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This programme contains scenes which some viewers may find upsetting | 0:00:02 | 0:00:06 | |
Eva Clarke was born into a world that did not want her to exist. | 0:00:06 | 0:00:09 | |
Under the Third Reich, all Jewish babies were to be killed. | 0:00:17 | 0:00:23 | |
We had to sign a paper that the babies will be taken away - | 0:00:23 | 0:00:29 | |
that's first time I heard the word "euthanasia". | 0:00:29 | 0:00:32 | |
By the time of Eva's birth, her mother Anka weighed just five stone | 0:00:32 | 0:00:37 | |
and was on the brink of starvation. | 0:00:37 | 0:00:40 | |
I was getting thinner and thinner | 0:00:40 | 0:00:42 | |
but my stomach was getting bigger and bigger. | 0:00:42 | 0:00:44 | |
Eva was born at Mauthausen, a Nazi death camp, where hundreds of thousands lost their lives. | 0:00:45 | 0:00:52 | |
But remarkably both Eva and Anka survived. | 0:00:55 | 0:01:00 | |
Now for the first time on television they tell their full story. | 0:01:02 | 0:01:07 | |
Anka Bergman was born 94 years ago in Czechoslovakia. | 0:01:26 | 0:01:31 | |
Her birthday, the 20th of April - the same as Hitler's. | 0:01:31 | 0:01:35 | |
In 1936, she was a carefree 18 year old, studying law at the Prague Charles University. | 0:01:35 | 0:01:43 | |
I found out that you don't have to go to the lectures if you do law, that you can do it at home. | 0:01:43 | 0:01:49 | |
So that suited me to the ground. | 0:01:49 | 0:01:51 | |
I wanted company and boyfriends and to enjoy myself, which I did. | 0:01:51 | 0:01:55 | |
I didn't know that Hitler was coming but somehow I filled it | 0:01:55 | 0:02:00 | |
with only cinema and theatres and concerts and parties. | 0:02:00 | 0:02:05 | |
My father was German, German but Jewish. | 0:02:06 | 0:02:08 | |
When Hitler came to power he came to Prague in 1933. | 0:02:08 | 0:02:13 | |
He thought that was far enough to be safe. It wasn't, | 0:02:13 | 0:02:16 | |
but if he hadn't, he wouldn't have met my mother. | 0:02:16 | 0:02:18 | |
She met him in a night club where she was with a group of friends. | 0:02:20 | 0:02:24 | |
I was in the company of, well, let's say, ten mixed girls and boys and he joined us. | 0:02:26 | 0:02:32 | |
That was it, you know. | 0:02:32 | 0:02:35 | |
I think it was love at first sight. | 0:02:35 | 0:02:37 | |
When I saw him I thought, "I don't see right", | 0:02:41 | 0:02:43 | |
because he was the best-looking man I have ever seen in my life | 0:02:43 | 0:02:47 | |
and until today I haven't changed my mind, I must say. | 0:02:47 | 0:02:50 | |
I've heard it from people other than my mother that my father really was something of a stunner | 0:02:52 | 0:02:58 | |
and people would literally walk down the road and turn around, you know. | 0:02:58 | 0:03:03 | |
But I think they both look equally good. | 0:03:03 | 0:03:06 | |
We started dating but it was all very, very hectic and we got married | 0:03:07 | 0:03:12 | |
and everything looked sort of as well as it could, | 0:03:12 | 0:03:15 | |
because we still didn't realise what the Germans were doing. | 0:03:15 | 0:03:19 | |
Anka and Bernd were to enjoy a just a few months of happiness | 0:03:20 | 0:03:24 | |
before their blissful days of freedom would come to an end. | 0:03:24 | 0:03:28 | |
EXPLOSION | 0:03:30 | 0:03:31 | |
In 1939, the Nazis occupied Czechoslovakia. | 0:03:31 | 0:03:36 | |
On March 15th, the tanks rolled into Prague. | 0:03:39 | 0:03:43 | |
It was snowing and it was like the height of winter. | 0:03:46 | 0:03:51 | |
