ŠTOKY - The Pachner family

The girls' names

Our group consists of nine girls and their teacher. Participation in the "Neighbors Who Disappeared" was more of a coincidence than anything else. In May 2006, we had a school trip to the Terezín Memorial and a few days before that, we also went to see an exposition at the Jihlava Jewish cemetery. During a sitting there, we met the Jihlava archiver, Ladislav Vilímek, who suggested we set up an exposition in the abandoned ceremonial chamber in the cemetery. We enthusiastically agreed and called our first meeting within a few days.

We had absolutely no idea where to start. We knew that much hasn't yet been recorded in this area and that there are probably many stories to be discovered, but also that one local historian has already treated the topic of the Jews of Štoky several years ago. It is, however, only twelve kilometers from Štoky to Havlíčkův Brod, where the topic of the local Jews has been left untouched to date. We still didn't know where to start our search. Fortunately though, our teacher recalled the Pachner family, whom she coincidentally encountered a mention of in the Havlíčkův Brod town archives during her university studies. This gave us a starting point and it is the reason why we chose this family for our research. We did not know how much information we would manage to assemble, but we believed we would find something at least.

Our first steps led us to the study room of the county library of Havlíčkův Brod. It was during the summer holidays, at the beginning of July. Our classmates were enjoying their holidays while we were delving into books, journals and almanacs. We found advertisements for a company and a shop owned by the Pachners as well as an article about the building they lived in. The almanac of the local high school contained mentions of several students named Pachner.

On the next meeting, we set off for the Havlíčkův Brod town archives. There were fourteen of us, so we filled the entire study room. Fortunately, the archive workers had great understanding for our endeavors and even helped us find various sources of information. We enthusiastically browsed the crates they brought us with high expectations. We started with the records of a break-of-the-century census, which allowed us to assemble all the family members, their full names, dates of birth and their birthplaces. We began comparing this data with the Terezín book of records and found the first few names of holocaust victims from this family.

Another great source of information were letters, written before and during the war by the Pachners. The letters are deposited in the archives, in the legacy of writer Josef Jahoda (born 1872, died 1946). Jahoda and Pachner were close friends, having both studied at the Německý Brod high school.

Initially, we didn't dare to hope to find photographs. The archives only contained pre-war shots of the Pachners' house. This took a turn when we managed to find a descendant of the family and contact him. This was in no way simple either. The way we made this discovery was slightly out of the ordinary - it was over the internet. We simply googled the name and we found several links. Most of these forwarded us to "Peter's Rum Site", in several languages! Thanks to this website, we obtained our first image: a Rum label, designed by Josef Pachner. This find made us very happy and we kept observing the label itself as well.

It still wasn't what we expected to find, however. We didn't know how the people looked, what made them happy and what were their worries. One of us gave in in the end and sent a polite, explanatory email to all the email addresses she could find for this name, about who we were and what we were doing. After several responses that were of no help to us, we received one response which finally satisfied us. A man wrote to us that he was a descendant of the Pachner family and that he would be glad to cooperate with us. This was a great breakthrough for us, as we got to know a lot of information and a couple of weeks later, we were in contact with nearly all of the living members of the family. We have been very lucky, because all of them supported (and still support) our work and were very happy we were doing it. Virtually all the photographs and various documents we have, we obtained from them.

Meeting and speaking with the witnesses was also part of the project. Every meeting with them was very interesting and often even emotional. These people didn't always tell us exactly what we needed, but we were grateful for every piece of information we obtained. At first, we found a few witnesses with the help of our teacher's mother. Eventually, we met a woman, who continued her schooling after elementary school in a shop owned by a local Jewish family. She now lives in a retirement home in Havlíčkův Brod and knows a good many people there. The other meetings were set up thanks to her. This way, we learned a lot about the life of Jews in pre-war Havlíčkův Brod. The topic of our work, however, remained the family we chose initially.

We joined the Neighbors Who Disappeared project in August 2006 after we learned of it from our teacher. We hesitated for a few days after having a look at the project website. We weren't sure if we should make up our minds and give it a shot, but the topic was so interesting to us that in the end, we decided to dive right in. The greatest problem of the entire project was most probably time. Not one of us expected the work involved would take so long and could include so many different presentations (expositions, articles, the panel, the almanac and other forms). Nevertheless, we believe the project brought us diverse new knowledge, interesting meetings and most importantly - experience we will carry throughout our lives.


