A Tribute to a Remarkable Lady

Katařina Fuchsová, or Katharina Fuchs, you were known by many names - Katja, Katka, Kačka, Kathy - but to me you were Babička. You were born Katharina Neumann to Bohemian parents in Vienna, Austria on 16 May 1921. You were a speaker of Czech, German, English and French, with some Russian and Spanish thrown in; you were a survivor of Terezín, Auschwitz and Mauthausen; a wife, mother, babička and prababička; a choir singer, a beer drinker and a potato boiler. You are no longer with us, but your spirit will abide.

You sometimes would just sit there at the end of the table, listening to your sons and their families talking and laughing. But there you are in every photo at every birthday, every graduation, every family gathering representing every bookmark of our lives. We know we owe these lives to your strength, your stealth, your will, and your sheer luck.

Luck that you married Honza Fuchs, who became a member of the Aufbaukommando at the Terezín concentration camp in 1941, a role that allowed him to slip extra potatoes into holes in the lining of his jacket that you sewed for him. Luck that until the end of 1944 you were spared transport after transport to the death camps, which took almost every other member of your extended family. Luck that when you were finally sent to Auschwitz, Mengele selected you to work in a munitions factory to assemble V1 rockets rather than send you straight to the furnaces. And luck stacked upon luck to later be reunited with Honza in Prague after you had been liberated from Mauthausen and he had escaped a death march by jumping into a haystack.

But you knew that life was not just good luck and bad luck. You knew to make the most of the hand you were dealt. Leave no crumb uneaten. Leave no letter unwritten. No favour or kindness unthanked. You treasured your family as the precious gifts that they were. You were never late to meet us. In fact sometimes you arrived four hours early. Sometimes you made a dry-run the day before, and still arrived four hours early on the day.

With a life thrust into turmoil from a young age, you also learnt to take comfort in routine, predictability and traditions. I saw you twice weekly as a teenager, as regular as clockwork. And I knew on those evenings to expect the call at 6pm to come down for a meal of vepřo knedlo zelo. Or řísky. Sometimes palačinky as a treat. You weren't much of a cook - we all knew it, and so did you - but no-one cared. In my early twenties I moved into my own flat, and still you came every Tuesday to cook and eat together. Sometimes we talked about your life, the early days in Vienna, your subsequent post-war existence in Prague, or your later life as a refugee in England after you and the family fled the 1968 Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia.

But mostly we avoided delving into the past, and stuck to conversations about our day-to-day routines. For you it was the latest tidbit that you'd learnt from your U3A university courses. Or gossip about colourful characters such as Gertie Balok, Frau Doktor Inge Müller and all the other Babičky in your circle. Or your swimming timetable at Copthall, and how it would fit with your plans to buy some kabanos at the Polish butcher in Chalk Farm. With Babička, no detail was too mundane.

And at the end of each weekly meeting, no matter how outrageous the British weather, you always caught the bus back to Hendon, irrespective of how much I insisted on driving you home. It also reminds me of that time when London came to a standstill in the snow. I was going to tell you the epic story of how I'd spent two hours walking home from work, until you said that you stayed up in a café all night and caught the first bus home in the morning. To have known Babička is to have known legendary patience. And stubbornness.

In later years I moved to Asia, and our meetings became less frequent. But you still sent your letters, typewritten on that old computer and printed on paper from a dot matrix printer with holes on either side. And we still spoke on the phone, sometimes at very unusual times because you always confused the timezones. I still came back to see you as often as I could. You still made bábovka and buchty. Oplatkový dort for birthdays, and vanilkové rohlíčky at Christmas time.

You were proud of me. You were frustrated by me. You called me 'můj zlatý' in your letters; you called me 'provocateur' when I was cheeky. You loved me, you loved all of us.

We will miss you.

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