“My Kiddos”
Hi. So, it’s been a while since I’ve talked about “My Kiddos”.
In 2023, I was approached by Bill Orlin, a Holocaust Survivor, who asked me if the kids I was talking about, were my kids.
I told him, “No”.
He asked me again and I answered, “yes.”
“YES! THEY ARE YOUR KIDS!” He said, as he explained, the way I spoke about them (the kiddos), seemed like I was talking about my own kids. For context, I don’t have my own kids.
MY CZECH BOYS : OTTO, TOMAS AND PETR
In 2010, three amazing Czech boys found me.
Otto Wolf (Found me in Jan. 2010)
Tomas Kulka (Found me in March. 2010)
Petr Ginz (Found me in Feb. 2010)
When these boys “found me,” they already knew that I was going to be “all about them.” I was then, and I still am now. These boys have saved me in ways you cannot even imagine. Their love towards me, is beautiful and I love them right back.
Otto Wolf (1927- 1945) :
Otto Wolf was born on June 5, 1927 in Mohelnice, Moravia, Czech Republic. He was the youngest of the three siblings.
Otto was twelve years younger than his brother, Kurt and seven years younger than his sister, Felicitas. The older siblings doted on their little brother and they did everything they could to make him happy, which was not hard, they had a very happy childhood together.
Otto really looked up to his siblings. He thought Kurt was an outstanding man and sometimes wished he could study medicine like his brother. But, Otto had other plans with his life. From what I’ve been able to find on Otto, he was a very lively boy, who was kind to everyone. He was a curious boy, who asked a lot of questions and would read books to find his answers. He was interested in current events, writing and being with friends. He always had a gift with words. He loved to write and tell stories. As Felicitas remembered, “He was a talented young man, who loved to write poetry”. Otto’s poetry did not survive the war, however his diaries did.
Otto grew up Jewish, but prewar, was not very religious. After Otto was born, the family moved to Olomouc. During the war, their father had said that it would be best for them to observe Jewish holidays and pray.
According to a Holocaust website, they stated that Otto’s demeanor was soft and gentle. He was admired among the local boys and made friends easily. According to some information that I have found, Otto was a boy that was handsome, well dressed and always kind to those around him. Girls loved him and the boys envied him.
Otto’s family lived in an apartment in Olomouc, NO.8 Smetanova. He was a very helpful boy, who did not like confrontations. He was a boy who helped his parents with chores and would discuss current events. He was always up to date on current events. He observed things and took notes on everything.
Otto’s diary was found to be unique and different from other Jewish diaries that were written during the Holocaust, such as Moshe Flinker and Anne Frank.
Otto’s life was threatened by the Nazis when they invaded the Czech Republic in March of 1939. The Jews of the Czech Republic were already a close community, now they were all in danger. In 1940, the Wolf family uprooted themselves from Olomouc to a little apartment in the small town of Trisce.
Otto was in eighth grade when the Nazis made it illegal for Jews to attend school. He was no longer able to go to school. Otto went to work as a locksmith with Mr. Alois Kousalík, repairing bicycles and locks.
Otto’s family were trying to live off of what they had. Their dad had lost his job as a successful salesman, and was living off the pensions his grandfather left behind. Felicitas went to work as a farmhand, Kurt was already in the Soviet Union and Otto, did his best as a locksmith. He gave what little he made to his parents to help with the rent.
In June of 1942, after Otto turned fifteen, they received their deportation notices.
This is where Otto’s life in hiding begins.
Otto packed a bag; with him he brought some notebooks and pens and refills (since he used a fountain pen to write).
How many journals did Otto bring with him? Well, it’s not certain how many, but apparently, he brought about three to four since when Felicitas donated them to the USHMM in 1995, there were three to four volumes of diaries (not counting Felicitas’s entries). What makes Otto’s diaries different from other diaries written during the Holocaust, is that Otto was very good at keeping track on how long the family had been in hiding. He would calculate the number of weeks they had been in hiding. He always noted Jewish holidays or even Christian holidays. He noted when Christmas or New Years was or any other important event.. He also wrote down that every morning they prayed.
Otto began his diary on the day the family was to go to the deportation site, which was his old school in Olomouc-Hodolany.
They went by buggy and horse. He wrote his first entry on June 22, 1942.
“June 24, 1942. Wednesday, first week
We depart Tršice at 2 P.M. en route to Olomouc. We are being moved out. Josef Lón takes us, because Mrs. Zdařilová could not get anyone else. Farewells are tough, and we are all quite upset. We make good time, and get to Olomouc around 4 P.M. Before we left Tršice, I turned in our apartment key at the district office, and also got identification papers for Licka [Felicitas, Otto’s sister]. We get off in Olomouc-Hodolany and tell Lón that we are going to see a doctor and some friends. We enter an apartment building. Just to make it look legitimate, Dad asks where Mr. Hanzlík lives. We rip the stars from our clothes right away. Around 4:30 P.M., we leave Olomouc-Hodolany to go back to Tršice. Lón had turned in the packages at the school, and we go on foot. We march tirelessly until 11:45 P.M. — we only take about an hour of rest en route. We go through Veliký Týnec around 7 P.M. Anyway, we reach the forest around midnight. Slávek had already been here with the backpacks, but because we are so late, he had gone back with them and then they carted the sewing machine and the box with stuff that has been prepared to the house of Zdařil the painter. We don’t sleep much — we just lie there. We feel like we’d been whipped.``
Otto’s family were helped by Felicitas’s then boyfriend and family friend, gardener, Jaroslav “Slavek” Zdaril. Otto’s feelings of Slavek were different than Felicitas’s.
Slavek had to be careful in how he presented the food and supplies to the Wolf’s, as he didn’t want anyone to see what he was doing. Sometimes, he did not show up at all, leaving Otto and his family without food or supplies for days. However, he did supply the Wolf’s with an electric cooker that helped cook their meals. They were supplied with dishes, utensils and other things for cooking.
But Slavek’s relationship with Otto was a little tricky. Otto was very protective of Felicitas (who he refers to in his diary as Lici or Licka, his nicknames for her). Slavek would fight with her and Otto would get defensive. Otto tried his best not to have a fist fight with Slavek. But he would throw words with Slavek, that could have caused fights. But Otto, knowing his gentle nature, was trying to keep the peace among the family. He had said in his diary on July 25,1943, “Well, that’s the kind of back-stabbing jerk our Slávek is!” Otto was not the biggest fan of Slavek and was terribly upset and mad when Slavek slapped Felicitas (April 3, 1944). The scene had angered Otto, and he wanted to fight, but Otto, being a pacifist, and gentle, had decided he’d better not. He was a boy who knew how to pick his battles, and seeing how Slavek “had one too many”, there was no use in trying to fight a man who would regret his actions in the morning. The problem with Slavek, is that he was protecting the family, due to his love for Felicitas, but once Felicitas’s feelings changed, so did Slavek’s. Otto also noted in his diary “Slavek left me a nasty note.” Slavek’s relationship with the Wolf’s exploded in the spring of 1944. He wrote on April 13, 1944:
“Dad leaves a letter in the hut, stating that, because of his violent behavior, Slávek has forced us to look for a safer environment, that we succeeded in finding it, and that Dad and Slávek will meet again after the war to settle accounts. “
Otto’s diaries, unlike Anne Frank’s, describe his daily routine, not much about his personal feelings. As his sister once said “My brother did not need to write down his feelings, for those he remembered. It was the day-to-day things he was afraid to forget.” In the diary, if you ever get the chance to read it, there are lots of “facts” about their day. He was very particular on writing about the food they were eating, and what the weather was like that day. In the winter, Otto and his family nearly froze to death. In the springtime, they were able to get warm and, in the summer, they were very hot, but they made sure they kept cool.
Otto’s diary is very different from Anne Frank’s. Though they are compared, and people like to assume that their diaries read the same, I can assure you they do not.
“WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 4, 1943
Dear Kitty
Nine o’clock. After Peter’s finished, it’s my turn for the bathroom. I wash myself from head to toe, and more often than not I find a tiny flea floating in the sink (only during the hot months, weeks or days). I brush my teeth, curl my hair, manicure my nails and dab peroxide on my upper lip to bleach the black hairs — all this in less than half an hour. Nine-thirty. I throw on my bathrobe. With soap in one hand, and potty, hairpins, panties, curlers and a wad of cotton in the other, I hurry out of the bathroom. The next in line invariably calls me back to remove the gracefully curved but unsightly hairs that I’ve left in the sink.
Approximately three o’clock. I have to get up to use the tin can under my bed, which, to be on the safe side, has a rubber mat underneath in case of leaks. I always hold my breath while I go, since it clatters into the can like a brook down a mountainside. The potty is returned to its place, and the figure in the white nightgown (the one that causes Margot to exclaim every evening, “Oh, that indecent nighty!”) climbs back into bed. A certain somebody lies awake for about fifteen minutes, listening to the sounds of the night. In the first place, to hear whether there are any burglars downstairs, and then to the various beds — upstairs, next door and in my room — to tell whether the others are asleep or half awake,” Anne Frank wrote. Otto’s diary does not have a name, nor does he address it like he’s writing to a friend. His diary reads a little bit differently.
“JULY 30, 1943, FRIDAY THE 58TH
Today we go again around 1/2 4 h across the stream to the forest and eat soup. We sleep until 1/2 11 ha. I grinded some coffee beans if Dad wanted. Then we go to the sparse square and walk to the opposite forest. Gandi, she, the Government and the Herinks are in the field, mowing. We go back and eat lard bread. We go to the sparse forest again and I have to run, because a woman is going upstairs. It’s hot and stuffy. The harvest is already in full swing. If only there were two cigarettes today. We are in hiding for a while. We have dinner bread. We’re going to cook at 10 o’clock. At 1/2 10 a.m. we heard a shot, probably by the well. Probably a hunter. The shots landed in hiding. Dad says the shooter probably heard us and wanted to scare us away. He shot high. Let’s cook. I was very surprised to see 30 cigarettes in the shed, but the newspaper was nowhere to be seen. I’m going to give my dad cigarettes. He is very happy for them, but he said he would rather have a newspaper. There is also food: bread, peppers, squared paper, I go to give our coffee and I take water. We cook prima beef soup and potatoes. We heat the goulash. The cookers are still cracking. It’s clear.”
Unlike Anne Frank’s diary, which has been published and translated into several languages across the globe, Otto’s diary was kept secret for many years. Why? Would it be in danger? Otto Frank had a job and wanted to keep his daughter’s words alive and since then, he established the Anne Frank Fonds, a foundation that is persevering her words. He even opened the Anne Frank House, which is where they were hiding and people visit it every year. Unlike Otto Wolf, his shelters are sometimes hard to find, but there are memorials in both Trsice and Mohelnice. Otto’s original diaries are not on display in museums sadly, but there are facsimiles that are usually on display in smaller Holocaust Museums across the United States.
Anne’s diary is iconic and it was one of the first Jewish diaries published about the Holocaust. Sadly, with her diary, came controversy. The whole “Sexuality and learning about your body” issues came up and of course, the book has had many editions, trying to make this book “appropriate” for students, when it should have been unedited. Otto’s diary, on the other hand, was not edited and he did not address his sexuality, as he seemed to keep that to himself. The private boy, who was interested in the world around him, was getting older and was a teenager. He was more interested in the ever-changing world and situation his family were in, than his feelings. Whatever feelings he had, as Felicitas said, “kept to himself.”