It was a catastrophe to see. | 0:03:53 | 0:03:56 | |
COMMENTATOR SPEAKS GERMAN | 0:03:56 | 0:04:01 | |
They marching through the main square, Wenceslas Square, in Prague | 0:04:01 | 0:04:05 | |
and we were all deadly desperate because we knew, well, this is it, what's going to happen? | 0:04:05 | 0:04:11 | |
COMMENTATOR SPEAKS GERMAN | 0:04:11 | 0:04:15 | |
The Nazis began to impose new rules and regulations on all Jews, | 0:04:16 | 0:04:21 | |
removing freedoms previously taken for granted. | 0:04:21 | 0:04:25 | |
The rules against the Jews started slowly, gradually. | 0:04:27 | 0:04:33 | |
You weren't allowed to go to the theatres and cinemas | 0:04:33 | 0:04:38 | |
and there was a curfew after eight. | 0:04:38 | 0:04:41 | |
You had to do it, but it was bearable. | 0:04:41 | 0:04:44 | |
She would also test these restrictions, or people did | 0:04:46 | 0:04:49 | |
and she did certainly, | 0:04:49 | 0:04:51 | |
and she did go to the cinema once when it was forbidden. | 0:04:51 | 0:04:54 | |
And I thought, "Blow it all, I must see this film", and I went to the cinema. | 0:04:54 | 0:05:00 | |
And she was sitting in the cinema watching the film when the Gestapo came in | 0:05:00 | 0:05:05 | |
and they started to go through the audience row by row, | 0:05:05 | 0:05:08 | |
looking at their ID papers and my mother was terrified | 0:05:08 | 0:05:11 | |
because she had no idea how they would react when they got to her | 0:05:11 | 0:05:14 | |
and when they saw the large "J" for Jew on her papers. | 0:05:14 | 0:05:17 | |
I was in the middle of the cinema in the middle row. | 0:05:17 | 0:05:21 | |
If I had stood up it would have been worse than waiting there, what's going to happen? | 0:05:21 | 0:05:28 | |
And they go through every row | 0:05:28 | 0:05:31 | |
and they stop the row in front of me. | 0:05:31 | 0:05:34 | |
I don't know why. | 0:05:34 | 0:05:37 | |
And they went. | 0:05:37 | 0:05:39 | |
And I sat there till the end because I didn't want to draw attention to me. | 0:05:39 | 0:05:45 | |
Then I came home and told my husband where I had been. | 0:05:45 | 0:05:48 | |
I thought he would kill me because he didn't know. | 0:05:48 | 0:05:53 | |
I didn't... They could have shot me, they could... | 0:05:53 | 0:05:56 | |
I don't know. | 0:05:57 | 0:05:59 | |
At this time most people had no idea about the lengths that Hitler and the Nazis would go to. | 0:06:01 | 0:06:08 | |
HE SPEAKS GERMAN | 0:06:08 | 0:06:11 | |
Faced with increasing discrimination, some Jews did choose | 0:06:14 | 0:06:17 | |
to leave Czechoslovakia, but the majority stayed. | 0:06:17 | 0:06:22 | |
We knew they were going to do something but... | 0:06:22 | 0:06:26 | |
as long as you don't experience it, you just think everybody is panicking. | 0:06:26 | 0:06:32 | |
I don't know. I really can't explain it to you. | 0:06:32 | 0:06:36 | |
But most of the Jews... | 0:06:36 | 0:06:42 | |
didn't leave. | 0:06:42 | 0:06:43 | |
In 1941, the Nazis implemented the next stage in Hitler's plan | 0:06:47 | 0:06:52 | |
and started transporting all Jewish people out of Prague. | 0:06:52 | 0:06:57 | |
In the November, Anka's husband received a card | 0:06:59 | 0:07:02 | |
instructing him to report to a warehouse near the railway station. | 0:07:02 | 0:07:06 | |
And a fortnight after him, I got a sort of postcard that I should come, | 0:07:08 | 0:07:14 | |
on that day, with 50 kilos of luggage. | 0:07:14 | 0:07:18 | |
And when she left, not only was she carrying her handbag | 0:07:18 | 0:07:21 | |
