A transition point between Terezín and England

In October 1942 a three-year-old Zdenka arrived at the Terezín ghetto with her mother. She was placed in the local orphanage. Her mother was murdered in Auschwitz in the Autumn of 1944. Little Zdenka was liberated in the Terezín ghetto. Soon afterwards she joined a group of other young children, mostly war orphans, who were sent to the manor house in Olešovice, which was administered by a group of people headed by the Christian humanitarian Přemysl Pitter and by Olga Fierzová. During 1945–1947 the manor houses in Kamenice, Lojovice, Olešovice, and Štiřín were transformed into sanatoriums protecting children of all nationalities from German concentration camps and Czech prison camps. “I was in the Olešovice manor house for three months. We were cared for by excellent people, Olga Fierzová and Přemysl Pitter. I don’t remember much of it any more, I was only six at the time. Neglected children had the opportunity to learn everyday habits and things that they couldn’t have known,” she recalled. Zdenka left Olešovice on 15 August 1945. An agreement between the Czechoslovak and British governments resulted in the British fostering some of the war orphans from concentration camps. Zdenka Husserlová lives in England to this day.