„He was completely stunned when I called him. Of course, he was already married.”
Jolana Blau was born on 27th April in 1938 in Bánovice nad Bebravou. Usual destiny of European Jews affected her family when she was three years old. In 1941 her father, her aunt and uncle were deported to Auschwitz, her father later perished in Majdanek. Jolana with her mother and grandmother were sent to labor camp Novaky. After the Slovakian uprising erupted in 1944 they were freed for several months. Three women were hiding in woods among Partisans. Finally Jolana and her mother were caught again and transported to Terezín in autumn 1944. Jolana survived in Terezín until the liberation in May 1945. She was seven years old. Only Jolana, her mother and grandmother had survived the war from the family of approximately 200 members. After the war they moved to Prague. In Prague Jolana graduated at a High School of Bussiness. She got married at her twenties for the first time. After the invasion of the armies of The Warsaw Pact in August 1968 Jolana emigrated to USA via Austria with her five years old daughter Simona. Within several years she got married for the second time to Vojtěch Blau, a Czech emigrant and very famous dealer of Persian carpets and tapestries. She lives in New York.
