Ruth Meissner Part I: Europe

The first quarter of Ruth's life was spent in Europe, Czechoslovakia to be exact. Below you will see an excerpt from her oral history recently taken in Israel. All questions in parentheses (...) are mine.

I lived in one place but I was born in another place. I was born where my mother was born, so she went for delivery to her town, but were living on the Austrian border. The town where I was born is called Zed-n-a-i-m. Znaim. It’s a town, a small town. But I was only born there. My mother’s family lived there. My mother is one of ten children. She was the youngest. She went, of course, home to give birth to be ___. But we lived in a place not far from there, about maybe twenty miles, probably it’s a name that I don’t think you will— (laughs) OK, so B-o-h-r-l-i-zed, Bohrliz. That’s the name of the small town in Moravia not far from the big city that you know. That’s maybe twelve miles from there. It’s not far.

(Tell me, what is your birth date?)

Twenty-four of February, ’28. There I lived until I was ten. This was Sudetenland, where Hitler took—Hitler came in—it was September ’38, and then we left home. We just ran away.

(Where did you go?)

We just really ran away, because it wasn’t for sure if they will go there or they won’t, so we stayed until the last minute. We stayed before we left. My mother was very ill, and she died when I was eight years old. She’s buried there. She didn’t go through the Holocaust. She died before because she was ill. So my sister went to Berlin, to the Jewish Gymnasium because she is four years older and she didn’t want to study at home. My father, my grandmother, and me, we stayed at home. One day my father said, “OK, we are leaving.” We had a car. He took us out to the car. We took some things, I don’t know what he took. I was ten years old, so of course I remember the day we left, but I don’t remember any details.

We went to some small place and there we stayed for maybe two or three months, and there was a school that I went to one day. I came back and I said, “I’m not going to this school because they are all stupid." All the children, all the ages were together. And I didn’t really—I just didn’t go. So my father decided, “OK, but we have to go to a place where she has to go to school.” So we went to Bruenn. But of course the Germans came there, too, in March or April, I don’t know exactly, ’39 they took all of Czechoslovakia. And here we were, we were refugees. It wasn’t very easy, because we didn’t have some— we had no income. How my father managed, I really can’t tell you. I know only—

—one thing that sometimes he said. “You see?” he said. He took out the money and said, “That’s all what we have.” But he had a very good nature. He always said that when the time is at its worst, help is nearest. Something may come up tomorrow. Something will come up. So he was very optimistic. I don’t know, I’m also a very optimistic person, maybe I got it from him. But really—and then, one day, he just wasn’t here any more. They took him away on the street and then I stayed there alone.

(Did you see them take him away?)

No.

(Someone told you?)

No, no. We decided to meet at my aunt’s for Erev Yom Kippur. I was certain—I decided maybe I will start on the fast, I’m old enough. That was my imagination. But of course I didn’t, with everything mixed up. And then, one lady that I knew her but not very well, but she knew my father, she decided to take me and my grandmother to live with her. I really don’t know how would I have managed. Because all my family, all my aunts and uncles who were all refugees, they were taken away at the same time, to Poland, Majdanek, Treblinka. I don’t know what happened that we—all the refugees left. Why we stayed, I have no idea. But we stayed. My sister wasn’t with us. She was at hachshara, you know what is hachshara?

(Mm-hmm.) [A place where young European Jews were prepared for emigration to what was then Palestine.]

So she wasn’t home. But one day we got the invitation for the transport, I called her, I sent her a telegram, “You have to come home,” and then we were sent to Theresienstadt. Even there I was just lucky. Because I was fourteen, and we came there with our grandmother. But our grandmother, we were walking and she was too old, she couldn’t—they took her on a stretcher. We stayed in the ghetto. It was because of the Zionist organization, they decided that two young girls, we have to keep them here. Because most of the people just went straight—they took everything what the people brought and then they sent them away. And we stayed.

Then I started—I came to live after a few months in a children’s home. We started to work in the garden. We were growing vegetables for the Germans. And it was good, because we could steal from the garden. It was forbidden, of course, but we always somehow managed, not like this, because it was outside and we were always watched, and of course it wasn’t so easy, but somehow we always managed to take something in and then we’d change it for bread. But the feeling you can steal it because you don’t steal it from your own people, you steal it from—it was only for the Germans. No one in the ghetto saw vegetables or something like that. It didn’t exist then.

And then I stayed for three years. One nice thing: Erich had a big brother [Kurt], the oldest, one year older than Werner. And one day before we left for the ghetto, someone knocked at the door and suddenly there was a big young man, red hair. My sister is also red hair. And he met my sister. They met and they knew each other from the Zionist organization. And he came to say goodbye. He was in Prague. He knew we are going to the transport, so he decided to come to say goodbye. So I met Erich’s brother without, of course, knowing who he was. I never knew it. But I knew him. He came of course—like all the Czech Jews, he came to the ghetto.

