Problematic Liberation of Terezín

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When the first Soviet troops arrived on May 8, 1945, to liberate the Small Fortress in Terezín, they were enthusiastically welcomed by all. Yet the fact that the liberators opened the gates of the Small Fortress and freed the wretched prisoners was a sign of very irresponsible behavior, since a highly contagious spotted fever epidemic was culminating there at that time. The Soviets underestimated the possibility that the ill and food deprived prisoners could start for the nearest villages to get something to eat. This of course meant the danger of spreading the epidemic among the civilians. Moreover, the prisoners that managed to get some food in the end often died anyway, because their bodies were not able to accept that food. Taťána Bubníková, a fifteen-year-old girl at that time, recalls the end of the war: “Those poor souls were so scrawny and they immediately started to go to Bohušovice. And we were all so scarred of the spotted fever; we did not want to get infected.” In the end this very problematic situation resulted in a conflict between the civilians from Bohušovice and the prisoners. The witness continues: “In the end, the men from Bohušovice stood guard in the streets and attempted preventing the poor prisoners from entering. The worst came when the prisoners got some sticks and started to beat our men. They simply could not understand that they cannot get any food, because otherwise their intestines would explode.”

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Taťána Bubníková, née Kalinová

Taťána Bubníková, maiden name Kalinová, was born in 1931 in Prague; she grew up in Bohušovice nad Ohří. Her father was a tailor, her mother a couturier. The occupation found her in the primary school. As an eleven-year-old girl she used to go to Terezín with food for the transported and used to carry letters from there with information for the families of the transported. These illegal activities were practiced also by both her parents, especially her mother, (in 1940 and 1943 she gave birth to two more boys). In 1945, Taťána went to the business school in Litoměřice. As a daughter of a trader she had problems to find work. In 1953, she married Bohuslav Bubník. She moved to Mělník and started to work in the Vitana Company. After the maternity leave she entered the accountant position in a state farm. To get a kindergarten place for her two children, she signed the membership in the Czechoslovak Women’s Federation. In 1960, she started to work at the district agriculture authority in the financial department, and later in the school department. She never reached the leader position, due to the fact that she refused to enter the Czechoslovak Communist Party. She retired in 1986. After the Velvet Revolution, she and her husband joined the efforts to renew the activity of the physical training institution Sokol and she has remained active in it ever since.

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Terezín (Theresienstadt), Small Fortress

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The Small Fortress of Terezín comprises a significant part of the city lying on the right bank of Ohře River. Originally a military citadel, the place was founded together with the rest of the city in the late 18th century, and functioned as a prison already during the 19th century. During WW1, the Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip was imprisoned here – the man who had assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife Sophie in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914. Princip died of tuberculosis after spending four years in the horrendous conditions of the Terezín gaol. During WW2, the place served as a prison for the Prague Gestapo. Due to bad hygienic conditions, the inmates of the jail suffered from an epidemic of typhus. In 1945–8 the Small Fortress functioned as an internment camp for German prisoners of war and also for civilians of German nationality who were to be deported from Czechoslovakia to Germany under President Beneš’s Decrees. Today, the Small Fortress houses the Terezín Memorial, and the main western gate leads out to the Terezín National Cemetery.