Jan & Kaja Saudek
Jan Saudek (M / Czechia, 1935), Holocaust survivor
Kaja Saudek (M / Czechia, 1935-2015), Holocaust survivor
- Twins.
- KEYWORDS : <Mischlinge> <concentration camp Luža, Poland>
Biography
Kaja (Karel) and Jan Saudek were born in Prague in 1935, twin sons of Gustav Saudek, who was Jewish, and his Czech (Slavic) wife. Both of their families originated in Bohemia; Gustav was born in Decin. After the Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia during World War II, the family was subject to the racial persecution the Germans directed against Jews and Slavs. Kája and his brother Jan were imprisoned with other Mischlinge (mixed-blood) children in the Nazi concentration camp Luža in Poland. Many of their Jewish family members died in the Theresienstadt concentration camp in Czechoslovakia, where their father was deported in February 1945, but both brothers and their father survived to return to Prague and rebuild their lives.
After the war, both brothers became famous artists.