Anicka Novak: Lidice Survivor, Essay Example

Perhaps it didn’t feel like it then, but now I look at the 1920s as glorious years. We worked hard, then, but at night we could sleep. We had the luxury of attending St. Martin’s[1], a church, which was the most monumental village in Lidice. Our children laughed as they played among the trees.[2]Sometimes we would argue amongst each other, and I would feel quite bad afterward. But in the face of what I was to go through, every argument – even the ones that seem monumental – seems like nothing now.

I was wife to Vaclav, a tireless miner, with a broad grin, a warm heart. He was a dedicated father, who doted on our son Capek. Capek was a smart, good-hearted boy, who made friends easily and worked diligently at his studies. When he was just eighteen, we sent him to live near his aunt at a small university near Prague.  Soon after, my heart broke for the first time. It was 1939, and I had purchased Capek some smart new shoes for Christmas. We were looking forward to having him home for a visit in just a month. I was already planning some of his favorite meals. But it was not to be.

On November 17, Capek, along with 1200 other university students were taken to a concentration camp.[3]When I heard the news, I felt as if as if I were strangling. My heart pounded, and every inch of me rebelled.Vaclav was devastated. He could not eat, could not sleep and did not bathe. Our house took on the smell of an animal, but I hardly cared, for my mind was so much on Capek. But we never had any word. No one would tell us where he had been taken. I began talking to some of the other mothers who had had children taken away about finding a way to bring our sons back, but the Nazis warned us not to intervene.[4]

For two years, my husband and I clung desperately to one another, hoping that somehow, our son would come home to us safely, but feeling ashamed of the doubt in our hearts. The taste of tears became as familiar to me as my own saliva. But this was only the beginning. For the next two years, the Germans oppressed us.  When Vaclav publicly voiced his outrage about what had happened to Capek he was charged with inciting unrest.He returned home, beaten brutally by a man everyone called “The Hangman.”[5]

The Hangman was assassinated soon afterward, and Vaclav and some of his friends were accused of having ties to the assassin. There would have been rejoicing in Lidice if any of us had had a chance to rejoice. But the Germans tore our families apart, separating men from women and children. They took Vaclav away on June 9^th, to a farm, and murdered him in cold blood, along with every man in our village. I was dragged[6] from my home, and sent, with the other women of the camp to Ravensbrook – a place even uglier than its name. Lidice itself was burned to the ground and erased from record.

On my first day at Ravensbrook, I was horrified to see a woman pulling a cement roller around a track. The guards made her struggle and pull until she could not anymore and she fell over and died.Soon, I was walking in her shoes. For three years, I spent my life working, day and night, night and day. If I paused for a moment, my guard would beat me so severely, that work began to feel like an oasis. We had no privacy, even when we had to go to the bathroom. I felt ashamed every day – not only because of my nakedness, but also because I had not struggled hard enough to keep Capek from a similar fate. Hunger gnawed at me day, after day, often making me feel nauseous and weak. Sometimes, we did not eat at all, but if we were lucky, we might get a miniscule piece of bread and a little broth.[7] Still, day after day, the women I knew died. My face, which had once been beautiful enough to win me not a few suitors, dried up and began to look hollow. Laughter became a foreign noise. But the worst part was hearing and seeing what happened to our children. Day after day, they were forced to labor alongside us. We had no food to give them, and they would waste away before our eyes. Some of them were burnt up in fires. They sterilized many of the daughters of our Polish women and forced our pregnant women to abort their unborn[8]. I tried to comfort one, Maria, but she lost her mind and was shot on the spot. For me efforts at consoling her, I received a turn at the roller.

The camp constantly smelled of urine and excrement, but we tried not to flinch or gag, less it lead to our deaths. In April of 1945, I felt sure I would die. With hardly any meat left on my bones, I was forced to march mile, after mile, as the Germans tried to march to our deaths But just as I had resolved to kill myself by attempting a futile escape, I heard a sound that might as well have been an angel singing – a Russian accent.[9]

Bibliography

The American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise. “Ravensbruck.” Jewish Virtual Library. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/Ravensbruck.html (accessed 8 Aug/2011).

Associated Press, “Czech Students Sent to Concentration Camp.” The Tuscaloosa News, 20 Nov. 1939. A2. (Google News Archive)

Associated Press. “Nazis make concentration camp for 240,000 Jews in Czech town.” The Montreal Gazette, Vol. 173 No. 63.(1944): 12. (Google News Archive)

Associated Press. “Witness of Lidice Atrocity Feared a Victim of Gestapo,” The Milwaukee Journal, 24 Sep. 1943, A3. (Google News Archive)

Parris, John A. “Killing of Nazi `Hangman’  Increases Reprisals in Czechoslovakia,” The Pittsburgh Press, 4 June 1942. A1 (Google News Archive)

“The Last Man of Lidice,” Lewiston Morning Tribune, 5 Oct. 1943. A4. (Google News Archive)

Paterson, Tony. “Survivors pay tribute to those who died  in Nazi concentration camps,” The Independent, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/survivors-pay-tribute-to-those-who-died-in-nazi-concentration-camps-489694.html (accessed 8 Aug. 2011).

Wechsberg, Joseph and Morowitz, David A. Trifles make perfection: the selected essays of Joseph Wechsberg (Jaffrey: David R. Godine, Publisher, 1999): 271.

[1] Associated Press, “Witness of Lidice Atrocity Feared a Victim of Gestapo,” The Milwaukee Journal,24 Sep. 1943, A3.

[2] Joseph Wechsberg and David A. Morowitz, Trifles make perfection: the selected essays of Joseph Wechsberg (Jaffrey: David R. Godine, Publisher,  1999), 271.

[3] Associated Press, “Czech Students  Sent to Concentration Camp,” The Tuscaloosa News, 20 Nov. 1939, A2.

[4] Ibid.

[5] John A. Parris, “Killing of Nazi `Hangman’ Increases Reprisals in Czechoslovakia,” The Pittsburgh Press, 4 June 1942, A1.

[6] “The Last Man of Lidice,” Lewiston Morning Tribune, 5 Oct. 1943, A4.

[7] Associated Press, “Nazis make concentration camp for 240,000 Jews in Czech town,” The Montreal Gazette,Vol. 173 No. 63, 20 March 1944, 12.

[8] The American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise, “Ravensbruck,” Jewish Virtual Library, http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/Ravensbruck.html (accessed 8 Aug/ 2011).

[9] Tony Paterson, “Survivors pay tribute to those who died in Nazi concentration camps,” The Independent,http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/survivors-pay-tribute-to-those-who-died-in-nazi-concentration-camps-489694.html (accessed 8 Aug. 2011).