Prague, Oct 25 (CTK) – Hundreds of people met in a Prague square to commemorate the children imprisoned in the Terezin (Theresienstadt) Nazi internment camp for Jews, north Bohemia, under WWII, one of whom was Jiri Brady and Toman Brod who attended the event.
It was held by students of secondary schools and universities, which participate in the Terezin relay race project reviving the stories and creative work of children imprisoned during WWII.
The case of an award for Brady, 88, has dominated the Czech political scene in the past few days.
Brady originally expected President Milos Zeman to give him state order of T. G. Masaryk. Brady said the Presidential Office protocol head told him by phone that he would be awarded on the national holiday, October 28, marking the 1918 establishment of Czechoslovakia. However, his name did not appear on the final list of the decorated personalities.
Brady’s relative, Culture Minister Daniel Herman (Christian Democrats, KDU-CSL) accused Zeman of having said he would not bestow a state award on Brady if Herman met the Tibetan Dalai Lama. After Herman did so, Brady’s name was deleted from the list, Herman said, but the Presidential Office denies it.
“It would be a pity if the whole story were overshadowed by the dispute whether Jiri Brady should or should not receive a state award,” grammar school teacher Jaroslav Najbert, from one of the organising schools, said.
In 1942, Brady and his sister sister Hana, three years his junior, were deported to Terezin and in the autumn of 1944, to Auschwitz where their parents died previously.
Brady was selected for work and sent to the nearby Gliwice camp. At the end of the war, he succeeded in escaping from a death march. His sister was murdered in a gas chamber.
Brady is involved in the Hanah’s Suitcase project that is compared to the story of Anne Frank, (1929-1945) Holocaust victim who gained fame posthumously following the publication of her diary.
In 1999, a suitcase of Hana Brady (1931-1944) was brought to the Holocaust Museum in Tokyo from Auschwitz. Museum director Fumiko Ishioka started searching for its history, found its original owner and contacted Brady. A book and a theatre play inspired by the story of Hana Brady were written and an exhibition on her was staged.
The Terezin relay race project has for six years remembered the fates of children from Terezin. Within the project, students have also digitised the magazine that children created in the Terezin ghetto during the war.
Students have long been in touch with Brady and have shot a documentary on him. They decided to honour him at yesterday’s meeting.
In reaction to the affair with deleting Brady’s name from the list of personalities to be awarded by Zeman, Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka will bestow the Karel Kramar medal on him, the Chamber of Deputies, the Palacky University in Olomouc, north Moravia, the Brno City Hall and Prague Mayor Adriana Krnacova (ANO) have also decided to decorate Brady.
Brady left for Canada in 1949 and he became a successful businessman. He has helped Czech immigrants there and has written and lectured on the Holocaust.
hol/dr/kva
