Two Sisters : Felicitas Wolf and Eva Ginz
Felicitas Garda and Chava Pressburger had so much in common.
Felicitas was born in Lipnik, Czech Republic on March 27, 1920. Eva was born on February 21, 1930 in Prague, Czech Republic.
Both of them had brothers, in Felicitas’s case, she had two, one younger and one older: Kurt Wolf and Otto Wolf.
Eva had an older brother, Petr Ginz.
When the war broke out in September of 1939, both girls were in danger, since they were both Jewish. Felicitas who was going to school for design and Eva was going to school. Both were humiliated in their country of the Czech Republic. Jews were forced to wear a Star of David patch on their clothes, and barred from doing anything for entertainment.
Eva and Petr were living a comfortable childhood in Prague until they could no longer exist in their own town. Deportations to the Terezin Ghetto started in October of 1941. Petr was sent to the Terezin Ghetto in 1942. Petr was 14. He was young. He was an amazing artist and writer. He did not let the Nazis diminish his imagination. He wrote novels and he wrote in a diary that was never completed. He began another diary filled of his plans for the month that he wanted to accomplish.
In 1944, Eva was deported to the Ghetto as well. She also brought with her a diary in which she wrote about her time in Terezin and how worried she was for Petr. She took on the role of mother as she was concerned for his health and his well-being.
In September of 1944, Petr was sent to Auschwitz where he was murdered. Eva stayed behind. She wrote everyday that she missed Petr and she didn’t know how to explain it to her parents that Petr was gone. Her father was sent to the Ghetto in 1945.
When they were liberated by the Russians in May of 1945, they went back home. When her mother saw them, the first thing out of her mouth was “And where is Petr?” They awaited in vain for Petr to come home. In 1947, Eva made a single note in her diary, “Petr hasn’t returned.” Petr had been dead for two years at that point. He’s been gone for about 78 years now. He was killed in the gas chamber at Auschwitz and reduced to ashes.
Eva rebuilt her life, going back to school, getting married and leaving the Czech Republic. She immigrated to Israel in 1949 and has lived there ever since. In 2004, she published her brother’s diaries.
Felicitas on the other hand, was forced out of her job and school because she was Jewish. The Wolf’s were living in Olomouc for the time being until they couldn’t live there anymore, so they resorted to Trsice, a small town about 21 minutes in driving time. They lived there and had a life there. Felicitas took work as a farm hand to help her family out with their decreasing financials. Otto’s schooling came to a sudden halt. He was in high school. Felicitas had just turned 22.
In 1942, they got a deportation notice. Felicitas said they had other plans. They left the deportation area and walked back to Trsice where they were met by a friend named Jaroslav Zdařil, also called Slavek in Otto’s diary. He was in charge of giving them food, shelter and keeping their existence a secret. But in the spring of 1944, the Wolf’s relationship with Slavek became so deteriorated that they needed help. A dentist named Mrs. Ludmila Tichá and their former maid Maria Zbořilová had come to their aide. Ticha provided food and Zbořilová provided the shelter. They hid in Maria’s attic (also called Marencka). They seemed safe there for the time being. Felicitas helped with sewing and mending of their clothes and Otto did other chores.
Felicitas’s other brother, Kurt was in the Soviet Union (Russia) fighting in the Czech Army as their Army doctor, which made sense since he was a med student in Brno.
Mr. Zbořil, who always had a problem with the Wolf’s staying at his house, finally demanded they’d leave. Along with Mrs. Ticha, she was helped by a woman named Andela Chodilová. In March of 1945, Mrs. Ticha told them that the Ohera family would take them in. The Oheras seemed welcoming of the family of four.
Otto continued writing in his diary. Things seemed smooth until April of 1945. On April 18, 1945, there was an attack on the tiny village of Zakrov. The Vlasov Troops, Russians that fought with the Germans, were looking for partisans. Otto, who was 17, seemed to fit their bill. The only ironic thing was, he wasn’t at all affiliated with Partisans or anything, he’d been in hiding for the past few years. Partisans are people that hid in the forests and attacked Nazis at every opportunity. The troops demanded ID’s from the family. They questioned Otto first. Otto couldn’t think of what to say, but he was visiting the Oheras and he was from Telc. They didn’t buy it, but it was true.
Otto was taken away, along with 22 other men. The Troops had invaded Trsice as well. As soon as Otto was taken away, Felicitas grabbed Otto’s diary and recorded down what had just happened. The family decided that they could not stay where they were and needed to resort to the forest 🌳 .
Felicitas wrote in her brother’s diary, this time, instead of pen, it was pencil. Otto wrote in pen, and in cursive. Felicitas’s handwriting was no different, she wrote in cursive and in Czech. Otto was taken to the headquarters in Ujezd. He was identified as a Jew and handed over to the Gestapo. There, he was tortured and then on April 20, 1945, in the forest of Kyjanice, he and 18 other men, including Oldrich Ohera, one of the men who was hiding Otto, was shot and then burned. In another account by Zdeňka Calábková, 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.” Q: “And they had all broken legs?” “Poor guys, none of them had his legs unhurt.” This was true, as when the war was over, on May 12, 1945, the Germans were forced to uncover the bodies they had burned. All of them had broken femurs or broken thighs.
Felicitas wrote in the same style as her brother, reporting on what they ate, where they were, the weather and their prayers for Otto’s safe return. She even wondered where Kurt was at that point. By the point Otto was killed, Kurt had been dead for about two years. He was killed in action on March 9, 1943 in Sokovlo. Kurt was 28 years old at the time of his death.
Felicitas writes:
“April 21, 1945, Saturday.
We rise at 7 A.M. Breakfast consists of a tiny piece of bread with a hint of shmaltz. The weather is very cold now. At noon, I crawl through the forest toward Mrs. Tichá’s, who is already waiting for me with a loaf of bread. […] She doesn’t know anything about our men: all Tršice men are home already but none from Zákřov. She says that I shouldn’t even think about going to the Oheras’ because the Gestapo is showing up there constantly. The Vlasovites may also be roaming around Tršice all the way to the Korábko looking for us. She is afraid that they may find us. She looks terrible: she can barely walk.” By the time she wrote this, Otto was already dead.
The war ended in Europe in May of 1945. Otto and Petr Ginz were gone, but their sisters remained.
Eva (now Chava) became a renowned artist in Israel and Felicitas became store manager and had her own clothing store. Both women married and had daughters and grandchildren. Otto’s life and legacy remains at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and Petr’s legacy rests with Chava herself, though a lot of Petr’s drawings and paintings are at Yad Vashem, the Israeli Holocaust Museum.
Otto and Petr are known because their sisters gave them a new life and a new generation who can remember them by.
Felicitias died in 2006 and Chava is going to be 92 this year!
Both women remained Jewish and their revenge on the Nazis was saving their brother’s words.
Otto and Kurt were posthumously awarded the Order of the Silver Lion by the Czechoslovak government.
Petr has a plaque somewhere in Prague and his artwork, was used to go to space.
The Sisters never met, since they both were in different situations. It’s a miracle that they were both alive. Felicitas never did any formal interviews or any testimonies. But Chava has done many interviews about her brother and her time in Terezin.
