Anka Kaudrova and Eva Clarke
Yesterday marked #HolocaustMemorialDay. For those who don’t know, I am a qualified Holocaust Education Ambassador, and as an 17 year old was given the chance to visit Auschwitz to learn about the horrors of the Holocaust first-hand. That experience changed my outlook on life forever and strongly encouraged me to dedicate my life to fighting intolerance and teaching history in all its forms. Since then, I’ve had the privilege of hearing four holocaust survivors speak, three of whom were women. Each was humbling, heart-breaking, inspiring, and life-affirming, and as the last generation to survive the horrors of the Holocaust it is so important that us future generations learn from them and carry on their legacy of remembrance.
This week, I had the honour of hearing the story of Eva
Clarke, and her mother Anka, and the incredible story of how they survived the
Holocaust. It is this story I wanted to share today, as I think it is truly a
testament to the strength of a mother’s love and the suffering that women can
endure, but also the love that can flourish even in the darkest days of human
history. I could never do the story justice the way that Eva herself can, but I
believe it was shared in the book Born Survivors by Wendy Holden so I encourage
you to read about these incredible women for yourself.
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Anka Kaudrová was born in 1917, in the town of Třebechovice, in present-day
Czechia. She grew up with her parents and two brothers and sisters. Although
they were raised as Jewish, they were not religious. Anka studied law at Prague
University until 1939 when the Nazis took control and shut down the
universities. On 15 May 1940, she married Bernd Nathan, an architect who had earned
an Iron Cross during the first world war and had fled to Prague in an attempt
to escape Nazi control. As restrictions grew, they were forced to wear a yellow
badge marking their Jewish identity, and were forced to live in a ghetto.
In December 1941, Anka and her husband were sent to the
concentration camp, Terezín (Theresienstadt). Unusually, they remained there
for three years owing to their youth, strength, and ability to work. Anka had
been a swimming champion in her youth, and credited this with being able to
carry out hard manual labour despite the difficult conditions.
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The sexes were segregated in the camp, but Anka’s parents
risked everything to steal precious moments together when they could.
Consequently, Anka became pregnant – a “crime” punishable by death within the
camp. When the Nazis discovered this fact, the couple were forced to sign a
document stating that when the baby was born, it would have to be handed out
over to the Gestapo to be murdered; it was the first time her mother had heard
the word 'euthanasia'. However, the baby, a boy they named Dan, was allowed to
stay with Anka – but tragically he died of pneumonia when he was just two
months old. As devastating as it is, his death saved the life of his mother
(and future sister), as if Anka had arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau with a baby,
she would have been sent immediately to the gas chambers.
However, when Anka was sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau in early
October 1944, she had fallen pregnant again, this time with Eva. That the
couple risked being discovered again, after so nearly paying the ultimate
price, is the ultimate testament to their love. I think it’s so beautiful that
in a place of so much hatred, love still managed to win. Even more poignantly,
Anka actually volunteered to go to Auschwitz after learning that her husband
was being sent – though of course neither of them could have imagined the
horrors that waited them at the camp. Tragically, however, Anka never saw her
husband again, and she never got the chance to tell him that they were
expecting another child. She later learnt that he had been shot on a Nazi Death
March on 18th January 1945 – less than a week before the liberation by the Red
Army. This is the most heartbreaking end to one of the most beautiful romances,
but Anka’s story does not end there.
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As Anka's pregnancy was not visible and she was deemed fit
for work – despite being asked directly by the infamous Mengele if she
pregnant, she lied and said no – a decision which she would only be more
grateful for once she learned of his horrific experiments. As a result of her
physical strength, she was sent out of Auschwitz to work in an armaments factory
in Freiberg, near Dresden. She was to remain there for the next six months –
getting weaker every day while at the same time, becoming more visibly
pregnant. She later told her daughter that if it hadn’t been for the kindness
of a strange farmer who gave her a glass of milk, she would have died of
starvation and exhaustion.
By the spring of 1945 the Germans were retreating and
evacuating concentration and slave labour camps, unsure what to do with their
‘dying cargo’ and unwilling to leave any evidence behind of their heinous
crimes. Eva’s mother and her fellow prisoners were forced onto a train: not
cattle tracks this time but coal trucks – open to the skies and, obviously,
filthy. They weren’t given any food and scarcely any water during what was to
become a 3-week nightmare journey around the Czech countryside as the Nazis
floundered.
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The train eventually arrived at Mauthausen concentration
camp. Anka had such a shock when she saw the name of this notorious camp that it
sent her into labour. Eva recalls how her mother was screaming not only with
the agony of labour, but with the agony of believing that this was her final
day on earth. Remarkably, Eva was born in the open elements on the cart,
without any medical assistance (although the Nazi’s did “mercifully” allow a
fellow prisoner who had been a doctor to check on them after the birth,
although he couldn’t have helped them even if he saw a need for it). Anka
weighed just 5 stone (35 kg), and Eva was just 3lbs when she was born.
Miraculously, the camp’s gas chambers had been blown up just two days earlier,
on the 28th April 1945. Eva is fully aware that had they arrived 48
hours sooner, she would not be here today. Without even a rag to wrap her baby
in, Anka was forced to wrap Eva in paper and constantly keep her close in an
effort to keep her warm, producing barely enough milk to feed her. Thankfully,
just days after Eva’s birth, the Americans liberated Mauthausen. Anka believed
that if they had come even a day later, both mother and child would have
perished (as many did even after the camp’s liberation owing to the starvation,
exhaustion, and disease).
Joyfully, Anka’s story had a happy ending. She and Eva returned to Prague to live with a cousin,
their only remaining family. In 1948, Anka married Eva’s stepfather, her old
acquaintance, Karel Bergman, a Czech Jew who had escaped to the United Kingdom
in 1939 and returned as a translator in the Royal Air Force. Bergman adopted
Eva, and the family moved to the UK and settled in Cardiff. Anka and her new
husband lived happily in Cardiff for the rest of their days, before she died at
the amazing age of 96.
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It was not until Eva was in her teens that she learned the
story of her real father and the miraculous circumstances of her birth.
Together, mother and daughter dedicate/d their lives to sharing their story,
educating new generations on the horrors of the holocaust, and fighting against
modern examples of racism and discrimination.
Eva lived in Cardiff until she was 18. In the 1960s, she met
and married Malcom Clarke, a lawyer from Abergavenny, and they had two sons.
She later learnt that her father-in-law, Kenneth Clarke, was a navigator in RAF
Bomber Command who participated in the bombing of Dresden while her mother,
Anka, was sheltering with other prisoners. As of 2017, Clarke resides in
Cambridge and works for various Holocaust Education charities.
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