My maternal grandparents saw their homeland transformed by hatred and World War II.
Hana Kraus, 1925-2004, and Walter Beer, 1922-present, grew up on opposite sides of the Czech Republic, then referred to as Czechoslovakia.
My grandmother was raised in Plzen, home of the Pilsner Urquell brewery.
My grandfather, whose father fought in World War I, lived in Ostrava, a city close to the current Slovakian border.
My grandparents and many others were ousted from their communities as the Nazis invaded Europe and fueled an ever-present distrust of Jews.
Their possessions were taken, and they both eventually wound up in Theresienstadt, a ghetto and concentration camp.
The Nazis tried to make Theresienstadt, Terezin in Czech, look pleasant to observers in the outside world, going so far as to stage events to deceive Red Cross observers.
There weren’t any death showers in Theresienstadt, but more than 140,000 Jews were held captive there and lived in crowded conditions with little food. It was also a transit stop for transport to Auschwitz, with residents being sent to the showers when it was overcrowded.
Roughly 33,000 occupants died from malnourishment, harsh treatment and illness, and about 88,000 were transported to death camps.
My grandmother was separated from her parents and made to sew Nazi uniforms. My grandfather was featured in the Nazi propaganda film shot to deceive the outside world.
The photo below shows my grandfather sprinting in the video. This shot of the photo, displayed at The William Breman Jewish Heritage Museum in Atlanta, was taken by friend and CNN online producer Brett Roegiers.
After Czechoslovakia was liberated from the Nazis, my grandparents, who lost much of their family and friends to the war or illness, crossed the Atlantic.
They met in a Czech social club and married in New York, where they raised my mother and aunt.
My grandparents donated time and artifacts from their travails to The Breman in Atlanta, where they lived. They told me their tales of their Holocaust for one of my best high school articles.
I’m sorry to confess my little brother and I did not take full advantage of our grandparents’ knowledge of the Holocaust and the Czech Republic.
It’s strange, but my grandparents and others who lived through great tragedy don’t bring it up to their children or younger family members without prompting. And the younger generation shows a strange reluctance to ask them about the past.
My trip to the Czech Republic was inspired less by an urge to dig into my grandparents’ family and time in the Holocaust and more by a desire to know about the country’s history as a whole and to celebrate my little brother’s acceptance into college.
We had planned to visit Terezin and my grandparents’ hometowns, but we also planned to stay in Prague and other national sites.
Now, it seems we will be learning more about our Czech family than I expected.
Last month, my little brother and I sent a letter telling of our trip to relatives on my grandfather’s side of the family. We had never met them, and I wasn’t sure they lived at the same address.
A week ago, I received an e-mail from the grandchildren of Olga Zapalova, my grandfather’s cousin on his father’s side.
I’ve since been in touch with them about spending time in my grandfather’s hometown and meeting the family, and they’re putting us up in a flat for a night or two.
I’m excited to learn about the family who stayed behind when my grandfather left the country. And I look forward to telling them about our family here in the States.
Here are some more photos from The Breman by Brett Roegiers.
My grandmother’s identity book
Postcard from my grandmother’s aunts during World War II
