Malka Sternberg - January 31, 2008
Introduction
Could you tell me your name please and where you were born?
My name is Amalia Malka--it was ??? now it's Sternberg because I'm married and where I was born--in Czechoslovakia, the very part which Daladier and Chamberlain gave to Hitler as a present...
The Sudentenland.
The Sudetenland--the capital of the Sudetenland was Liberec today--was Reichenberg was the name before and I come from there. I was born there and we stayed there until we fled.
What do you remember about life before the war--berfore the Germans came?
Yes, I remember very, very much. We were a big family. My father was one of seven brothers, all lived in this little town--not such a little town, a little town in Reichenberg as it was then known--and my grandmother lived--they had a big farm there not for to use it as a farm, just use it for us to be there and so we used to meet there--the whole clan--every Shabbos and the clan--the neighbors of the clan and all the other Jewish people were there and it was uh, something that everybody remembered afterwards.
How large was the Jewish community?
Well the Jewish community was not large but it was not quite as small as I remember because there was a Neological Temple, which had nothing to do with us. We were the religious ones. We had little shtiebelekh, you know, and of course, where Jews are you can't have one shtiebel you got to have another one where they all can go into so we had two shtiebels and uh, I remember we used to play there--the children used to go to the prayer. We never went inside, we just played outside because we were small. And I went first to a German school and one day they--a girl came out and she gave me--slapped, slapped my face left and right. She said, "My father said I should do that to you because you're Jewish." And the headmaster was also our class teacher and I was going to tell him ??? happened and I looked up and saw that he saw it and he didn't say anything, just turned away. The next day my father didn't let me go there, I went to a Czech school after that and from there I only have nice memories.
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