Able to Report, Healthy
Koloman Gajan became ill in 1945; he contracted typhus during his stay in his fifth concentration camp in Lauingen. They had a medical check-up approximately once a week, during which the health committee took away the dead and seriously ill destined for liquidation. “I was at the exit of the building, I even felt that some ‛good’ guy took my shoes off. Some unknown people had already written me off. When the committee came, everybody able of reporting had to stand up and say his/her number and ‛Melde gehorsam, gesund’ (able to report, healthy). I saw my friends looking at me and waiting to see if I would stand up or not. They almost hypnotised me to help me get up and report. How it happened I cannot say even today, but I got up and reported myself. The committee did not have time to deal with us so they passed on. Right after that, I fell,” he recalled. Mr. Gajan was lucky to have his friends who took him regularly behind the barrack and most likely thanks to them and the March sun he returned to health. “As if by magic, I got well," he claimed.
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Komentáře
Koloman Gajan, Professor, PhD
Historian Koloman Gajan was born as Koloman Edelmann in 1918. He was the seventh of nine children. He came from an orthodox Jewish family from Hambork, a little village in Šariš in East Slovakia. He graduated from the Jewish Reform Real Grammar School in Brno in the school year 1939/1940. He was arrested by the Gestapo shortly after. Luckily he was released and left Brno for a training camp of the Zionistic Youth for emigration to Palestine. It took place in the Křivoklát area. He stayed in the Czech country until March 1942. When there was threat of his transportation, he illegally left for Slovakia. He lived at his sister's first, and then obtained false documents with the name Jan Gajan. He joined the domestic resistance movement and after he was informed that he would be arrested in December 1944. He went through six different concentration camps - Sachsenhausen, Bergen-Belsen, Kaufering, Landsberg, Lauingen, and Allach - in the period from January to May 1945. He settled down in Prague after 1945 and studied History at the Philosophical Faculty, Charles University. (He received his PhDr. degree in 1952). He was professionally engaged with the history of the working-class movement, and later with international relations of the 20th century. He taught at the Philosophical Faculty, Charles University until 1969. He was a Czech Communist Party member in 1945-1969. After 1969 he was prohibited to publish and teach his subject. Subsequently, he worked as a language teacher in a Conference Center, (The Park of Julius Fučík), in Prague. After 1990 he came back to his lecturing activities at the Philosophical Faculty, Charles University. He presently lives in Prague-Dejvice.
