She concealed her Jewish star with her hand

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In 1940, the Nazis began to concentrate the local Jews in the castle of Mladá Boleslav. "Nowadays, the castle serves as a museum, but in the past, it served various purposes, harboring apartments and shops. During the war, the Nazis turned it into an internment camp for Jews," says Eva Machková, who grew up in Mladá Boleslav and in 1939 was 8 years old. A friend of the parents of Eva Machková, Mrs. Seidlerová, was of Jewish origin. "She had a son about my age. Before the war, we would go for walks together," she recalled. The family of Mrs. Seidlerová was interned at the castle, too. Eva Machková recalls that after her internment, they only saw Mrs. Seidlerová one more time: "We met her on the street and my mother would stop and speak to her quite normally. Mrs. Seidlerová would conceal the yellow star on her coat with her hand as she didn't want to put my mom at risk." All Jews in the Protectorate aged 6 or above had the obligation to wear a humiliating yellow star as of September 1, 1941. For having concealed the star, Mrs. Seidlerová was putting herself at risk of being persecuted. It was the last meeting between the two women. The Seidler spouses were murdered in the concentration camps. After the war, only their son returned home. "We've never talked together anymore. There was a wall between us that made it impossible," says Eva Machková.

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Eva Machková

Eva Machková was born on March 12, 1931, in Prague but grew up in Mladá Boleslav. Her father was a technical officer in the Mladá Boleslav Škoda works. The family lived in Mladá Boleslav throughout the period of WWII and Eva Machková witnessed, among other things, the bombing of the city in May 1945 and its subsequent liberation by the Red Army. After graduating from the Pekařovo gymnázium grammar school, she started to study law in Prague, but soon she changed to the Theatre Faculty of the Academy of Music, where she focused on the field of theater studies. She founded a family and after the birth of her son she started a job in the Mladá Boleslav theater. However, this experience discouraged her from working in professional theaters. After returning to Prague, she briefly worked in the Theatre Institute, but in 1961 she took up a job in the Central House of Folk Art Creativity (ÚDLUT), where she stayed for the next 27 years. Since 1964, she extramurally studied pedagogy. She graduated in 1970. In ÚDLUT, as a senior methodologist, she organized shows and seminars, (Jiráskův Hronov, Šrámkův Písek, Loutkářská Chrudim, Žďár nad Sázavou, the Kaplické divadlo theater summer). She created the theoretical foundation for the drama in education. She raised a number of other experts - practical teachers and theorists. In the 1990s, she was at the birth of the Department of Drama in Education at the Academy of Performing Arts. Although Eva Machková has retired, she continues to be active as a teacher and publisher.

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Mladá Boleslav, the castle

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The castle of Mladá Boleslav was built in the middle of the 13th century at a place, where a Slavic settlement had already been established in the 10th century. In the course of the following centuries, it went through several reconstructions. In the beginning of the 18th century, it was transformed into barracks and the military garrison stayed here until 1940, when it was turned into an internment camp for Jews from the city and the surrounding area. Later, the Jews were transported to Theresienstadt or to other concentration camps. 1043 local Jews were deported in two transports marked as Cl and Cm. Only 48 of them survived the war. Since 1943, the castle was once again used as barracks and since the beginning of the 1950s, it was used as a textile warehouse. The State Archive and Museum of the Mladá Boleslav district is located here since 1972.

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She concealed her Jewish star with her hand

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