Cecilie Korycan was born into a very pious family in Smilno, Slovakia in 1919 , but she grew up in Brno. Shortly before the deportation, she married Herman Koryčan, with whom she was deported to the Terezín ghetto in 1941.
In Terezín, they both volunteered for transport from Terezín to the ghetto in Riga, Latvia. The couple were soon separated, Cecilie was deployed for forced labour in the Riga-Mühlgraben and Libau camps. Then she was imprisoned in the Fuhlsbüttel and Kiel-Hassee camps. At the end of the war she survived a death march towards Hamburg. In April 1945 she was exchanged as part of a prisoner exchange organised by the Swedish Red Cross.
During her treatment in Sweden, she learned that Herman had survived and returned to Brno. Neither her parents nor her siblings Josef, Berta, Gisela, Natan, Mordechai, Hermina and Jolana survived the war. Two sons, Petr and Jiří, were born to her in Brno. In 1966 the family managed to emigrate and settled in Chicago.
The interview was filmed on May 12, 1997 in Miami Beach, Florida, USA.