Address: HYBERNSKÁ 1674/42, PRAHA 1
BORN 1860
DIED 1942 IN PRAGUE
My great grandmother Elise Fischel was born Elise Mattersdorff, in Dresden, where she grew up. The Mattersdorffs owned a bank in Dresden. Elise was one of six children, the third of five sisters and one brother, Richard who took over the bank, but died in 1921.
Elise married Wilhelm Fischel, a gynaecologist and Director of the Gynaecology Ambulatoriums of the University Polyclinic in Prague. They had three daughters, Erika, Dora and my grandmother Vera. Elise was widowed aged just 50 but her spacious apartment at Hybernska 42 was also home to my great-aunt Dora and to my grandparents and their children, Käte and Ellen Herrnheiser. Kate, my mother, told me, ‘I loved my granny. She was very very warm and often used to play with us and would sit with us and read to us. She had a great sense of humour and used to write wonderful April Fool letters She was very musical and a very good pianist. She used to take me to chamber music concerts in the Opera House on Sunday mornings.’
Erika moved to Palestine in 1934 and died there of typhoid in 1942. Vera and her family left for Palestine in March 1939, moving on to Egypt in 1942. Elise and her daughter Dora refused to leave Prague with them. My mother remembered, ‘My father wanted to take them but they said, “What on earth should we do, what can happen to us ?” Elise and Dora were forcibly moved to Strašnice , Prag Xlll . Elise was fortunate enough to die on 29th January, 1942, before she was transported to Terezin. Her daughter Dora was transported to Terezin on 3rd August 1942 and on 20th August 1942, to Riga concentration camp, where she was murdered. Two of Elise’s sisters, Paula Rodova and Emma Mattersdorff were also transported and murdered.