project NEIGHBOURS WHO DISAPPEARED

Story from Heřmanův Městec (A story about a child Jitka Pípalová)

Motto: "… I am thinking… People always had, still have and will have their beliefs and hopes. And that's the most important thing. Because if people don't believe in anything, they are either dead or inhuman." - Authors

I. Foreword

At the beginning of last year our school was offered a trip by the Czech Freedom Fighters Associations to the concentration camp in Terezín and to Lidice, connected with a visit of the graveyard of our president T. G. Masaryk.

Because I am interested in history and I have never been to these places, I expressed my interest to participate. I enjoyed the visit and I would definitely like to visit Terezín again. During the tour of the premises I mentioned that my relatives were also affected by the Genocide. Our teacher suggested that I could join the project "Neighbours Who Disappeared".

I accepted with some hesitation and started to think who could assist me. I was afraid I might overestimate my abilities. At an exhibition about the history of our town I noticed my schoolmates Verča and Anička. I knew that Verča was very curious and communicative. When I saw how angry she was about the Nuremberg Laws, I suggested she could assist me in the project. Aňa joined our discussion and in the end both of them offered to help me. At the beginning of our work, we realized that our ICT skills were not sufficient and therefore we also invited Ondra. Our team was complete.

This is how it began...

II. I am thinking…

"I am thinking... In my thoughts I slowly travel back to the past of our town. Black and white film starts to unravel in front of my eyes. It could be entitled "A Day in Heřmanův Městec in 1939".

On the screen you can see the densely populated Jewish Quarter. Suddenly I become part of the film. I stand in front of our synagogue. In the direction towards the centre of the town, the present-day Peace Square (náměstí Míru), you can find a fragment of a column, where their used to be a chain in the 19th century, dividing the Jewish Quarter from the rest of the town. Almost all the people that pass me have a troubled expression in their face.

I am heading towards the centre of the town. I walk below the shop notice boards. An outraged man almost knocks me down. The shop assistant apologizes: "I am sorry, but I cannot do otherwise. Law is law and I have a family! I hope you understand." The man doesn't listen and turns round the corner, in the direction I came from... A few shops further down I notice a young mother with a crying baby. She comes out of a grocery store and tries to calm down her son, promising she would prepare something sweet for him, if he stopped crying.

I can feel solidarity, as well as fear. Fear of what would happen if somebody violated the new German laws. And I feel something else. An unspoken question: "What is going to happen to all of us? A democratic state turned into Protectorate? Forever? No! This cannot happen in a free state!

Without realizing I am standing in the door of a Jewish temple. The sun shines through the glass stained windows. Several men are sitting in high wooden benches and when I look up I see the same number of women. Rabbi Folkmann interrupts my thoughts. He encourages everyone and urges the young ones not to cause trouble. I leave absent-mindedly and my steps lead me through the crooked streets to a very old cemetery. Most of the gravestones are covered with pebbles. I plunge deeper in thoughts. Should I tell anyone about the future? Do I have the right to change history? Would it serve any purpose?

People always had, still have and will have their beliefs and hopes. And that's the most important thing. Because if people don't believe in anything, they are either dead or inhuman.

In my black and white film colours start to appear and I am slowly returning from my dream to the 21st century, where the former Jewish town looks very different."

Even in these days, the synagogue remains to be the dominant feature. After a long period of dereliction it finally went through a complete reconstruction and it can proudly look into the future again. Most of the houses were not preserved, however, and the sites are empty.

III. Tracing history

History of our town goes back to 1325. Jewish settlement was documented as early as 1450. At that time, Jewish inhabitants had their own cemetery and a wooden synagogue. It burned down in 1623 and a new one replaced it, standing within the view of the Christian church. It didn't comply with a later directive and had to be brought down in 1727. From this time the oldest map of the town with a layout of the Jewish and Catholic settlement was preserved. A third one, this time a stone baroque synagogue, located according to the rules, was finished in 1760 and rebuilt in 1870 in the present Neo-Romanesque style.

On the border of the former ghetto, one of the largest and oldest cemeteries in the Czech Republic has been preserved to this time. In twenty-one uneven rows there are 1077 gravestones. The most recent stone plaque bears inscribed names of the Holocaust victims.

IV. We start to search

Our first point of reference was Mr Ladislav Mareš, the last inhabitant of the town who professes Judaism. He provided invaluable help. Already during our first meeting he gave us lots of interesting information and we happily started our search. The story he told us that day was so captivating that we had to return several times.

