Jan Rocek: My Life

My life 1924-1966

Jan Rocek

1 Jan Rocek: My Life

Copyright © 2003 by Jan Rocek. All rights reserved.

2 Jan Rocek: My Life

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION 1 PRAHA (PRAGUE) 1 Mother 1 Father 3 Other members of the family 6 My early life in Prague 9 Schools 15 Life in Czechoslovakia 17 Work 21 The Chemistry Course 22 Dye Shop 23 Transport 25 TEREZIN 26 Family 26 Sick 28 Jugendheim 28 The Chemical Laboratory 30 Room 127 36 General situation 38 Cultural life 40 Gustav Schorsch 45 The Murmelstein Affair 46 Eva 48 My feelings about Terezin 49 OSWIECIM -- AUSCHWITZ 51 Transport 51 Arrival in Auschwitz 52 Life in Auschwitz 54 The “Leipzig transport” 57 MEUSELWITZ 58 The camp 58 The factory 61 Air raids 63 Evacuation 65 The march 67 Liberation 69 In the hospital 70

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PRAHA 74 University studies 75 Eva 77 The Glass Factory 81 Vacations 82 February 1948 85 Graduate Studies 89 Military service 91 The Academy 94 Children 98 The Hungarian Uprising 102 Secret Police 103 Visit to England 107 Back in Czechoslovakia 112 Second visit to England 112 Trip to Poland 115 ESCAPE 118 Dresden 122 Potsdam 123 At the Baltic Sea 125 Warnemü nde 129 Escape 132 Copenhagen 134 England 140 AMERICA 141 Cambridge 141 Washington 150 Illinois 155

APPENDICES 157 Mother’s letter 1941 158 Vilda Sü ssland’s letter 1945 161 Letter to Elsa Kohn 1946 169 Letter to Elsa Kohn 1958 175 Letter to Professor Sorm 180 Professor Sorm’s response 181 Letter from Sir Christopher Ingold, August 1960 183 Professor Frank Westheimer’s job offer, August 1960 184 Newspaper reports of our escape 185

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Photographs 195

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INTRODUCTION

For years our sons and friends have urged us, Eva and me, to write the stories of our lives and for years I have resisted. I had more urgent things to do, and besides, though our stories are certainly unusual, they are hardly unique. So many much more talented writers have written their stories, stories far more unusual, revealing and interesting than ours. Moreover, I have a rather poor memory and so all I could produce would be fragments, occasional and unsystematic recollections. Furthermore, for a long time I was convinced that though my memory was poor and I remembered far less than many others, the few things that I could recall I remembered correctly -- that my memory was limited, but very reliable. Unfortunately, I relatively recently realized that not even that is true, and that I made mistakes even in matters I thought I remembered exactly. So why write at all? Well, perhaps some day one of our grandchildren might want to know more about us and the times during which we lived -- though I don’t know why they should. I myself have never been very interested in my ancestry. I always found it much more interesting to think and learn about the present and speculate about the future and prepare for it than to concern myself with the past. Still, they might be different from me in this respect, as they are in so many others. And besides, I have sort of promised a number of well meaning friends that I shall try to write something about my life and it seems that if I don’t do it now, at the age of 78, I never will.

PRAHA (PRAGUE)

Mother

I was born on March 24 1924 in Prague, actually in a private hospital or sanitarium named Sanops in Prague-Smichov. When I was little I was close to my mother, Frieda or Friedericke, later in Czech Bedriska, who played with me and loved to read to me. She was born on September 7 1895 in Jablonec nad Nisou (Gablonz and der Neisse) to Abraham Löbl (Loebl) and his second wife Leontine nee Gutmann and grew up in Jablonec, a German speaking town in the Sudetenland, the northern part of Bohemia. At the time she was growing up girls could not go to a gymnasium (college preparatory high school) and so she spent a year in Lausanne, Switzerland, in a private school (pensionat) to finish her education and to learn French. During World War I she was a volunteer nurse. Also during that time she and her friends used to stuff cigarettes for the soldiers and she learned to smoke. She had a much older half-brother, Hugo Löbl, born July 16, 1875, from her father’s first marriage, who became a very successful industrialist and owned a large electrical supplies factory in Jablonec. He was married to a very nice lady, my aunt Lilly, born May 18, 1894, and they had two daughters, Hella and Susie. Susie was my age and Hella was five 6 Jan Rocek: My Life years older and very beautiful. Mother and I used to be invited to their elegant large villa in Jablonec.

As far as I am aware Mother never lived in a Czech-speaking town until she married Father in 1922, and she never learned Czech very well. She spoke it, of course, particularly after 1933, when Hitler came to power in Germany, and Father forbade the speaking of German in our home, but she was never comfortable with it. When I was little she read to me German fairy tales and a bit later Schiller’s romantic poetry and even his drama “William Tell.” I loved both the poems and the drama and learned one long poem, “Die Bürgschaft,” by heart probably at the age of five. When she was reading to me she would sit in the large stuffed easy chair in our festive dining room and I would sit on the ground on a large pillow. I still remember little fragments of several of the poems today. When I was little Mother had a small business at home; she made painted handkerchiefs and similar things and even employed a helper. She must have been quite artistic and had an interest in paintings, but never painted herself. She was much more interested in physical activities than Father, played tennis, was a good swimmer, and liked to hike, skate and sled. I liked to go hiking with her, but cared less for obligatory walks in our neighborhood. She also took me swimming, skating and sledding. I particularly remember a two day hike in the Krkonose (German: Riesengebirge) mountains when I was eight years old. Together we climbed the tallest mountain in Bohemia, the 1603 m high Snezka (Schneekoppe); it was a very windy day and I held on to her afraid that the wind would blow me away. We then spent a night together in a hotel in Spindleruv Mlyn before returning the next day to Janske Lazne to Father and my sister Helga. Unfortunately, Mother became very ill in 1936 or 1937. It turned out that she not only had very high blood pressure, but also a serious coronary disease and deteriorated rapidly. From a formerly physically active woman she became very easily tired, had to lie down a lot, and Father, Helga and I took over household chores. In Terezin, she spent almost the entire time in the hospital. In addition to her heart condition she got paratyphoid fever, chronic pleurisy and finally a stroke that paralyzed the right side of her body so that she could no longer get out of bed. Staying in the hospital for almost the entire time we were in Terezin was possible since my cousin, Erich Klapp, who was also her physician, was the first doctor to arrive in Terezin and therefore assumed charge of the health establishment. I visited Mother regularly in the hospital. In the fall of 1944 she went to Auschwitz with my father and my fifteen year old sister Helga and there certainly directly into the gas chambers.

Father

My father, Hugo Robitschek, was born on June 12, 1887, in a small Czech town, Popovice near Benesov, about 30 miles SE of Prague. He was the youngest of 7 7 Jan Rocek: My Life children (there may have been more, but I knew of only six siblings who lived to adulthood) of Friedrich (Bedrich) Robitschek and Josefine (Josefa) nee Rosenzweig. He was quite young when his father died, probably thirteen or fourteen; his religious mother forced him to go to the synagogue every day for a whole year to pray for his father and he did not particularly enjoy it.

Father finished four grades of a gymnasium and then a business school from which he graduated with