Helen Stransky - January 31, 2008
Fate of Parents
And what happened to your parents?
My parents didn't believe war was coming and they were sent to Theresienstadt and from there I think my mother went on to Auschwitz. I'm not exactly sure. I have three different versions of their deaths. I know that my--I have certificates from Terezín about my mom and da...dad being on a transport where they wheeled them around in a uh, truck with this poison gas blowing until they died. It was about 1941. Then I had another one--another uh, thing given to me by the Jewish agency where they--when I arrived here in Israel where they said that I--that my father died of a heart attack in Terezín and my mom went to Auschwitz and, and died of uh, meningitis or it was the other way around, I'm not exactly sure. I do have their certificates--I did have their certification.
They didn't think that a war was coming you said.
That's right.
But they sent you off.
They sent--yes. My uncle and grandmother had already arrived in England and my uncle tried to talk my mother and father into leaving but they wouldn't believe. They figured that everything would be all right. Um, yeah, for why they didn't leave--whether they didn't want to leave their lifestyle because my family was very well off. They were about the second richest family in, in all of Czechoslovakia. It was comfortable for them.
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