Anka Bergman

Anka Bergman (1917 – July 2013) was a Holocaust survivor noted for giving birth to Eva Clarke whilst in a concentration camp.

Born in 1917 in the town of Třebechovice, in present day Czech Republic, she grew up with her parents and two brothers and sisters. They were raised Jewish but not religious. After attending a boarding grammar school, she studied law at Prague University. As the Nazis took control in 1939, they closed universities and Bergman got a job as a hatmaker. She married Bernd Nathan who was an architect who earned an Iron Cross during the first world war. He previously came to Prague from Germany in an attempt to escape Nazi control.As restrictions grew they were forced to wear a yellow badge.

In November 1941, they were ordered to a warehouse near Holesovice station in Prague. Anka and Bernd were separated, and Anka was sent to Theresienstadt, which at the time was an old barracks transformed into a Nazi Ghetto. She had a job in a provisions store to help feed the fifteen members of her extended family transported to the same ghetto. After some time Anka was able to find her husband, and have a baby. The Gestapo forced her to sign a document that if her son was born it would be killed, but he died at two months old to pneumonia.

In September 1944 Bernd was sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Anka was pregnant again, and not knowing the camp, volunteered to join him. Upon arriving in October, she was again separated from Bernd, who would later be shot in a death march by the Nazis. Anka, malnourished and keeping her pregnancy secret, was selected for slave labor in an armaments factory near Dresden, Germany. She was so malnourished upon being evacuated to the country side for the Mauthausen concentration camp, she credits a farmer who offered her a glass of milk for her survival. She would have been sent to the gas chambers if they were not blown up the day before. Here she gave birth to her daughter Eva Clarke. Three days later the camp was liberated by American forces.

During her time in these ghettos and camps, music from performers who were also captured, helped motivate people to go on. Anka's favorite was The Bartered Bride by the Czech opera Smetana.

She returned to Prague to stay with her remaining family members. Her husband, parents, and two sisters were murdered at Auschwitz. In 1984 she started a new life with Czech RAF fighter Karel Bergman in Cardiff, Wales and would often give talks on her experiences.

Anka Bergman died in July 2013, and Eva currently regularly speaks for the Holocaust Educational Trust.