and her suitcase, she was also carrying a large box, a very large box. | 0:07:21 | 0:07:27 | |
I said to her, "What did you have in the box, didn't you have enough to worry about?" | 0:07:27 | 0:07:30 | |
I had a box with 50 doughnuts, | 0:07:30 | 0:07:34 | |
ordinary, plain doughnuts with jam in the middle. | 0:07:34 | 0:07:39 | |
I said, "Why doughnuts?" She said, "Because your father liked doughnuts." | 0:07:39 | 0:07:42 | |
My husband was very keen on them and I thought I would bring it for them, bring it to him. | 0:07:42 | 0:07:48 | |
There was one young German soldier, he could see that she was having difficulty carrying all her luggage, | 0:07:48 | 0:07:54 | |
well, mainly carrying the doughnuts, | 0:07:54 | 0:07:56 | |
and he said to her, "Es ist scheissegal, ob die Schachtel mitkommt", | 0:07:56 | 0:08:00 | |
which means, "I couldn't give a shit if that box goes with you or not." | 0:08:00 | 0:08:05 | |
He said it terribly, really. | 0:08:05 | 0:08:08 | |
He would have been no older than 20 years, but anyway. | 0:08:08 | 0:08:11 | |
But I managed to get it on the train. | 0:08:11 | 0:08:14 | |
I brought it to Terezin and my husband enjoyed them. | 0:08:14 | 0:08:17 | |
Anka had arrived at Terezin concentration camp. | 0:08:20 | 0:08:25 | |
The rest of Anka's family were also sent to Terezin, | 0:08:25 | 0:08:29 | |
as were thousands of Jews from all over Europe. | 0:08:29 | 0:08:33 | |
Anka and her husband Bernd had remained together, | 0:08:33 | 0:08:36 | |
but they were about to experience first-hand the brutality of the Nazi regime. | 0:08:36 | 0:08:42 | |
The primary function of Terezin was | 0:08:48 | 0:08:50 | |
as a transit camp for the notorious Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, | 0:08:50 | 0:08:56 | |
a grim truth successfully disguised in a Nazi propaganda film. | 0:08:56 | 0:09:01 | |
The reality of the camp was far more severe than the pictures suggest. | 0:09:06 | 0:09:11 | |
Food was scarce and living conditions tough | 0:09:11 | 0:09:15 | |
and those who were weak and not able to work were quickly transported on to Auschwitz. | 0:09:15 | 0:09:21 | |
Because my parents were young, strong and well capable of work, | 0:09:23 | 0:09:26 | |
so they remained in Terezin for three years. | 0:09:26 | 0:09:29 | |
And at the beginning we all thought it isn't too bad, we can take it, | 0:09:32 | 0:09:36 | |
and the Germans thought, we will show you how you can take it | 0:09:36 | 0:09:39 | |
and suddenly they took about 15 young men and hanged them | 0:09:39 | 0:09:43 | |
because they tried to smuggle a letter to their parents | 0:09:43 | 0:09:48 | |
and they caught one of them and 15 were hanged. | 0:09:48 | 0:09:52 | |
Sleeping arrangements at Terezin were strictly controlled. | 0:09:53 | 0:09:57 | |
Men and women were forced to live in separate barracks | 0:09:57 | 0:10:01 | |
but Anka found a way to meet regularly with her husband. | 0:10:01 | 0:10:06 | |
I managed to get pregnant. That was the biggest sin | 0:10:06 | 0:10:11 | |
we could have committed because there were segregation of sexes. | 0:10:11 | 0:10:17 | |
And I mean, one finds, one finds ways and means how one does the various things. | 0:10:17 | 0:10:23 | |
My mother stayed in the same barracks as I did. | 0:10:25 | 0:10:28 | |
She look at me, how and where?! ANKA LAUGHS | 0:10:28 | 0:10:33 | |
She laughed actually because in all that misery there, | 0:10:33 | 0:10:39 | |
she had a sense of humour. | 0:10:39 | 0:10:41 | |
