Zdeněk and Míla had both offered to help hide Hans during his days in Prague, but he did not want to endanger them further. Things with Míla were difficult; her parents were worried about the risks created by a relationship with a Jew and were doing their best to persuade her to spend less time with Hans. Zdeněk had, along with other Czechs of his age, just received a summons to report for war work, in his case to a factory in Berlin. Zdeněk would not be able to help Hans in Prague for long. The evenings and weekends when Zdeněk and Míla sat with Hans laughing, reading poems, drinking, and smoking were already dangerous enough.
Lotar and Zdenka took him in. A small apartment of Zdenka’s, a little way from the center of town, had just become vacant, and to keep him safer, Zdenka and Lotar moved in with Hans. They pretended to be a family of three, two brothers and their older sister. Despite increasing difficulties, Zdenka had managed to purchase another set of identification papers on the black market. Zdenka, Zdeněk, Lotar, and Hans worked on changing the name and the photograph. They chose the fictitious name of Jan Rubeš. Lotar’s own faked identity was in the name of his friend Ivan Rubeš, so the fabricated identity was created to pass Hans off as Ivan’s younger brother.
The caretaker of the building had been happily employed by Zdenka’s family for decades. She did not ask questions and was trusted to keep their secret. I do not know how they came and went, whether they wore their yellow stars as they entered the building when they returned from work, passing into a hidden world, or if they took the risk of not donning the stars. There are no photographs from this period. The documents left behind reveal little, indicating only that Hans lived in secret with his brother and sister-in-law at an apartment in Prague 5.
Zdenka later recounted one memory of her time living with Hans in 1943. He had been left alone in the apartment, as she had to go to the farm and Lotar had been called in to Montana. Zdeněk had already been dispatched to Berlin. Míla was away with her family.
Hans had two days off from work and had promised Zdenka that he would be quiet and behave responsibly. It was a very cold day, and the heating in the apartment suddenly broke down. Hans was freezing but did not want to attract attention by asking the caretaker for help. He decided to fix the heating himself, starting with the kitchen radiator. He had never been very good at manual tasks. As he grappled with a valve, it broke. Water poured from the radiator onto the wooden floorboards and seeped down to the floor below. Hans grabbed all the sheets and towels from the bedrooms and bathroom and threw them down in an attempt to stanch the leaking.
Zdenka returned to find Hans completely drenched, on his hands and knees. She called the caretaker and went downstairs to offer her apologies to the neighbors for their cracked and dripping ceiling. Her younger brother had just arrived from the countryside, she explained, and was not used to modern plumbing. Always charming, she offered to pay for any repairs. She presented them with a bottle of plum brandy and, for good measure, added some black-market bonbons that had been intended for Otto and Ella. When she was satisfied that the risk of suspicion was removed, Zdenka went back upstairs and instructed a shivering Hans to change into his warmest clothes. She affectionately wrapped him in a thick wool blanket and admonished him. As Hans warmed his fingers by nursing a cup of tea, instead of being angry Zdenka teased him: “I always knew it was risky to live with two Jews but never imagined that it was because one of them was going to flood the building. I now see why they call you the unfortunate one.”
Zdenka and Hans both laughed in relieved amusement. Lotar was less entertained by the occurrence and fretted for days that the flood had aroused speculation about the unusual trio among the neighbors. His anxiety turned out to have been unfounded, and had Zdenka not written it down many years later, this incident would have been forgotten.
As the Prague winter took hold, life continued for the three of them, their efforts focused on keeping their heads down and working. The days revolved around obtaining goods for the illicit packages for Otto and Ella and ensuring that they were delivered. News from Terezín trickled out both through the Council in Prague and in the letters. The boys learned that their uncle Rudolf Neumann had died of heart trouble and that his wife, Jenny, had been ordered on to Auschwitz, beyond the reach of parcels and letters. Uncle Josef, with his wife and two children, had been sent farther east as well.