Anne’s diary goes into details of hiding in an attic and trying to stay silent. Otto’s diary tends to talk about the situation and how the people around him were treating the family. He would mention his siblings occasionally in the diary, but sometimes mentioned his feelings on certain people, but he tended to be neutral on his feelings.
As more and more comparisons about Otto and Anne are written, something is certain, they were different ages, but they did start their diaries in the same year, 1942 and they both wrote their last entries only a year apart from each other. Unlike Otto’s sister who took over the diary, Anne’s diary was never completed by anyone. Her last entry was on August 1, 1944.
Anne’s diary was saved by Miep Gies (1909–2010) and Otto’s diaries were saved by his sister. The diaries are both documents of the Holocaust, and though they may be similar in a lot of ways, they are very different, especially the way they were handled after the war. It took Otto Frank two years after Anne’s death to publish the diary. He was not sure on whether he should publish the diary or not, but lots of friends and remaining family members suggested he should “give Anne to the world”. Otto Wolf did not get that kind of treatment. Only after Communism fell in the Czech Republic, did Otto’s diary get some recognition.
Otto’s diary was only published in Czech, and only excerpts have been published in English, but it has never been fully published in English. Why? Was it because it was not as well-known as Anne Frank’s? Probably, but no one really knows why?
Unlike other diaries from the Holocaust- Otto’s entries were not daily and he did not write about the events of the war, but mainly the events that occurred in his life.
Otto’s descriptions of events are important, as he always seemed to write down if Slavek showed up, or the family’s fights with him. Sometimes Otto mentions that the people who they thought were their friends, now turned against them. But another helper that seemed to emerge was Alois Pluhar and his wife.
They provided the Wolf’s with some food, but his frustration at the Wolf’s, as Otto noted in his diary, on April 4, 1944,
“We return to the hut happy. As we relate our experience, Pluhař comes in, drunk, bellowing, and cursing like a sailor. At first, he says that we have to give him his books and that, from now on, we don’t know each other. We are pigs, oxen, asses, snakes, and so forth. After he has sat a while and sobered up a bit, he is sorry for what he said. He goes home at half past two. “
But on November 18, 1943, Pluhar had screamed at Slavek, exploding, and expressing his frustrations in helping the Wolf’s. Otto noted “Then that’s our last time seeing them.” Pluhar would come and try to help them for another year, but wouldn’t after that.
After the explosion with Slavek, they had to find safer ground.
As was mentioned in Felicitas’s chapter, Ludmilla Tich and Marie Zboril stepped into help.
Otto noted in his diary on April 4, 1944,
“Lici (Felicitas) must get to Mrs. Ticha today.” Ludmilla Ticha was the local dentist and knew the Wolf’s pretty well.
Though on April 4, 1944, Otto wrote:
“We get up at 1 o’clock. We eat bread with margarine. It is cloudy. Ans. splashes. We decided that today Lici must get to Anča 1 . Let’s go to [illegible abbreviation] 2and we ask where she lives, and then we go to her. There is dry bread for dinner. It is cloudy. At 1/29 o’clock, Lici and I went through the forest to O. We came there and Lici rang, but no one opened it. We just wanted to go home, a woman was walking and we asked her if Anča lived here. The person asked what I wanted. Lici asked if she wasn’t the lady. They say yes, it’s a great coincidence. Lici went to her and she was very friendly. She immediately promised help, both monetary and economic. They say how much bread we want. She ordered us on Thursday after the holidays. We go to the shed and we are very happy. As we interpret, Reut goes. He’s drunk and so he swears and yells, at first, he said, give me my books and we don’t know each other. As he sat and sobered up, he also told us that we were pigs, oxen, donkeys, snakes, etc. He regretted what he said. At 1/2 3 in the morning, he goes home. He said he was with Reut. Slavek and explained our misunderstandings to him. Reut. he left and is said to be coming on Sunday. From the beginning, as he came, he said we were guarded and so on. boasted. I’m going with my dad for water and we’ve been through for a while. Mom and Lici want to go to Anchi tomorrow. Then we have breakfast and go to bed. Dad is sleeping. Anča told us that the situation was excellent and that it would be over soon.”
In the diary, Otto refers to Ticha as Anča. Ticha was a woman who did everything in her power to help the Wolf’s. She said “As much bread as you want.”
In April of 1944, Maria (Marenka) Zboril, their former maid, had come to the rescue. Her husband, Frantisek Zboril was a carpenter. But when Otto and his family needed help, she immediately said “OF COURSE! COME!” She was their friend and always promised them that she would help them in any way she could. Otto was delighted. This was good news.
Otto’s diary captures the essence of life in hiding. Sometimes, when people were in hiding, they had to be extremely quiet or they had to be somewhere where the Nazis couldn’t find them.
His family hid in the attic of the Zboril house. Sound familiar? Anne Frank hid in an attic as well.
His days were filled with cooking, chores as well as keeping quiet upstairs, as they didn’t want to be discovered.
On April 13, 1944 Otto writes:
“Dad and I get up at 10 a.m. and we pray. Then Mom and Lici pray. There is soup for lunch, it has scrambled eggs and crumbs. Ans. I pack backpacks and various things. It is warm. We wonder if God will hear us today. There is the rest of the soup for dinner. At 1/4 of 9 o’clock Lici got dressed and in 835 Lici and God set out for Anča. At 3/4 of 9 o’clock I go to the forest with my mother. We happily reached the forest and are waiting for Lici in the forest. It’s been 9 o’clock and Lici isn’t coming, it’s been 1/4 o’clock and it’s still nothing. My mother and I are no longer sure if Ancha has changed her mind. After 1/2 10 a.m. Lici arrived, happily done. She brought 1 loaf of homemade bread, 1 1/4 kg of honey, 1/4 kg of margarine and 2 large noodle cubes. It is said that Anča apologized very much that Lici was not supposed to come until Monday. Anča allegedly wanted to give us some fat, but she didn’t get to it until next time. Lici begged her not to leave us, and she is said to be of course not to worry that she will do what she can. We can have as much bread as we need. She lent us 1000 K and didn’t want confirmation for anything in the world. All this speaks more than long articles to make sure that Anča is a very good person. I put the food in the bag and I go through the forest in the terrible darkness to the hut, Mom and Lici, 1 cable each, they go to the Ice Cream4. I came to the shed at 10 o’clock, my dad was waiting for me at the Games. gardens. Since I was gone, my dad has packed up and taken away. Then we packed all the dishes in the cables we made from the bag. We packed our briefcases this afternoon. Then I go to the creek to wash the bucket and aluminum. I came back and ran to Lick that it was all good that Zmr. they will take us. We are happy. Lici comes with a small muffler, 2 briefcases and her cable around the mill on the other side, and I and Dad packed the duvets and other things we still want to take with us, and took the field behind the barn. We packed the duvets there well. Dad put a letter to the shed that Sl. he forced his violent behavior to find a safer environment, which we succeeded in, and that they would meet after the war to settle. Then Lici came and Dad took a hop from the hops next to the barn and they put on duvets and dishes and we go on the road, the Dolomites. Then we came to the field road and we went, resting for a while. I kept the bag with those duvets in the field near Kousalík’s plums and let’s go. We crossed the Xacanovská and then Lipíčanská roads and went to Zmrlinky. Dad is happy to be there, they are incredibly classy. I stole a piece of bread and went with Lici for those duvets. We missed the road and wandered for a while, and when we returned, we found our way.``
In the diary, Zmrl is short for Zboril, as Otto refers to them as.
The way that Otto speaks about Marie is that she is the “sweetest person on Earth”. Marie loved her former employers and did everything she could to make them more comfortable.
In 2020 when the pandemic first began, many of us had to “stay inside”. But people would compare it to being kept inside and hidden. But that is not the same as the situation that Otto was put in. He was fearing for his life. If the Zborils were caught, they would have been shot on the spot. Plain and simple.
They slept during the day to keep themselves quiet. They would be up at night and did their chores then.
Otto turned seventeen while at the Zborils. He was a teenager, almost an adult. He was growing and getting taller and hitting puberty.
With the Zborils seemed like a safe choice, the man of the house, Franktisek, was not keen on them being there. Maria was very happy to provide for the Wolf’s, but as stated in Felicitas’s chapter, Franktisek wanted them out.
The Wolf’s were in distress, but Ticha to the rescue! She came by and told Otto and his family that the Oheras in nearby Zakrov would be happy to take them in.
They left for their new hiding place on March 5 1945.
Otto noted this in his diary.
“March 5, 1945, Monday, 142nd Week.
Mar. She brought us coffee again. She talks to Jumba (Mr. Zboril) in the morning and he says he turns quite a bit. He didn’t go to work today. We sent Mar in the morning. to Anchi. Mar. she told her. She is supposed to think about it and come in the evening, not during the day, she is forbidden from A. In the morning, Jumbo is like butter, saying that Mar has us. call down and at least cook us soup. Anča came at noon, she follows us upstairs. She managed with the help of sl. A. find us an apartment here and there at XY [at Oherů]. Mar. but we have to say that we are going to Přáslavice, that Anča can’t advise us anything. After a while, Mar. came that we shouldn’t go anywhere, that Jumbo was no longer saying anything, on the contrary, that he was like nothing. Dad and I are having fun with Mar. a little further on and Anča is talking to Lici and her mother. It is said that it will be ready tonight and that Anča and A. will be waiting for us at 1/2 of 9 o’clock in the cemetery with sledges. Before Mar. Anča and I said goodbye and thanked and Anča goes away. Anča is very happy for the place where we will be through the supply. He also has a radio. Mar. it’s all hin. I’m packing. The jumbo is with Lici like butter. We have hot milk dinner. In the evening she came small, cried terribly, she is angry at Jumba. I took things to the kiln. At 8 o’clock my dad and I go across the footbridge, I have a duck with duvets and a briefcase, my dad an interpreter, a bucket and a watering can. Then I went for a second strings, underwear and a briefcase. The Russians are flying. At 3/4 of 9 o’clock Anča and A. arrived with sledges. I loaded them with the duvets and Dad’s muffler and drove off. Lici pushes them. We go through the Gate around Burianka to the hill. Dad can’t go on, he has a lot, someone is going to Příhon, we slipped into the forest. The people who went were the Success Government with a girl. I left ours in the woods and I go to Lici and Anča and Lici was waiting for us on the hill, she came with me for those things. Then we all go along the road, we met Anča and A. They have already ridden there on a sleigh, now they are facing us. Sl. A. also helps us wear Anča. We arrived there at about 1/211 o’clock. It’s very nice there, bed, curtains, sl. A. threw us to the ground. She is very kind. Then our hosts came, they are very nice people. They have already flooded us and made us white coffee and prepared 1 liter of milk, fine for tomorrow. Then Anča se sl. A. home, the landlord is with us for a while, he listens daily Vykleky great for tomorrow. Then Anča se sl. A. home, the landlord is with us for a while, he listens daily Vykleky great for tomorrow. Then Anča se sl.. The Russians killed almost 1 million prisoners for the offensive. American. attacks Cologne, they reported it today. After midnight we lie down, ours in bed, Lici and I go to the ground. We didn’t meet anyone at all on the way here.”
The Oheras were lovely people, who to the Wolf’s were more or less strangers. Trsice is only minutes away from Zakrov, so they did not have any trouble getting to their new hiding place. Some sources say that Otto and his family stayed in a house that was set up from the Ohera’s for retirement, others say it was a little apartment room, and others say it was the Ohera’s attic. While at the Oheras, he helped with locksmith jobs, like repairing Mr. Ohera’s bicycle.