And when I was a young teenager about, I don't know, 12, 13, | 0:10:43 | 0:10:47 | |
no doubt when it would have been at its most embarrassing, | 0:10:47 | 0:10:50 | |
I asked her how, how come she got pregnant? | 0:10:50 | 0:10:53 | |
She replied in a very clever way. | 0:10:53 | 0:10:55 | |
She said, "Under such circumstances you find comfort where you can | 0:10:55 | 0:10:59 | |
"and to hell with the consequences", end of story. | 0:10:59 | 0:11:01 | |
But to be Jewish and become pregnant under the Nazi regime | 0:11:04 | 0:11:08 | |
was a serious crime and there was a devastating consequence. | 0:11:08 | 0:11:13 | |
There were five couples in the same position as we, that they found out that we were pregnant | 0:11:13 | 0:11:21 | |
and we had to sign a paper that the babies, when they are born, will be | 0:11:21 | 0:11:27 | |
taken away and that's the first time I heard the word "euthanasia". | 0:11:27 | 0:11:32 | |
But we did sign it that the children will be taken away. | 0:11:35 | 0:11:40 | |
The children were born... | 0:11:43 | 0:11:45 | |
..but nothing happened and nobody knows why we had to sign it | 0:11:46 | 0:11:51 | |
and nobody knows why nothing happened. | 0:11:51 | 0:11:53 | |
My little boy was born in February 1944 | 0:11:54 | 0:12:00 | |
and he died of a natural death two months later of pneumonia. | 0:12:00 | 0:12:05 | |
But he wasn't killed, but on the other hand, | 0:12:05 | 0:12:09 | |
his death saved my life and Eva, of course, because I wouldn't be here to tell you the story. | 0:12:09 | 0:12:15 | |
Anka and Bernd's time at Terezin was running out. | 0:12:18 | 0:12:22 | |
At the end of September 1944, Anka discovered she was pregnant | 0:12:22 | 0:12:26 | |
for a second time but before she was able to tell her husband about the pregnancy, he was taken away. | 0:12:26 | 0:12:33 | |
Bernd was being sent to Auschwitz. | 0:12:36 | 0:12:39 | |
The next day, Anka volunteered to follow him. | 0:12:39 | 0:12:44 | |
They told us if you want to see your husbands so you can come of your own free will | 0:12:45 | 0:12:51 | |
and you will see them in a different ghetto. | 0:12:51 | 0:12:54 | |
I was one of the first ones to go voluntarily. | 0:12:54 | 0:12:58 | |
But I never saw him again. | 0:13:04 | 0:13:06 | |
She heard from an eyewitness, quite soon after the end of the war | 0:13:08 | 0:13:12 | |
that my father had actually been shot dead in Auschwitz on the 18th January 1945. | 0:13:12 | 0:13:18 | |
-He never knew about you? -No, he never knew that she was pregnant. | 0:13:18 | 0:13:22 | |
Although Anka had endured five years of Nazi brutality, | 0:13:25 | 0:13:29 | |
she was completely unaware of what was taking place behind the electric fences of Auschwitz. | 0:13:29 | 0:13:36 | |
I knew you were sent east, Auschwitz probably but I didn't, I didn't know any more. It didn't mean anything. | 0:13:37 | 0:13:45 | |
It meant it's in Poland and it can't be all that marvellous as Terezin was but we didn't know... | 0:13:45 | 0:13:52 | |
Nothing. | 0:13:52 | 0:13:54 | |
And so we arrived on the famous ramp, | 0:14:01 | 0:14:05 | |
we saw the chimneys spouting the smoke | 0:14:05 | 0:14:10 | |
and fire and the smell and it looked like hell. | 0:14:10 | 0:14:17 | |
We didn't know what was happening there. | 0:14:17 | 0:14:19 | |
Just the picture of those chimneys and those fire, I can't describe it. | 0:14:19 | 0:14:27 | |
It is unbelievable and indescribable and we all got frightened | 0:14:27 | 0:14:33 | |
and didn't know what of. | 0:14:33 | 0:14:35 | |
