Jiří Lauscher, born 14. 9. 1901 in Theresienstadt, resident in Theresienstadt.

Schools: village, town, business continuing.

Trained in the office of the ironworks and rolling mill 1915-1920.

In 1920, I travelled to the United States to do a Hachshara at a fruit farm in California. In order to get used to the conditions there, I first stayed with some relatives in New York. I was homesick and I didn’t want to go through the same trouble in Eretz, and so I returned to Europe and enrolled in the 1st craft kibbutz of the Czechoslovak HeHalutz in Olomouc as a cooper and carpenter in Pavlovice (distillery and yeast plant). After working for a year, I was sent to Merkas HeHalutz, where I served my mandatory year, organized the employment office and put together travel packs for chalutzim for their aliyah. After working for a year for the HeHalutz, I was sent to the Techelet-Lavan retraining summer camp for the young (800 people) in Stará Libava near Došov by Olomouc, where, as a cooper with several retrained chaverim, I made pallets, kitchen equipment, latrines, etc., and later I was a rations master and a technical worker.

After leaving Prague, Merkas HeHalutz was no more, because the chaverim had gone to Eretz, and so we took the working chalucim vaad to Mor. Ostrava, where there was also a craft kibbutz. I worked in Ferd. Pilař’s workshop in Mar. Hory, and in the evenings in the HeHalutz. From September 1924 to January 1925. I was then sent to Bratislava, where the HeHalutz gardening group was struggling. A chaver and I were tasked with providing them with a livelihood, which we managed to do with the help of the Zionist leadership in Mor. Ostrava (Dr. Kahn). In March, 1925, I was urgently sent to Eretz, because there weren’t enough people.

In Eretz, I immediately began constructing homes in En Ganim, where we were temporarily stationed. After a short while, I was assigned to the first group in Emek, where our group’s hityashvut was supposed to be prepared in cooperation with the first group of Hashomer Hatzair from Poland. After a promising beginning in Afula (Israel), the crisis and unemployment of 1926 hit, and so we took down the tents and found work in Haifa building on Carmel and later draining in Mifraz Acre. In 1927, the Achva group, which partially broke up, joined with the hityashvut in Sarid.

There, I built new and inspired by Ein Ganimhouses. We soon started working on the construction of a large cowshed, several chicken coops, a hatchery, a children’s home, the colony’s system of defense, roads, and bore holes. We also took over the buildings in neighboring Ginegar and later in Emek HaYarden, Beth Sera. Since then, there was enough construction work in our own settlement, and so I remained in Sarid until 1930. I was the head expert for all construction work (although I was still actively working), besides overseeing the technician from Hanhala Zionit. After surviving a bad case of tropical and tertian malaria, I travelled to Europe, where I remained due to a death in the family, without giving up on the possibility of returning. I got a job as the head of a factory that tanned and colored furs in Prague. In 1938-39, I specialized in wooden toys that would be manufactured in Eretz. But aliyah could not take place. I worked for 2 years in toy factory, and in the last year as a member of a group of about 20 Jewish people up until I was transported. In Theresienstadt, I was a cooper and I was occasionally ordered to manufacture toys for the SS, or rather design and create the models for them, as well as models of German attack vehicles, etc. I devoted myself to conservation and took a toy-making course in Prague.

AS

16. XI. 1945