We discovered that Anna Pipalová, née Fuchsová, was his step-sister. Therefore he could provide valuable documents and sources. His recounting was so captivating that we started to examine the life story of Anna Pipalová. Some places remained empty and therefore we had to embark on a search beyond the borders of our town. Via Internet we contacted archives, municipal authorities and the Jewish Museum in Prague.

We were not sitting at the computer or flipping through books, chronicles or regional magazines all the time. We also documented places related to our story. Our teacher, Mrs Eva Bočková, who assisted us in the project, spent hours in the archive of Chrudim and in the National Archive in Prague. We encountered a number of problems when collecting the data. It was also difficult to get a precise number of resettled people. Some sources were incomplete, others listed different names or names without dates of birth. Therefore our inventory cannot be completely accurate.

V. Memories of a survivor

"The right side of the Jewish Street in direction to the Klešic house was placed higher all the way to the mill. On the higher side, a stream ran in front of the houses and its water powered the water mill. The stream was not covered. Its bed was lined with bricks and it was bridged only at the entrances to the houses. The higher part of the street was separated from the lower part of the street by a wall, disconnected on several places by stone stairs leading directly to the lower roadway, which was quite narrow and cars had to drive very close to the wall."

"In 1920s and 1930s the Jewish Street in the direction to the mill was slightly twisted and below the wall there was a house of the Havlík family. Right above the mill the stream was narrowed by a concrete gutter, which grew wider in front of the floodgate. People used to do their washing here. Next to the Havlík house was a shaft, where the water ran when the miller wasn't milling. He would open the floodgate to the shaft and close the one to the raceway."

"I remember that in the first half of the 1930s a fire broke out in the Jewish Street, taking toll on five houses that stood in a row between the two riverbeds.

The fire started, if I remember correctly, in Šanda's house and spread on both sides. Towards the slaughterhouse the houses of Dostál and Hubáček burned down and towards the mill the houses of Šanda and Müller sisters (who had a tobacco shop in the house). From there it spread to the multi-storey house of Leon Brozan. In between his house and the house of the Müller sisters led a narrow street heading to the stream bed from the mill-wheel."

"The premises of the ghetto with no yards and gardens were bizarre but picturesque."

VI. The story of Pipal family

On 15 May 1915, when Heřmanův Městec must have been in bloom, a girl called Anna was born to Hermína and Josef Fuchs. She was born into a turbulent transformation of Europe, the First World War. Her father was soon enlisted and didn't return. She was educated in Prague at a basic Jewish boarding school and later continued her studies at a lycee and finished successfully with final exams in French, German and English. Then she moved to Moravia (first to Brno, later to Uherské Hradiště), where she worked as a governess in Jewish families. In this town she also met her future husband.

On the pale photography we can see a pleasant young man called Emil Pipal. He was born in Vienna on 31 of July 1899. When he was five, his family moved to Uherské Hradiště. When he grew up, he was involved in sport and cultural activities in the town. After the establishment of Czechoslovakia he joined the army as a volunteer. When he left the army, he worked as a clerk of Czechoslovak joint-stock insurance company in Uherské Hradiště. He was a member of a rowing team and a number of other clubs.

In 1938, in this ill-fated year for democratic Europe, Anna Fuchsová and Emil Pipal got married in Uherské Hradiště. We couldn't find the exact date because the German mayor of the town destroyed the Jewish as well as civilian registry offices at the end of the war.

After the arrival of Germans, Emil probably made the biggest mistake of his life. He actively participated in the resistance movement called "Nation's Defence", established by soldiers from the local garrison.

Despite the black clouds gathering over Europe, the skies in Zlín were illuminated on 24 August 1939 by a sunbeam called Jitka. The happy father couldn't hold her in his arms for long. On 13 January 1940 he was arrested, accused of sabotage and subsequently imprisoned by the Gestapo.

In these difficult times of Jewish persecution, Anna with little Jitka decided to return to Heřmanův Městec to her mother, who lived there with her children from another marriage. She was still in written contact with Emil.

When another letter arrived in autumn 1942 from what is now Polish Wroclaw, everybody knew Emil would not return. He sent his last will, farewell and hope. He formally divorced Anna in hope that the authorities would be tolerant to his family. At the beginning of November, the horrible truth was published in the newspapers. On 6 November 1942 Emil Pipal together with other convicted men was executed in Wroclaw for treason against Germany. He was buried in a nameless grave, marked only with a number. Later, the liberation army passed through the city and the graves were destroyed.

