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Who is Rudolf Vrba?
Rudolf Vrba is a person of exceptional strength and courage. He was born Walter Rosenberg in Topoľčany in Slovakia. At the age of 18, he was arrested by the Nazis and spent two years at Majdanek and Auschwitz concentration camps in Poland. In 1944 he escaped from Auschwitz together with his fellow prisoner Alfred Wetzler. Immediately after their escape, while still in hiding, they wrote down a detailed testimony of the mass extermination of people in the camps. Their report belongs to the fundamental documents of World War II and is kept today in the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library in New York, in the Vatican archives, and at the Yad Vashem memorial in Jerusalem.
In autumn 1944 Walter Rosenberg joined a partisan guerilla unit and, under the code name Rudolf Vrba, fought against the Nazis until the liberation. After the war he studied chemistry at the Prague Technical University. He worked as a scientist and a university professor, writing more than fifty scientific books and articles. He also lectured and wrote several books about the Holocaust. He appeared as a witness at the trials of Nazi criminals and his wartime experience has been recorded in several documentaries, including Claude Lanzmann's legendary Shoah. He described his wartime story in his own words in his book Escape from Auschwitz. It is the tale of a man who is able to confront his destiny under any circumstances, however hopeless they may seem. „Evil is committed by those who yield to evil in any way: whether actively or passively, whether as an instrument, an observer, or a victim. Under certain circumstances even ignorance is evil.“ - This is the message of an indomitable man, Rudolf Vrba.
Věra Fleichmannová
Věra Fleichmannová, 56, is a member of the group „Alone and Together,“ a group of mentally handicapped individuals who have decided to learn to express their views and wishes, so that they are able to makes decisions themselves without being influenced or led by others. They have chosen to call themselves the „self-defenders." Among the „self-defenders“ are many people whom society has not allowed to make independent decisions and do not partially or completely „enjoy full rights.“ Věra, however, has arranged to get her own identification card and enjoys the full rights of a citizen. Her disability was caused by a difficult birth, after which she suffered from delayed development. She receives a full disability pension, but has decided to work in a special workshop. When she is confused about what to do next, she asks for help. „Earlier i really underestimated myself, and i felt that i could not do many things. Now i am surer of myself, i have tried to take on many different roles in the group, and i now realize that things are not that difficult. When i want to, i can succeed." The self-defenders' assistant Dana Kosičková adds: „It is admirable that Věra shows, at her age, a desire to improve herself. I knew her as a very quiet woman. That she would apply herself to be on the panel of judges, even when she has fears in front of large numbers of unknown people, is proof of the amount of progress she has made."
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Taisa Izmailová
Taisa left Grozny for the neighboring Republic of Kabardino-Balkarija in December 1994. She was fortunate enough to leave one month before Russian tanks destroyed her home. The only things she took with her were her three daughters and her identification card. She used what money she had to pay for a taxi to the town of Nalcik. Despite being alone, Taisa was able to build a new home within four years. After receiving repeated threats, she decided to leave again, this time to Dubai, where her sister was living. After two months in Dubai, someone advised her to try her luck in the Czech Republic. She only had enough money for two plane tickets, so two of her daughters had to remain in the United Arab Emirates. On Christmas Day 1999, Taisa requested asylum in the Czech Republic and after four years of waiting received the status of a refugee. „Before the war i was only interested in fashionable clothing, French perfume, and where to go on holiday. Then after what i lived through, i began to notice different things,“ she says responding to the question of why she accepted a spot on the panel of judges in the festival. „Today i know that i can take care of my family. The war gave me self-confidence and the freedom to make decisions for myself."
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Vladimír Kováč
Vladimír Kováč was born in Prague twenty-nine years ago. His carefree childhood ended the moment his mother remarried for a second time. His step-father treated Vláďa horribly, and his home life was full of conflict. When Vláďa was fifteen he confessed his gay sexual orientation to his mother, who in turn threw him out of his home and onto the streets.
Soon after landing on the streets, Vláďa was taken into the „care“ of a woman who took him to Cheb, dressed him in woman's clothes and forced him into prostitution. The failure of his family to support him in any way combine with the despair of life on the streets pushed Vláďa toward the drug Pervitin. Trapped in a cycle of hopelessness, Vláďa's drug addition and his surroundings brought him into delinquency.
Like many people who take drugs intravenously, Vláďa became infected with hepatitis B and HIV. Vláďa was convicted of being an accomplice to theft and was imprisoned. After being discharged, his medical condition worsened and Vláďa had to undergo treatment at the AIDS centre in Bulovka. During the course of his convalescence, he was put into the care of the House of Light, a social-medical asylum centre. Over the next two years Vláďa managed to beat his drug addiction and stabilize his condition. He found employment, a partner and accommodation.
From the second half of last year he began to work as a social worker in the House of Light and is a prevention worker for the Czech society AIDS Help. He views his professional future as a battle against the discrimination of HIV positive people and the struggle for the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases.
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Jelena Podgornaya
"'Are you Jewish? i am asking you, are you Jewish? You don't understand juda? You don't know what juden mord is?' a drunken neo-Nazi was yelling at me, and my friends were trying to drag me away,“ describes Jelena Podgornaya regarding an incident last April. A neo-Nazi, Ondřej Lezskovan, attacked the thirty-five year old Russian Jew, who comes from St. Petersburg, but has been residing in the Czech Republic for five years, right outside the shopping centre where she worked. The brothers Ondřej and Zdeněk ©vamberk were onlookers of the whole incident. All three have inclinations to support neo-Nazis and Zdeněk ©vamberk is one of the leading figures in one nationalist organisation.
The three attackers were employed in the same building as their victim. Jelena, however, did not succumb to fear and filed a complaint with the owner of the shopping centre. He offered her another job. Many other people would probably have rather gotten out altogether, but Jelena refused to run away sheepishly from the neo-Nazis. In the end it was all worth it. The neo-Nazi Zdeněk ©vamberk was dismissed and the other two received a serious warning. „I kept seeing them and they always greeted me politely. The attacker even apologised and said that he had acted so in a drunken state, not knowing what he was doing," says Jelena with satisfaction in her voice.
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Lýdie ®igová
"I am afraid in my own home. The people who attacked us are not in prison and may, at any time, return and perhaps kill us,“ explains twenty-one year old Lýdie ®igová about her everyday dread. She lives with her husband and three children in the town of Jeseník. She became famous after being brutally attacked by three youths in June last year. They cut her husband several times in the face and chest and injured the then pregnant Mrs. ®igová in the eye, causing permanent damage. Although the district court ruled that the attack had racist undertones, the authorities decided to suspend the sentence. This decision created public protests and the Jeseník public prosecutor gave up the entitlement to decide upon the appeal. The sentence was further appealed by the Bruntál public prosecutor. The young couple are waiting for the judgements of ongoing court proceedings, trying to obtain more secure accommodation and, above all, trying to forget about the whole episode.
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