Our heads were shaved and they took all our clothes and we were naked there. | 0:14:36 | 0:14:42 | |
We slowly were sent into a barrack where they were showers | 0:14:42 | 0:14:47 | |
but we didn't know anything about any other showers, | 0:14:47 | 0:14:52 | |
so it didn't worry us and they were real showers | 0:14:52 | 0:14:55 | |
and we washed in the cold water and no towel and nothing | 0:14:55 | 0:14:59 | |
and we ran around there like naked and the men looking at us. | 0:14:59 | 0:15:04 | |
No, it was awful, that beginning. | 0:15:04 | 0:15:08 | |
We were frightened but we still didn't know of what. | 0:15:09 | 0:15:13 | |
And then we were sent to some other barracks where there were already other people, | 0:15:13 | 0:15:17 | |
it was cold and windy and horrible | 0:15:17 | 0:15:20 | |
and a friend of mine who was standing next to me | 0:15:20 | 0:15:23 | |
asked one of the girls who were there, "When will I see my parents?" | 0:15:23 | 0:15:28 | |
And they all started laughing like mad. | 0:15:28 | 0:15:31 | |
"You stupid cow", or who knows what not, "they are in the chimney by now", | 0:15:31 | 0:15:37 | |
and in that moment you knew what was happening there, | 0:15:37 | 0:15:41 | |
not how and what, but you knew they were burning the people in the chimneys. | 0:15:41 | 0:15:48 | |
My mother was in Auschwitz for ten days which was, you know, | 0:16:16 | 0:16:21 | |
although a short space of time, she said it really was hell on earth. | 0:16:21 | 0:16:24 | |
She said it was like Dante's Inferno. | 0:16:24 | 0:16:27 | |
People there, everybody... | 0:16:40 | 0:16:42 | |
stopped looking human somehow. | 0:16:42 | 0:16:46 | |
Anka's parents, her sisters, her brother-in-law and her nephew | 0:16:51 | 0:16:56 | |
had all been sent to Auschwitz | 0:16:56 | 0:16:58 | |
a long time before Anka and her husband. | 0:16:58 | 0:17:01 | |
And when they arrived there they were able to keep their luggage, they kept their clothes, | 0:17:03 | 0:17:07 | |
they weren't shaved, they weren't tattooed and they were sent to what was called a familienlage. | 0:17:07 | 0:17:12 | |
One or two of the wooden huts in Auschwitz-Birkenau | 0:17:12 | 0:17:15 | |
had families together and there was just one very cynical reason why. | 0:17:15 | 0:17:19 | |
And that was so that they could be forced to write postcards home. | 0:17:19 | 0:17:23 | |
And my aunt, my mother's oldest sister Denna, | 0:17:23 | 0:17:27 | |
she wrote a postcard to her cousin who still happened to be in Prague. | 0:17:27 | 0:17:31 | |
Shall I translate? | 0:17:31 | 0:17:33 | |
"My dear ones, I am here with my husband and sister and her son | 0:17:33 | 0:17:40 | |
"and we are all fine. | 0:17:40 | 0:17:43 | |
"I hope that you are all well and happy. Best wishes to... | 0:17:43 | 0:17:51 | |
"Yours, Denna" and so on. | 0:17:51 | 0:17:54 | |
The postcards had to be written in German so the Germans could censor them. | 0:17:54 | 0:17:58 | |
And my aunt was desperate to get a message out in code. | 0:17:58 | 0:18:02 | |
And the code word is in the address, in the first line of the address | 0:18:02 | 0:18:07 | |
where the lady to whom it was sent, her first name was Olga. | 0:18:07 | 0:18:11 | |
Well, the word "Olga" doesn't feature in the postcard | 0:18:11 | 0:18:14 | |
and where the word "Olga" should be is the word "Lechem". | 0:18:14 | 0:18:16 | |
The word "Lechem" is not German, it's Hebrew and it means "bread" | 0:18:16 | 0:18:21 | |
and my aunt was telling her cousin that they were starving. | 0:18:21 | 0:18:24 | |