At the same time, at the end of 1942, Anna and Jitka, who were staying in Heřmanův Městec, were called to a gathering place Pardubice, where they reported on 3rd December. Here, they embarked on a transport Cf to Terezín together with other Jewish inhabitants. Jitka, who was three at the time, was the youngest member of the transport.

After two difficult years in the Terezín ghetto, during which they still believed they would return home, they were transported to the extermination camp in Auschwitz. After several days in the transport, the train reached its destination on 12 October 1944. Anna and Jitka were driven out of the train and at the selection they were sent in the direction, from which there was no way back. They probably died on the same day in a gas chamber.

From all the people who entered the transport, only three women returned to Heřmanův Městec. One of them was Hermína Marešová, mother of Anna and grandmother of Jitka.

In the end, there remains one unanswered question: "What did the little three-year old girl do that she had to die? Did she present such a danger to the Nazi Germany that she had to be killed?"

VII. Hermína Brozanová

Hermína Brozanová lived a fictional life. She was born in Heřmanův Městec on 20 October 1892 to orthodox couple, Marie (née Schück) and Izák Brozan. Two years later, another girl was born - Karolína. The family made their living by collecting and selling feathers. Hermína attended local German school and later trained to be a dressmaker.

On 13 September 1914 she married Josef Fuchs, the oldest son of the later caretaker of the Jewish cemetery, and a member of the Jewish community in Heřmanův Městec. During the First World War, Josef joined the 21st infantry regiment and left for the Russian battlefield at Přemyšl. There he was captured and transported to Omsk.

When the War ended and he didn't return, he was declared missing at the proposal of his wife Hermína Fuchsová. After an unsuccessful search, the Regional court in Chrudim on 7 February 1923 pronounced him dead (since 1920) and nullified the marriage. We investigated the life story of Anna, the only child of the couple.

In 1925 Hermína remarried an electrician Jaroslav Mareš from Mostek u Vysokého Mýta. Another three children were born, who became stepbrothers and stepsisters of Anna - Hermína, Jaroslav and Ladislav. In 1931 Mr Mareš died of tuberculosis and Hermína, as his widow, took over his shop with electrical engineering.

Because it was a licensed trade, she had to employ an experienced professional, who would become her guarantor. Even in these difficult times she secured her children good education. The oldest daughter Anna finished her studies at a lyceum in Prague, the second daughter trade school in Chrudim, son Jaroslav a technical school in Kutná Hora and the youngest Ladislav Josef Ressel Secondary School in Chrudim.

At the end of 1942 they were summoned to Pardubice. On 3 December Hermína and her older daughter Anna and granddaughter Jitka arrived at the gathering place. On 5 December 1942 they left to Terezín. Why only Anna and little Jitka? Probably because the German officials transported Jewish inhabitants according to the Jewish registry office, in which the children from the second marriage were not listed.

In Terezín Hermína had to part with Jitka and Anna and worked as a housemaid with doctor Beck. Just a year later, on 15 December 1943, Hermína was transported to Auschwitz. She had a number 71 292 tattooed on her left hand.

At the end of the War, from 3 March 1945 to April 1945, she stayed in the Bergen - Belsen concentration camp. Here she lived to see the liberation. Her son Ladislav came for her and brought her to Bohemia together with her two friends, Ruth Hisch and Anna Taussig.

After returning home, Hermína soon recovered. She worked at the shop just like before the War and received a small widow's pension. She was still registered as a tradeswoman. After 1948 she had to close the shop down.

After the death of Jaroslav Levínský, her son-in-law, Hermína moved to her daughter's place and helped her in bringing up the grandchildren. In 1976 she died of pneumonia at the hospital in Chrudim.

VIII. Conclusion

We ended up the intricate and tragic history of the family at the Jewish cemetery in Heřmanův Městec. There are two silent witnesses of the whole story, the gravestones of Ferdinand Fuchs and Marie Brozanová. With them the whole story began and here it was concluded.

Our work enabled us to penetrate the problems of that era. What we find obvious today was very rare during the Second World War. We were surprised that people can unite and keep hope even in the most difficult situations, that even in hard conditions love can exist and that hopes are always kept alive. We hope that people will learn from the past and things like this will never repeat. We want to cry out in the world: "Let us hope that this horrible history will never repeat!"

We believe that this project opened our eyes to see the real values of life: family, friendship, love … and above all, the incalculable price of human life. Even though the project wasn't easy and we invested lots of our time, it gave us more than we expected. Thank you for letting us be part of the project and present the history of one ordinary family from the times of the Second World War.

WRITTEN WORKS