Terezín Ghetto

Short biography of interviewees:

Eva Herrmannová was born in Vienna in 1929, she was raised in Opava. After the occupation of Czech borderlands by Nazi Germany in 1938, she moved with her parents to Prostějov. According to the Nuremberg laws, she was a "Jewish half-breed". On June 9, 1943, she was deported through Prague to the Terezín ghetto. After the liberation, she graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts, focusing on music science and opera direction. For 30 years she worked in the Theatre Institute, also acting as the director of the Prague National Theatre Opera for almost five years. The interview was recorded in Prague on 15th August 1996.

Ota Ullman was born in 1917 in Kamýk nad Vltavou. In 1940 he was ordered to work in woods as a forced laborer processing the wind-fallen trees. A year later, he was sent to a labor camp for Jews in Lípa, near Havlíčkův Brod. In spite of his request to join the transport to Terezín ghetto, where he wanted to meet his parents, he was kept in the camp in Lípa until its closure. Only in May of 1943 was he deported to Terezín. From there, he was deported to the death camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau and then further concentration camps. After the liberation, he became a distinguished expert in the field of statistics. The interview was recorded in Prague on 19th June 1996.

Jana Urbanová was born in Teplice in 1937, her father was a doctor of medicine. After the Munich Agreement, when anti-Jewish laws had been introduced in the areas of Czechoslovakia ceded to Germany, the family moved inland, to Prague. According to the Nuremberg laws, Jana´s mother was an "Aryan", her father was a Jew, and thus Jana was considered to be a "Jewish half-breed". Thanks to her mother not divorcing her father, Jana had been protected against deportation for a long time and got deported to the ghetto in Terezín, together with her father, only towards the end of the war. She remained in Terezín until the liberation. The interview was filmed on 11th October 1996 in Krupka.


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