Olga did receive the postcard, understood the message and sent a parcel. | 0:18:26 | 0:18:32 | |
But by the time the card had been posted, Anka's parents, sisters, | 0:18:32 | 0:18:36 | |
brother-in-law and nephew had all been killed. | 0:18:36 | 0:18:40 | |
Anka had arrived at Auschwitz pregnant with Eva and her life was in grave danger. | 0:18:43 | 0:18:50 | |
The Nazis assessed all inmates and decided who would live and who would die. | 0:18:50 | 0:18:55 | |
We went through these so-called selections where they picked people | 0:18:57 | 0:19:01 | |
who were most capable of eventually doing some war work. | 0:19:01 | 0:19:06 | |
Pregnant women were routinely sent straight to the gas chambers. | 0:19:07 | 0:19:13 | |
But, for now, Anka's pregnancy would go undetected. | 0:19:13 | 0:19:17 | |
She was selected to live. | 0:19:17 | 0:19:20 | |
We were given some food and some better clothes | 0:19:20 | 0:19:24 | |
and we were put on a train and sent away from Auschwitz. | 0:19:24 | 0:19:29 | |
And that was just marvellous. | 0:19:29 | 0:19:31 | |
The feeling that we were leaving Auschwitz alive, you just can't imagine. | 0:19:34 | 0:19:39 | |
It was heaven. | 0:19:39 | 0:19:41 | |
In October 1944, Anka was just three months into her pregnancy. | 0:19:42 | 0:19:48 | |
If discovered, she would be sent straight back to Auschwitz to a certain death. | 0:19:49 | 0:19:54 | |
But for now, the greatest threat to Anka and her unborn child was the lack of food and warmth. | 0:19:54 | 0:20:02 | |
We were like sardines again in that train and there was only one bucket | 0:20:02 | 0:20:05 | |
and it all started overflowing pretty quickly and no food and no water. | 0:20:05 | 0:20:11 | |
Anka was on her way to an armaments factory. | 0:20:13 | 0:20:16 | |
We went up a hill to a huge factory | 0:20:25 | 0:20:29 | |
and it opened the door and it was warm there. | 0:20:29 | 0:20:33 | |
And we saw and smelt the bed bugs. | 0:20:33 | 0:20:38 | |
I don't know if you have ever seen one, but they are little beetles | 0:20:38 | 0:20:42 | |
which wouldn't matter so much but they have that certain smell, | 0:20:42 | 0:20:47 | |
sort of sweet. Never mind! | 0:20:47 | 0:20:49 | |
I never saw it since and I hope, I hope not to smell it again, | 0:20:49 | 0:20:54 | |
but there were thousands of them and that meant warmth. | 0:20:54 | 0:20:58 | |
Anka was to spend the next six months riveting the tail fin | 0:20:59 | 0:21:03 | |
of the V1, the unmanned flying bomb, the notorious doodlebug. | 0:21:03 | 0:21:09 | |
Compared to Auschwitz the factory was a haven, | 0:21:09 | 0:21:12 | |
but Anka's life was still at risk. | 0:21:12 | 0:21:16 | |
I was getting thinner and thinner | 0:21:16 | 0:21:19 | |
but my stomach was getting bigger and bigger. | 0:21:19 | 0:21:23 | |
Discovery of her condition would have meant her immediate return to the gas chambers. | 0:21:25 | 0:21:30 | |
I perhaps am the only person, idiotic as I am, | 0:21:31 | 0:21:35 | |
who thought that I would get through it and I will come home, | 0:21:35 | 0:21:39 | |
never doubted it. | 0:21:39 | 0:21:41 | |
And seeing all these people going in the gas every day and every day and so on and so on | 0:21:41 | 0:21:48 | |
and being pregnant and the baby, I knew I was coming home | 0:21:48 | 0:21:52 | |
which is totally stupid. | 0:21:52 | 0:21:54 | |
But I lived with this idea. | 0:21:54 | 0:21:57 | |
By the February of 1945, Anka was seven months' pregnant | 0:21:58 | 0:22:03 | |
