Jiří Kos was born in 1925 in Rychnov nad Kněžnou, Czechoslovakia. He was labeled as a “Jewish half-breed of second degree” by the Protectorate laws, as one of his grandparents was labeled as a Jew. Thus, he was expelled from school and deported to concentration camps Kleinstein and Hagibor, from which he escaped. After February 1948, when he protested against the Communist regime, he was labeled a “bourgeois element” and was expelled from school again. Interview was recorded in 1997 in Prague, Czech Republic.
The painter Ondřej Sekora, whose drawings you are about to see, was born in 1899 at Královo Pole, Czechoslovakia, near Brno. He became famous thanks to children’s book illustrations. In March of 1941, he was kicked out of the Lidove noviny daily newspaper for refusing to divorce his wife Ludmila, born Roubíčková, labeled as a Jew by the Protectorate laws. As a result of remaining married to Ludmila, he was interned, in 1944 - 1945, in camps Kleinstein, Hagibor and Freiheit-Osterode. During the war, he kept drawing a cartoon diary, in which his short stay at Hagibor is also featured.
James (Jaroslav) Bor was born in 1920 in Milevsko, Chechoslovakia. He survived the Terezín ghetto and the Auschwitz-Birkenau, Eichen and Taucha concentration camps. The interview was recorded in October 1996 in Prague, Czech Republic.