The life at the Oheras seemed blissful and they were safe and happy. If there were routine house searches, they would retreat to the forest.
But there was an issue, with the searches came other people who were also fighting for the Germans. These people were called the Vlasovite Troops. They were really Russians fighting on the German side. These troops were dangerous, who hated Jews just as much as the Germans did.
The problem with this is that they just invaded little towns such as Trsice and Zakrov with no explanation or warning. On a Czech Holocaust website, author Ludvik Vaclavek, wrote this about the troops.
“The Russian collaborating military unit that carried out the raid on Zakrov in April 1945 was Cossack Battalion №574, which was formed in Berdichev, Ukraine and was commanded by Captain Panin. He performed the tasks of the rear security unit and had previously intervened in Slovakia against the guerrillas. He numbered about 400 men. He carried out the Zákřov action on the orders of the head of the Přerov Gestapo SS-Obersturmführer Karel Streit . The guerrilla unit “Juraj” operated in the Olomouc-Přerov-Lipník area. On April 7, 1945, he also briefly occupied Tršice. However, by the time the Gestapo was looking for him around Tršice and Zákřov, he was already moving in the Drahanská Highlands, west of Olomouc. ``
It’s a little confusing on how the troops ended up at the house of the Oheras. All the information that is known is that they showed up and questioned the Wolf’s. People claim Otto was eighteen years old by this point. He would have turned eighteen that June, had he survived, but he was still seventeen.
Otto’s last diary entry was on April 13, 1945. From then on, Felicitas picked up the diary and began to write in it. Good thinking on her part, so she told us what happened to Otto when he disappeared.
According to mashlinecko.cz, they said this: “They were arresting men and boys from Zákřov until the morning. Being finishing her brother´s diary Felicitas Wolfová made the following note about this day: “At six in the morning they asked everyone to show their IDs and the first one to do so was our Otto, who didn´t know what to say, so he said that he was visiting O. and that he is from Telč. The leader of Vl. didn’t believe him and told him to go with him. Otto obeyed very pale in face. We were all sitting feeling like we had been stabbed into the heart. They also wanted an ID from the father, but he said that he was a relative and that he is 61 years old, so they left him out. They didn´t ask me and mum for ID. I started to look for Otto´s documentation in my old bag which was hidden in the heap of manure, but I couldn’t find it. I hid in the toilet and kept searching until I found it.” By the time Felicitas found it, Otto was already taken away. It was too late.
There are multiple versions of Otto’s arrest story. A video on YouTube says that he was wandering the village because he thought the war was over and was caught. But the correct version of the story was what Felicitas wrote down in the diary.
Otto’s life was in literal danger and his entire family knew it. The thing that the Russian troops were looking for was Partisans. Partisans were people who fought the Nazis and their collaborators, by hiding in the forests or little towns. They attacked the Nazis at every opportunity. But, unfortunately, for Otto, he looked like one. When he was taken away, Felicitas did not realize that this would be the last time she saw her brother alive.
Otto was taken to Velky Uzjed, an hour’s walk from Zakrov. But in driving time, it’s seven minutes away. Otto was not the only one rounded up. He was rounded up with twenty-three other men, including his protector, Oldrich Ohera.
The men were taken and interrogated. None of the men had anything to do with being a Partisan. At first, it was not known that Otto was Jewish. Apparently, as the story goes, he was denounced by the local fascist named Hodulik, who was also rounded up.
The Russians decided to hand him over to the Gestapo, who were a few doors down. The Gestapo asked Otto his name. But Otto had one thing in mind: He didn’t care whether he lived or died, he was not going to give these Germans any information. He refused to give them his name or anything. Otto was not a rebellious teenager, but he thought now was his chance to rebel. The Germans were mad and wanted this seventeen-year-old boy, who already hated the Germans and the Russians, to give them some information. Otto had to make a choice, either give his family up and let them die, or he would die in place of them. The choice was simple, die for them. From what I’ve found, his torture was graphic and unbearable. Some sources say the Germans cut his tongue so bad that it almost fell out. Some say, according to Zdenka Calabkova, who was the daughter of Oldrich Ohera, described that they were all tortured and their bones were broken. Otto was no different. He was beaten so badly that Otto broke several ribs and almost his spine. Even if he survived, he wouldn’t live very long or he’d have health issues for the rest of his life.
Otto’s body was so badly hurt from all the torture, but he still did not reveal his name, his family’s names or those who helped hide them, saving them all.
On Friday, April 20, 1945, the end came for Otto and eighteen other young men, ages from fifteen to fifty. They were taken to the Kyjanice forest. The men were put on a truck, all of them could barely walk, because of their pain. First, they were lined up. There are opposing stories to what happened next. Two sources, including Salvaged Pages, said that Otto was shot and then burned. Another source, a news article on the death of Otto, said he was shot in the head and then burned in a tiny little hut with the other men. But the account by Zdenka Calabkova, she said this:
“They took the men to Velký Újezd, where they interrogated and tortured them for two days. Local people later told us what happened there. Then they put them in a lorry with petrol and took them to Kyjanice. There was a wooden cabin with a ground floor about two to three meters. It was a storage place for equipment. They threw them in, sprayed everything with petrol and set the cabin on fire. That was how our poor men had ended. The place was guarded until the end of the war when the Russians came. Nobody could come near. They even brought a German priest to consecrate it. And when he saw the atrocities, he broke down and wasn’t able to do anything. Poor guys, none of them had his legs unhurt.”
According to a source, they said this about the massacre.
“At that time the residents of Zákřov also supported the Juraj partisan unit operating in the area. After the Gestapo received information that there was a center of the partisan movement in Zákřov, the Gestapo officers Ernst Geppert and Josef Hykade were smuggled into Zákřov as false partisans via the Cossack Battalion 574. In the evening hours of April 18, 1945, 350 Cossacks from theVlasov army and the Gestapo men Geppert and Hykade carried out the Zákřov retaliatory action. Otto Wolf was also discovered in the process.
The next morning, all the arrested men over 50 years old were released and the 23 younger ones were driven in threes to Velký Újezd, where they were initially locked in a former stable in the courtyard of the town hall. After two days of interrogation and severe torture by the Cossacks, 19 of the men were thrown onto a truck in the early evening of April 20 and taken from the Protectorate to theSudetenlandto a wooden hut on the Muderberg above Kianitzhazards. The Gestapo men and Cossacks first poured tar into the shack and then filled the shack with wood. Then they brought in prisoners one by one, and according to Hykade, Geppert alternated with the Cossack Čorny and shot everyone in the neck. The last of the victims was Otto Wolf. They then set fire to the hut with gasoline. The remains of the murdered then had to be buried by residents of Kozlau. Otto Wolf’s diary was continued by his sister Felicitas after his arrest.”
The other men that were rounded up were from Trsice and they were let go. Sadly, the men from Zakrov were not. Today, people would label Otto as a hero, because he did not disclose his family’s names or their whereabouts.
Even though he died on April 20, 1945, his story continues on.
As it was stated in Felicitas’s chapter, a memorial was erected for the Wolf family and the forest where Otto and his family hid, is now a memorial park in which visitors visiting Trsice can visit the hideouts that the Wolfs made.
His diary was always with Felicitas. After the war, the family had trouble going home without Otto or Kurt (Kurt, who had died a few years before in the Battle of Sokolovo, where he died in such a horrific way). They moved back to Olomouc, Czech Republic.
They decided as a family that Otto would not be discussed and be kept hidden, that way they would not suffer as much. The mother suffered from the loss and had a stroke.
But with Otto’s legacy, the diaries remained, all four volumes of them.
After the war, Otto’s father, Berthold had tried to get the diaries published. But, with the Communists taking over after the war, the diaries were not able to get published. The diaries were never brought up again, until when Felicitas moved to the United States, taking them with her. In 1995, Felicitas gave his diaries and photos of his family to the USHMM (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum) in Washington DC. She was seventy-five at the time. She donated the only photo we know of Otto and the only one that is everywhere.
Otto’s legacy is now in the hands of educators. In 2002, author and historian Alexandra Zapruder wrote a very compelling and important book called Salvaged Pages. Inside, she featured fourteen young people who wrote diaries during the Holocaust.
Otto is chapter five. This was the first time Otto’s story was told in America. Now, his story is part of a special exhibit at the Houston Holocaust Museum called “AND STILL I WRITE”. Otto’s photo is featured in the exhibit along with diarists such as Petr Ginz, Peter Feigl, and Yitskhok Rudashevski (all who are in Salvaged Pages).
Otto is among the one million Jewish teens that did not see the end of the war. With Otto’s story gaining some attention, it is safe to say that with museums such as the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), educators Alexandra Zapruder and Colleen Tambuscio, are saving Otto’s story and continuing to teach about him. This gives us hope that this boy ‘s memory will live on. With Felicitas being gone for nearly sixteen years, she was always worried that people would forget her brothers.
In 1998, in the Czech Republic, there was a TV film made about Otto’s diary. Though it’s very difficult to find a copy of this film, it was made in the Czech Republic.
There is a special monument that was placed on the house where Otto was born in Mohelnice. It is dedicated to both Otto and Kurt.
In 2011, the Otto Wolf library was established in the Synagogue in Lostice.
According to Hrebecsko, a blog from the Czech Republic, had this to say on Otto in their blog post from August 4, 2020:
“The Wolfs are not forgotten in Mohelnice either. At Otto’s birth house in Nádražní Street, opposite the Church of St. A plaque is placed in Stanislav, which commemorates Otto’s birth and tragic death, as well as the fact that his brother, Sokolov’s hero Kurt Wolf, lived here — with the words ``Fallen for Us to Live.”
According to the Association of Miliary places and Worship, they had this to say about Otto:
“Otto Wolf was born on June 5, 1927 in Mohelnice as the youngest son of Růžena and Berthold Wolf. His father came from Úsov and his mother from Lipník nad Bečvou. In the 1920s, the family moved from Lipník to Mohelnice. Even in the then predominantly German Mohelnice, they proudly declared their support for the Czech minority. Their children attended a Czech school and were members of Sokol. From 1933, the Wolfs lived in Olomouc. Otto’s sister Felicitas (born 1920) worked in a fashion salon and his brother Kurt (born 1915) studied medicine at Masaryk University in Brno.After the arrival of the Nazis, the Wolfs settled in Tršice, but Kurt fled to the Soviet Union, where he later became one of the first to join Svoboda’s army. In June 1942, Otto, together with his sister and parents, was called to the first transport from Olomouc to Terezín.
On June 22, they were taken by car to the assembly point, but in the town, they got out of the car and secretly returned on foot to the previously prepared forest shelter near Tršice. This is the beginning of the diary that Otto, then 15, began to write. He continued his regular records of dangerous life in hiding until March 1945. This created a unique work, which is considered an important document illuminating the conditions during the occupation and testifying to the help of the Czech population to endangered fellow citizens.
Otto Wolf was unhappily caught three weeks before the end of the war in a guerrilla operation carried out by a Cossack unit in the German secret police. Despite great suffering, Otto never revealed his name, the names of his protectors, or his parents’ hiding place. He was executed along with other arrests on April 20, 1945 in a forest near the village of Kyjanice. Both his parents and Felicitas were liberated. Kurt fell in 1943 at the Battle of Sokolov. He was promoted in memoriam to the rank of lieutenant and received an honorary doctorate and numerous high honors, including the Order of the White Lion with a 1st degree star, the Czechoslovak War Cross 1939 and the Order of the Red Banner. The memorial plaque was unveiled to the Wolf brothers in Mohelnice in 1947 at Otto’s birth house in Nádražní Street №6.
