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The memories of Peter’s father Ota Ginz
(Kirjat Jam, Israel):
Before Hitler’s occupation of Czechoslovakia, we lived happily as a small family in Prague. I was the only one from our family who survived the rage provoked by Hitler. My father died in 1912 after an illness, while all the others perished during the German occupation. Among these victims, were also those born in the next generation, my son Peter (1928) and his cousin Paul (1927), my youngest brother’s son. Eva was transported to Terezín on the 17th of May 1944, and I went later on the 11th of February 1945. We returned together at the same time on 14th of May 1945. I will not speak about the emotions Prague evoked in us. We set off home from the Wilson station, but we walked, because there was no public transportation running.
As we were approaching our home we were very emotional. Our hearts were beating and here we were. There was our dear mother looking out for us in the window, the same way she did in previous days. We hugged full of tears! Mom suddenly calls: “Where is Peter?” We comforted our mom that there were a lot of prisoners on the way and that certainly we would all reunite.
The weeks and months passed and we were losing hope. But the three of us were still hoping we would reunite with Peter. The story went around that Soviet troops transported a large number of imprisoned children to the USSR for recovery. We did not want to continue living in uncertainty though. I wrote to Michail Sholokhov. I spent some unforgettable moments with him and his family. I soon received an answer that unfortunately I was wrong. After the end of the war, no young prisoners arrived in the Soviet Union. That was the end of all our hopes.
There were a number of sheds near the Letná exhibition center, where the victims who were supposed to be transported to Terezín gathered. The Prague religious community covered the ground with mattresses. One October day in 1942 I joined our Peter there. We were talking seriously, but I avoided evoking sad thoughts in him. We were comforting each other that we would reunite at Mom’s again. After some experiences I had heard of before we parted I admonished to Peter to be careful with the German guards. I went with him as far as relatives could go and I hugged Peter, we kissed and he went through the entrance. He looked back several times, we waved at each other and Peter disappeared inside the gate. I don’t know how I was able to get home. I was very well aware that my wife’s nerves could not handle this parting.
When Peter was in Terezin and we were in Prague we wanted to know as much about each other as we could, we used every opportunity to be in contact.
When Peter ran out of paper, he used the paper of one friend who had nobody to write to. This way letters with unknown names came to us. What is more, Peter could not write German well enough so the contents of his news were poor. Finally though he found a way to a more open correspondence. Peter became acquainted with Czech policemen who served in Terezin, we don’t know how. Some of them probably offered to deliver his letters to Prague. This way, we received several extensive letters from Mom (sometimes rather censored) and rich letters from Peter with full Czech contents without any censorship. We were ecstatic about every piece of news about our dear ones, but we were also pleased by every word from people who were not our relatives. The chief of the children’s home where Peter stayed called him in one of his letters “The beauty of our home”. In a different report we could read: “I can only report all good about Peter. He is a precious, wonderful boy”.
A flimsy, transparent strip of paper sent secretly by Peter and without any censorship- not dated:
Dear Dad, Mom and Eva,
I am still fine, but not as well as earlier, but from this point of view, you don’t have to worry about me. I hope you received a stamp for a package. Please, send some lozenges for grandmother (she has a cough), and for me some Arabic rubber, some textbooks, a spoon, bread and a few of the engravings I made. (Everything is new here, bunks, the street names, the whole authority structure, and that is why I would like to have something old which would remind me of the times I spent with you and was coloring those engravings. The magazine I am editing is still being published. I write stories with serious subjects and sometimes I even dabble at philosophy. Otherwise I go to school at kvinta1.
I am doing well at school. We are supposed to have exams next week. As for the material matters: Every evening I go to grandmother who always gives me something to eat. My uncle often gives me a bite too. As for the shoes: A boy, who is employed in the shoemaker factory, has the bunk next to mine. This way my shoe repairs are taken care of. As for clothes: I cannot wear brown any more so I am wearing trousers you sent together with daddy’s vest. Three weeks ago we had polio in the room. Just like the others I was given an injection from a blood of some adult person. Rudi Freundenfeld2 supplied it for me. At this moment, thank God, new cases of polio have not appeared.
Kisses, Peter
Send me some books about sociology.
The memories of Peter’s sister Eva Ginz-Pressburg
(Beer Sheva, Israel):
My brother was a very talented, creative, hard working and eager boy with different interests. He wrote articles and stories, and was also an author of several short novels. He also took an interest in drawing and painting. His painting “the moonland” proves Peter’s unusual fantasy and imagination. The employees of the museum Yad Vashem together with the astronaut Illan Ramon chose this picture as the most suitable for its intention. The tragedy of the space shuttle Columbia had shaken the whole world. Illan, as well as other members of the crew, did not survive this scientific flight.
