Sobotková Jiřina

Sobotková, Jiřina Abraham Harshalom, David Moshkovitz, and David Bolek, all from Poland, passed through several concentration camps before being transferred by train from Buchenwald via Czechoslovakia to an unknown destination in April 1945. Although they were dressed in striped prisoner uniforms, they decided to escape from the transport when the train made a stop in Prague. After jumping from the train, they hid behind a pile of logs and waited for a suitable pedestrian to pass by to whom they could turn for help. The person they approached was an 18-year-old boy who was strolling with a girl. They asked him for civilian clothes and he immediately ran home and came back with a suitcase of clothing for them. The men changed their clothes after which the boy invited the three fugitives to his home. Harshalom, Moshkovitz, and Bolek had been very lucky – the boy’s family was a patriotic Czech family. His mother’s father was a former senator in the Czechoslovak Republic, her brother had been sent to a concentration camp, and her sister had been the secretary of the foreign minister Jan Masaryk. The boy’s mother, Jiřina Sobotková, fed the fugitives, and arranged for them to bathe. She could not harbor the three fugitives in the one-room apartment, but she made sure to find a refuge for them in her friends’ storeroom. Following their transfer there, Sobotková continued to look after the men and supplied them with food. Harshalom, Moshkovitz, and Bolek stayed there until the end of the war. Sobotková continued helping them even after the war ended, and a deep friendship developed between her and her wards. The survivors immigrated to Israel and continued to correspond with Sobotková from there. In 1963 they invited her to visit them in Israel. On September 13, 1963, Yad Vashem recognized Jiřina Sobotková as Righteous Among the Nations.