Anna Hyndráková

Anna Hyndráková (née Kovanicová; 25 March 1928 – 20 February 2022) was a Czech holocaust survivor and historian. She worked at the Jewish Museum in Prague. During World War II, she survived both forced labour and concentration camps including the Theresienstadt, Auschwitz, Christianstadt, Niesky and Görlitz.

Hyndráková is notable for her work on the educational films Butterflies Do Not Live Here (1958) and On Shoes, Braid and Dummy (1961), as well as her contributions in collecting stories from Holocaust survivors and advising on the curation of collections for the Jewish Museum in Prague.

Life Early life Anna Hyndráková grew up in Prague along with her parents and her sister. Her parents were both Jewish, her mother spoke Czech and German as did her father who also spoke Russian from his time as a POW in Russia during the World War I. Hyndráková's father worked as a salesman selling perfumes while her mother was a stay-at-home mom.

They were sent to a male-only labor camp at Niesky. Here, German and Polish prisoners forced the women to have sex with them. After three days they was transferred to Görlitz camp. Anna was coerced into another sexual relationship with a Jewish prisoner from Cologne. Hyndráková states, "I fought only a little, I no longer had the will or the strength," in describing this relationship. and subsequently the Jewish Museum's Holocaust documentation centre. Hyndráková also contributed to the political dissent by distributing Samizdat literature.

Contributions to the Holocaust history Anna's own accounts of the Holocaust are very valuable and provide nuanced descriptions of what life was like for young Jewish women surviving World War II. She gives extremely graphic accounts of sexual experiences she had at various camps. Hyndráková's accounts are particularly useful to historians because they offer a different perspective on the sexual encounters that Jewish women who survived the Holocaust had. Hyndráková characterises her sexual experiences as rape, while others used sex work as a tool to improve their circumstances.

Anna Hyndráková has helped to compile substantial work on the Holocaust, Holocaust survivors and their experiences. She aided in the compilation of extensive collections for the Jewish Museum in Prague focused on first hand accounts of the Holocaust by witnesses and survivors alike.

Anna Hyndráková was also an advisor on the educational films Butterflies Do Not Live Here (1958) and On Shoes, Braid and Dummy (1961). Both of these films center on artwork produced between 1941 and 1945 by Jewish kids living in the Theresienstadt Ghetto. Both films focus on the cultural significance of art in Jewish ghettos and briefly mention the therapeutic benefits of art for Jewish kids living in the cramped quarters.