WILMINGTON — Although he experienced these atrocities nearly 80 years ago, Jan Rocek was able to describe in some detail the experience of himself and his family at the hands of the Nazi party during World War II. Rocek, 99, visited Padua Academy in mid-November and spoke to students of longtime history teacher Barbara Markham.
Before escaping Communist Czechoslovakia with his family in 1960, Rocek and his family endured much hardship. They were sent to the Terezin ghetto north of his native Prague in 1942, where he saw people begging for food. He said approximately 33,000 people died in that ghetto; some 88,000 were transported to concentration camps in Auschwitz and Treblinka.
It was tough, but, “for young people — and I was young at the time — life was much more bearable, Rocek said.
He said he was hungry all the time, and he fought a long battle with bed bugs, but he was working. He did meet his wife, Eva, during his time at Terezin.
He lost much of his family at Auschwitz after being sent there in the fall of 1944, but. Rocek, who had some training in chemistry, survived. He recalled arriving at the camp and seeing Dr. Josef Mengele, the noted Nazi doctor who conducted experiments on many of the Jews who were sent there. As they departed the trains, the Jewish prisoners were asked about their health.
“Only later we learned those sent to the left were sent straight to the gas chambers,” he said, adding that his parents and sister “had no chance.”
He was allowed to keep just his glasses and shoes and recalled that there were not enough winter clothes for the prisoners. The camp was surrounded by a high-voltage fence and men with guns, and he had to watch people march to their deaths.
“Everything was done to humiliate us,” he said.
Rocek was transferred to a munitions factory near Leipzig, Germany, where he was a metal worker. There, he endured 12-hour shifts with “so-called black coffee in the morning” and nothing else. They were fed enough to keep them alive and working. He said he was lucky to get sent there at the end of the war, and that’s why he survived. At times, he thought of committing suicide.
After the war, he returned to Prague and completed his studies in chemistry. Eva had survived the war as well, and they were married in 1947. He visited England twice for his work as a chemist, and after that, he was determined to get his family out of Communist Czechoslovakia. The government was offering a trip to East Germany in 1960, and the Roceks began planning their escape. On the trip, they traveled to the Baltic Sea, and when their ship reached a harbor in Denmark, Rocek, his wife, mother-in-law and two sons jumped into the water. They were rescued by the police, and he spent a brief time in a Danish jail, but they were free. Their adventure made several European newspapers, and even The New York Times had a story about it.
Many Czechs were pursued by the secret police if they were suspected of anti-Communist activities, but that was not the case with Rocek.
“I was not personally in danger as long as I did my work and kept my mouth shut,” he said. That included pledging support to the Communist government in order to keep his job. Rocek said ht was humiliating, but he did what he had to do. Still, he wanted out.
In the United States, he found a home in academia. He was a research fellow at Harvard University for two years, then a professor at Catholic University of America for four. He moved to the University of Illinois-Chicago, where he spent three decades on the faculty. His wife, also a chemist, taught at UIC as well.
The couple moved to Delaware in the mid-2000s to be closer to one of their sons. Eva Rocek died in 2015 after 68 years of marriage.
He warned the Padua students that the atrocities committed by the Nazis during World War II could happen again if the circumstances are right.
“Anything can happen to people who have no accountability,” he said.