Otto’s last diary entry dates from April 13, 1945. Felicitas recorded the following weeks of his illegal life and the end of the war.
The news of the deaths of Otto and Kurt did not reach the Wolfs until several days after their liberation and was a severe blow to them. They hoped to be able to perpetuate the memory of their sons, at least by publishing a diary. However, their several years of efforts were in vain, mainly due to the lack of political will of the then regime.
While similar publications and dailies were published abroad, such as The Anne Frank Diary, Otto’s Diary remained secretive from the Czech public for a long time. Despite documenting a unique act of heroism and compassion. The text also describes in detail a somewhat extraordinary phenomenon in our country — hiding a group of four for almost three years, even though several dozen inhabitants of Tršice and the chief gendarmerie foreman knew this. They all risked the lives of themselves and their families, especially during the so-called Heydrichiad, when executions were the order of the day, even for much less serious offenses.
After the war, Berthold Wolf worked as a cantor of the Jewish religious community in Olomouc; he died in 1962.
Felicitas opened a fashion salon in Olomouc, which was nationalized in 1948. In 1968, she left for the United States with her husband Otto Grätzer. She took the diary with her. The manuscript has been in the collections of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC since 1995. It was only after the fall of totalitarianism that this important document was published in our country under the title Diary of Otto Wolf 1942–1945 (Sefer 1997).
The Otto Wolf Library was established in August 2011 in the reconstructed Lostice Synagogue.
The Respect and Tolerance Association, with the support of the NFOH, created a DVD presentation for educational purposes in 2012, depicting this powerful story of the Wolf family entitled The Otto Wolf Diary and the Fates of His Family.
In the same year, with the support of the Jewish Community Foundation in Prague, the Respect and Tolerance Association created a committee from the diary of Otto Wolf and Felicitas Wolfová with interactive methodological texts.”
Otto’s life may have ended too soon, but his legacy will continue, as long as there are people who talk about his story. ”
In 2022, Otto would have celebrated his ninety- fifth birthday.
He sadly did not see his nineties. With Otto being dear for almost seventy-seven years, it’s hard to imagine what his life could have been like after the war. Would Otto have spoken about his time in hiding? Would Otto have been quiet about it? What would Otto’s profession have been had he survived? The world likes to guess the answers to these questions. Sadly, we will never know the answers to these questions.
As the world is constantly changing and there are so many Holocaust debates, Otto is constantly caught in the argument
.
The Holocaust deniers and the Antisemitic rhetoric seem to think Otto never existed or that his diary, like Anne Frank’s was fake and never written by the boy who gave up his life for so many, so that no one else would have to die like he did.
Otto’s diary, as people can see online at USHMM.ORG, was indeed real. As I have seen the grand debate over Anne Frank’s diary, over its authenticity, Otto’s diary, as per Felicitas, assured them that Otto wrote these diaries and her brother did exist . People tend to ask, why is there only one photo of him? Kurt has three photos, Felicitas has three (or if her family has more?) and Otto has one. Just one. I have tried to look through the Czech Archives and see if they can find any. Sadly, I was met with disappointment. With my research, the famous and well-known photo of Otto was the same one that was used for all his memorials and museum pieces. It is amazing we have a photo of him at all. Felicitas has some photos and I’m sure she took more once she was able to leave the Czech Republic.
Otto’s school photos (if any of his classmates have any) are gone and sadly I have not been able to locate a yearbook from his schools that he attended. There are some documents pertaining to Otto, which include school reports.
Otto’s story is similar to a lot of diarists whose lives came crashing down, but their words were saved. People like to compare Otto to Anne Frank, calling him the “Male Anne Frank”. While his chaos was occurring, just a few countries away, Anne Frank was placed in multiple concentration camps, fighting for her life. Otto and Anne died a month apart from one another. Anne died in March of 1945 and Otto in April of 1945.
Otto was seventeen and Anne was fifteen. People often wonder how Otto received his diaries. The answer to this question is unknown and only Felicitas might have known. Anne wrote in her diary the moment she got it in June of 1942. Otto also began his diary in June of 1942. There are lots of similarities between them. Otto’s sister and brother were doting on him, while it took a disastrous situation to bring the Frank family together.
But Otto was never betrayed and that is one of the many “myths’’ about his story. There are some that think that the Russians knew that the Wolf’s were Jewish, but they were really unaware that the family they were confronting were Jewish. They just saw Otto and he fit the bill for a soldier.
Anne Frank’s story runs a little differently. The whole family were taken away and many of them, including Anne, were dead by the war’s end.
The diaries are what remains of Otto and they are carefully preserved at the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC.
Why is Otto’s diary not published in English? In the Czech Republic, Otto’s diary was only published in Czech but it did not get the Anne Frank treatment. Like the diary of Moshe Flinker (1926–1945) , whose diary was published in both English and Hebrew in 1971, Otto’s diary seemed to just stay in the Czech Republic. It didn’t get published in English, until 2002, when Zapruder was able to publish excerpts of Otto’s diary in English (with permission by Felicitas). Otto’s diary was read by American students for the first time.
In 2016, the University of Houston Clear-Lake published an article on Otto, making it the first time that a University in Texas has heard the name “Otto Wolf” before. In the years that followed, Otto has been mentioned a few times in the UHCL ‘s newspaper, The Signal.
Between the years 1995 until recently, the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC had Otto featured in their journals that they sold in their gift shop. It is not sold anymore sadly, but I still have mine that I never wrote in and I’m glad it’s now a keepsake. Though on Otto’s page there are some errors on where he was born and other information.
The Holocaust Museum in Washington DC also uses Otto’s diary in their YouTube videos to show people that they have many diaries kept safe at their museum. Otto’s diaries are still kept in pristine condition, even after all these years. So why digitize them? Otto’s diaries will fade with time and his handwriting may become too hard to read. The age of digitization makes people who unable to come see the diaries in person, are able to see his handwriting, a very special treat to students and Holocaust educators.
As Holocaust educators in schools, or museums try their best to save stories like Otto’s from ever fading. It’s important to study Otto’s diary as a historical document, not just a diary that was written by a boy who was fifteen and then ended when he turned seventeen.
Otto’s life may have ended on April 20,1945, but his spirit will always live on.
Tomas Kulka (1934–1942)
Imagine being a small child when the war began. By the time the Holocaust ended, 1.5 million Jewish children and teens were dead. In the midst of all this, a small seven-year-old boy was caught in the fire. A little Czech boy who wanted to play with his stuffed animals, was a threat to society. Tomas Kulka is that little boy.
Apparently, from the research that has been done, the Kulka’s originated in Olomouc before they moved. Tomas’s father, Robert, who was born on August 30, 1890 in Olomouc, was a businessman. He was the youngest of three children.
The Kulkas were integrated into society in Olomouc. The Czech Jews thrived with businesses and trade. Olomouc was a town that was bustling with opportunities and for Robert, saw it as just that. After he completed school, in 1909 he attended business school. His goals were to run a successful business. He went to school in Olomouc. Trying to find which school in Olomouc he went to was a little tricky. In the search for business schools, there were a few, but none had the “records’’ option. In between that time, he graduated and ran a business. The kind of business he ran was a family business.
Robert was very ambitious, even from when he was young. He was also a man who wanted to have a family. In 1933, he met a woman named Elsa Eliska Skutezka. The Skutezka’s were a semi-religious family.
Elsa, Tomas’s mother, was from Brno (that’s where Kurt Wolf went to medical school). Her birthday was April 14, 1902, but on another website that was found, it stated her birthday was on March 23, 1902, so it is not clear what her birthday is.
She was the oldest of three children. She was beautiful and she was well educated. In 1920, when she was eighteen years old, she graduated from a Germanic-language secondary school. She was Czech, but she was also a talented linguist and from what was recorded, she knew both Czech, Hebrew and German. She was married to a man named Sigfried Roth. He was born on March 9, 1889. She moved to Bratislava to be with her husband. But the marriage was not a success, and the two divorced.
She moved back to Brno where she opened a millinery business. On May 24, 1933, she married Robert Kulka and the two moved to Olomouc. In Olomouc, they were successful and they had hoped to expand their family. Robert was twelve years Elsa’s senior. When they were married, Robert was forty-three and Elsa was thirty- one. They were considered “old” when they got married, but in today’s age, people get married at all different ages.
With Elsa wanting a child, their joy came a day and a year after their first anniversary of marriage.
According to Veronika Wihlodova, an archivist in Brno, said this about Elsa :
“Elsa Skutezká was born on April 14, 1902 in Brno as the daughter of Eduard Skutezký, a hauler in Brno, and Emmy Skutezká, neé Schwarz. She had brother Robert, born 1903, who was a lawyer and in the years 1941–1945 fought in the Czechoslovak foreign army, and sister Anna, born 1905. The family lived in Brno, Přadlácká street 9. On August 31, 1924, Elsa Skutezká married in Brno Mr. Siegfried (Vítězslav) Roth, born in Třebíč, March 7, 1889. Mr. Roth was a proxy (a procurator) of the General Slovak Credit Bank in Bratislava. The marriage was probably childless and was separated sometime between March 19, 1927 and October 20, 1931. Mrs. Rothová first lived with her parents when she returned from Bratislava, and from October 1931 on Bednářská street (now Jugoslávská street) 5. She worked as a modiste (she made hats). On May 24, 1933, she married in Brno, Mr. Robert Kulka, born August 30, 1890 in Olomouc. Mr. Kulka was a widower, a merchant and lived in Olomouc, street Pod lipami 15 -nIn November of 1937, Mr. and Mrs. Kulka and their son Tomas (Tomáš) moved from Olomouc, Palackého street 20 to Brno to the address Cejl street 83/85. Mr. Kulka worked as a clerk. From May 1941 to December 1942, when they were transported to the concentration camp in Terezín, the Kulks lived at Nová street (today Lidická street) 17.
Your sincerely
Veronika Wihodová”
Interesting to read that Robert was a widower. In every site that could be found, this is new information. As much has been researched, the only wife that was ever listed was Elsa. The information about his previous wife is very difficult, near impossible to find.
Tomas Kulka was born on May 25, 1934 in Olomouc. His parents made sure he was well dressed, and had stuffed animals, which he loved. In 1937, Tomas’s maternal grandfather passed away. It was good-bye Olomouc and hello Brno, a place his mother knew well.
The Kulka’s took over the family shipping business in Brno. The family were successful in Brno and as it seemed by all accounts, Tomas was very happy there. His mother took him on playdates with other kids, and Tomas was growing up right before their eyes.
According to research, Tomas developed like any other little toddler. His favorite toys were stuffed animals, which his mother adorned him with. He loved to talk and he was a curious child, who loved the outdoors. He loved animals. Sadly, it is not known if the Kulkas owned any pets. The Kulka’s lived comfortably in Brno. They were close to Tomas’s paternal grandmother. In the summertime, they would visit the other set of grandparents, who lived in Olomouc.
Olomouc is only a fifty-six-minute drive to Brno. But some might say it’ll take an hour.
