The factory cost my parents and brother their lives
František Lederer lived in Teplice with his parents and his four-year older brother. They were Jews, and they spoke Czech at home. His father, Richard, co-owned the textile mill “Lederer & Glaser,” (formerly Getreuer), and his mother, Eliška, tended to their home. František attended the primary school on Metelka Square in Teplice. The Lederer family had a very decent standard of living – they lived in their own villa, owned a Hudson personal automobile, and regularly went on holiday to the sea, mostly to Belgium: “We were on holiday in Belgium as late as 1937, and my father wanted to return come what may, even though he suspected things wouldn't be too good for us Jews in Bohemia. But he had the factory here together with that Glaser man. So we returned,” František Lederer remembers. The family moved to Prague in 1938. The Protectorate was declared in 1939 and this was followed by one anti-Jewish provision after the other. In the autumn of 1941, the Lederer family was placed on one of the first transports headed to Lodž.
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František Lederer
František Lederer was born in July, 1930 in Teplice in a Jewish family. His father Richard was the co-owner of a textile factory and his mother Eliška did the housekeeping. The family had a very high standard of living. They lived in their own villa in Teplice and his father drove a Hudson. They went on vacation frequently to the sea-side resorts in Belgium. Sometimes, they would even fly to Belgium. The turning point was the year 1938, when bad times began for the family. First, they had to leave their villa and move from Teplice, (that was part of the Sudetenland that was annexed by the Germans in September 1938), to Prague. Here they became the object of disdain from their environment for their Jewish origin. Eventually, in October 1941, they were deported to the Lódź ghetto. In the Lódź ghetto, František Lederer lost his parents in 1942 and only six months later his only brother Jindřich Lederer. At age 12, he became an orphan and the fact that he survived the ghetto and later the concentration camp in Auschwitz equals a miracle. His life was saved by pure chance during the second selection in Auschwitz, that took place immediately after his arrival in the camp. After the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp at the end of January 1945, Mr. Lederer set out on a long return journey home via Hungary that took three months. After the war, he briefly lived in Prague before he returned to his native Teplice, where he then worked in the textile industry for forty years.
