OUR FINDINGS
ARTUR PACHNER, MD.
Artur Pachner was born on March 24, 1874 in Německý Brod. He attended the local high school from 1883 to 1891 and then he studied medicine at Charles University in Prague. He became a dentist, but also had attestations from other disciplines (practitioner, pediatrist, internist and laryngologist). He further broadened his education by studying in Berlin. He was a successful doctor and used many modern methods in his work. He had great understanding for people and served them with great self-sacrifice. He was scientifically active, he spoke at medical conventions (e.g., in Poznan, Poland, 1933), he wrote scientific publications, such as articles about healing wounds using colloid silver, metallurgy and the science of welding metals etc. The significance of his work can be seen in the Ottův slovník naučný - his name is in the 1937 addenda to the encyclopedia. He liked to read and translated works such as Bernhard Kellerman's novel "Ninth of November".
He was also very fond of animals. He kept a small alligator, which grew until it had to be given away, probably to a zoo. He and his brother Arnošt owned a large dog who once jumped at the dean of the university, during a walk along the Prague promenade. Fortunately, this all ended well.
Artur intended to open a private dentist's office in Prague, but since this was very expensive, he settled in Chrudim in 1899. During World War I, he served in the military hospital in Vysoké Mýto and allegedly saved many young men from being dragged off to the front lines.
In or around the year 1903, Artur married Gabriela Schillerová, born March 13, 1881 in Polná u Jihlavy. Gabriela was called Ella within the family. She ruled the kitchen, being a very apt cook and would never let anyone else cook, not even her own daughter. She had a maid to help her, but she was only allowed to peel the potatoes and wash the dishes. Ella was reportedly uptight and didn't trust people. During their marriage, Artur and Ella only had one daughter - Milada. Their grandson Martin remembers Ella as a loving grandmother who flooded him with presents.
Ella's parents, Ludvík Schiller and Anna, born Hallerová, owned a shop and a tannery in Polná. They also had two other sons, Viktor (a lawyer who lived in Prague and died along with his wife and his son in the Lodz ghetto) and Hugo (who was president of a bank and survived the war in France). The Schiller family was more religious, but in the light of the "Hilsneriad" (the aftermath of the Hilsner's assassination), Anna wanted their granddaughter baptised (although this never happened). She was, however, very pleased that Milada married a man of non-Jewish origin. She had no idea back then that this would soon save her granddaughter's life. Ludvík Schiller died during World War I. Anna, Ella's mother, was an educated and very capable woman; she played chess and governed her husband's business and finances. She was born on September 19, 1857 in Kaliště u Humpolce. She was deported to Terezín at the age of 84 (transport Aar from Prague on July 16, 1942) and then to Treblinka with the Bw transport on October 19, 1942. Before departure from Terezín, she wrote a farewell letter to her daughter and son-in-law. The letter, dated October 14, 1942, was preserved as a copy in Artur Pachner's journal:
My dears,
I hear, that the transport from the countryside is to come soon. I feel terrible that you will have to suffer this terror as well. I would like at least to be together with you. There are two ways for me - for the first I lack courage, so I must take the other with everyone else.
I ask only one thing of you. If you bring any food with you, give something small to Fanda. They were very kind to me, all of them. You will see for yourself how things go here.
I have been in the transport for two days now. Might we already be there, even though it must be worse there than it is here. You will know that Ida has died. No need to be sorry for her.
I will write you if I am able. I would like to hear of the Skálas, but I cannot.
A kiss and farewell,
your mother
The worst thing is that I have no warm clothing. I am worried as to how you clothed yourselves. Everyone does it wrong. You must be very careful with the food here, especially at first, before you accustom yourselves. One could see a lot of suffering here, will it ever end? The weather is bad and who knows where they are taking us this time. If I at least had warm shoes... but why speak of it.
After the coming of the Germans, the Pachner's house at 134/1 Ressel's Square, which they owned since 1905, was confiscated. They then subleased with a Jewish family in Chrudim. Before her departure for Terezín, their daughter Milada came to visit them to say goodbye, in secret, under the cover of the night. She could not do so during the day, because as a Jew, she wasn't allowed to leave Prague. According to the witnesses, Artur long believed that he would avoid deportation and that as a capable doctor and the discoverer of numerous new techniques, would save himself aiding people of Jewish descent.
Artur and Ella were deported on December 5, 1942, on the Cf transport from Pardubice to Terezín. They stayed there for a year. Artur kept a journal in Terezín and was doing a sociological study on the Jews. This proves he had great courage, as should the notes have been found, he would have been cruelly punished (jail, cane beatings, removal to the Small fort of Terezín, death...). He wrote with a pencil stub he found, into small notebooks made of cut wrapping paper. Thanks to the Czech guards, he managed to smuggle all of this out, into Prague. Milada held these after the war and wanted to publish them, but never managed to do so. A part of the journal was printed in 1947, in the Sociological Revue. The text is proof that the people on the outside had no idea what was happening in Terezín and what was coming to them next. It also depicts the terrible everyday life in the ghetto. The elderly had much more trouble enduring the defamation, the cold, the illnesses, filth and hunger. Artur wanted to help out in Terezín, as a doctor, but wasn't allowed to because of his age. So instead he performed his duties in secret, risking even more cruel punishment. His journal contains for example, a note on how he received a gift of two raw potatoes for advice he gave an ill fellow prisoner - given the conditions, this was a great gift!