Tomas turned five in 1939, the same year the Nazis came into town. Sadly, the Nazis barred little Tomas from entering Kindergarten, because he was Jewish. The little boy learned his ABC’s, colors, animals and other things five-year-olds know in
kindergarten at home.
According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC, stated that Robert’s brother and sister-in-law were able to make it Palestine, in the winter of 1940. But according to Geni.com, both of Robert’s siblings died during the Holocaust, so was there another sibling that was not accounted for? According to Geni.com, Robert’s siblings were Paula Freda and Friedrike Gans. Trying to locate Robert’s family has been difficult and it’s not easy to trace a family that was affected by the Holocaust directly, since many of the family trees are usually very small, since the majority of the family were murdered during the Holocaust. Tomas’s family was no different.
With the United States Holocaust Museum being the only viable source for Tomas’s family, there must be some relatives that live in Israel, but who knows what their names are and if they had a family tree? There are a few photos of Tomas, but not many. There are only three, which the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC owns.
During the occupation, the restrictions kept getting worse. As the story goes, Robert wanted to stay in Brno, because he thought the family business could be saved. If there was any chance of leaving the country, he missed the opportunity.
Elsa was teaching Tomas all she knew, while shielding him from the horrible world outside. The deportations began in 1941.
On January 2, 1940, the Kulkas had to leave their home. Not because they wanted to, because they were forced to. Tomas was only six. He brought some of his stuffed animals with him for the move. Where they moved to, is a difficult thing to trace. The Kulkas business was also in trouble. Due to the Nazi’s rule of no Jews owning businesses or owning land, Elsa had to sell the business for two-hundred Czech crowns, which in American dollars, at least in those days, was ten dollars. Not a lot and it was painful for her to sell it. The business was over and her family was in trouble, and in jeopardy of being deported. Sadly, there were no options for hiding Tomas. Where could he go? Who would take this little boy? Robert ran to some friends and asked if they knew of a place, they could hide their little six-year-old? The friend ran to another friend and they got back with Robert. Sadly no one would take the innocent, and gentle little boy. The family were in such disarray, that all Tomas wanted to do was play with his animals, which brought him comfort.
Elsa searched for any organization or place where she could place Tomas. But Tomas was very close to his mother. He did not want to leave her. He was not a crybaby, but by some accounts, when he was left alone for a long time, he would cry.
In March of 1942, the Kulkas complied with their summons to be deported. They were deported to Theresienstadt, or Terezin.
Terezin was a ghetto, but it was a place that had a gray area. It was considered a concentration camp, but also a transit camp for Jews to be deported. Terezin was a former military fortress, converted into a ghetto-concentration camp.
The Jews of the Czech Republic were forced to live in horrible, almost unbearable conditions. Tomas turned seven in the ghetto and it was not the place he’d thought about celebrating his seventh birthday. Many seven-year-olds, at least now, are going to school, in second grade, and learning about fun stuff. Tomas, was not able to get an education, due to being Jewish.
Terezin was located in Litoměřice, a town in the Ústí nad Labem Region. The problem with Terezin is that it was not deporting people fast enough and in 1942, they were deporting Jews to a dreadful place: Sobibor.
Sobibor was located in Poland, in the forest in the village of Sobibor. The purpose of Sobibor was killing as many Jews as they possibly could.
In 1942, Anne Frank, Otto Wolf and Moshe Flinker went into hiding. Sobibor is what they were hiding from. In their wildest imagination, they could not have realized the deadly nightmare that Sobibor was. If they had gone to the ghettos, especially Otto and his family, they would have been deported to Sobibor and they would have never been heard from again. But unlike the Wolf’s, who chose to go into hiding, the Kulka family were in jeopardy.
Sobibor was constructed in March of 1942.
According to historians, some have said this about the camp:
“The camp incorporated several pre-war buildings including a post office, a forester’s lodge, a forestry tower, and a chapel. The forester’s lodge became the camp administration building, while the post office was used as lodging for the SS (though not, as commonly reported, for the commandant). The former post office, located near the railroad tracks, still stands today. The SS adapted the preexisting railroad infrastructure, adding an 800-meter railroad spur that ended inside the camp. This third set of tracks allowed regular rail traffic to continue uninterrupted while the camp unloaded transports of new prisoners. Some building materials were supplied by the SS Central Construction Office in Lublin, while others were procured from local sawmills and brickworks, as well as from the remains of demolished houses of Jews.”
According to a historical document about Sobibor, the difference between Auschwitz’s gas chambers and the ones at Sobibor was the way they used the gas. The gas chambers at Sobibor were built to look like the gas chambers at Belzec, another extermination camp, where most of the Jews who were sent there, were in the ghettos in Poland.
Sobibor murdered 167,000 Jews.
Sobibor was no secret from the villagers, for they saw everything.
In May of 1942, deportations began to Sobibor. The first transport had Tomas on it.
The way that the family died is a little interesting. Tomas, from public knowledge, and according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Tomas was put on a transport to Sobibor.
On May 9, 1942, Tomas and his grandmother were murdered by gas. But new information has been brought to my attention about his death. When he got off the train at Sobibor, he saw “men with guns”. This, of course, scared Tomas, and he “bolted” (tried to run away). The Nazis began shooting at him. They missed, thank God, but a man grabbed the seven year-old by the shirt and told him to go back, it’s better if he did. He was brought back and was about to be shot, when his grandmother ran up and pleaded with the Nazis. He was spared,but only for a minute. They then were gassed to death, while Tomas, was screaming for his mother.
The death of his parents is a little contradictory. From the research that was conducted, it was said, according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, that both Robert and Elsa died in Ossowa Labor Camp. But, according to a Czech Holocaust Website, Holocaust.CZ, it stated that both Elsa and Robert were murdered at Sobibor as well. The records from Sobibor are now gone. They were destroyed, and it is unclear where his parents died, but whether they all died together, or apart, none of them survived. The story of his parent’s death at Ossowa says this: She was deported to the Ossowa forced labor camp in Ukraine on May 9, 1942 and died there within six months of being there. Tomas’s father, as it said, died there within six months.
Ossowa was a forced labor camp in Ukraine and many people died there within months of arriving. But another source says the family were all deported to Sobibor on May 9, 1942. The Czech site is a little confusing, when it said under both Tomas and Robert : “Sobibor, Ossowa”. Which place did they die at? Tomas was killed at Sobibor and that is public knowledge, but where his parents were murdered is a little difficult to place.
Tomas’s parents were not old either. Tomas’s mother was forty when she died and his father was fifty-two.
What happens to Tomas now? What is his lasting legacy? Are they any relatives? The relatives that hopefully survived are scattered.
Ilana Skutecky Breslaw donated three photos of Tomas to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. She gave us only three photos of Tomas. If only there were more. Tomas was an adorable little boy.
Though Tomas has been dead for more than eighty-years now, there are people who remember him.
Rabbi Cutler said this on Tomas and his family:
“Tomas Kulka was the son of Elsa and Robert Kulka, who were married in 1933 in Brno in Moravia and moved to Olomouc, where Tomas was born. Following Elsa’s father’s death in 1937, the family moved to Brno where they took over the family shipping company. Just before Tomas’ fifth birthday the Nazis occupied Moravia. On March 31, 1942 Tomas and his family were sent to Theresienstadt. In May, he and his maternal grandmother were deported to Sobibor, where they were gassed upon arrival. Tomas was two weeks short of his eighth birthday. That same year, his parents died in the Ossova labor camp in Ukraine.
With the right amount of research, perhaps we could learn about Tomas’ favorite foods and whether he preferred sports or reading, whether he went to bed easily or gave his parents a hard time.
These are the details of the life of one person among six million. Such an approach honors the dead as they are recalled years after their deaths. The horrors and the actual lives lost become known to a new generation.
But we can also take a step further, moving into what I’ll call Applied History. Holocaust Education in this approach no longer becomes solely about learning what once happened, but also about how we stop it from ever happening again. The problem with this approach is that the moment Holocaust Education becomes about preventing another genocide is the moment we shift from remembering the victims as individuals to commodifying them as metaphors for a future atrocity. Tomas Kulka’s life is no longer remembered for its own purpose, he is no longer valued as an individual human with a name and a story; rather he becomes a useful prop, a bulwark against contemporary or future murderous fascism. He is there for us rather than us being there for him.”
Tomas’s spirit continues to be there within the walls of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and he continues to be the face of the one million Jewish children who were murdered.
Robert and Elsa were good parents, and from the research that was conducted, it was apparent that they gave Tomas all the love they could. Tomas was by all accounts, a very sweet and good boy. The only thing that remains of Tomas now, are three photographs.
Tomas would have been eighty-eight today had he survived. The regret of his parents not placing him in a good hiding spot was relevant when they were sent to the Terezin Ghetto. Sadly, they had not heard of OSE, a group that helped hide Jewish children and they could not find anyone to take this sweet little boy. Tomas faced the persecution head on. They were in the ghetto for a few months and it was hell. The lack of food and the lack of resources really took a toll on their health. Tomas was young and in the eyes of the Nazis, needed to be killed.
In the Ossowa forced labor camp, the Kulkas endured hard labor, little food and disease. It is very hard to imagine how they both perished at their ages.
Tomas was remembered by the WJC- World Jewish Congress:
“Tomas Kulka was a Jewish boy who lived in Moravia, present-day Czech Republic. In 1939, when he was 5 years old, the Nazis occupied Moravia. Because Tomas was Jewish, he was not allowed to attend school. On March 31, 1942 Tomas and his family were sent to the transit camp of Theresienstadt. That same year his parents died in the Ossova labor camp in Ukraine. In May, he and his maternal grandmother were deported to Sobibor, where they were gassed upon arrival. I only pray that his grandmother managed to stay with him to the end. Tomas was two weeks short of his eighth birthday.”
Each of these places state that his parents died at Ossova but we will never know where they actually died.
Tomas is loud and he always will be.
Petr Ginz (1928–1944)
Petr Ginz’s life was short and it shouldn’t have been. A talented boy was taken away for no real reason at all, other than because he was Jewish.
Petr’s mother Maria Dolanska was born in 1898 in Cibuz, Czech Republic. His mother Maria went to a commerce high school, where she studied German and French. She was one of five children. She worked so her younger siblings could study. She got married when she was twenty-nine. According to Chava, she did not know if her mother actually converted to Judaism, but once her parents were married, she lived her life as a Jew.
His father, Otta (Ota) Ginz was born on July 19, 1896 in Zdanice, Czech Republic. He had five other siblings. His siblings were Anna, Viktor, Herma and Milos. None of his siblings survived the Holocaust, only he did and his niece, Hanka survived.
He was big in the Esperanto movement. He was the manager of exports of a textile company. He was a withdrawn person who did not show his feelings, though he loved his children dearly.
His parents met at an Esperanto conference in 1927. Petr’s parents were married on March 8, 1927.
Petr was born on February 1, 1928 in Prague. He was the first born and he was the pride and joy. Though his mother was a non -Jew, Petr and his sister grew up in a traditional Jewish home.
Chava, his sister, said this:
“My brother was born in 1928 in Prague. Our childhood was more or less the same. Petr was two years older and I loved him very much. He had his bar mitzvah in the Maisel Synagogue in Prague, I remember that afterwards there was a small celebration at home with relatives, and a chocolate cake. Petr was a talented boy, and when Jews were no longer being accepted at high school, my parents put him in a school named the Experimental School, in Nusle. It was a special school for talented children where they were attempting to teach with not completely conventional methods. Our parents thought that here his talent would take root and develop. But soon after they threw Petr out of this school as well, because of his Jewish origin. My brother was always very curious and Mother and Father supported education. Petr began to write already as a child, he wrote many articles, stories and poems. He drew a lot as well.”