The Pachner family - Neighbors Who Disappeared

We noticed no difference between the Pachners and other families in the Německý Brod of the day. In the late 19th century census however, we found a column describing the religion of the citizens. This one contained something that made the Pachners differ from most of the others. It said there: "Religion: Izraelite". This one word was all that made them unlike the others. Other than this, they lived a perfectly normal life, just like millions of others. They considered themselves Czech and their practice of Judaism was rather lukewarm. The children of Josef and Barbora were taught religion at school, but never proclaimed it in adulthood - they were atheists, which is proved, for example, by the 1921 census records. Their peaceful lives were left as such until the coming of World War II.

Josef and Barbora Pachner have lived in Německý Brod since 1879. They owned no. 104 in Dolní Street. Josef had a wine and liquor store here, as well as a liquor manufacturing workshop and later, a drug store. A well-known product of his company was the "Jesuit Liquor". Josef was active in the Sokol, he was a municipal representative for several years and at the same time, he was a member of the Německý Brod Jewish Community. Barbora Pachner was of the Taussig family - the family that gave us Jiří and František Langer, both excellent writers, and Arnošt Kolman, a philosopher.

Josef and Barbora had seven children - six sons and a daughter. Their approach to religion was rather lukewarm. The children were taught religion at school, but never adhered to it in adulthood. They knew nothing of the troubles, the doom and the death their origin will finally bring them. Four of Josef and Barbora's children lived to see the war, although only a single son survived it.

The eldest of the seven children was Arnošt. He loved the sciences and had a large collection of shells as a boy. He became a dentist and his office was in his house in Německý Brod, no. 89, Main Square. He treated the toothaches of writer Jaroslav Hašek, among others, and as a doctor, he encountered Jan Zrzavý, later a painter, several times. He married and had three daughters. He possessed a great manual aptitude and was good at working with gold - he made jewellery. He filmed Německý Brod and his family on a video camera, loved art and supposedly failed a year in high school in order to attend the same classes as his younger brother Artur. They graduated together and went on to study medicine in Prague. Arnošt and his wife were forced to leave Německý Brod in 1939 and to move to Prague. They were deported from Prague to Terezín in May 1942 and then to Treblinka, Poland, in October 1942. Both of them apparently perished upon arrival in the gas chambers. Their daughters, Marie and Alžběta, both survived Terezín.

Artur also became a dentist. His office was in Chrudim, on Ressl's square. He was very patriotic and more importantly, a true expert in his field writing professional articles and performing experiments with silver and its healing powers. He also loved animals - he kept an alligator at home, and when it overgrew him, he gave it to a zoo. Artur and Ella, his wife, were deported from Pardubice to Terezín in early December, 1942, from where they continued due east a year later. They both perished in Auschwitz-Birkenau in the so-called Terezín family camp. Artur apparently died of exhaustion in late January, 1944, and his wife in July of that year in the gas chambers. Their daughter Milada survived the war thanks to her mixed marriage and her selfless husband - she was very lucky, as she wasn't even deported to Terezín. In Terezín, Artur wrote a journal and some sort of discourse on Jews despite the threat of severe punishments. A Czech guard smuggled all of his works out of the camp - it is a very sad read.

