Editka, is it your birthday today?

On March 15, 1939, when the Wehrmacht was occupying Bohemia and Moravia, Daruše Burdová was a student of the Czech Girls’ reformist grammar school in Jaselská Street in Brno. Each class of the school adopted a few Jewish students who were no longer allowed to attend German schools. Daruše Burdová in particular remembers one of them, Edita Linková, who together with her parents had to board a transport heading to Theresienstadt on March 23, 1943. Before she left, she invited Daruše together with two other schoolmates to her home in Lipova Street: “We slowly walked that street up the hill and looked for her home. We passed one villa, a second one, the third one. Then we found such an amazingly beautiful villa. I’d never been in such a villa before in my life. Editka was waiting there for us. We saw a cake with whipped cream on the table and we asked: “Editka, is it your birthday today? But we don’t have a present for you.” She said: no, it’s not my birthday.” Suddenly, Mrs. Linková came into the room and Editka told us that she was leaving with her parents in an hour. The cream turned sour in our mouths. I hadn’t eaten whipped cream for 2 years but I didn’t find it tasteful at that moment because we were all saying goodbye to her in tears. Editka gave a small golden ruby ring to each of us as a souvenir.” Daruše Burdová doesn’t know whether her classmate survived the Nazi concentration camps.