Hagibor

Both sports venue and labour camp · Vinohradská 1201/159, 100 00 Prague-Prague 10, Czech Republic

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New Year's Eve party

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A labour camp for processing mica was founded in Prague’s Hagibor in the summer of 1944. Jewish Mischlings of the first degree and people living in mixed marriages were deployed there on forced labour. “I got a telegram that said I was to go to Prague – Hagibor. I was thinking: ‘Should I go, or should I not?’ Unfortunately, you lived in constant fear. There was nothing I could do; I went,” recalls Anita Gaydečková. Prague citizens were allowed to go home after work every day, but those from outside of Prague had to stay at the camp overnight. Anita Gaydečková remembers how once she managed to leave the camp secretly. She welcomed the New Year of 1945 at large. “My friends sent me a leaflet saying to crawl under the wooden fence; they would wait for me and we would celebrate the New Year’s Eve together.” Happily, it went well. After a nice evening spent with friends, she crawled back to the camp; she encountered a guardsman, but he was so drunk that he did not pay attention to her. In the morning, she was in her post, as if nothing happened.

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Anita Gaydečková

Parents sent Anita, a young Jewish girl from Olomouc, was to study in France in the late 1930s. Just before leaving, she met Jindřich Gaydečka, a young man of German origin and fell in love so leaving was not easy for her. Following the Munich conference, she returned to the Protectorate upon her fiancé’s urging (and against her parents’ advice), was christened and married her fiancé on 17 September 1939. The marriage saved her life. Unlike her parents and sister, she was not called for the transport to Terezín and Auschwitz; only at the end of the summer of 1944 she was required to attend a labour camp in Prague’s Hagibor. The camp interned Jewish Mischlings of the first degree” and those who lived in mixed marriages. Anita was in Hagibor until the end of January 1945; she was taken to Terezín afterwards and there the end of the war caught her.

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Hagibor

Available in: English | Česky

Hagibor is the Hebrew word for a hero. It is also the name of a sports club that started to train in Prague-Strašnice in 1926. The club used the premises that belonged to The Jewish Community of Prague. The area was intended as a construction site for future Jewish hospital and it adjoined an institution for ill people. Soon, the name Hagibor started to be used for the entire compound. During the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, Hagibor was one of the few places in Prague where Jewish children could gather and play. The sports instruction was given by a famous Jewish teacher, Freddy Hirsch. In 1943, the institution for ill was closed down, and it was also forbidden to use the sport venues. Subsequently, Hagibor was turned to a labour camp for processing mica. Shortly after the war, Hagibor served as an internment place for so called collaborators and for deported Germans.

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Jewish children welcome!

Hana Trávová

New Year's Eve party

Anita Gaydečková