Their relationship you know about [see entry on Werner Meissner Part III: October 19th] and how he didn’t survive, and it is a very interesting story. One day they brought children from Poland, from all the Polish ghettos, tons of children, to Theresienstadt, to the ghetto. They put them apart and they feed them and they clean them. They just—

—then we heard—thet couldn’t get there, they were separated—they wanted to exchange for each child to get—the Germans would send them to Palestine and they would get for each child a big car, the lorries.

(The tank?)

No, no, a car, big cars. That they will change for each child. And they took of course people who will take care of the children. There had to be grown-ups there. And one of the grown-ups was Erich’s brother, because he was already a doctor. He studied and he finished already, so they took him to accompany the children to go to Palestine.

(Who was going to give them the car?)

I don’t know who did it, but someone from the Germans. The Germans were interested. It was in 1943. They were interested. They wanted—someone did it, I can’t tell you who it was. But what happened, the mufti from Jerusalem, Al Hussein, he heard of it. Somehow it came to his—he suddenly knew. He went to Hitler and told him, “You know about this project?” Hitler told him no. He said, “You know these children will one day be soldiers. Don’t allow it.” And they sent all the children with all the grown-ups directly to Auschwitz, to the gas chambers. So this is how his brother ended. And I knew him [Kurt]. I knew him in the ghetto. We met. He was much older than I was, but he was a good friend of my sister. They were friends in the Zionist organization, so that’s very interesting how we [Erich] met and we married. (chuckles) It’s a story.

I stayed three years, we stayed until the end. After the war, we left the ghetto, my sister and me, and went to Prague. And only then we realized that no one of our family survived, because we of course didn’t know it before. My sister had a boyfriend in the ghetto she married. He came back, too, and they married and left Prague for another place, and I stayed in Prague. I decided I had to see what I’m going to do. To go back to school after so many years that I had no school, it was very difficult. I started to look at the books and started to study and it was such nonsense, something that I just couldn’t—I couldn’t concentrate. It was nothing. I said, “This is nothing for me.” And I left it.

One day I met a friend, and she told me, “What are you going to do?” And I told her, “I don’t know.” And she said, “You know, maybe you always are talking you want to be—” I always wanted to be a doctor, for children, a pediatrician. But of course it was impossible. I had to study too much. So I decided I’m going to nursing school. And it was also my cousin who came from Israel to Prague, he came with the Jewish army. They were in the English army, but they were separated in Palestine. The Jews had a separate unit, and they came to look for their families. I asked him, “I would like to come to Palestine then, but I don’t want to come to go illegal. I’m not willing to go to another camp. That I had enough.” He said, “You know what? Go and learn something. You are alone, you can come to the kibbutz.” But I decided kibbutz was nothing for me, I don’t want to live in a kibbutz.

So I went to the nursing school and I finished.

(In Prague?)

In Prague.

(Where did you live?)

There.

(By yourself?)

With all the others. I was the only Jewish girl in there. There was no Jewish girl in there. I lived with the other girls. Of course I had nothing really in common with them, but I was there.

(Were they nice to you?)

They were OK.

But there was a very interesting incident. What I am telling you is true, there was always something different, and I didn’t understand really why. They were students. It was a medical school from the university, the nursing and the medical school, it was all together. And the students always went away and were studying during the weekends, and they never asked me [to come along]. We were on very good terms, friendly and nice and everything, but they never asked me to come. And one day I said, “Why they are never asking me?” It was so strange, I didn’t understand. One day I decided I had to ask one of them. “You have to tell me the truth.” He didn’t know what to say. “Why are you never inviting me? I’m not ugly.” On contrary, I was very good-looking in that time. “So why are you never asking me? Tell me, what’s the reason?” He didn’t know what to say, but he promised he would tell me the truth, and then finally he told me, “Because you are Jewish.” I said, “So what? I’m not different. I am a young girl, seventeen, eighteen years old like all the others. What’s the difference if one is Christian, one in Jewish, maybe one is Muslim, what’s the difference?” So he said, “It’s a big difference. You are something else. You’re something better.” That was something that really amazed me. They would never dare to go with a Jewish girl, just to go out and have sex. This is understood. They would never dare to do it with a Jewish girl, because they always saw that Jewish girls have some other morality, some other—that’s what was in their minds. But he finally said it. OK, at least I know. “But I can come with you without having sex. I don’t think—” “Yeah, but this is what we do.” He was very—he really said it.

You can imagine you are something different. Even before—but before I couldn’t know, because I was too young. I was too small. Of course I couldn’t know. So I decided after I this, of course, where did I get the money, because I of course had no money. The Joint [American Joint Jewish Distribution Committee] in that time gave me each month money to live on and they paid the school, so I had something to live on. And when I finished, the war in Israel, the state came, independence, and I decided I’m going to Israel. My sister married and had a daughter and she was pregnant with the other child. I told her, “I’m going to Israel. I’m not staying here.” She was shocked. She said, “But we won’t separate.” Then one day she told me, “You know, we decided we are going to Israel.” Because the communists were already in Czechoslovakia, so it was already not so—the regime was not so nice, so they decided they will go, too. She came two weeks earlier, but we came more or less together.

Transcription by Sandy Adler, Adler Enterprises LLC