and was now in great danger of being discovered by the Nazis. | 0:22:03 | 0:22:08 | |
Miraculously, she would be spared the fate of the gas chambers. | 0:22:08 | 0:22:12 | |
At the end of the January, Auschwitz had been liberated by the Russians. | 0:22:13 | 0:22:18 | |
But there was now a new threat to Anka's life. | 0:22:20 | 0:22:23 | |
The Nazis had started to evacuate the camps and factories | 0:22:23 | 0:22:28 | |
to annihilate all living witnesses to the holocaust. | 0:22:28 | 0:22:33 | |
Anka was put on yet another torturous train journey, | 0:22:33 | 0:22:36 | |
heading south away from the advancing allies. | 0:22:36 | 0:22:40 | |
There was no food and no water and no nothing and we were in open coal wagons. | 0:22:41 | 0:22:48 | |
The train journey lasted three weeks and during this time many people lost their lives to hunger. | 0:22:49 | 0:22:56 | |
Anka was on the brink of starvation | 0:22:59 | 0:23:02 | |
and by now was nine months' pregnant. | 0:23:02 | 0:23:05 | |
Finally the train arrived at its destination... | 0:23:05 | 0:23:08 | |
..Mauthausen Death Camp. | 0:23:10 | 0:23:12 | |
At this very moment, Anka went into labour. | 0:23:12 | 0:23:18 | |
When my mother saw the name "Mauthausen" at the station | 0:23:18 | 0:23:22 | |
she was very shocked because as opposed to when she'd arrived in Auschwitz | 0:23:22 | 0:23:25 | |
not knowing what that was, this time she knew | 0:23:25 | 0:23:28 | |
because she had heard about this appalling place from very early on in the war. | 0:23:28 | 0:23:32 | |
And she says the shock was so great that she thinks it provoked the onset of her labour | 0:23:36 | 0:23:41 | |
and she started to give birth to me on that coal truck. | 0:23:41 | 0:23:46 | |
We went up the hill and I was sort of starting to give birth to the child | 0:23:46 | 0:23:52 | |
and there I stopped just before the opening of the main doors of Mauthausen | 0:23:52 | 0:23:58 | |
and then I had to climb down from that wagon and nobody helped me. | 0:23:58 | 0:24:04 | |
There was this Russian doctor who was with us and who you knew slightly, the prisoner. | 0:24:04 | 0:24:10 | |
And she was just passing. | 0:24:10 | 0:24:12 | |
I begged her to help me and she turned round and went. | 0:24:12 | 0:24:18 | |
I mean, a doctor. | 0:24:18 | 0:24:20 | |
The baby came out and we were still going for ten minutes, I think, | 0:24:21 | 0:24:26 | |
and then they called a doctor from the camp, the prisoner, | 0:24:26 | 0:24:31 | |
and he was a gynaecologist by pure fluke and he cut the baby off | 0:24:31 | 0:24:35 | |
and smacked its bottom and it was a healthy baby and I was in heaven. | 0:24:35 | 0:24:42 | |
Her arms were like my little finger. | 0:24:46 | 0:24:48 | |
I mean, she was tiny. | 0:24:48 | 0:24:50 | |
You didn't dare to touch her. | 0:24:50 | 0:24:52 | |
They think I weighed about three pounds. | 0:24:52 | 0:24:55 | |
I was wrapped in paper. | 0:24:55 | 0:24:57 | |
My mother just held me all the time. | 0:24:57 | 0:25:00 | |
Despite all odds Anka's baby had made it into the world | 0:25:01 | 0:25:06 | |
but at the worst possible moment. | 0:25:06 | 0:25:08 | |
The Nazis were desperately getting rid of all witnesses to their crimes. | 0:25:10 | 0:25:15 | |
In the dying days of the war, thousands were shot, gassed and starved to death. | 0:25:15 | 0:25:22 | |
Anka and her new-born baby were on their way to the gas chambers of Mauthausen. | 0:25:22 | 0:25:28 | |
But then, another miracle. | 0:25:28 | 0:25:31 | |
The Germans disappeared. | 0:25:32 | 0:25:36 | |
