Wilhelmina (“Mina”) Pächter was born 16 July 1872 in Hluboka (Frauenberg) in southern Bohemia, sixth and youngest daughter of Heinrich Stein, a tanner. On the steep hill above Hluboka stands a famous castle, still a tourist attraction, where the Counts of Schwarzenberg lived, formerly Bohemia’s most powerful family. Mina’s greatgrandfather Wolf (Ze’ev) Lazar Stein (1700–62?) was already a tanner and also a “Hofjude,” court Jew to the Count of Schwarzenberg.
At the time Mina was growing up, few women were accepted at universities, and she therefore attended a teachers’ seminary in Prague, studying art and literature. (In her later years she always kept by her bedside a copy of Goethe’s “Faust,” which she often quoted, as well as Shakespeare’s “King Lear” and a Hebrew prayer book bound in silver with her own monogram—usually along with a recent crime novel.)
About 1900 she married Adolf Pächter, to the dismay of the elder Steins—for Adolf was a widower with six children, who was twenty-seven years older than his bride. In 1904 her son Heinz (Hanoch) arrived, and three years later a daughter, Anna Wilma. Adolf had six other children from previous marriages, some grown, others young; Mina became mother for all of them.
The family led a prosperous existence, occupying several houses in Bodenbach on the steep slope behind Adolf’s button factory, the Schäferwand, or “shepherds’ cliff.” About two hundred Jews lived in Bodenbach, and with Adolf’s support (he was the wealthiest man in the community) a synagogue was built in 1907. It still exists as a government storehouse.
The family’s luck turned in 1915 when Adolf contracted pneumonia and died. He left the factory and his extensive property to his children, expecting them to take care of Mina. But they did not. In time, because none of the children had the skill to run the factory effectively, it passed into other hands.
To support herself, Mina established herself as an art dealer. She had excellent social connections and was sometimes called into court as an expert witness. She also accumulated an impressive art collection of her own, later looted by the Nazis. Her daughter Anny followed her lead and studied art history.
In 1930 Anny married George Stern, an attorney from Lovosice (Lobositz), another river town about thirty miles upstream. Not long afterwards, Mina came to live with her daughter and with her grandson Peter (later called David).
It was a happy arrangement, but happiness did not last. Hitler rose to power and Jewish refugees began arriving in Bodenbach. Unfortunately, most residents of the Czech borderland were Germans and many openly supported Hitler.
The Czech republic resisted the Nazis until the infamous Munich Pact of September 1938, when its French and British allies agreed not to intervene if Germany overran the Czech borderland. Soon the German army marched in, swastika flags appeared all over the town, and all Jews had to flee.
Anny Stern grabbed her suitcase and boarded a train for Prague; George was with the Czech army, called up (before the British and French caved in) to resist a Nazi invasion, and later he joined her. Mina arrived by one of the last trains, and all other members of the Pächter and Stern families also fled. In March 1939, however, the Nazis occupied the rest of the country.
George Stern, Anny’s husband, escaped to Palestine. Anny Stern became involved in Jewish emigration to Palestine, securing visas and funds for Jewish refugees as an official of the “Palestine Office” supervised by Adolf Eichmann, a leader of anti-Jewish persecutions. At the end of November 1939, by great luck and thanks to the steadfast support of community leader Jakob (Yankev) Edelstein, she and her son were allowed to leave for Palestine.
Of the family members that stayed behind, only one survived: Liesel (Elizabeth), granddaughter of Adele Hirsch, Adolf Pächter’s second wife. She was in eleventh grade when the Nazis invaded; and, when all Jews were expelled from public schools, she volunteered to be trained as a nurse, later working in Jewish hospitals and marrying one of the doctors, Dr. Ernest Reich.
In 1942 most of Prague’s Jews were transferred to the old fortress town of Terezín (Theresienstadt), into which ultimately all Czech Jews were crammed. For many of them, including Liesel’s parents and sister, that was only a brief stop before a final trip to Auschwitz and destruction. Liesel and her husband left Prague for Terezín in March 1943.
Liesel had been working for four or five months at the ghetto hospital when she heard that Mina Pächter was there. By the time she found her, Mina was in poor health. Residents of Terezín were always hungry and often starving, food rations were meager, and many came down with “hunger edema,” which we now know signified protein deficiency. For older people, that was the beginning of the end.
Liesel arranged for Mina to be brought to the hospital and tended her as well as she could. Mina stayed mostly in bed, gradually getting weaker. She died on Yom Kippur, 1944, when much of Terezín’s original population was already gone. Liesel watched as her body was taken to the crematorium outside the walls, the final destination for thousands of Jews.