In early December, Otto and Ella’s names were included in a transport list for Poland, but Lotar and Zdenka did everything they could to ensure that they were removed. Lotar would later write that their efforts to keep them near Prague in Terezín were superhuman.
In reality, this meant sending parcels with a surplus of food and currency for bribes and also beseeching Pišta for help from the Elders. It is not clear whether it was thanks to their efforts or down to luck, but the transport to Auschwitz was postponed, and Otto and Ella spent their first Christmas in Terezín. Letters from the camp started arriving almost weekly in December, and while Otto reported that the contents of many of the parcels had been looted in transport, what reached them was enough to keep them fed and protected. Otto and Ella were delighted to receive the packages and described how they used the food, clothes, other items, and money for themselves and to help others. Their letters were filled with news of family and friends inside the camp, to be passed on to relatives outside. They were also crammed with requests for more food, more currency, and all the everyday household things that were so crucial—dark shoe polish or hair dye, lighter fuel, currencies, sturdy boots, batteries, soap.
Otto and Ella wrote separately. They lived in different buildings, segregated by gender and job. Otto explained that he tried to have dinners with Ella, as she had access to cooking facilities, but this was not always possible.
The new distance between them was not solely physical; they also differed in their attitude toward their surroundings. In the senseless world of the camp, they coped differently, and the words in their letters reflect this.
Otto was dour. He persisted in being appalled at the conditions, outraged and burdened by the immorality and inhumanity of the place. He wrote that, even after a short time in the camp, the typical inmate had grown numb and was like a chased animal that only seeks food and rest. It will be difficult for those who return from here to recover any sliver of their humanity. No one reads or engages in conversation, it is all bitter arguments about places in queues. All feelings of emotion, sensibility, or sexuality have been extinguished. Women here suffer from early menopause and the men are rendered impotent.
And yet he tried to maintain a degree of positivity when he added: But it all seems like paradise compared to the alternative in Poland.
In another message, Otto implored Hans and Lotar to love each other, that is the only way you will be able to overcome the evil that lies ahead.
Otto managed to keep his sense of irony despite it all. He wrote of his happiness at being assigned a bunk bed and no longer having to sleep on the floor. He was thankful that his dormitory, unlike the ones infested with bedbugs and fleas, housed only fleas. A later letter says: Oh Zdenka, how you would laugh! I queued up for a dumpling for lunch and it fell to the ground but the new me nevertheless ate it with delight. It did make me miss dear Mrs. Novakova’s dumplings at Montana. What an artist she was!
In her communications with the boys, Ella continued to be more optimistic than Otto and was also pragmatic about life in the camp. This was perhaps due to the fact that her living conditions were marginally better, but it was also her nature to take a sunnier view. Her letters were brisker, more concise, less descriptive and critical of her surroundings. They were heartfelt and lacked irony. She worked to remain positive about both her environment and her ability to withstand it. She concentrated on an imagined future together with her boys and on practical ways to attain it. She wrote that she was working hard to obtain better jobs and protection from the transports to the east for both her and Otto. She remained focused on ensuring that Otto stayed healthy and did
not lose weight. Ella also asked for supplies but emphasized that her strength was holding up and the parcels should not be sent if doing so presented a risk. I have lived here for so long without anything that I can do without it all for a while longer.
In early December 1942, she remained hopeful that this would be the first and last holiday that they all spent apart.
The letters continued regularly throughout the winter months and were filled with advice, pleas, and mundane detail. Ella asked for pickles and vanilla extract. Otto explained that he needed work boots and longed for gingerbread biscuits and Christmas cake.
I have no record of the boys’ holidays during that winter of 1942. There are no documents, no photographs, no subsequent written recollections, but it seems doubtful that there would have been many celebrations. I do not have the letters that were sent to Otto and Ella, but the replies tell us that Lotar worried and sought Otto’s counsel about handling things at the factory.
