She left the camp and thus escaped the raping
On May 8, 1945, the Red Army occupied the labor camp of Merzdorf. The German personnel of the camp had fled a day earlier. One of the inmates agreed with the Russian commandant that a group of inmates from the camp could join them on their march to Bohemia. Jana Dubová recalls: "It was thirty kilometers to the border. We went with the first army, with the artillery, into the mountains and the road was littered with wrecks of German cars and corpses. There was still heavy artillery fire ravaging the area. We feared for our lives." The girls went with a group of Russian soldiers, mostly from Moscow, who were helping them and who were very decent. Jana recalls that her feet were all bloody from walking in the clogs. One of the Russian soldiers got her some "sneakers" in which she then walked all the way home. Hitting the road with the first army proved to be a wise decision, as a short time later, a group of wild troops from Siberia arrived in the labor camp and raped the remaining women.
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Jana Dubová
Jana Dubová, née Heller, was born on August 30, 1926, in Prague. She came from a Czech Jewish family. After the occupation of Czechoslovakia, her father wanted Jana to take part in the rescue operation of Sir Nicholas Winton, who organized the departure of Jewish children to safety in England. Unfortunately, it was already too late for Jana to leave as the war broke out. She had to stay in the Protectorate and in April 1942, she and her family were deported to Theresienstadt. Jana remained in Theresienstadt until the fall of 1944, when she was placed in a transport headed to Auschwitz. After their arrival, her mother was sent to the gas chambers right away. After about three weeks in Auschwitz, Jana was selected to work with other women in Merzdorf, where they worked in a factory for flax processing. There she had to live and work under tough conditions, with very little food, performing a difficult job. By the end of the war, an epidemic of typhus broke out in the factory. Right after the liberation of the camp by the Russians, Jana and a few girlfriends set out on foot on a journey back home, on the tail of the receding front lines. The return to Prague was difficult. Out of the whole family that counted 30 people, only her and her sister survived the Holocaust. After the war, she married her boyfriend, whom she knew from Theresienstadt and who was also a survivor of the Holocaust. She graduated from the State School of Graphic Arts and made a living with applied graphics. Jana Dubová created a series of paintings called the "Dreams of the Dead," in which she depicted her memories.
