born in 1927 in the town of Hořice, Czechoslovakia (now in Czech Republic), describes training to be a shop assistant with a Jewish family; Jews being assembled before being taken to Auschwitz; working as a member of a resistance organization and providing food for Jewish people; how Jewish people could not be in parks and public places or run businesses; all Jews having to leave their homes and move into one villa, then later seeing the Jews being removed from the villa; and German families taking over the Jewish people’s properties.
Oral history interview with Drahomíra Blosgebrová
Oral History
Drahomíra Blosgebrová (née Švarcová), born in 1934 in the small village of Zákřov, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic), describes her parents, Anna and František, and her two brothers, Oto and Vladimír; being 10 years old when German soldiers arrived in their village and set fire to her family’s house; going with her father and one of her two brothers to a neighbor’s house, which was filled with German soldiers; one of the soldiers taking her father; being sent with her brother Oto to live in Lazníky, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic) with their aunt; her father and brother (Vladimir) being held captive with 17 other men, who were beaten and taken to a cabin that was set on fire by German soldiers; how the main cause of this incident was the mayor of Zákřov denouncing people he believed were partisans or committed alleged offenses such as listening to the radio; soldiers explaining later that her family’s house had been burned by mistake; being looked after by her aunt; experiencing a lot of fear and having no friends until she was 16 years old; and her brother Oto, who settled in Most, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic).
Oral history interview with Marta Plášilová
Oral History
Marta Plášilová, born December 12, 1930 in Prague-Libeň, Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic), describes one of the four Jews in her second grade elementary school class, Helga Weis, who survived the concentration camps and later moved to Palestine where she became a painter; the strong Jewish community in Libeň; her family’s friendship with Jewish families, in particular “Uncle” Frýba and his two children; how life changed after the German occupation; Jewish children being barred from attending schools in 1943; her father’s efforts along with Uncle Frýba to help Jewish families escape and hide their valuables; the deportation of Jews; the arrest of Uncle Frýda for anti-state activities and the deportation of his family; watching with her father as the Germans forced Jewish families onto the trains; the Jewish woman who cleaned their house and whose husband died in a concentration camp; how during the war she went shopping with her mother for food outside the city and the Germans would take the food when they returned to the city; going with her father and searching for Jewish families after the war so they could return their hidden valuables; and the day that she said goodbye to Helga Weis.
Oral history interview with Helga Shékalová
Oral History
Helga Shékalová, born in 1930 in the city of Olomouc, Czechoslovakia (now in Czech Republic), describes her mother as a Gentile and her father as a Jew born in Vienna, Austria; her father getting infected during the Spanish flu epidemic and suffering neurological issues afterward; her father working as an office equipment seller until having to stop in 1939-1940; her father’s doctor no longer being able to prescribe medication for him, so the Jewish community arranged for her father to stay at a Jewish hospital in Prague until he died in 1945; her mother converting to Jewish faith after she married her father, then both of her parents converting to Catholicism in 1939 and having her baptized to save her life; seeing a fascist march with people carrying torches; being expelled from school in the fourth grade in 1940, which ended her social contacts; not being allowed to go to parks or ride in trams; a time when a group of German children chased and beat her because she was wearing a star; her grandmother having her apartment confiscated as Jewish property, so she moved to Pekařská street in Olomouc; her grandmother being taken away on a train with elderly people and being shot; how she and her mother had to go to Prague to get registered and then being loaded on a train to Terezín (Theresienstadt); and working as a dental assistant in Terezín for prisoners before being liberated.
Oral history interview with Hildegard Sedlářová
Oral History
Hildegard Sedlářová (née Lex), born in 1926 in Šternberk, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic), discusses the good relations between Czechs, Germans, and Jews before WWII; the Germans forbidding Jewish children from attending regular schools and her one Jewish friend, Heidi Klimešová, becoming too afraid to speak; being aware of the Germans taking Jews’ belongings and confiscating or destroying their stores; her family hiding two Jewish women, a widow Mrs. Geslarová and Mrs. Brachová; her mother helping Mrs. Geslarová get to a train bound for Vienna; how the entire city turned their backs on her family after learning they hid Jews; the threat of the Russian soldiers to women after the war and having to hide from them; several atrocities committed by Russian soldiers; the commonness of suicide; how after the war families of German descent, even if innocent like hers, were treated very badly; Czechs taking what they wanted from her home and establishing a camp for Germans and a mass grave outside Šternberk; and seeing the mass grave.