Excerpts from the journal Artur Pachner wrote in Terezín in 1943:
"On July 13, 1942, our dear mother, aged 85, was deported. No-one knows where to, hear-say tells us it was Terezín. We weren't allowed to attend this funeral of the living, so we wept secretly, mainly so that we wouldn't further hurt each other with our pains. On December 2, 1942, my wife and I were also deported. The hope that we might reunite with mother in Terezín to bear our fate together was consolation to us, only for us to be bitterly disappointed. The registry office told us that number AA V 958 - our darling mother - was deported from Terezín on October 19, 1942, under a new number, BW 1251, in unpleasant weather, without luggage and poorly clad, further "nach dem Osten". Where and whether this number was still alive, they didn't know. No records. In Terezín a good friend of our family gave us three small, quickly scribbled, crumpled shreds of paper, where the poor old lady gave us her goodbyes.
"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 shine with a twenty candle lightbulb so that we don't trip on the beams. They pretentiously call this human mew lodging. There are thirty of us, stashed on several square meters. Men and women, all together. 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. Those 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.
Those who haven'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 wrote 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 could barely hold the pen. God only knows how my wife managed to obtain a kettle of warm water to warm our hands.
In this 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 the oncoming end in their faces, I seek to order my thoughts..."
Artur and Ella both boarded the Ds transport to Auschwitz on December 18, 1943. Apparently, the usual selection wasn't performed with this particular transport. Both ended up in the so-called "family camp" in Birkenau (Arbeitslager Birkenau bei Neu Berun = Birkenau work camp near Nová Beruň), where Czech Jews from Terezín were concentrated as early as September 1943. This camp was intended to play the theater that might be needed in case of Red Cross inspections (similar to what happened in June 1944 in Terezín). The conditions here were somewhat better than in the rest of Auschwitz, although the death rate was enormous nevertheless (illnesses, hunger, exhaustion...).
Artur died, apparently of exhaustion, some time in late January 1944. In March, 1944, nearly all of the September arrivals were gassed in a single night (8th of March) - women, men, children; a total of 3792 people! During the first half of July 1944, this "family camp" was fully liquidated - nearly 6500 elderly or unhealthy people and children were murdered in the gas chambers and 3500 work-capable men and women were sent to various places. Ella died in the gas chamber. According to witnesses, she was fairly healthy and strong. Given different circumstances, she would have had a high chance of survival.
The sole daughter of Artur and Ella, Milada, was born on November 21, 1904 in Chrudim. She died on March 28, 1997 in Arizona, USA. She attended the Vysoké Mýto high school (1915-1919) and then École des hautes études sociales et politiques (University of social and polical studies), in Paris. She completed her studies at the latter in 1926 and obtained her diploma. She then worked in Prague, at the Ministry of Healthcare and soon became a writer - the author of women's novels and children's tales - a dramatist and a journalist. She also translated from French to Czech. Her father helped with certain topics when she wrote. For example, they co-published the theater play Cherubín (1937), which is about heredity. She wasn't allowed to publish her works during the occupation because of her descent.
She married Jakub Skála, a doctor of law, in 1932 and lived in Prague. They had two children, a son and a daughter. Thanks to their preserved written communication, we know that Milada sent food parcels to her mother and father in Terezín and Auschwitz. Her son remembers that sending these parcels was an everyday ritual. He also remembers buying a hundred or two of red and blue boxes of appropriate dimensions in a Prague-Košíře wholesale. Some of these boxes remained unused when the war was over. The chance that the packages reached their rightful owners was measly... Milada only got to know this after the war. Other members of the family sent similar packages to their relatives.
Thanks to the mixed marriage, Milada survived the war, and as one of very few within the family, she never even had to endure Terezín. At the beginning of the war, she had a hideout prepared in the woods, near their country home in Jílové u Prahy, but she never made use of it. Thanks to her husband's contacts, she owned coats both with and without the Star, as well as papers with and without the "J", some with her own, some with another name and she used these for the entire period of occupation according to a carefully thought out plan. She didn't take walks and barely ever left the apartment alone. Her son Martin remembers an incident about when they were returning from the doctor's office where he was being vaccinated. He felt sick in the tram and vomited. His mother had to show her papers, and luckily had the right ones with her - without the "J", as Jews were no longer allowed to use trams at the time and getting caught would have had tragic consequences...
Milada's husband was very brave. He didn't divorce her and as a punishment, he was deported to a labor camp somewhere in Upper Silesia. He escaped in January 1945 and went into hiding. The suffering and mental stress during the occupation impacted his health and he died in 1963. Thanks to her own contacts, Milada obtained a paper towards the end of the war "proving" that she carried an infectious disease and made sure the apartment smelled of disinfectants anytime the gestapo was about to visit. The Germans were beginning to feel afraid, so they were less diligent in performing their duties, which allowed Milada to escape them. She left the country with the children after her husband's death, in 1966.