The witness's father, Vítězslav Löw, came to Pilsen from Velichov in the Karlovy Vary region. He was at first a business traveler, later a co-owner of the Wedeles and Löw company which operated a kaolin mine in Horni Lukavice. He and his wife Irma had an only son, Hanuš.
In November 1939, Sister Elsa and her husband Josef Möschel, a master bricklayer from Lesov near Karlovy Vary, moved to this address. Not only the two of them were not convenient for the new rulers of the occupied borderland for "racial” reasons, they were also members of the German Social Democratic Party which fought openly against the Nazis.
In January 1942, the whole family was deported to the Terezin ghetto and, in May 1944, to the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp.
Mother Irma died in Birkenau, father Vítězslav and son Hanuš were sent to the Blechhammer (Blachownia Śląska) Auschwitz subcamp. Vítězslav soon became weak and was murdered. Hanuš worked hard in an aviation gas factory, in December 1944, he developed pneumonia and was sent to a sickbay from where he and two other Czech prisoners managed to escape.
During the dramatic escape, they crossed the front, in severe frost they covered 400 km to Poprad, where they joined the Czechoslovak Eastern Army under the leadership of Ludvik Svoboda and took part in several battles.
The whole family of Hanuš was murdered. He never returned to Pilsen. He changed his surname to the Czech-sounding Lamač and married a girl he once met in Terezin and happily met again after the war.
After the communist coup in February 1948, he fled to Holland, his wife managed to emigrate later. The young couple wanted to get away from bloodstained Europe. They settled in Chile, where they built their new life. That is why Hanuš eventually changed his first name to the Spanish Juan.
The interview was recorded on 20 November 1996 in Santiago, Chile.