Nobody threw them out, no-one, suddenly they were gone. | 0:25:36 | 0:25:40 | |
There are two reasons why we survived and the first | 0:25:47 | 0:25:50 | |
is that on the 28th April, 1945, | 0:25:50 | 0:25:53 | |
the Nazis had dismantled the gas chamber in Mauthausen. | 0:25:53 | 0:25:58 | |
Well, my birthday is the 29th. | 0:25:58 | 0:26:00 | |
So presumably had my mother arrived on the 26th or 27th, | 0:26:00 | 0:26:04 | |
again, I wouldn't be sitting here today. | 0:26:04 | 0:26:06 | |
The second reason we survived was because a few days after my birth | 0:26:06 | 0:26:10 | |
the American Army liberated the camp. | 0:26:10 | 0:26:12 | |
My mother reckons she wouldn't have lasted much longer. | 0:26:14 | 0:26:17 | |
Anka's four years of Nazi imprisonment were finally over. | 0:26:19 | 0:26:23 | |
When she was strong enough she and baby Eva returned home to Prague. | 0:26:25 | 0:26:30 | |
Anka was free at last, but she and Eva were now alone in the world. | 0:26:31 | 0:26:36 | |
CELEBRATORY MUSIC PLAYS | 0:26:37 | 0:26:40 | |
That was the worst moment of the whole war for me, to arrive in Prague | 0:26:47 | 0:26:52 | |
which I wished all through the time, "When will I be home?" | 0:26:52 | 0:26:56 | |
and there was no home. | 0:26:56 | 0:26:58 | |
I come from a big family and there was nobody, nothing. | 0:27:00 | 0:27:05 | |
I didn't know where my next meal will come from because | 0:27:05 | 0:27:09 | |
I had no money, no clothes and a little baby. | 0:27:09 | 0:27:14 | |
But nevertheless she still had a vestige of optimism in the back of her mind and she asked somebody | 0:27:14 | 0:27:21 | |
to give her some money to go on the tram. | 0:27:21 | 0:27:23 | |
She thought that if anybody had survived, there was a chance it would be her cousin. | 0:27:23 | 0:27:28 | |
I ring the bell and the door opens and the whole family waits for me there | 0:27:30 | 0:27:36 | |
and say, "Where have you been? We heard you are coming to us." | 0:27:36 | 0:27:41 | |
And they were just marvellous. | 0:27:41 | 0:27:45 | |
Now I'm going to start to cry. | 0:27:45 | 0:27:47 | |
I can't... | 0:27:55 | 0:27:57 | |
Well, I asked them if I could stay a few days and they said, "Of course." | 0:28:11 | 0:28:16 | |
And a few days ran to three-and-a-half years | 0:28:16 | 0:28:20 | |
and it was just, I found a new family. | 0:28:20 | 0:28:24 | |
Other survivors returned home to discover they had lost everything and everyone. | 0:28:27 | 0:28:33 | |
Many committed suicide. | 0:28:33 | 0:28:36 | |
All my other friends, whom I met in the road, sort of street, | 0:28:37 | 0:28:41 | |
they walked about like flotsam because there was nobody nowhere for many of them. | 0:28:41 | 0:28:48 | |
And I had this fantastic, growing thing. | 0:28:48 | 0:28:52 | |
It's unbelievable how much it gives you and how much you can take | 0:28:54 | 0:28:59 | |
for somebody else. | 0:28:59 | 0:29:02 | |
She was the greatest help of all, without knowing it. | 0:29:02 | 0:29:08 | |
A mother's love and all that. | 0:29:08 | 0:29:10 | |
It's the most potent thing in life, I find. | 0:29:10 | 0:29:17 | |
You get over everything. | 0:29:19 | 0:29:21 | |
In 1948, Anka remarried and the family moved to Britain. | 0:29:26 | 0:29:32 | |
Today the woman who gave birth in a concentration camp | 0:29:32 | 0:29:36 | |
has two grandsons... | 0:29:36 | 0:29:38 | |
That is lovely. | 0:29:39 | 0:29:41 | |
..and three great-grandchildren. | 0:29:41 | 0:29:44 | |
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd | 0:30:03 | 0:30:06 |