Petr’s gift of literacy and being a talented artist began when he was young. Petr had an imagination and loved to reach Jules Verne. Petr’s family were a close-knit family. According to his younger sister, Chava, they visited their maternal grandmother, Ruzena in Bohemia on Sundays and they also visited their paternal grandparents and cousins. They were very close with their uncle Milos and his family. Milos had two children, Pavel and Hanka.
Petr’s education was very important to his family The family sent him to a progressive Jewish school. He was very smart and according to Chava, he was sent to a school for gifted children, but it lasted only a year.
Petr’s parents raised Petr and his sister to have good manners, and distinguish the difference between right and wrong. They raised Petr to be a good man.
Petr’s sister, Chava, said this:
“ In the morning we rose, the maid prepared breakfast and then Petr and I would walk by ourselves to school. In those days there weren’t very many cars and the streets were safe for us. We lived at Tesnov, close to Hlavkuv Bridge. It was a beautiful walk; on winter mornings the gas lamps would still be lit and the snow would crunch under our feet. School was in the morning, I usually finished earlier than Petr and my mother would be waiting for me in front of the school. Then we would have lunch at home; only our father was in the office and came home later. After lunch our mother would go lie down and we would do our homework; in those days there wasn’t much of it.”
Petr really enjoyed the sciences, drawing and reading. He took education very seriously, even at a young age.
He wanted to be a scientist, novelist, book binder or a reporter. He made his first diaries himself. According to Chava, he made them out of household items and he enjoyed the process of book-binding as well as being creative. Petr wrote little articles and he wrote five short novels.
Some of the novels he wrote from the time he was eight to fourteen were: From Prague to China, The Wizard from Altay Mountains, Around the World in One Second and A Visit from Prehistory. The only surviving novel was A Visit from Prehistory.. He wrote in the style of his favorite author, Jules Verne and illustrated himself.
Petr’s happy childhood came crashing down in March of 1939, when the Nazis came to town. The Nazis began imposing Anti-Jewish laws on the Jews of the Czech Republic. Because Petr and Chava were half-Jewish, they made laws that applied to them as well. They were considered “Mischlinge” (Children of a Mixed Marriage). The only difference between them and regular Jewish children is that they were sent to concentration camps when they reached the age of fourteen.
In 1941, Petr began keeping a diary. He wrote his daily activities and he wrote down important events that had happened to him.
In his diary, he began to describe the deportations that were taking place. When he could no longer be in school, he got a small job cleaning typewriters. He loved the work and he got along with everyone.
Petr continued to draw and write. As Chava recalled “When it came time to his own deportation, his handwriting became disorderly and messy.” The Terezin Ghetto was established in 1941. The family soon realized that his fourteenth birthday was vastly approaching and his parents got scared.
Petr found out he was in the transport on September 22, 1942.
He recalled :
“After I finished cleaning a couple of typewriters (I wrote down the numbers conscientiously. Old Fuchs later copied them and collected payment for the cleaning. Of course, I didn’t get paid.), I was sent to inspect typewriters. Every fourteen days there was an inspection of typewriters in all the departments of the Jewish community, to see if any needed cleaning. That day, it was the Legal Department’s turn, at 21 Norimberska Street. I was sent there with a small case, in which I carried gasoline for cleaning the platen, alcohol for cleaning the keys, and for the same purpose a wire brush and a cloth. My case also contained several replacement ribbons (13, 14, and 14.5 mm), a notepad for recording the replaced ribbons, a couple of chisels, and an oil can. On the way, I had collected a few cigarette butts. But I found most of them on the stairs of the Jewish religious community center.
I sat down in front of a typewriter in the legal department and began cleaning it. Suddenly, the phone rang. It was the typewriter repair shop, telling me to go to the workshop immediately. I was very surprised, because it was normally “I who phoned them (that’s when I tore a string somewhere) rather than the other way around. But I kept my surprise to myself, collected my things, and walked to the workshop. As soon as I entered, Wolf said calmly: “You’re in it, don’t worry about it.”
Petr was always a boy who remained calm in dire situations, which was amazing, because in any case if any family figured out they were being deported, they would be freaking out.
Petr then said :
“So I went home. While walking, I tried to absorb, for the last time, the street noise I would not hear again for a long time (in my opinion; Father and Mother were counting on just a few months). I arrived at home (I hid my star on the way from the corner to the entrance to our building, till I reached the apartment, so that it would not be noticed that Jews still lived in our house). All the way to the third floor there were only offices, on the fourth floor lived the Kohners (they left for Poland three months ago, people say all their luggage was confiscated), the Mautners (they left for Theresienstadt), Ichas (Aryans, railway employees), and us. We had been saved from moving out because the apartment was registered in Mother’s name.
Finally, I arrived home and knocked on the door. “Who is it?” Mummy asked from inside. “Me.” Mummy opened, surprised that I was home so early. “Mancinka, don’t get frightened, I’m in a transport.” Mummy was immediately beside herself; she started crying, she didn’t know what to do. I comforted her. Suddenly the doorbell rang. Auntie Nada arrived to tell us to tell us I was in a transport, but we already knew it. Auntie Nada is a practical soul; she went straight into action. First, we hurried to the community centre to pick up the forms that were about to be distributed. Otherwise we would have heard about the transport only at noon. We were to board at 6 P.M., at Veletrzni Palace. Afterward we ran quickly back home; my good friend, Harry Popper was already waiting to say good-bye to me, which he had succeeded in doing. There was a lot of action; we were packing; some women helpers from the Jewish Community arrived to help us pack. In the meantime we somehow managed to eat lunch. I no longer remember what we had for lunch that day, although I would really like to know it; I believe it was hamburgers.”
Petr’s mother was so upset and she had every right to be, her boy was going to be deported and who knew when they would meet again?
Petr’s deportation notice came to them on October 22, 1942. It stated he must report to the assembly grounds at Veletrh in Prague. He was allowed to bring some belongings with him.
He prepared for deportation. He wrote:
“After lunch I was told to choose which of my toys I wanted to take along. I took a supply of paper (including this notebook), linoleum, small knives for cutting it, the unfinished novel The Wizard of Altay Mountains, which at the time consisted of about 260 pages. I wanted to finish writing it in Theresienstadt, but in the end nothing came of it. I will speak later about laziness in Thereisdant. I also took thin leather for binding, and a few sheets of endpaper. That was all. Sorry, also a few broken watercolour paints; the rest were left at home. And that was definitely all from my own drawer in the wardrobe, and the big case from Macesky. I packed these items lovingly with the other luggage, and it will probably be seen as bad that I was more worried about losing them than anything else.”
When his deportation day came, his mother hugged and kissed him, not knowing that would be the last time she’d ever hug or kiss her son. His father and Petr arrived at the grounds.
Petr’s father remembered:
“On October 22, 1942, I accompanied our Petr there. We had an earnest talk, but I avoided triggering sad thoughts in him, and we comforted each other by saying that we would both meet at home soon. On the basis of examples, I knew I warned Petr in the last moment before his departure to be careful when dealing with German guards, with whom he would soon be confronted. We reached the point beyond which those accompanying the victims were not allowed to go, I pressed our Petr to me, we kissed, and Petr went inside. He turned around a few times, we waved to each other, and Petr disappeared in the gate. I turned away and at that moment a loud cry escaped my insides, more like a scream of pain. I controlled myself and forced myself to calm down. I don’t know how I made it home. I was well aware that my wife’s nerves would not have managed the separation I had just lived through.”
Petr’s father did not realize that would be the last time that he would ever see his son alive.
When Petr arrived in Terezin, he was assigned to be in a barrack with boys his own age. He was not sure of what challenges he would face, but he would quickly encounter one: HUNGER. There was hardly anything to eat in Terezin.
He was growing and when teens are growing, they need a lot of food to eat, and when they don’t, they can get sick. Petr got sick many times while in Terezin. While there, he and a group of boys, began to write and publish a secret underground magazine entitled Vedem, meaning “WE LEAD!”
The boys began writing their own satirical commentaries about Terezin, the Nazis and the world around them. Petr would mostly illustrate and put it together. The inspiration for this magazine was a teacher, and the leader of their barrack, Professor Valtr Eisnger. He encouraged the boys and he inspired them to do something about their love of literature and the arts and hence VEDEM was created.
Each of the boys would take on a nickname or a pseudonym for the paper. When there was not enough content, Petr himself wrote under false names. The Nazis did not realize the boys were creating this, and if they had, the boys would have been shot on the spot. Luckily, Petr’s life was spared in Terezin.
In 1944, Petr began documenting his time in Terezin. He opened his diary in February of 1944, he had been there for almost two years. Petr had just turned sixteen. Unlike his counterparts, Ilya Gerber, who was imprisoned in the Kovno Ghetto and who also wrote a diary, did not describe his daily activities or interactions with girls. He made “plans” that he wanted to achieve by the end of the month or the next month.
His entries were filled with wonderful ideas and plans. He wanted to prepare himself for liberation.
In May of 1944, his sister, Chava was also deported to the Terezin Ghetto. She had just turned fourteen that February.
She recalled that she saw Petr and he made her feel less homesick. He began to teach her English. He urged her to prepare for liberation. Petr became very concerned about Chava’s education and continued to give her books that were available to read and study. For example, they found a book on shorthand, and they studied it together. The problem with Terezin, is that it was a concentration camp and a transit camp, meaning there were deportations to different extermination camps, such as Auschwitz.
Petr’s view on Judaism would soon change, while being in Terezin. As Chava recalled in her diary, said that Petr would renounce the religion as soon as he returned home.
Petr’s love for his sister, however, never ceased to change. He was always educating her and trying to keep her safe.
With Terezin getting more and more gloomy, he tried to be positive. As Chava later said, “It had been two years since I hadn’t seen him. He was very tall, very pale and very thin. I was very concerned for his health. I became a mother to him, instead of a sister.”
Petr’s body was slowly adjusting to hunger. He lost a lot of weight, to the point of looking like a skeleton.
In September of 1944, Petr wrote his last diary entry and on September 28, 1944, Petr and his cousin Pavel (who had been sent to the Terezin Ghetto, along with his uncle and cousin Hanka), were on the list for a transport to Auschwitz.
Chava recalled the last day she ever saw her brother alive.
“I grabbed him a piece of bread for the journey, and I managed to get past the crowd and under the rope and handed him the bread between the bars. I had enough time to hold his hand before a guard drove me away.”
Petr’s journey lasted ten hours on a train, with no food and no facilities to relieve himself.
When Petr arrived there, he was looked at by the Nazi guards and Nazi doctors. He was extremely thin and did not look well enough to work. He was sent to die in the gas chamber. He died in 1944, though some say September 28, 1944, but that’s when he was sent to Auschwitz. He was murdered at the age of sixteen. But his story does not end there.
In February of 1945, his father, Otto was also sent to the Terezin Ghetto. He was there with Chava.
In May of 1945, they were liberated. They were able to return home. When they arrived home, Petr’s mother asked where Petr was. They began to search for him but were told that Petr was murdered.
Petr had been dead for fifty-eight years and Chava got a call that Yad Vashem had Petr’s two original diaries. She was able to get them back and still has them today.
