I simply left the camp...
Towards the end of World War II, the prisoners of the Theresienstadt ghetto – although they had not been freed by the Allies yet and were unable to move about the camp freely – weren't as closely guarded by the administration of the camp as they had been before. Anna Magdalena Schwarz remained in Theresienstadt only with her seriously ill mother. In early May 1945, she heard Prague calling for help on the radio – the Prague uprising was just under way. Therefore Mrs. Schwarz decided to escape from Theresienstadt. Today, she recalls her escape from the Theresienstadt concentration camp with a smile: "I simply walked out of the camp." And indeed – all Mrs. Schwarz had to do in order to escape from the camp was to put on civilian clothes. She walked out the gate and after seemingly endless four years she was free. What would have been impossible just a few weeks ago was now without any consequences. Mrs. Schwarz then hitchhiked to Prague.
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Anna Magdalena Schwarz
Anna Magdalena Schwarz was born in 1921 in a Prague Jewish family that converted to Catholicism. Already in 1939, she became a postulant of the Jiřetín monastery. In the beginning of the war, she and her mother were on the very first transports to Theresienstadt. At the end of the war, she escaped from the Theresienstadt concentration camp and returned to Prague. In the early postwar years, she studied English and French at Charles University. After February 1948, she had to terminate her studies and make a living as a foreign-language correspondent and official. In 1953, she was arrested and a year later convicted for anti-state religious activities. She served her sentence of 11 years in the women's prison in Pardubice. She was released on the amnesty in 1960. After her release, she made a living as a worker, later by interpreting in Český Krumlov. In 1968, she became a translator at the University of Agriculture in Prague. During the normalization, she got actively involved in the Charter 77 and VONS. In August 1980, she managed to pass the perpetual vows in the monastery of the Discalced Carmelites in Krakow, where she lives until today.
