Věra Solarová was born in Prague in 1927. Her mother was not Jewish. Her parents divorced before the Nazi occupation of the Czech lands. Věra was raised by her father, a veteran and invalid from the World War I. After she had been expelled from school under anti-Jewish regulations, she took care of her father who was excluded from the transport to Terezín because of his advanced illness. He died before his daughter was deported. In Terezín she met her later husband and she survived there until the liberation. In the ghetto, she worked in agriculture. The interview was taken in Prague on 10th January 1996.
Marie Sandová was born in Třebívlice in 1916, but she was raised in Litoměřice, the town just across the river from Terezín. She received her degree in medicine from the Charles University, Prague. After she had married, she moved to Pilsen. Eventually, she was deported to Terezín ghetto where she worked as a pharmacist. Not to abandon her husband, she voluntarily joined him on the last transport from Terezín ghetto to the death camp of Auschwith-Birkenau. From there, she was deported to Freiberg, then to Mauthausen and then to Horní Bříza. She managed to escape from the Death March and she had been hiding in Southern Bohemia until the end of the war. After the liberation, she settled down in the city Třeboň, where she worked as a pharmacist. The interview was recorded in Prague on 23rd April 1996.
Erika Žádníková was born in Krems an der Donau, Austria, in 1920. She grew up in Těmice near Kamenice nad Lipou. In reaction to increasing anti-Jewish persecution, she got married in 1940. The wedding took place in the Jewish traditional way, in the local new synagogue, built shortly before the occupation. The husband and wife were immediately ordered to perform forced labour on the lands of the local manor farm estate. Erika was deported to Terezín ghetto from the town of Tábor. After deportation from Terezín she survived the camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau and Kurzbach. She was liberated near the town of Liednitz. The interview was recorded in Kamenice nad Lipou on 24th October 1996.
František Lukáš was born in Prague in 1911. He was gifted for visual arts, drawing and painting. Though he graduated from a reguler school, he also took private classes of drawing and studied at a vocational school of painting. Before the occupation, he began his studies at the Faculty of Architecture and Civil Engineering of the Czech Technical University. He survived in Terezín ghetto and then the camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Oranienburg-Heinkelwerke, Sachsenhausen and Schwarzheide. After the war he worked in a theatre and as a screenwriter for the film ateliers at Barrandov, Prague. As a cameraman of short footage films his name figures in the titles of more then 300 films. The interview was recorded in Prague on 18th January 1996.
Raja Žádníková was born in Tel Aviv-Jaffa, Palestine, in 1929. Her parents came from Europe: her mother from Vienna, her father from Prague. Life was not easy for the family in Palestine and so they moved with the baby back to Prague quite soon. The family were deported to Terezín ghetto at the beginning of the year 1942. Raja´s father was then deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, he did not survive. Raja and her mother lived to see the liberation in Terezín. After the war Raja studied medicine and worked in the Institute for Mother and Child Care in Prague for many years. The interview was recorded in Prague on 2nd February 1996.