Holocaust survivor shares her mother’s experiences of courage, perseverance during horrors of war

  • Published
  • By Staff Sgt. Brian Stives
  • 501st Combat Support Wing Public Affairs
RAF ALCONBURY, United Kingdom --  Eva Clarke, the daughter of a Czech mother and German father, both of whom were Jewish, spoke at the Holocaust Remembrance Luncheon at the RAF Alconbury Community Activities Center April 8. She shared her parents' experiences of being kept prisoner for three years in German concentration camps, saying her parents weren't her only family members suffering at the hands of the Nazi soldiers.

"During World War I, my grandfather was in the German army, and received the Iron Cross (the Iron Cross was awarded for bravery in battle). In World War II, however, because he was Jewish, he was put into a concentration camp at Terezin," she said.

"My parents (Bernd and Anka) spent three years at Terezin, until the end of September 1944, when my father was sent to Auschwitz. The next day, my mother volunteered to go to be with him, but she never saw him again. She later found out that he'd been shot dead Jan. 18."

A short time before her parents became prisoners of war, the Germans made it illegal for Jews to do many things, one of which was as minor as going to the movies.

"When someone forbids you to do something, it makes you more determined to do it anyway, and that's what my mother did - she went to watch a film," Eva said. "But it so happened that was the day the Gestapo came into the cinema, and immediately stopped it."

Eva explained how the Gestapo soldiers started going through every row of seats, inspecting everyone's papers.

"My mother was terrified about what they would do to her if they saw her papers, which were marked with a big 'J' for 'Jew,' she said. "But for some reason they stopped right at the row in front of where my mother was seated, and left the cinema without ever looking at her papers. To this day, I keep asking her, 'What was the name of the film you went to see that day?' However, she still doesn't remember - the experience terrified her so much, she blocked it out of her mind. When we first came to live here when I was very young, for a long while my mother went to the cinema every day - just because she could."

As Eva grew up, she learned more about her mother's amazing story.

"I asked my mother how she was taken prisoner, because I, like almost everyone else, imagined that in the middle of the night, German soldiers with guns came banging on the door, dragging people from their beds. But she said it was nothing like that. She told me a card came in the post saying that on a certain day, at a certain time; they had to report to a warehouse in Prague, near one of the mainline railway stations.

"When my parents received their cards, they were also told to take a small suitcase, and advised to take warm clothing, and pots and pan," she said. "When my mother went to report to the Germans, not only was she carrying her handbag and a suitcase, she was also carrying a large cardboard box, held together by a piece of string. When I asked her what on earth she had in the box, she said she was carrying three dozen doughnuts, 'Because your father liked doughnuts.' For her, it was a very natural thing to do, as she had no idea where their next meal was coming from."

Eva said her mother spent three days and nights in the warehouse; she and the others slept on the floor, weren't given much food or water, and on the final day were marched to the railway station by the German soldiers.

"There was one young German soldier who knew he had a bit of power, and he wielded it," she said. "He didn't harm them physically; he was just a bit sarcastic. My mother was having great difficulty carrying her luggage and the box of doughnuts - the moisture from the doughnuts was making the cardboard soft, and the whole box was coming apart.

"The soldier said (in German), 'I couldn't give a (expletive deleted) if that box goes with you or not.' Implying that it wasn't going to do much good where she was going. He was just twisting the knife, metaphorically."

When the families arrived in Terezin, they were immediately split up. Men went to one part, women to another, and children to another. They were able to meet up sometimes during the day, but largely they led separate lives.

"My mother was fortunate enough to be given a job," she said. "It didn't pay, but it did make her life a bit easier. Her job was working with the man who had the responsibility of distributing the food. Which meant my mother had access to food. When I say access to food, she would actually steal it - a potato, a carrot; anything to make a more substantial soup to feed 15 members of her closest family. That was her main worry - how on earth was she going to find food for all those people, amongst whom were her parents."

Eva said it was during 1943 that her mother discovered she was pregnant.

"When I was about 10 or 12, I asked her how come she'd gotten pregnant, and she said, 'in the circumstances, you found comfort where you could, and to hell with the consequences.'"

