When Time Stopped: A Memoir of My Father's War and What Remains

by Ariana Neumann

If Terezín was not hell itself, like Auschwitz, it was the anteroom to hell. But culture was still possible, and for many this frenetic clinging to an almost hypertrophy of culture was the final assurance. We are human beings and we remain human beings, despite everything!

Terezín was used for Nazi propaganda. It incorporated a bank and a post office, and it had a working hospital. Nevertheless, the inmates were malnourished and frail. This, together with the overcrowded and unhygienic conditions, meant that illnesses proliferated.

It must have been a risky and delicate encounter, carefully transacting with people who held his fate, as well as that of his parents, in their hands.

the typical inmate had grown numb and was like a chased animal that only seeks food and rest. It will be difficult for those who return from here to recover any sliver of their humanity.

it all seems like paradise compared to the alternative in Poland.

The darkest shadow lies beneath the candle.

If he traveled to the center of it all, to Berlin, to the heart of the Reich, just beneath the candle, where the darkness was greatest, the Gestapo might never find him.

you will understand this when you are older, sometimes you just feel that everything around you has come to an end. You feel that you are completely alone, that time is frozen, and that you are invisible. At first, you might feel exhilarated by the sense of freedom, but then you’ll be frightened that you are lost and you will never be able to go back.”

Venezuelans always expect guests to show up about an hour after they are invited. It is an unspoken but unbreakable social rule. Despite his fifty years in Caracas, my father still refused to adapt to the more relaxed Latin American timings.

I took the thin glass vial covered in brown rubber from my pocket and placed it at the back of my mouth. I held it between the lower back left molars and the side of my mouth. I was told it would take only a few seconds, a minute at most. Cyanide poisons your nerves so the brain dies first, then the heart.

I waited a few minutes to make sure they were gone. The train heaved forward and I was able to breathe again. I coughed and spat the ampoule into my hand. I placed it carefully back in my pocket. I could need it again.

in that world of absurd choices, Ella chose to survive. Her letters were filled with hope but also pragmatism and a determination to maximize her and Otto’s chances of survival.

he had no real choice, merely the crushing sense of responsibility and torment that arises from the illusion of choice.

Czechs, as Slavs, were duly categorized within the obsessive racial classification of Nazi ideology. They were considered “lapsed Aryans.” This meant that while they were discriminated against, they were treated marginally better than the Russians or Poles, who were deemed Untermensch, inferior people, subhuman.

Only his thoughts could be free, and even those had to be controlled if he was to focus on surviving.

There was a note of rebelliousness here and there to add authenticity to the young Czech chemist working for his country’s oppressors. The illegal alcohol and the frowned-upon flirtation with a war widow subtly made Jan Šebesta real.

By October 1943, Jan Šebesta even possessed a genuine identity card issued by the German authorities, literally bearing the official stamp and complete with a confidently smiling portrait that was still recognizable to his young daughter in Caracas almost four decades later.

The list had omitted one question. Had a Jan Šebesta, born in Alt Bunzlau on March 11, 1921, ever existed? This question had never been posed in Prague or in Berlin and was thus never answered.

One of the many paradoxes of life in Terezín was that, for a while, at least, Ella’s sojourn in the hospital protected her from being sent east.

Two Czech boys with their secrets. Two pranksters grinning, in their shorts, in front of a symbol of German power.

Nietzsche wrote that what separates humans from animals is the ability to find one’s condition risible. Nazis tended to solemnity and humorlessness. They always showed what Nietzsche called “Tierischer Ernst,” a certain “animal earnestness,” a complete inability to laugh at themselves.

I behaved as I did out of an instinct to survive and not bravery.

there is nothing like the comfort of numbers, united in nationality and hatred, to embolden one.

The tag attached with string around the sack read: From: Warnecke & Böhm. Berlin. Contents: Dr. Ing, Carl Kemph. Weight: 78 Kgs.

Everything that could be mended would immediately be repaired. It was a clear order from the Reich and the Germans were good at following orders. It was one thing at which the Nazis, especially, excelled. So a few hours after every bombardment, life carried on as if nothing had happened. Everything that could be repaired would function again. Except for Dr. Kemph. Sadly, poor Dr. Kemph could not be put right.

Each squadron’s pathfinders marked the areas to be targeted with colored flares. We called them “Christmas trees.” The planes then carpet-bombed the marked area in waves. As firefighters, Zdeněk and I had to go toward the Christmas trees and guess whether we were inside or outside the targeted square.

We couldn’t do anything but watch it burn. I prayed Helene Rudloff died instantly.

“Have you not noticed, Handa, that when the buildings crumble under the bombs, the toilets all remain attached to the walls? Even when everything else falls down?”

“Remember, it’s Jan, not Handa, here,” I whispered.

The sickening fear created by his life in Berlin must have been relentless. I had always thought my father’s nightmares had to do with Czechoslovakia, but as I read his writings about the war, it seemed to be his nights in Berlin that were the stuff of terrors.

The incident must have taken less than five minutes, though it felt like hours.

to ease overcrowding, deporting thousands to Auschwitz. In the three days from May 16 to 18, more than seventy-five hundred people were transported. My grandparents managed to avoid selection.

Next to us, the Vltava flowed, indifferent and calm.

My only identity card bore the name Jan Šebesta. I would have to wait until the city was liberated to become Hans Neumann again.

After more than six years, the occupation was finally over. On May 23, 1945, Zdenka wrote to Otto’s brother, Uncle Richard, in America. I have the letter:

Zita was one of 51 people on a transport of 1,500 who survived the war. Ella, along with the rest of the sick, had been sent directly to the gas chambers. I cannot imagine the grief that Hans, Lotar, and Zdenka must have felt on hearing the news.

The shouts of the officers and the black of their guns would have been enough to jolt them. Links! Rechts! Left for older people. Right for the young.

“You have to fight. Not with violence but with your mind, not for people but for ideas. Fight and work for what you believe in, Handa. That struggle is all that matters.”

“If you want to be truly just in this life, when you see people who are weak, you must stand with them. Because you are strong, and it is the weak who need you more, not the strong.”

the rain had revealed Otto’s distinguished silver hair and washed away his luck.

Every step at Montana, in Libčice, on the cobbled streets of Prague would have elicited memories. There must have been ghosts everywhere.

Of all the destinations considered, Venezuela seemed to be the best choice. While many Europeans migrated to the U.S., Venezuela lacked a developed paint industry and thus presented a real opportunity to the Neumanns for a new start.

I have not yet received a single piece of news from Benes, who is organizing things for you in Caracas; he must have acclimatized himself so much that he has started to act like the locals who put everything off till “mañana.”

one can live there; it is relatively easy to make enough for daily needs. A satisfactory living can be quickly established, and it is a good environment to set up a new Montana. The only things you’ll need are to maintain your good health, learn a bit of Spanish, and a dose of optimism…

He adopted many Venezuelan traditions but never their attitude toward keeping time.

“If your name is on the wall, they must think you are dead.” He paused for the briefest moment. “What does it mean?” he said, chuckling quietly. “It means that I tricked them. That is exactly what it means. “I tricked them. I lived.”

Some say that trauma is, to some extent, inherited, no matter how distanced or sheltered the environment into which you are born.

We choose who we are, but our choices are always molded by where we come from, even when we do not know where that is.

I look at my three children as they chatter and laugh and I pray that, in addition to the timekeeping and tenacity, they also have my father’s boldness, his poetry, and his strength. And hopefully too a little of his luck.