This is how Edgar Krása remembers "Middle-Class Kitchen", as it was called:
Edgar Krása was born in the autumn of 1920 in Karlovy Vary. With the growing power of the Nazis, it was no longer possible to live in the town and the family moved to Prague. At the age of fourteen, his aunt explained to him that he should train as a cook, that whoever worked with food would always have a job. And so he started to learn to be a cook.
When restaurants stopped hiring people labeled as Jews, he found work in the Jewish community's soup kitchen. He went to Terezin with an AK transport, a construction squad that was tasked with preparing the town to receive ten times its original population. He became friends with the musician and composer Raphael Schächter, and together they found a place to live in the ghetto, in the attic of one of the small houses. Edgar performed in all 16 performances of Verdi's Requiem that Rafael staged in Terezín, including a propaganda performance for a Red Cross delegation. After their visit, Edgar was deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp along with thousands of others. He survived the selection process and was further deported to the camps Blechhammer and Gleiwitz.
After liberation, he returned to Prague and worked as a cook at U Rozvařilů, where he had once trained. He arranged an apprenticeship in Switzerland, but his permit to stay abroad was revoked after the communist coup. He returned to Prague but soon saw that he no longer wanted to live in the country. He dreamed of the possibility of emigrating to Israel. He worked as a cook at the Israeli embassy, got married. Meanwhile, the communists closed the border.
Together with his wife Hana, Edgar decided to flee the country illegally and attempted to travel to Italy with fake passports, from where they wanted to go to Israel. However, they were detained by the Austrian police. They eventually succeeded in immigrating to Israel, Edgar working as a cook in a hotel, Hana working as a seamstress. Eventually, they decided to immigrate to the U.S. so that their children would have a better life. They named their second son Rafael, after Rafael Schacht. In retirement, Edgar devoted himself to educating schoolchildren about the Holocaust.
The interview was recorded on October 25, 1996 in Newton, Massachusetts, USA.