Because the Germans were trying to annihilate every member of the Jewish race, to become pregnant in a concentration camp was considered a crime punishable by death.

"When the Germans discovered my mother was pregnant, they made my parents sign a document agreeing that when the baby was born, he or she would have to be handed over to be euthanized - but what they really meant, was murdered," she said.

Eva's brother, George was born in February of 1944. He wasn't taken away from her parents, but died of pneumonia just two months later.

"His death meant my life," said Eva. "Had my mother arrived at Auschwitz holding my brother in her arms, she would have been sent straight to the gas chamber. Because she'd arrived and wasn't holding a baby (although she was pregnant again with me, but hadn't told anybody else) she lived to see another day."

Retelling her mother's personal tale, Eva told those at the ceremony that when her mother arrived at Auschwitz, she was so bewildered and frightened that she just couldn't begin to imagine what horrors the place held.

"She asked some of the women there, 'What goes on here? What happens here? When will I see my parents again?' But the women just laughed at her in a hysterical fashion, as though they'd lost their minds. But they hadn't. They just couldn't understand that anybody arriving in Auschwitz didn't know what went on there.

"They said, 'Well, we'll all go up in smoke, and you'll never see your parents again.' She just couldn't believe what they were saying."

Her mother was sent out of Auschwitz to a slave labor camp near Dresden, Germany. She was put to work on the VI unmanned flying bomb (also known as the Doddlebug), riveting on the tail fin.

"My mother spent the next six months there, becoming more obviously pregnant, which became very dangerous for her," said Eva.

The Allies started raids when her mother was in the slave labor camp. She said the Germans locked all the prisoners away during the raids, but the prisoners were pleased because they knew it was the Allies coming for them - even though they knew the next bomb could fall on them.

"When my father-in-law, who was from South Wales and a navigator in the British Royal Air Force, first met my mother, he was absolutely devastated that he could have killed my mother because he was actually taking part in the raids," Eva said.

At the end of March and the beginning of April 1944, the Germans started evacuating the camps. According to Eva, they wanted to leave as few living witnesses as possible as to what actually happened inside those camps. That's when the notorious death marches took place.

"My mother was on a coal truck for three solid weeks. It only stopped to throw off the dead bodies. One time when it stopped, my mother happened to be standing by the door, when a farmer walked up to the truck," she said. "My mother was a scarcely-living, pregnant skeleton - she weighed about five stone (70 pounds).

"The farmer brought her a glass of milk, but a Nazi officer standing next to her raised his whip, ready to beat her if she accepted it. However, for some reason, he changed his mind, lowered his whip and let her drink the milk. To this day, she maintains that's what saved her life."

As the coal truck arrived in Mauthausen, Eva's mother saw the town's sign and became very frightened, because this time she realized what was going to happen to her there. It was at that moment when she started giving birth to Eva.

Somehow, they both survived the experience to share their tale today.

Eva said there were two reasons for that. Firstly, on April 28, 1945, the Germans blew up the gas chamber at Mauthausen - the day before she was born. The second reason was that three days after her birth, the U.S. Army liberated the camp.

Later, newborn baby Eva went with her mother back to Prague, to live at her aunt's house.

"My mother asked if we could stay for three weeks - we stayed for three years," Eva said.

In 1948, Eva's mother was ready to consider marriage once more, as she knew for a fact that her husband had been shot dead in Auschwitz. Her stepfather, who was also Czech and Jewish, had previously escaped from his home country to England, joined the RAF and later met her mother. The family then moved to South Wales, where they settled, and Eva later met her husband.

Eva's perspective of her mother's life during the war tells of the strength and courage Anka possesses, which helped get her through those terrible atrocities.

Today Eva lives in Cambridge with her mother who is 95. Eva is now retired and spends her time visiting schools, telling children the story of how she came into the world.

For her it is important to commemorate all the victims of the Holocaust, "To remember all of those thousands and thousands and thousands of people who died, who were killed in the Holocaust, and especially all those thousands of people who've never ever had one single person remember them because all their families were killed," she said.

She also has a huge amount of admiration for her mother.

"I can't believe she actually went through it. But, you know, she always says that 'nobody knows what they can withstand until they have to.' And fortunately, most of us are not put to the test."