Jan Mayer was born on 13 April 1925 in Moravská Ostrava.
He attended the Jewish elementary school and later attended the classical grammar school in Ostrava. After the Nazi occupation, he had to transfer to the Jewish high school in Brno - the only high school in the country where students identified as Jews were still allowed to study.
After his deportation to Terezín, he was deported together with his father, uncle and brother to Auschwitz-Birkenau. There, he and his brother signed up to work as cabinetmakers and were transported to a labor camp near Gliwice. On 19 January 1945, they had to march in bitter cold to the Blechhammer concentration camp. After liberation by the Red Army, they reached Budapest via Uzhhorod, where they stayed for some time. After the liberation of Ostrava, they decided to return home.
Jan Mayer, his brother and friends were the first Jews to return to Ostrava from the concentration camps. However, there was a Russian headquarters in his family home, so he and his brother had to find a new apartment. In 1946 he completed his studies and passed the examination for the school-leaving certificate. In 1947-49 he did his compulsory military service, and after he returned, he worked in a timber company, which before nationalisation belonged to his father. In later years he also worked for the Jewish community in Ostrava.
The interview was filmed on 7 May 1996 in Ostrava.
Arnošt Rusek, born Stamberger, was born on 19 March 1921 in Ostrava and grew up in Mariánské Hory. His parents owned an apartment house and lived in it. His mother was very ill and needed help. He went to kindergarten and later to the elementary school, and attended the “reálné gymnázium" (in German Realgymnasium) high school in Matiční Street.
He was the first in his family to receive a summons to enter the "retraining camp" in Nisko on San. His father also arrived in the same camp in the second transport. They escaped from the camp that was still under construction. They were hiding in the forest and crossed the border into the USSR.
Arnošt was sent by the Soviet authorities to Novosibirsk, where he worked as a lumberjack. Later, he enlisted in the Czechoslovak military unit and was drafted to Buzuluk. There he was assigned to study at the school for officers and underwent military training, he also met a military nurse whom he later married. He fought near Kiev, where he lost his leg.
After recovering, he organized conscriptions to Svoboda's army and directed its training camps. Gradually, he and his wife got to Prague and then to Ostrava as part of a rear regiment. In 1945, their daughter Klaudia was born. Arnošt worked at the military base in Ostrava until 1955. Then he took a job as a clerk of the City National Committee and later worked at the Regional National Committee in the Department for Construction.
The interview was filmed on 9 November 1996 in Ostrava.
Jehuda Bacon was born on 28 July 1929 in Moravská Ostrava into a family of traditional Jews, his father Israel Bacon and mother Ethel (Esta) owned a small leather goods factory. He had two sisters, Rela (Rivka), who emigrated to Israel in 1939, and Hana.
He attended the Jewish elementary school in Ostrava where he learned German and Hebrew. In 1942, together with his parents and sister Hana, he was deported to the Terezín ghetto and, in December 1943, they were transported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, the so-called Terezín family camp.
Jehuda Bacon became one of the "Birkenau Boys", boys between the ages of 13 and 15 who worked around the crematorium and gas chambers. He left the camp in January 1945 in a death march that ended at the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp in Austria. After the war, he was admitted to a convalescent home for children affected by the war, established in Štiřín by humanist Přemysl Pitter. In 1946, together with other orphans, he was taken into the care of a Zionist organization which took them to Palestine. He graduated from the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design and studied art in London and Paris. In 1961, he was one of the crown witnesses at the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem.
The interview was filmed in Jerusalem on 26 December 1996.