Prague, March 22 (CTK) – Dagmar Lieblova, a Holocaust survivor, the Terezin Initiative international association’s founder and chairwoman and holder of the Order of Tomas Garrigue Masaryk, died in Prague’s Central Military Hospital on Thursday aged 88, writer Marek Lauermann has told CTK.
Lauermann, who writes about the history of Jews in Kutna Hora, central Bohemia, wrote a book about Lieblova, who also comes from Kutna Hora.
“Almost until her last days, she was invited as a fascinating speaker to many discussions in the Czech Republic, in Europe, but also in the USA and Canada,” Lauermann said.
He based his book, named “They made a typo, and so I am here,” on Lieblova’s memories which he collected by interviewing her. It was published in 2014.
The book title refers to a fatal chance thanks to which she was able to survive her internment in Auschwitz.
Through an error in the camp’s records, which said she was older than her actual age (15), she was sent to work in Nazi Germany.
She lost all her family in Auschwitz, with only one of her female cousins remaining alive, Lieblova said in an interview with CTK in January 2015.
In Hamburg, she was deployed at ruins removal and did other hard work. She lived to be freed in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp by British soldiers on April 15, 1945.
After her return home and having undergone treatment for tuberculosis, she finished a secondary school with a leaving exam and later graduated in the German and Czech languages at the Faculty of Arts of the Charles University in Prague.
She taught in many schools, including the translation and interpreting department of the Charles University.
“She made a major contribution to preserving in a dignified manner the memory of those who died during the Shoah, and for her entire life, she strove to make an impact on the education of the new generation of Europeans towards tolerance, against racism, anti-Semitism and xenophobia,” Lauermann said.
She was bestowed the Order of Tomas Garrigue Masaryk for an excellent contribution to the development of democracy, humanity and human rights in 2011.
