Ella and Otto bade their children farewell with kisses.
There was one more communication, from Ella, the original of which was not among the others, probably because it must have been almost unbearable for Lotar and Zdenka to read. Its contents were recalled much later by Lotar. Ella, weakened and desolate, had a note smuggled out from the hospital to report that on September 29, 1944, my grandfather had been deported alone to Auschwitz in a transport she referred to as labor.
Otto had remained strong and healthy, and the family continued to be hopeful, given the classification of the transport, that he would survive.
There is one more piece of paper, undated, among the letters from the camp. Initially, it baffled both the translator and me. It was a note, written by someone with little formal schooling and signed Mrs. Rosa. The writer, who was clearly panicked, scribbled that she could not find Mrs. Mother at her usual place. She promised that she had looked everywhere and asked at the camp, but no one knew where she had gone. Mrs. Rosa explained that she had been unable to deliver the package, as she had promised to do. She asked Mrs. Jedličková, which was Zdenka’s maiden name, to confirm a day and time to meet at Bohušovice station so she could return the parcel of goods in a wheelbarrow.
Note from Mrs. Rosa
Mrs. Rosa, anxious to return the undelivered parcel, was the unwilling bearer of the news that Lotar and Zdenka had dreaded.
Ella was deported to Auschwitz on October 19, 1944, with her niece Zita in a special transport that included those who were unwell.
The letters and cards were the last link between the parents and their children. When the letters stopped, the lives of Otto and Ella were plunged into darkness. It was almost impossible to have any communication with the inmates of Auschwitz and camps in Eastern Europe.
In Prague, the offices of the Judenrat were instructed that all the remaining Jews, including those who had intermarried or worked on the Council, were to be deported. It was only a matter of time until Lotar found his name on a list. It would be impossible to hide from the Gestapo. Denunciation for reward was highly likely, given the miserable conditions that people were enduring as the Reich crumbled. Lotar and Zdenka were living in one of her apartments and did not trust their neighbors. Zdenka later recalled that decisive action was required. The increasingly obvious disintegration of the German military machine had created opportunities. Soldiers were becoming nihilistic, reflective, or desperate. Others were just running wild in a frenzy of violence, a terrifying prospect for anyone who caught their attention. Zdenka, as astute in her judgment as ever, identified an SS guard who, for some reason, was susceptible to her approach. She did not record how she prevailed upon him, whether it was bribery, a desire to protect himself in the future, or perhaps even kindness. He agreed to help.
Early one February morning in 1945, this man, in SS uniform, barged noisily into their apartment building on Podskalská Street. He shouted, slammed doors, knocked down pictures, and threw furniture around as loudly as he could. The commotion woke all the neighbors. He acted the scene so perfectly that Lotar and Zdenka became scared and wondered whether they had been duped and the man actually intended to arrest or shoot them. He chased Lotar and Zdenka down the stairs at gunpoint and then out, around the corner. When they reached an alleyway, to Lotar and Zdenka’s great relief, the SS man declared,
“Well, that does it, I guess. Goodbye now. Good luck.”
Satisfied that there were now multiple witnesses to his arrest, many of whom might have been potential informers, Lotar returned as quickly and discreetly as he could to Zdenka’s apartment on Trojanova Street. Just as before, when they had sat out the aftermath of Heydrich’s assassination, only the building’s caretaker was entrusted to keep their secret. To complete her pretense, Zdenka burst into the offices of the Judenrat and, later that day, the SS headquarters and hysterically protested that her beloved and innocent husband had been taken at dawn. All those who heard her recounting the arrest concluded that it was unlikely that Lotar Neumann would be heard of again.
Their ploy succeeded. The charade served to throw the Gestapo off Lotar’s scent. No one would be looking for him now. As an added precaution, Lotar started to use Ivan Rubeš’s identity once more. The Federation of Jewish Communities in the Czech Republic holds a record card for Lotar, bearing a red stamp dated February 10, 1945: HAFT.
Imprisoned.
CHAPTER 16 What Remains of Us
On February 14, 1945, four days after Lotar was officially declared imprisoned, the Allies bombed Dresden, the German city some hundred and fifteen kilometers northwest of Prague. Allied planes had been seen over Prague before, but they had never attacked. That day, those involved later explained, a combination of faulty radar, high winds, and heavy clouds led to a navigational error. Disoriented, between 12:28 p.m. and 12:33 p.m., sixty-two American bombers descended on Prague in three waves and carpet-bombed. It was so unexpected that the city’s air raid sirens wailed only after the first bombs hit. Most people were unable to seek shelter. In those five minutes, the planes dropped 152 tons of explosives.
More than seven hundred civilians were killed and close to a thousand injured. The crisis was exacerbated by the fact that most Prague firefighters had been dispatched to help in Dresden. Hundreds of historical monuments and buildings were damaged. One of Zdenka’s buildings, where her mother and sister lived, was hit. In the panic that followed the extraordinarily brief but savage onslaught, Lotar and Zdenka abandoned caution and ran to find them. Zdenka’s mother was hurt but was able to walk. Marie, her nineteen-year-old sister, was badly injured, with a severe concussion and serious wounds to her legs. It was Lotar, supposedly in prison, who took her in his arms and, in plain daylight, carried her down the streets to the University Hospital. There, in a bombed-out infirmary, her life was saved.
Much of Europe succumbed to chaos in the early months of 1945 as war raged and the Reich crumbled. Berlin and Prague were no exceptions. The Russian army was advancing, and the Germans were staging an increasingly desperate defensive war. The bombing of Berlin by the Allies had started up again on February 3 with the largest daylight attack on the city to date. Thousands lost their lives, tens of thousands were injured, and hundreds of thousands were displaced as a result of that raid alone. Through the smoke and dust of the bombs and fires of the Allied raids, Berliners could see and hear that the Soviet army was drawing ever closer.
In January 1945, my father found himself dealing with a wholly unexpected challenge. He was temporarily blinded in a laboratory explosion at the factory. This was followed by a brief enforced respite from the fire brigade as a result of having suffered a concussion while on duty. One of my documents from the box is a medical note from January 31, 1945, signed by Dr. Hermann Gysi, stating that Jan was being treated three times a week for Vegetative Dystonia, a disorder of the nerves that does not seem to be caused by a physical illness. Among its common symptoms are heart palpitations, chills, fear, insomnia, feelings of suffocation, and panic attacks. It is clear that Jan Šebesta’s life was taking a toll on his health.
By then, four months had passed without news of his parents or any of the family members who had been sent east. Amid the work, the firefighting, the bombings, the impending arrival of the Soviets, and the fear of being uncovered, my father’s only links with his former self were Zdeněk and an occasional surreptitious telephone call to Lotar or Míla. Berlin grew more dangerous with each passing day. It was time to go home to Prague.