It was eventually this painting that Illan Ramon took with him into space. It brought Peter’s diary back to life. The diary he wrote and kept from the 24th of February 1941 until August 1942. Several weeks after the space shuttle Columbia’s tragedy, someone from Prague contacted the museum and offered six of Peter’s written textbooks and his drawing for sale. The inheritance was found in an old house in Modřany bought several years ago. The person threw away most of the junk that filled the house, but for certain inexplicable reasons he kept the textbooks and drawings. He remembered his “discovery” when there was a report on Czech TV and in connection with the tragedy of Columbia, there was a description of a Prague boy Peter Ginz and his fate. The person sent the samples of the discovered textbooks and drawings via electronic mail.
When I set my eyes on Peter’s work I was very upset. I felt as if Peter had never died and it seemed he was living in eternity and this way he was sending a message about himself. The newly found inheritance contained two diaries recording the events from the years 1941 to 1942. It was from a period before his deportation to Terezín when we all lived together as a family in Prague. As soon as I saw the pages of Peter’s diary and his drawings I was immediately convinced of their authenticity. I recognized my brother’s handwriting as well as some of the events described here. Peter’s handwriting is becoming more nervous and less legible as the date of his transport to Terezín was approaching. My excitement while reading every following page was rising. Peter does not deliberately write about his fear of the future, and there are black clouds in his notes, which finally swallowed him.
My husband and I decided to go to Prague and to find the owner of Peter’s newly found inheritance. I hoped I would have a legal claim to his legacy. After consulting with a lawyer, I found out I had no such rights. It is because the house, where all the papers were found, was owned by the new person for more than three years. Eventually I managed to gain the inheritance so now I am the owner of Peter’s two diaries and some of the linocuts. The rest is the property of the Yad Vashem museum in Jerusalem.
Peter’s diary is very precious to me as is our childhood together. It only lasted for a short while until the time when the Nazis started to persecute the Jews. Before this time we lived happily as a family.
Peter and I were born in Prague. Our Dad mastered several foreign languages and was the chief of an export textile department. He met our Mum at an Esperanto meeting. Both our parents were progressive people who took care of our education and healthy lifestyle. We used to play a lot of sports. In the winter we went skiing and skating and in the summer we went swimming, and took hiking tours especially during the holidays.
Our Mum came from Hradec Králové and her father was a village teacher. We visited our relatives in Hradec very often. These visits, mainly at Christmas, are my most beautiful memories. My mum loved music, had a lovely voice and liked singing the opera arias at home when we were both little. After the war, the holocaust, and after the tragedy of losing Peter she never sang again.
Our Dad was born in Ždánice near Prague and his family came from the area of Kouřim. Later they moved to Prague where my grandfather owned an antique shop. Grandfather Ginz was a very educated and wise man. The pride of his shop was mainly the old and valuable books. He was also a talented painter, which a small inheritance of his artworks reflects. He also had literary tendencies and sometimes led his business correspondence in verses. He died early at the age of fifty- five, but he provided very well for his wife and his five children. Eventually, our whole family, except for my dad, me and one of my cousins died during the holocaust. Grandfather’s sudden death saved him from this horrible suffering.
My parents were raising us to be decent and honest and emphasized discipline and education. They were teaching us how to distinguish what was right and what was wrong.
The holocaust convinced us that there are evil people in the world who are fanatic and are able to murder and torture mercilessly. But there are others for whom love is important and they try to help each other in all circumstances. They are opposed to hate and against evil.
Peter’s young spirit was directed toward good. What he wanted and what he was interested in came from the richness of his soul. He belonged to the important group of positively thinking people who are gifted in this way.
My brother wanted to see, not to observe, he really enjoyed thinking and finding the answers to his questions. He wanted to get to the bottom of things and discover what his knowledge could express. There are many paintings proving his desire to see. They are more than one hundred and twenty of these paintings in the museum of Yad Vashem in Jerusalem.
Peter was interested in everything. Every child developing naturally has a lot of interests. Some of them become more dominant later and the child can become a writer, painter or his talents can lead him to a completely different job. In retrospect, we can only wonder where Peter’s path would take him and which of his many interests would become the crucial ones.
I remember the times when we were only children. Peter had fair hair and serious blue eyes, sometimes there was a boy’s mischief in them.
I remember that during our mutual strolls Peter used to walk looking down at the earth and so he often would find some “treasure”- specially marbled stone, pearl, even a coin. I don’t remember ever seeing him cry. That was beyond his dignity. But I used to cry very often and he was teasing me and called me “miss whiney”. In 1942 my brother left for Terezín where we met again after two years. He was suddenly tall, slim and a pale youngster with his childhood appearance gone.
