Terezín. Auschwitz. Kaufering. When I recall it, I still tremble
Download image
Jaroslav Žatečka was born May 4, 1928 in Krchleby near Čáslav. His mother Anna Žatečková came from a Czech family who lived in the USA and she moved back to Czechoslovakia in the 1920s. Jaroslav spent his childhood in Třemošnice where his unmarried mother worked in a factory which produced gas masks. During a document check which was conducted in the factory after the assassination of Heydrich, she failed to provide documents which she had not requested when she had returned to her homeland. Anna Žatečková and her fourteen-year-old son Jaroslav were therefore summoned to the Gestapo in Kolín. Since they were unable to prove that they were not Jews, they were included in the third transport of Jews from Kolín to the ghetto in Terezín on June 13, 1942. Jaroslav Žatečka stayed in the children’s home L417 and did various jobs. On September 28, 1944 he was transported to Auschwitz and his mother followed him on October 6, 1944. She died in Auschwitz. Jaroslav Žatečka passed the selection process and after a short time he was taken from Auschwitz to the labour camp Kaufering in Bavaria, where he was liberated by the American army in April 1945. After rehabilitation in the spa town Baden-Baden he returned to Czechoslovakia in July 1945. After completing his studies and his military service he started a family. In 1953 he was sentenced to half a year of imprisonment for alleged dissemination of news from the West. He served his sentence in the prison in Prague-Pankrác, but amnesty was declared two months later and he was able to return home. Jaroslav Žatečka lives in Třemošnice near Čáslav.