Oral history interview with Larissa Šimeková
Oral History
Larissa Šimeková (née Grünwald), born in 1920 in Siberia, Russia, describes her father as once being a prisoner of war in the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk as an Austro-Hungarian military officer; her father owning a clothing factory with an uncle; attending school in the city of Prostějov, Czechoslovakia (now in Czech Republic), until Jewish children were expelled in 1939; her father being Jewish and her mother being Gentile; some Czech children yelling at her for being a Jew; Jewish people fleeing Sudetenland to Prostějov; her father’s factory being taken away; Jewish people having to give up their radios, bicycles, and gold; Jews being banned from cinemas and public places; groups of Jewish men having to sweep the streets; marrying a Jewish doctor in 1941 who could only treat Jewish patients; Germans turning a synagogue into a warehouse; her father panicking and divorcing her mother to protect their children; in June 1942, how transports began taking 1,700 Jews from Prostějov to the Czech city of Olomouc then to Terezín, a concentration camp north of Prague; being assigned to jobs in Terezín; routinely seeing dead people in Terezín and piles of bodies being covered with blankets and taken away for burning.
Oral history interview with Jaroslava Zoráhalová
Oral History
Jaroslava Franc Zoráhalová, born on June 4, 1927 in Olomouc, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic), describes moving with her family to Zlin, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic) and later back to Olomouc; how Jews had lived peacefully among Czechs and Germans until 1933; the Germans’ arrival in Zlin and the effects on the Jews including, having to wear the Star of David, having minimal access to food, being barred from buses, trams, cinemas, and many other places; seeing signs on buildings like “Jews out!” and “Jude” next to a drawing of a pig; hearing that some Jewish families committed suicide; being reared Catholic but having a Jewish grandmother; the deportation of her 71 year old grandmother with many of her siblings to Theresienstadt and then to Auschwitz; learning after the war that when her grandmother arrived in Auschwitz she was forced with the entire transport into a truck and gassed to death; her mother not having to wear the Jewish star or be sent to a camp because she was not considered fully Jewish and her German father had divorced her Jewish mother; Jews in small nearby villages, like Jevíčko and Tršice, having to perform humiliating public tasks; her father’s work for the Baťa factory, which helped some Jews escape to various countries; how the factory helped one of her uncles escape to Casablanca; the fates of other Jews she knew, including Zuzana Bekmanová and the Herlich family; having only spoken German only once since the war; seeing after the war an old, very fat German man hanging dead in the town square; and hearing that a young disabled woman, Sášenka Halavaňová, sneaked into a camp where the Germans had to live post-war and whipped the Germans.
Oral history interview with Jan Jančí
Oral History
Jan Jančí, born in 1919 in the village of Veselíčko, Přerov District, Czechoslovakia (now in Czech Republic), describes going to primary school in the village of Javoříčko in the 1930s; attending farming school and taking over a farm; Gestapo arresting him at his home on charges of supporting partisans, then putting him in prison in the city of Olomouc for 11 months in 1944; being beaten in prison; SS men going to Javoříčko and shooting people and setting homes on fire; later burying 38 people in Javoříčko.
Research interview with Tat'ána Bubníková
Oral History
Research interview with Vlasta Košvancová Ryáčková
Oral History
Research interview with Marie Hanzlíková
Oral History
Research interview with Jaroslav Bránský
Oral History
Research interview with Leopold Farber
Oral History
Research interview with Ladislav Šín
Oral History
Research interview with Stanislava Šprincová
Oral History
Research interview with Editha Kokojanová
Oral History
Research interview with Anna Honová
Oral History
Research interview with Dalibor Dostál
Oral History
Research interview with Va'clav Kubík
Oral History
Research interview with Ilona Hájková
Oral History
Research interview with Stanislava Brožová
Oral History
Research interview with František Psota
Oral History
Research interview with Daruše Burdová
Oral History
Research interview with Jan Weiser
Oral History
Research interview with Slaviboj Kuchta
Oral History
Research interview with Ladislav Naprstek
Oral History
Research interview with Pavel Kohout
Oral History
Research interview with Vladimīr Tuček
Oral History
Research interview with Ludmila Blahoušová
Oral History
Research interview with Karel Blahouš
Oral History
Research interview with Ružena Höllingerová
Oral History
Research interview with Marie Kotrbáčková
Oral History
Research interview with Drahomíra Blosgebrová
Oral History
Research interview with Marta Plášilová
Oral History
Research interview with Helga Shékalová
Oral History
Research interview with Hildegard Sedlářová
Oral History
Research interview with Jaroslava Zoráhalová
Oral History
Research interview with František Cvoliga
Oral History
Research interview with Bohumila Czabanova
Oral History
Research interview with Vlasta Kuchtová
Oral History
Research interview with Marketa Dvoracek
Oral History
Research interview with Véra Weberová
Oral History
Research interview with Eduard Marek
Oral History
Research interview with Libuše Svobodova Přibová
Oral History
Research interview with Kvéta Sedláková
Oral History
Research interview with Oldřich Marada
Oral History
Research interview with Karel Vašiček
Oral History
Research interview with Susana Urbanová
Oral History
Research interview with Vojtěch Peřina
Oral History
Research interview with Jindra Kubánková
Oral History
Research interview with Josef Vašiček
Oral History
Research interview with Čestmir Jiran
Oral History
Research interview with Helena Vovsová
Oral History
Research interview with Vlasta Čižkova
Oral History
Oral history interview with Eduard Marek
Oral History