A respectful good day to you, Mr. Herst

Miloš Pick was born to a Jewish family. He grew up in the East Bohemian town of Libáň. When the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia was established in March 1939, Libáň officials began implementing the Nuremberg Laws that discriminated against Jews. Miloš Pick remembers the day when they had to sow the Star of David on to their clothes: “We felt so humiliated – those of us who could stayed at home the whole first day. The second day it was the market fair in Libáň. The square was full of people coming for the market, and my cousin had to cross the square with the star on her dress for the first time. One village woman with a basket on her back grabbed her by the hand and shouted across the whole square: ‘Missy, don’t say you listened to that knave Hitler – take it off at once!’ ” Even in those times there were some inhabitants of Libáň who did not succumb to the fear and who openly acknowledged the Jews. “One time I was walking across the square with Mr. Herst, and one stubborn student, Karel Randák, saw us and immediately doffed his hat and roared – surely even the Gestapo in Jičín must have heard it: ‘A respectful good day to you, Mr. Herst.’ Mr. Herst returned the gesture, the hat almost fell out of his hands how he was trembling,” Miloš Pick recounts. He and his sister were the only two Libáň Jews out of more than thirty who survived the Nazi concentration camps.