Věra Saudková was born in 1921 to Josef David and his wife Otylia. Her mother came from a Jewish family, the Kafka family, her father was not Jewish.
After the occupation her parents divorced, Věra was designated as a Jewish “half-breed”. For some time she worked as an instructor at the studio of one of the first propagators of sporting exercise for women, Běla Friedländer. Her aunts Elli and Valli with families were deported already in October of 1941, to the ghetto in Lodz. Her mother was deported in August of 1942 to the ghetto in Terezín.
Karel Projsa originally proposed to Otylia, Věra’s mother, once she stopped being protected by her marriage to the “Aryan” Josef David. When she refused, Projsa proposed to Věra, offering her the same protection. From his flat, Věra supplied her mother as well as other deportees with food. It was in this flat where the Czech writer Jiří Weil hid after staging a suicide to escape a deportation transport. Gabriela (Elli), Valerie (Valli) and Otylie (Ottla) Kafka did not survive the war.
The interview was recorded on March 24, 1997.