On December 19, Otto advised Lotar not to fret excessively about business matters at Montana. Here, one looks at things differently. There are between 80–100 corpses per day. Their oldest terrier, Jerry, he wrote, had received a better burial than the dozens that died daily in Terezín. In reference to Lotar’s gloom, he opined: I don’t quite understand Lotík’s remark that life is not really worth it anymore. It is a strange comment for us to hear as we think of the life outside these confines as more than a paradise. Everything is relative, so I am asking you, Lotík—please don’t despair. Don’t give up!
At the end of December, Otto had to inform his sons that Ella had fallen ill with stomach ulcers but was being taken care of by great medical experts at the Terezín hospital. He urged his boys to have a good time and raise a New Year’s toast.
The brothers struggled despite the relative freedom and safety of their life in Prague. Lotar, always the more conscientious of the two, bore the weight of it all, of the parcels, the endless requests to Pišta. He became physically ill with worry and some days could barely function at all.
Hans wrote less often than Lotar. His parents’ replies do not show a concern about his state of mind. If he was depressed, I imagine he kept it to himself. In fact, Otto and Ella wanted to know more about their younger son and asked specifically for him to write with news.
The winter bore on and turned to spring. At the beginning of March 1943, yet another deportation notice arrived at Libčice. For the third time, Hans had been designated a transport, this time the day before Lotar’s twenty-fifth birthday, on March 9.
On this occasion, they wasted no time with work letters and calls to the Council. Pišta had already warned them that letters attesting indispensability were no longer even being read by officials. He could not be taken off the transport list this time. The brothers had learned enough from the Terezín letters to know that Hans had to avoid deportation altogether.
There was only one option. Hans would have to abscond.
Lotar turned for help to their trusted manager at Montana. Frank Novák, whose wife was the creator of the dumplings that Otto dreamed of in Terezín, had always been Otto’s right-hand man. He was loyal, courageous, and above all, practical. Lotar and Frank devised a plan to hide Hans. They would construct a false wall in a side room at the factory, concealing a few square feet of floor space, just enough to accommodate him. The secret chamber could not be reached from inside the factory. Machinery would be installed in front of part of the new wall. The rest of the surface would be hidden behind a stack of paint drums, originally two deep but now consisting of only a single row. Access was just about manageable from the outside by scrambling through an old half-submerged window frame. The grille could be removed, allowing the occupant to crawl out into the garden. Keeping this arrangement secret could not have been easy, with some forty-five people still working at Montana. Most would have, in more normal circumstances, supported the family. Few could be trusted now, given the penalties faced by those harboring fugitives and the rewards on offer to informants.
Frank, Hans, and Lotar built and disguised the compartment over a weekend. Then they waited. The change seemed to pass unnoticed by the workers who clocked in on Monday morning. It was decided that Hans should remain silently in the cavity during factory hours. As soon as the staff went home, food and clothes could be brought to him and his bedpan cleaned. When the factory emptied and it was dark, Hans could crawl out of the window into the shadows and breathe the crisp air. He could then access the factory to use the shower in the changing room and heat up food in the kitchen next to the dining area, but he was to do so only at night and without turning on a single light. It was vital that neighbors remain oblivious to his presence. He was to keep things immaculate and perfectly untouched. It was critical that there was not so much as a coffee mug out of place when the workers arrived each morning. Hans was provided with a blanket and a mattress, a flashlight and candles. He would have to remain in this makeshift secret room until a more permanent place could be found.
They recognized that the key to hiding was not to stay in one place for too long, to move before people noticed the inevitable signs of another person’s presence. Montana was the obvious place for the Gestapo to look for Hans, so obvious that paradoxically it seemed to them all, at least temporarily, the best place to hide. The local people knew the Neumann family and the boys by sight. Frank, the Montana manager, once again arranged the services of his cousin the barber who had dyed Otto’s hair before his transport. He visited at night and bleached Hans’s hair a pale ash, so that if anyone glimpsed him around the factory, he would not easily be recognized. Just before dawn on March 9, 1943, instead of heading to Veletržní Palác near Bubny, the newly blond Hans entered his secret room.
