Věra Kohnová

Who was Věra Kohnová?

Věra Kohnová was a Jewish girl from Czechoslovakia. She wrote a diary about her feelings and about events during the Nazi occupation. Her diary was published in 2006.

Kohnová was born in Plzeň in 1929, into the family of Otakar Kohn, a secretary for the Teller company. At the age of twelve she began keeping a diary. She wrote in it for five months, during which time the situation of her family and other Jews in Plzeň gradually worsened. She didn't describe the fate of Jews of the time but wrote mainly about her personal feelings. The last entry in her diary is, "We are here just tomorrow and after tomorrow, who knows what will be then. Bye-bye, my diary!".

On 22 January 1942, the family was put on transport "S" to Theresienstadt. The last record of Věra Kohnová comes from 11 March, when she left Theresienstadt on a transport for another Nazi camp in Izbica—a transfer station to the extermination camps. Although she and her family did not survive, her diary was hidden by Marie Kalivodová and Miroslav Matouš for 65 years.

In 2006, the diary was published as a book in Czech, English and German, ISBN 80-86057-40-2.