Alena Divišová came from a working-class family. When the Germans occupied Prague, she had just begun an apprenticeship as a seamstress. A Jewish colleague put her in touch with a communist resistance group. Outraged by the persecution of the Jews, she helped Jewish friends who were in hiding and smuggled food into the Theresienstadt ghetto. But the Gestapo was hot on her trail. After months in detention, the 19-year-old was deported in 1944 via the Ravensbrück concentration camp to the Schlieben and Altenburg women’s satellite camps. She managed to escape during a death march. After completing her studies, she later worked in Prague as a historian and was honored as one of the “Righteous Among the Nations.”