"It is easy to write records, when we have an ink pen, a desk, paper and light. And when we have a morsel of privacy. I have but a tiny bit of pencil salvaged at the "altmaterial" dump, a bit of crumpled wrapping paper from a package from home, a 70 cm wide, 1 m 80 cm long cot in a dark corner of an attic, paved with soft bricks, the red dust of which soils the bed, clothing, footwear and body. Only a small skylight lets in a bit of daylight. We use a twenty candle lightbulb, so that we don't trip on the beams. They call this human mew pretentiously - lodging. There are thirty of us, stashed on several square meters. Men and women, altogether. We live, eat, sleep and die on our cots, pressed against each other with no aisles. Lucus a non lucendo, they aren't filled with straw, rather coarse, lumped, wool, soaked with urine and excrement and filled with lice. The legacy of my predecessor, who has been swallowed by the crematorium yesterday. There was a time - unbelievably long ago - when I had all that I now so painfully lack. These few thousand words, with which I now spend weeks, I would have put on paper in a single day. I even had a typewriter - Underwood no. 5.
Who hasn't seen the misery of this inferno, will hardly be able to visualise it. I recall that in the depths of the Macocha, where nothing lives and nothing grows, I spotted to my great surprise a measly lump of pale green moss, living off the warmth and light of a lightbulb. It lived, just like we "live". And because I live, I open a vent to my despair and I try to write. I do not see what I write in the dark. From time to time, a hungry, scrambling pillbug falls on my head - everything here is hungry - in belief that it is night, the time to feast. Hundreds of fleas are jumping on the floor and crawling up my body.
I had to push my way to the skylight every now and then, in order to check what I have written. The light of a weak lightbulb hung far away did not suffice. My frostburned fingers sting - I can barely hold the pen. God only knows how my wife managed to obtain a kettle of warm water to warm our hands.
In hell, densely inhabited by nervous, hunger crazed people, infested with sicknesses and ailments through and through, one in ten of whom bear the seal of oncoming end in their faces, I seek to order my thoughts..."

Pavel, another son of Josef and Barbora, took over his father's drugstore "U Černého psa" ("The Black Dog Drugstore"). It was in the building the Pachners owned in Německý Brod. He also had a photographic laboratory and a fuel station there, and after his brother's death, a liquor store. He himself, however, didn't drink. Pavel liked to spoil his grandchildren; he would give them sweets from large jars he kept in the store. Pavel and Ida were moved from Německý Brod to Prague in 1939, from where they were deported to Terezín in May 1942. They both perished somewhere in the east, apparently in the Polish camp, Sobibor - but we do not know for sure. Hana and Zdeňka, their daughters, survived till the end of the war in Terezín.

Alma, the only daughter of Josef and Barbora, died before the war in 1938. Her family might have been the one affected most by the war. Alois, her husband loved the arts. He had a splendid sense of humor and loved to tell jokes. He was a merchant and before the war, he owned a small knitting workshop in Jihlava. He had twin sons with Alma - Jiří and Pavel. Alois was first moved to Prague and then, in September 1942, deported to Terezín. He died in September 1942 in Maly Trascianiets in what is now Belarus.

Jiří Rotter, one of Alma and Alois' sons, also dealt with textiles. He had a company in Jihlava, in Matky Boží Street. Apart from that, he spoke German and English quite well as well as playing the violin. He got married and had a daughter, Věruška, in January 1942. At the time, he already lived in Prague. He was active in the anti-Nazi resistance in spite of the tremendous peril. The entire family was sent to Terezín in October 1942 and to Auschwitz in autumn of 1944. Jiří was deported at the end of September, his wife and daughter followed in early October.

Jiří survived the death march and lived to see the liberation of the Buchenwald camp. His wife and daughter both died in Auschwitz-Birkenau. This sad story made us realise how serious the hatred towards the Jews was. It didn't make choices: children, young, old... Věruška was two years and ten months old.

The tragedy of Alma's family, however, was unfortunately not over yet. Her second son, Pavel, became a lawyer. Before the war, he lived in Polná u Jihlavy and then moved to Prague. In August 1942, he, his wife and his seven-year-old son were deported to Terezín and a month later, to Maly Trascianiets, where they all perished immediately upon arrival. Most probably shot into a mass grave. Their transport was the second to last to Maly Trascianiets... fate?

The fifth child of Josef and Barbora was also a son. His name was Hugo and he died on November 3, 1906 in Německý Brod. He was twenty eight years old and was unmarried.

Oskar, the next of the siblings, took over his father's liquor store in Německý Brod. He didn't live to see the war - he died on March 13, 1937, in Německý Brod. Oskar's wife Marta was a niece, once removed, of composer Gustav Mahler. She was fifty six years old when she was deported to Terezín. She died in Maly Trascianiets in July 1942.

Hugo, the son of Oskar and Marta, was deported from Prague to Terezín in November 1942 and ended up in Auschwitz-Birkenau within several weeks. He didn't live to see the end of the war. He was a doctor and would have had his whole life ahead of him.

Their daughter Věra was held in Terezín during the final months of the war and lived to see the liberation here. She was saved by her mixed marriage. She was the only member of the Pachner family who lived in Havlíčkův Brod after the war. She died in October 1990.