Even in his early youth Peter was very eager for knowledge. He longed for education. Not even Nazis managed to weaken his desire to educate himself and get to the bottom of things. Especially after he was, just as all other Jewish children, released from school. Despite the obstacles, his desire for knowledge went to the extreme. He often used to plan his activities one month ahead and then he would balance in his detailed sheets what he was able to fulfill during that month. In the sheet written in September 1944 we can read notes he made shortly before his transport in Terezín. He left Terezín on 28th of September 1944 and headed toward his death in Auschwitz. This book mainly contains two of my brother’s diaries. Let me mention a few words regarding the diaries. Peter’s diaries contain short and abrupt notes from his daily life between 19th of September 1941 to 23rd of February 1942 in the first diary. The second one includes the notes from 24th of February to 9th of August until the time when he was transported from Terezín.
It is certain that Peter wrote his diaries only for himself without thinking that somebody else would ever read them. Here we can find a truthful testimony about Peter’s life in the family, his friends and acquaintances, about the environment where he grew up and all that in a period where this environment was being damaged day by day by a Nazi despotism.
Peter’s diary also works as a testimony about a method Germans were exercising during the Holocaust. Everything seems to work as usual: the Jewish religious community, Jewish hospitals, even schools. Only the Jewish freedom is becoming more and more limited. There are regulations about what Jews have to submit to, where they are not allowed to go and what they are restricted to do. More and more people are placed in transports. Suddenly someone from our relatives is missing, one pupil at school or a teacher. People help each other pack, help is organized for carrying the suitcases. Those, who remain, seem to continue to live their lives. The teacher, as a punishment, gives to inflect one hundred nouns.
People don’t understand what is happening, it is beyond their comprehension. When Mr. Mautner receives his summon to transport he goes to ask the religious community whether there was not a mistake. How can be this possible? He is over fifty and suffering from heart disease! People leaving Poland have no idea that the carefully packed suitcases for the trip serve only as an alibi. They might never see them again. They don’t know that maybe in a week they will be put to gas chamber, burnt or murdered some other way…
From the Eva´s diary:
27th September 1944
Peter and Paul are in the transport. They were summoned the day before yesterday. It was said that they would go the next day, but they are still here, because the train has not arrived. They are living in the Hamburg barracks.
… We hope that the transport will stay here. It is claimed there is a strike all over the protectorate and that is why the trains will not be coming. When I discovered that Peter was in it I started feeling sick. I ran away to the toilet and there I cried.
While I was with Peter I tried to calm myself and not cause him any more worries. They are supposed to go somewhere near Dresden. I am terrified there might be bombing and something might happen to the boys. Mum and Dad, I miss you very much especially now that my only help will leave. Who knows whether we would all meet again and reunite? Oh, I wish the war were finally over. It is too much for everyone! I wonder what my parents will say when they find out Peter is gone? They will know soon now. Karel Müller already wrote it to them. Poor Mum and Dad!
28th September 1944
The train is here and both of the boys are on board. Peter’s number is 2392 and Paul’s 2626. They are together in the same compartment. Peter is extraordinarily calm. Uncle Miloš4 admired him. I kept hoping the train would not come, even though I knew it would be otherwise. What is there to be done? We went to see them in the morning with Hanka (my cousin) to šlojzka (gate). It was a horrendous sight that I will never forget till my death. There were crowds of women, children and old men pushing one another so they could see their sons, husbands, fathers or brothers for the last time. The men were leaning out of the windows pushing and shoving each other to set eyes on their dear ones. The barracks were surrounded by policemen so nobody would run away. Ghetto guys were standing at the building to send away the people who got too close. The men were waving out of the windows and saying goodbyes to their relatives through the expressions on their faces. There was crying and weeping heard from all sides. We hurried to bring the boys two slices of bread. We did not want them to be hungry. I pushed myself through the crowd, crawled under the rope that was dividing the barracks from the crowd, and handed Peter the bread through a window.
23rd April 1945
Oh, God what is happening here these days I do not think I can even write. One afternoon (Friday 20th April) I was at work when I saw a goods train passing by. There were people sticking their heads out of the windows. They looked absolutely dreadful. They were pale, utterly yellow and green in their faces, emaciated, the sunken cheeks, cut and in prisoner’s clothes.. Their eyes were shining in a strange way… a hungry way. Straight away I ran into the ghetto (we were working outside) at the station. They were just getting out of the wagons if you can call it that. Only a few of them could even stand on their feet (bones covered by skin), the others were lying on the wagon floors completely exhausted. However, they had been on the way for two weeks without hardly anything to eat. They were going from Buchenwald and Auschwitz. These were mainly Hungarian and Polish people.