In 2002, Petr and Chava’s stories and diaries were shared with the world for the first time in the book Salvaged Pages by Alexandra Zapruder.
In 2004, Chava made the decision to have her brother’s diary published.
She wrote a long preface to the book. She expressed her feelings about Petr’s diaries and his life.
Petr’s story continued to gain some attention in the mid 2010’s.
In 2012, a small studio made a very well-done documentary on Petr, entitled The Last Flight of Petr Ginz. Chava was interviewed and the studio used his art work in animating the film. The film was beautifully scored by John Califra. The film was all animated, except with the interviews of Chava and other historians.
Petr’s death caused a big hole in the parent’s house. This prompted Petr’s father to say that they would no longer discuss Petr, so they would not suffer as much.
Unlike Felicitas Garda, who did not talk about her brothers at all, Chava does just the opposite. She submitted Petr’s “Page of Testimony ‘’ (Death Certificate) for Yad Vashem, the Israeli Holocaust Museum. Chava talked about Petr and she did a video for Yad Vashem discussing him. With him, she wanted to make sure he was kept alive. As she said when she saw his diaries, she stated that she felt like Petr had not actually died, that he was alive somewhere, giving her these.
There was one witness that saw Petr die. A friend of Petr’s saw him walking towards the gas chamber.
Petr’s love would never leave Chava. Chava loved her brother and their father donated a lot of his artwork to Yad Vashem.
In 2003, when the American Space shuttle Colombia was going to space, Israeli astronaut, Ilan Ramon, who was the child of a Holocaust survivor, wanted to take something with him to space. Yad Vashem gave him a copy of Petr’s artwork “Moon in Space.” Sadly, the space shuttle blew up upon its arrival back to Earth. Ramon died in the explosion.
Petr’s story is still being taught. At the Houston Holocaust Museum, Petr and Chava’s stories are on display at the Museum.
Petr’s story will never fade, when he’s always with us.
MY BEATING HEART
Moshe Flinker (1926–1945)
Moshe found me in 2010 as well. When he found me, I was a complete wreck and he managed to put me back together again and he still does that, every time.
Moshe Flinker was a boy who people tend to compare to Anne Frank, but his story and Anne’s are almost identical. They had a lot in common, which included, where they died, how they died and the fact that their diaries were published.
Moshe Ze’ev Flinker was born on October 9, 1926 in The Hague, Holland (The Netherland). He was the oldest boy of seven children. There were four girls and two boys, which included Moshe. There were his sisters, Gittel, Esther Malka, Rivka and Rochel. His brother was named Chaim Ahron.
He came from a very religious Orthodox family. He celebrated his Bar Mitzvah and according to his nephew, Leon, he was given a silver cup for his Bar Mitzvah.
The Flinker’s lived a comfortable life in The Hague. Moshe went to school in The Hague and enjoyed his studies. He studied Torah with Rabbi Grabel. The remaining siblings remembered Moshe as a very bright student, hardworking and serious. Moshe’s only photograph shows his intensity.
In 1940, the Nazis invaded Holland. The Nazis started imposing the Anti-Jewish laws there too, for which Moshe recorded in his diary. He wrote on November 24, 1942 that he was kicked out of school.
In 1942, the year that Anne Frank turned thirteen and went into hiding, Moshe also began a diary at age sixteen. The Jews of Holland were at risk. Moshe mentioned in his diary that between the years of 1941–1942, the animosity towards Jews grew.
In July of 1942, while his father was on a business trip, the family got their deportation notices. Mindel Flinker, Moshe’s mother, called Noah and said “The wedding invites are here and they were all invited”. Their father was quick to act. His longtime friend, Hank Raats took the risk to find the family of nine a hiding place. Hank took Esther Malka and Lea. The others were in other places.
Later, the Flinkers were on the move again, traveling illegally to Brussels, Belgium. They managed to find residence at the 1 Pikar Street apartments. Thanks to Noah’s wealth, he was able to secure false ID cards for the entire family.
Moshe’s new name was Harry Flinker.
Moshe’s life in hiding began. He spent his days studying the Torah and showing his frustrations over the Torah.
He was very religious and studied the Torah intensely, which often left him frustrated and hopeless.
In his diary, Moshe describes his anguish between himself, a Jew in hiding and who was for the time being, safe, to those who were directly in danger. Moshe’s religious beliefs were rooted in Jewish tradition, and he seemed to be frustrated with the Torah and even the Bible.
He wrote in his diary:
“February 12, 1943
During recent days an emptiness has formed inside me. Nothing motivates me to do anything or write anything, and no new ideas enter my mind; everything is as if asleep. Although I do not know from where this emptiness has come, I can feel it with my whole body. When I pray I feel as if I am praying to the wall and am not heard at all, and there is a voice inside me that says: “What are you praying for? The Lord does not hear you.” (A few times already there has flashed into my mind the verse which I think I heard on Simchat Torah [ Jewish holiday celebrating the Torah], “And the spirit of Thy holiness do not take from him.”) Yes, I think that the holy spark I always felt within me has been taken from me, and here I am, without spirit, without thought, without anything, and all I have is my miserable body. I don’t know what I will do. […] Whenever I pray I beg the Lord to return His holy spirit to me, but up to now I feel nothing but this numbing emptiness, which has lasted for two weeks.”
Moshe was a talented linguist as well as writer. He knew several languages and he was studying Arabic. He was studying this language because he thought when he got older, he would become an Israeli diplomat. Parts of Israel speak Arabic and he thought it would be a great language to know.
According to his sister Leah, he would be in the bathroom, studying Arabic. He would always study at nightfall, and according to his sister, Leah, to them, Arabic was not a holy language.
Moshe completed his diary in September 1943. He completed his diary by saying:
“This is the end of my diary; thanks be to God”.
Moshe’s comfortable life in hiding came to a sudden halt on April 5, 1944. They were betrayed by a Belgian Jewish collaborator named Jacques, whose family were arrested by the Germans. With his cooperation, he would betray Jews that were in hiding. His mother, his sisters, Esther Malka, Leah and himself were all found by the Gestapo in their apartment. They were taken away and deported to Malines Transit Camp. At the Gestapo headquarters, the Germans took the most known photo of Moshe. It was a mugshot. His deep and angry look showed his terror.
Moshe’s father was out running errands, preparing for Passover. Moshe’s other siblings were at the public bathhouse. Their apartment did not have a bathroom. When they were coming home, the owner of the apartment warned there was danger upstairs. He immediately placed his other children in hiding and found the Tieffenbrunner orphanage where his siblings stayed until the end of the war. Moshe’s father was found two weeks later. He was sent to the Dossin prison on April 21, 1944. Then he was sent to Malines where he found Moshe, Leah, Esther Malka and Mindel.
On May 19, 1944, they were deported to Auschwitz. When they arrived, Mindel, Moshe’s mother, was gassed upon arrival. Esther Malka and Leah made it through the selection process. Moshe and his father also endured the selection process in Auschwitz. For a long time, it was believed that Moshe and his father also perished at Auschwitz, but they did not.
His sister Leah remembers seeing Moshe across the barbed wire but he never saw his sisters again.
On November 17, 1944, Moshe and his father were then deported to Echterdingen Forced Labor Camp. They spent two months there repairing land strips. When Typhus was spreading around to all the prisoners, Moshe caught the deadly disease.
On January 20, 1945, Moshe and his father boarded yet another train. This time they were sent to Bergen Belsen, where Anne and Margot Frank died. He and Anne were there at the same time, but it is uncertain if they ever met. Moshe died there shortly after arriving there. He was eighteen. Moshe’s father also perished there in Belsen.
His sisters, Leah and Esther Malka were deported to other camps. Leah was deported to Ravensbruck on January 18, 1945, then to Malchow on February 28, 1945 and finally to Leipzig on April 14, 1945. She was liberated on April 23, 1945. Esther Malka was sent to Mulhausen where she was liberated on May 8, 1945.
After the sisters found each other after the war, they went back to Belgium and found the remaining of the siblings. They went back to the apartment where they were hiding and the landlord had saved Moshe’s diary and some of their belongings.
The siblings decided to fulfill their parents’ dream of moving to Israel a reality. They immigrated to Israel where they all settled in Jerusalem. Esther Malka immigrated to the United States in 1957. She lived in Brooklyn, New York until her death in 2002. The rest of the siblings married and had many children and all remained in Israel. Moshe’s diary remains in the family to this day.
Moshe’s diary was then handed over to Yad Vashem, where it was published first in Hebrew, then translated into English in 1971.
People tend to look at Moshe Flinker and Anne Frank and think they’re one in the same. Let’s discuss.
Anne Frank’s diary began on June 13, 1942. Moshe’s diary began on November 24, 1942. Moshe was born in 1926, while Anne was born in 1929. Though they were both in Holland at the time of the occupation of the Nazis, their diaries were written in different circumstances. Anne’s was written as a confidant, a friend that she could express her feelings to, while Moshe’s diary was filled with his feelings of frustrations and questioning God about the world around him. Though there is something that both diaries do describe daily activities and feelings, their feelings were very different. While Anne was exploring her own body, Moshe was trying to figure out why his people, the Jews, were suffering so much and how could GOD let this happen?
Both diaries were rescued by the most unlikely people. Anne’s by their helper, Miep Gies and Moshe’s diary was saved by the landlord.
The orthodox religion has been passed on to the remainder of the Flinker family. Leon, Esther Malka’s son, said that what traditions his uncle Moshe had growing up, were passed down to him.
Leah is the only sibling alive today, the rest of them all passed away. The family, with the exception of Leon, lives in Israel.
Moshe’s diary, though it was published, is out of print and very hard to find. If you are able to find it, the price, you’ll notice, is sometimes unreasonable. Some people want over a hundred dollars for it, but you can find it for a decent price.
Anne Frank’s diary is published every year, with new editions and covers. Moshe’s diary, unfortunately did not get that treatment.
Yes, Anne’s diary is iconic, but Moshe’s diary was published at a time when it was really needed. Let me explain. The Holocaust was and still is something that most Americans have a difficult concept of, and Moshe’s diary was an example of someone’s experience, other than Anne Frank’s.
Between the years of 1971–2022, several Holocaust diaries have been published, including that of Yitskhok Rudashevski, whose diary was published in 1973, a few years after Moshe’s.
Moshe’s diary is an example of those Jews who were in hiding. Like Otto Wolf’s diary, Moshe’s diary was not fully acclaimed overseas. In Israel, it was a big hit, for in Israel, thousands of Jews who live there, are Holocaust survivors. In America, the way Moshe’s story is taught is through the book Salvaged Pages, not his own diary, like Anne’s diary is.
Moshe Flinker, if he’s lucky, makes it into a classroom in America. There are so many educators who do their best to remember this boy. This boy, who was struggling with his own faith, now is the symbol for those who feel the same way,
Moshe would be ninety-six today, had he survived. His sister, Leah is ninety-five.
Today, Moshe’s voice screams for justice and peace. Though the Holocaust has been over for quite some time now, there are remnants of it, especially in the United States. The rights being stripped away from certain groups of people, hatred against Jews still an issue and attacks among Jews and other minorities, just to name a few.
Today, had Moshe survived, he probably would have made it to Israel, gotten a great education, probably at a Shiva. A Shiva is where young men study the Torah for a living. He would have settled down and maybe had a few children, who knows?
With Moshe being dead for seventy-seven years and probably more, his voice does not go silent.
Moshe’s voice will always be LOUD and he will never be silent.