The youngest member of the family was František. He became the head physician of the gynaecological and childbirth division of the Ostrava hospital. He educated midwives and founded a nursery in Ostrava. He married a non-Jewish woman, and he probably survived the war thanks only to her. By leaving Ostrava and moving to Zlín, he apparently saved himself for the first time, as of those who were deported from Ostrava, eastwards to Nisko nad Sanem in October 1939, barely any survived till the end of the war. He was arrested to be held in Hagibor concentration camp in Prague on October 12, 1944. A miracle happened there: an SS officer sent him home to die for his poor health. This surprised us, as it didn't happen very often. We found out that František contracted a heavy flu and, as he also suffered diabetes, his condition got very serious. In the end, however, he pulled through. He was summoned to Hagibor again in December, but he refused to obey, which probably saved his life again. His son Petr was in the Postoloprty camp towards the end of the war. He escaped on April 4, 1945 and went into hiding at his parents' in Zlín till the end of the war. He refused to speak of the months spent in the camp for the rest of his life. Eva, František's daughter, was spared the concentration camps thanks to a diphtheria infection. Doctors she knew helped her stay home as a carrier of the infectious disease.

Of all the siblings, only František survived the war.
One family, fourteen victims.
Fourteen neighbors who disappeared...

A list of sources and literature used for the creation of this text:

Archived sources:
Moravský zemský archiv Brno (The Brno Land-Archive) - Státní okresní archiv Havlíčkův Brod (The Havlíčkův Brod State District Archive)
Archiv města Havlíčkův Brod (The Havlíčkův Brod Town Archive)
Fond Havlíčkovo gymnázium Havlíčkův Brod (Havlíček's High School Fund, Havlíčkův Brod)
Fond Okresní úřad Německý Brod (Německý Brod District Authorities Fund)
Pozůstalost Josefa Jahody (The legacy of Josef Jahoda)

Published books:
LANGER, F., Byli a bylo (They were and it was), Praha 2003.
PACHNER, A., Terezín učí… (Terezín teaches...), in: Sociologická revue, roč. XIII, č. 4, 1947, s. 201-241.
Terezínská pamětní kniha I-II, Praha 1995.

Literatura:
Dvě stě let gymnasia v Německém Brodě (Two hundred years of the Německý Brod high school), Německý Brod 1935.
Havlíčkobrodsko v národním odboji (The Havlíčkův Brod district as part of the national resistance), Havlíčkův Brod 1946.

Photographs:
"A collection of photographs, Havlíčkův Brod" fund (The Brno Land-Archive - The Havlíčkův Brod State District Archive)
Private archives of the Pachner family
The private archive of the students working on the Havlíčkův Brod Neighbors who Disappeared project.

Our thanks
We encountered and received the help of many interesting people while working on the project. We would like to give our thanks to Ladislav Vilímek, who allowed us to set up the exposition on the premises of the Jewish cemetery in Jihlava and in fact, unwittingly led us to the Neighbors Who Disappeared project.
We would also like to thank the descendants of the Pachner family. Without their help and support, we would never collect as much information.
We received useful advice for the realisation of the project from its coordinator, Mgr. Marta Vančurová ("The Forgotten" Association) and Mgr. Eva Kuželová, a lecturer of the Cultural and Educational Center of the Jewish Museum in Prague. They let us participate in the project and make use of all the new options that involved. They lent us a camera so we could film our meetings, sessions and activities. Thanks to them, some of us also attended the international seminar for teachers in Terezín (November 2006) and another seminar, in the Cultural and Educational Center in Prague (March 2007), which allowed us to present our project.
We would also like to point out the great cooperation of the Havlíčkův Brod SokA employees, thanks to who we could perform our research with very few restrictions.
We were accompanied to the midst of the complex events and atmosphere of World War II by the very willing witnesses of this grievous time. We cannot name them all here, but they also deserve our thanks.
We would also like to thank our school, which offered us the technical equipment needed. Ludmila Andrlová, our teacher, gave us priceless help in proofreading all the published texts as well as in translating German texts to Czech.
The leader of our group, our teacher Barbora Voldřichová, was the single most important participant. Without her, we would have hardly gotten this far.
We also admire our parents, who support us and allow us to participate in all the necessary activities.