I ate one of the sugar cubes and saved the other for my little brother.
*
Life soared upon wings of rapturous celebration of victory and freedom, but in no time it collapsed into hatred and a longing for revenge.
During the first few postwar weeks, the Germans had to help dismantle the barricades. Sometimes, so I was told, one of them would be killed or even hanged from a lamppost or tree branch. I never actually saw anything like this, but had I come across such an event, I certainly would have stopped and looked on. I never suspected that often those who hanged another without trial were merely concealing their own misdeeds, and they did not care if the hanged were in fact guilty of anything at all.
At the beginning of the war, several German families lived on our street. In addition to German, they spoke Czech, and we children played together. Later, however, their parents forbade them to even speak with me.
From the moment I arrived in Terezín, the only Germans I met wore uniforms, and instead of the state symbol on their hats they had a skull and crossbones. Those skulls also adorned traffic signs that warned of particularly dangerous curves, which we called curves of death. The skulls on their hats proclaimed that the wearers were standing in a curve and beyond lay death.
Their deeds seemed to me so evil that I was convinced it was my duty to remind people never to forget the horrors the Germans had perpetrated. Over the school break I composed an article in which, with maudlin and artless pathos, I recalled my four Christmases in Terezín and concluded with a note about the end of the war.
The spring brought us peace, the end of the war, which we had so much looked forward to, which we had awaited for six years. The end, however, brought such horrifying news. Of the hundreds of thousands of children and the elderly who were taken off to the East, not a single one returned. I think about my friends and cannot believe they’re no longer on this earth, that the Germans managed to murder hundreds and hundreds of helpless children. I shudder with horror every time I realize that it was only due to a miracle that I survived. But since I have had the good fortune to remain alive, I pledge my word that I will do everything to ensure that what we were witness to during those final years of the war will never happen again. . My only wish is that you never feel pity for the Germans, even if they never did you any harm. Do not forget the horrors of the concentration camps and judge fairly and without mercy so that your children will not be forced into German prisons as we were, so that during Christmas, sitting over their bread and water, they will not have to despair over the fact that you were lenient on the German butchers.
I sent the article to a children’s magazine called Onward, which printed it complete with several mistakes I had made.
My only experience had been the war, but it was a devastating one. My world was now divided into good and evil, with the Red Army and their allies embodying the good. The Germans embodied the evil. That was it. I knew nothing of other evils, other slaughters. I knew life from only one side, and I mistakenly assumed that I was entitled to sweeping judgments.
I wasn’t alone in considering the Germans the embodiment of evil. Everyone nurtured in his memory how the Germans had dealt out blows. It was the Germans, after all, who had chosen Hitler as their leader. They had accepted his doctrine that they were the master race even though they had nothing in common with genuine masters. They made their way through Europe and believed they would rule forever. They pounced upon their neighbors and undertook to exterminate every single Jew and execute at least a hundred innocent Poles, Russians, or Serbs for every one German who had fallen outside of battle. And they did not alter their behavior even when they knew all was lost. Even during the last days of the war, they drove prisoners from the concentration camps, executing those who fell behind.
What had happened was an abrupt departure from the order of things whether human or divine. They went beyond all measure of arrogance, and the people clamored for some kind of justice.
Six weeks after the end of the war, the president established by special decree extraordinary People’s Courts and a Federal Court to try former German leaders along with Czech collaborationists. The brief news reports of the trials usually ended with, Condemned to death.
The sentences were carried out immediately.
Obergruppenführer K. H. Frank, a man with thousands of human lives on his conscience, was even executed in public. I very much wanted to witness such a spectacle, but I was forbidden.
In a newspaper report from May 23, 1946, I at least found a photo of Frank hanging on the gallows.
Third Courtyard of Pankrác Prison, 12:58
5,000 people — the muffled drone of the courtyard as the sun beats down. The gallows are situated in a corner between two buildings, before which stand the executioner and his two assistants. At 13:02 the tribunal arrives, followed by Frank surrounded by four members of the prison guard. Through a translator, Dr. Kozák once again reads the sentence to Frank. Frank, however, at first simply stares into space, then he looks around.
. .
The last question Dr. Kozák puts to him is: “Have you understood the verdict, K. H. Frank?” And a final “
Jawohl
.” “Do you have any last wishes?” “No.”
13:31—the just punishment of K. H. Frank is carried out.
I read the brief article with a thrilling satisfaction: Justice does exist after all.
*
When a catastrophe blows over and mortal danger is past, euphoria prevails for a brief time. Not even the sorrow of those deprived of their loved ones, the anger of those who longed for retaliation, the final murders committed by the fleeing SS, or the powerful explosions of the Soviet liberators could wipe out the thrill of newly won freedom.
From the very first days, flags billowed from windows: Czechoslovak flags, red Soviet flags with some yellow symbols (which my cousin explained were supposed to be a hammer and sickle), American flags with sloppily stitched-on stars, and even British flags. Lord knows where people came by them so quickly.
Units of our armies abroad were returning, welcomed with ecstatic ovations. Flowers fluttered through the air, and after such long-lasting silence, shouts of rapture erupted everywhere. The mood of exaltation encouraged our dreams of a society in which we would live freely, effortlessly, and more safely than at any time before.
At the same time, reminders of war lay everywhere. The remnants of the barricades were disappearing only slowly from the streets; automobiles appeared only occasionally; people stood in lines in front of shops. Old Town Square was defaced by debris from the town hall, and bombs had demolished the Emmaus Monastery. This, however, did not last long. Signs soon appeared calling for the fulfillment of a two-year plan to restore everything the war had destroyed. Father added that we would soon have five-year plans just like those in the Soviet Union, and only then would genuine prosperity reign. I was too young, too affected by what I had gone through, to understand that nothing could be as simple, as effortless as it appeared to Father or to the enthusiastic orators on the radio.
Real school started after the holidays. I passed a test to get into the high school in Vršovice. A few days after the beginning of the school year I celebrated my fourteenth birthday. For breakfast I got cocoa (my grandmother in Canada had sent it) and then gifts of a box of oil paints, a palette, and nonporous paper, so I could develop my fondness for painting. At the same time my father reminded me that the Germans had deprived me of five years of school. I should be two grades higher, so I’d better do everything I could to catch up, especially in mathematics, physics, and chemistry. I could paint only when I’d finished all my other obligations.