MY BEST GIRLS
Donia (1922–1943) and Ester (1925–1943)
I have autism. One of my special interests is the Holocaust, specially studying the lives of Jewish teens and children who either survived or died during the Holocaust. It’s hard enough to study them without getting too deep, or getting too emotionally attached. With the Sorger (Serger) Sisters, I have done just that. To me, they are quite mysterious and I’m not entirely sure why? I know they were both murdered, but the way that they died, was intriguing to me. You know the term “Buried alive”- well, Donia was literally “buried alive”. She was injured after being shot, and she was holding her sister, who had just been shot dead. She told the Nazis, “Please don’t bury me! I’m still alive!” They didn’t listen obviously and she was buried under the Earth. She suffered so badly. The way that these girls have taken up so much of my energy and time (which is perfectly fine by the way), I want to make sure that they are remembered for who they were, not by the way that they died.
Don’t take this the wrong way, but I feel like I’ve been let down by so many “living” people, that when I turn to them, It feels like I’m getting everything out of my life that I want to do. To me, I want to keep these girls alive. Have I met them in real life? (Kinda, it’s kind of a complicated story and that will be another post at some point when I’m ready). But for me, these girls won’t seem to “leave me alone.” I want them to bother me, if they need to .
As an autistic person, it’s hard to let things “Go” or to stop “obessing” over something. I don’t know that a pair of teens (or in Donia’s case, Young Adult), would be something that I wanted to study, or just take an interest in.
You might ask, “Kate, how did you find them?”
In these cases, they seem to “Find Me” and in this case, that was exactly what happened. It was 2016 and the election in America had just happened, and I, of course, trying to find out what to do, being a Jewish woman and being a Holocaust historian, I was looking for answers. On Yad Vashem’s website, I see the photo (pictured above).
The caption said this:
“Obertyn, Poland: Sonja Shulamit, Donia, and Esther Sorger during the holiday of Sukkot. Pre-war.
Shulamit, Donia and Ester were born in Obertyn, Poland. During the war they were moved to the Kolomyja Ghetto. Donia (left) was buried alive in the Kamionka Forest on 18 February 1943. Ester (right) was also murdered on 18 February 1943. Their parents Eliasz and Golda nee Schleimer were murdered in the local cemetery after their hiding place had been discovered. Their sister Shulamit (center) survived the Holocaust. She submitted Pages of Testimony in their memory and donated the family album containing this photograph to Yad Vashem.”
This was news to me. I don’t know what it was, but it seemed that Donia and Ester literally took hold of my heart and never let it go. Sometimes, as an autistic person, I like how people “look”. It’s really weird to explain, and with these teens and children, the same thing applies. I don’t know what it was about Donia and Ester that really made me want to read more about them, but I wanted to learn more. So, of course, Yad Vashem was very helpful in telling me what happened. I ended up buying the book that their surviving sister wrote and I read exactly what happened to them. The thing about Donia, is that she screamed for mercy. The thing that hurt me more than anything, was reading on how these girls died. Ester, was shot and she died almost instantly, but Donia, was not yet dead, but she suffocated under the Earth. How could someone have done that to her? She was only 21, still a young adult. She was scared, and those men killed her.
The thing that really makes me angry is that how could these Nazis look at these girls, or any Jewish child for that matter, or teen, kill them, and then go home to their own kids? HOW IS THAT LOGIC? They just killed Jewish teens or children, think nothing of it, and then just go home to their own families and act like it was no big deal? How? That’s something this autistic brain of mine can’t wrap it’s head around? It’s so hard to understand, and it’s so hard to figure out. I find that logic to be used now: These people who want to hurt the LGBTQ community will look at these kids in the eyes and know that they’re hurting them, and then go home to their own kids like it’s no big deal.
But back to the Sorger’s:
In my docent training, I have to come up with a tour to give to people. For me, I see the 6 million Jews as people, not as a number. I want to tell people’s stories, particularly the Jewish teens and children. So, of course, I included the stories of the Sorger (Serger) girls. I was thrilled, because in my own way, I can feel them. They don’t leave me. I wish more people who studied this topic of the Holocaust, felt the way I do, but I’m autistic, so I take this more seriously than the average person.
I want to fight for these girls and “save” them, like they did for me. They didn’t walk away from me, when I tried to walk away from my own life.
For me, these girls mean so much, but why? To be quite blunt, I guess it’s because they found me and I guess I want to share their stories. I’m learning new things about them as time progresses.
For example, I learned that both girls wanted careers. Ester was studying nursing and Donia was studying business (or economics, as their surviving sister said in her book).
Eli-Eliash and Golda-Olga Sorger (Their parents) lived in the town of Obertyn, Poland (today Ukraine). On the eve of World War II, some 1,200 Jews lived in Obertyn, about one quarter of the town’s total population. Eli was a photographer, and also owned a shoe and leather store. They had four daughters: Donia-Rosa (b. 1922), Esther (b. 1925), Ruthie, who died in infancy and Sonia (b. 1932). The family was Zionist in outlook, and Golda’s brother Yaakov Schleimer immigrated to Eretz Israel (Mandatory Palestine) in 1932. Eli was a Zionist activist, and served as chairman of the “Hatikva” organization in Obertyn. The Sorgers were financially comfortable. In 1938, Donia and Esther left to study in Stanislawow, but were only there for one year before the war broke out.
In September 1939, the Soviets entered Obertyn and dismantled all the Jewish community’s institutions and organizations. The Sorgers were designated for evacuation to Siberia, however thanks to Eli’s work as a photographer, they were allowed to remain in Obertyn but had to leave their home. Eli took photographs for personal documents, and every now and then was invited to photograph Russian officers’ events. The Soviets left Obertyn in June 1941, and the Hungarian Army entered the town for a short time in early July. The Germans took over in August, and a range of anti-Jewish measures were introduced: limitations on freedom of movement, identifying marks, property confiscation and conscription for forced labor. In April 1942, the Jews of Obertyn, including the Sorgers, were deported to the Kolomyja ghetto together with Jews from the surrounding areas. Esther Sorger, who was a nurse in the Jewish hospital, stayed in Obertyn to take care of the typhus epidemic patients there.
Golda’s mother Pesia Schleimer was also confined in the Kolomyja ghetto, and Donia took care of her. Living conditions in the ghetto were very difficult, and the inmates were starving. When the Germans allowed some of the professionals to return to Obertyn, Eli managed to take Golda and Sonia back to Obertyn with him. They moved from one hiding place to another. Pesia perished in Kolomyja and Donia managed to escape and return to Obertyn. Esther succeeded in evading the Aktion against the hospital staff, and went into hiding. The family members were in different hiding places until February 1943. One of the women in whose house Donia and Esther were hiding betrayed them. They were taken away by Ukrainian policemen and murdered. Eli, Golda and Sonia were also caught. Eli and Golda were taken to prison in Obertyn, and Sonia was smuggled to a new hiding place by Romanitze, a Ukrainian policeman who knew the family. Eli and Golda tried unsuccessfully to commit suicide in prison, and were later murdered at the town cemetery.
11-year-old Sonia was left alone. She wandered from place to place, sometimes finding refuge in a farm or barn. She lived with a peasant family in the village of Zukow for a few months, but her Jewish identity was discovered, and she returned to Obertyn, giving herself up to the local Ukrainian militia. She was sent to Hurodanka, and this time too, Romanitze came to her aid and brought her back to Obertyn. Sonia continued to drift from one hiding place to another, until she reached Kolomyja in 1944, and stayed there under an assumed identity until her liberation by the Red Army in May 1944.
After liberation, Sonia was adopted by Mrs. Gecinski, a Polish Kolomyja resident, and her name was changed to Christina. In 1945, the Gecinski family left for western Poland with Sonia-Christina. In 1959, Sonia-Christina (later Shulamit Carmi) immigrated to Israel and settled in Kibbutz Givat Hashlosha. Her memoir, “The Strange Ways of Providence in my Life”, was published in 2015.
NEW KID ON THE BLOCK
Christian Helmut Hepner (Hafner)
Christian found me last year and this week, he would have turned 100!! Sadly, he didn’t get to see 100.
He was born on July 22, 1924 in Germany. I’m not sure how many siblings he had, but he was considered “Half Jew,” which makes sense. He was a happy boy, who really loved to be outside.
The thing that strikes me about him, is that his death DOES NOT MAKE ONE BIT OF SENSE. There are documents about him. He was told he had to serve in the army, but since he was “Half-Jew” he had to serve in the “TOT” organization, which I had never heard of .
He was shot, which I got, but “kneeling before a picture of Goring”. WHAT? How is that possible? Why would they have a picture of Goring there? That doesn’t make sense at all? I knew he was shot, but why that way? Was he staged that way? Or was he forced? We will never know? It’s hard to place what exactlty went down and we don’t know if anyone else was shot? But apparently, his death was really weird, and he apprently was at the wrong place at the wrong time it seems?
In my search to find what “TOT” was or how exactly he ended up where he was, I have to dive into the archvies of Germany. He never moved from Germany, so he lived and died there.
But, if his mother died at Auschwitz, from one document said, then why wasn’t he deported? He should have been right? It didn’t seem that way. He seemed to “Safe” but not really? He had to serve in the military, but it’s weird to understand how, or why?
The thing is really is interesting, is his death. I know he was shot, but the way he died…doesn’t make sense. As it says in the documents: The death was never cleared…well obiviously not? Will anyone know? It’s hard to say? It’s hard to tell. The thing I can do now, is try to contact this Jan Hepner and see what he knows? If he’s still alive? Maybe? I don’t know? I hope to try to find out more about this boy. I’ve “seen” him before, and I really want to know in what circumstances he was killed? For what reason? I’m not sure? But that’s a mystery I intend to find out.
He saved me a lot last year and he knew he could save me.
With the Hamas- Israel war still going on, I wanna say this:
You do know that HAMAS is a TERRIORST GROUP.. right? They are literally killing Palestine citizens and the Palestinians are totally fine with Jews dying. Well, sorry, but when I think of that, I think FUCK YOU ALL.
These kids, died CAUSE OF SHIT LIKE THIS. I know you think the Holocaust is “Ancient History”- but not really. You try to tear them out of schools, and ban their diaries or anything about them.
I hold onto these kids dearly. Here’s the kicker though, this is something you may not know about them.
THEY KNOW EVERYTHING. THESE KIDS SEE EVERYTHING. THEY SEE THE RACISM AND THE HATRED. THEY SEE IT ALL.
You know how pissed off these kids are? They are so mad, that they want to try to tear to “our side” and want to show you that they died for something.
In my eyes, they did. They gave up their lives for me. The least I can is make sure that they aren’t forgotten or unwanted. The hatred is just annoying and I’m so tired of this. Palestine against Israel, yeah, we’ll never get our shit together, are we?
The fuckers in this, the dumbass celebrities screaming for “Freeing Palestine”- you know you’re supporting a terrorist group, right? YOU DO KNOW THAT RIGHT?
Please tell me that those of you who “support” Palestine, know this too? They (The Palestine people), want the Jews dead, they are perfectly ok with the Jews being attacked.
Like fuck you? I’m sorry, but I know Americans would throw a goddamn hissy fit if we were attacked by other countries. Can you for once see it from Israel’s point of view? Yeah, I know Bibi isn’t great, but for Godsake, the other Jews just wanna live peacefully?
The kiddos I have mentioned are everything to me and I want to save them as much as they have saved me.
