Elizabeth Herrlich was born in December 1928 in Opava. Her father, a renowned veterinarian and former horse trader, came from Šternberk.
She grew up among the peasants and their animals, and since the occupation of the borderlands, due to the growing intolerance among her non-Jewish friends, she gravitated towards the Zionist Maccabi movement. The family wanted to emigrate to New Zealand, where they needed experienced vets, but the emigration failed.
Elizabeth and her parents were deported to the ghetto at Terezín, from where she was further deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp and the concentration camps at Dresden and Merzdorf.
After the war, she found a job at a factory, married a former Czechoslovak Army in Exile soldier, and together they moved as far away from blood-soaked Europe as possible, to pre-revolutionary Cuba, where her husband fell into gambling. After the divorce, she returned to Europe and remarried, to a devout husband.
The interview was filmed on February 5, 1998, in Geneva, Switzerland.
During her visit to Olomouc, Elizabeth Herrlich did not find any reminder or memorial plaque on the site of the synagogue. Can you find it? Describe your search in the box below this text.