That same day the Gestapo received notification that Hans Neumann of Libčice had not registered at Bubny for his transport. He had officially absconded and was duly placed on the SS wanted list in Prague. Hans’s citizen’s registry card can be found in the archives in Prague today. It still has a scribbled note, from April 1943, to the effect that any attempt by this man to register his domicile anywhere should be reported immediately to the Gestapo.
Lotar would linger after the last workers went home every night. Zdenka and Míla took turns delivering food and helping him with cleaning chores. Mr. Novák would arrive particularly early to ensure that Hans was safe and that any indication that someone was using the facilities at night had been removed.
Frank Novák took an enormous risk helping Lotar and Hans. His wife, Marie, was, understandably, deeply worried about the consequences for the family if he were discovered helping to hide a Jew. Jana, Frank’s stepdaughter, who was seven at the time, still remembers their numerous and impassioned debates on the subject.
Frank Novák and Marie Nováková in Czechoslovakia, 1940s
I reached Jana through an organization called Memory of Nations, which collates the memories of witnesses of the war. She had told them her story. Jana and her younger half sister, Eva, agreed to meet me and my family during our Czech visit in October 2017. We met outside the old Montana factory building, which still stands in Libeň. It comprises now, as it did then, two buildings, a rather elegant and modern 1930s white and gray office block built onto the side of a more rugged nineteenth-century yellow brick warehouse.
It is no longer a factory and has seen many occupants over the past fifty years. Most recently, the building has been used as a disco and rented out as a space for concerts and parties. Still, much like it was when Montana was in existence, it is surrounded by other factories and offices. When we visited, a crew of painters and builders was busily redecorating. There we stood, Jana and I, with no language in common, both of us raised by men who had risked their lives together in this place, one to save the other.
My children, husband, mother, aunt, Eva, her husband, Mr. Nedvídek, and Magda, the diligent Czech researcher, made up the party. Magda and Mr. Nedvídek acted as translators as Jana and I pieced together our shared momen
t of history.
Jana and Eva were eager to share what they remembered and did their best to answer the dozens of questions we had for them. It struck us all at that moment that my children and I really owed our own lives to Mr. Novák’s extraordinary bravery, without which my father was unlikely to have survived. When I thanked them, Eva grabbed my hand, looked at me, her eyes brimming with humanity and grace, and uttered some words that Mr. Nedvídek translated, “Please stop. Your thanks are not due, because my father did not do anything extraordinary. He only did the correct thing. Simply, he did what everybody should have done. We should all, as a country, have behaved like Frank Novák. And it is us who apologize to you that we did not.”
We must have seemed an odd and disparate bunch to the workers repainting the building in Libeň. Eleven people of all ages and heights, some with walking sticks, a couple hunched in teenage awkwardness, all attempting to understand and be understood, pointing at and asking questions about an empty disco, while some hugged and a few wept in that industrial estate on a Tuesday morning.
As one walks to the right of the building, the low-lying window by which my father entered and left his secret room is visible. He sat inside for days on end in silence, reading his books, writing his letters. Míla brought him puzzles and stitched him a small doll for company and for luck.
My father kept the handmade good-luck doll in the box that he left me. Time has softened its colors and erased the inked features of its face. The details of the dress and the delicately knitted red and cream bonnet still evidence the care with which it was crafted.
In early April, when Zdeněk returned for a few days to Prague from his job in Berlin, Míla brought him to visit Hans late one evening at Montana. The three friends sat in the gloom of the nighttime factory, happy to be together again, their simple supper dimly visible in the candlelight. Zdeněk talked about his life in Berlin. He explained that he was working for a paint manufacturer called Warnecke & Böhm, making industrial lacquer for the Luftwaffe, the German air force. Most young and able German men had joined the army, and the factory was understaffed. Zdeněk was so busy with work that he had little time for anything else.
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