I thought I was going to faint because of how wrought-up I felt while I was looking for my Peter there. Some of the people who left from here returned. My little Peter was not among them though. And then one transport after another started coming. Hungarians, French, Slovaks, Polish (they were in concentration camps for seven years), Czechs came too. None of ours, and the number of dead! A bunch in every wagon, dressed in rags, naked or in broken wooden shoes. They took them away from the camps, because the Russians were coming. It was a horrendous sight hardly anybody ever experienced. I would like to put it all down on a paper, but I can’t, because I don’t have enough talent to do it. The poor people were throwing themselves at every piece of food. They were fighting hard over it. Some of them were suffering from typhus or other ugly diseases. And those who came from Litzmanstadt and Birkenau, the things they were saying! Auschwitz and Birkenau are the same. They are two camps right next to each other. It is occupied now. Every transport coming to Birkenau was robbed of everything and sorted out immediately. Children until the age of 14 and old people went straight to the gas chambers and were burnt. In addition, they were choosing more people at random about who to send to the gas. And what awful food! Coffee, soup, more coffee and so on. If people who went through it personally had not told me all about it I would not believe all that. I am so scared about what is happening to my little Peter, whether he is still alive or not.
The memories of Peter’s mother Mirjam Ginz
(Kirjat Jam, Israel):
I got married in Prague, where my husband had his mother and four siblings. Our two children, Peter and Eva were born there.
Peter was very popular among his schoolmates. I cannot recall a moment when he would behave violently or fight in front of the school as other boys did. Also the teachers liked him. Whenever there was a celebration such as a holiday or the beginning of a school year he represented some nice character that really fit his nature. I remember, for example, his role as King Artaxer with a golden crown on his head and a truncheon in his hand. The king banished his lazy wife Vašti from the country and married a modest girl Ester who then saved all the Jews from the evil king Haman. The teacher told me “How could I give him any character, but a good one? he would not fit for Haman at all”. Peter was a very sensitive boy and when our maid sang the song “The orphaned child” he started crying and asked her not to sing any more.
It was a long way to walk to school for Peter. We used to live in Stárkova Street at the Denis station and before Peter got to school he had to pass several busy and noisy streets and also two crossroads. First we used to take him and then he went with his schoolmate Felix Bardach who lived in the street next door. Felix was a very small and weak boy. I only happened to find out by chance that Peter used to carry his school bag too, in addition to his own heavy one.
Peter was also an enthusiastic reader. He was mainly interested in Jules Verne and he started to write as well. His first books were children stories and then he added illustrations. His sister Eva considered him to be her idol and started writing too.
It is hard to believe how modest Peter had been. Once before his birthday, I think it was his tenth, I tried to find out which present would please him most. He claimed he did not need anything, but later he admitted hesitantly that he would like something if it were at all possible. When I kept asking him he finally gave in and told me he would very much like in case “it is not too much trouble” to have one more pocket in his coat.
When we, as a Jewish family, could not keep a housemaid any more Peter was always trying to help. Those were the days when both children started wearing the yellow star. Soon they closed down the Jewish school and children had nowhere to learn. Peter began to indulge himself in long walks. He went all the way out of Prague to Šárka and wanted to be alone if he could. What was going through his head on those lonely walks and what kind of a dream world he was seeking? We were living in a fear and anxiety at the time. My husband, released from work, used to wash the dishes in a Jewish hospital and I was trying to make a living too while we only got very little for the rations. There was not even milk for the children.
For some time Peter was learning at the Jewish community how to clean the typewriters and provide small repairs. He was involved in these activities for some time.
When big groups of Jews were taken to Terezín, Peter looked out for old people and helped them even though he was not very strong himself. He used to carry their luggage near the place they were supposed to get on. It was strictly forbidden to even approach the platform. Sometimes they immediately seized a companion like that.
Peter left for Terezín in October 1942. He was very brave when saying his goodbyes not to make matters worse for me. He was even comforting me. ”Don’t cry mum and don’t worry about me I will return to you”. He had spent two years in Terezín where Eva could catch up with him. She was taken in May 1944 when she reached the age of 14. This was the procedure Germans had for children from mixed marriages.
While my children were in Terezín I was comforting myself they would come back. When I found out from acquaintances – it was on the Prague streets- that Peter was taken from there a deadly faintness came over me. I felt something terrible had happened.
This worry was confirmed ten years later – until then I was still hoping for a miracle. Jehuda Bacon, who left Terezín with the same transport heading to Auschwitz, told us that right at the Auschwitz station they were sorting the prisoners out into two sides: right and left. Those on the left went to the gas chambers. He saw Peter walking this way. You, about whom they say are merciful, how could you let this happen!
We try not to think, not to remember, otherwise we would not be able to lead our lives at all.
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