Jan Roček

Prepared by the Witnesses of War team

Jan Roček was born Jan Robitschek on 24 March 1924 in Prague, Czechoslovakia, into an assimilated Jewish family. His father, Hugo, was a veteran of the Czechoslovak Legions and owned a small paint and varnish factory. After the German occupation, Jan was expelled from school. A laboratory training course organized by Prague’s Jewish community introduced him to chemistry—the subject that would shape his future.

On 15 May 1942, Jan and his family were deported to the Terezín ghetto. After manual and agricultural work, he secured a position in its analytical laboratory under Dr. Adolf Pollak, gaining practical experience despite imprisonment. In Terezín, he also met Eva Porgesová, his future wife. Before their separation, they promised to contact each other if they survived.

On 28 September 1944, Jan was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau on transport Ek. He survived the selection and approximately a month in the camp. Declaring himself a metalworker, he was transferred on 27 October 1944 to Meuselwitz, where he performed forced labor operating a lathe in an armaments factory. His parents and younger sister, Helga, were subsequently deported to Auschwitz and murdered.

In the final weeks of the war, Jan survived the evacuation of Meuselwitz and a death march through the Kraslice region. Returning to Prague, he reunited with Eva, who had also survived the Holocaust. They married in 1947, pursued scientific studies and raised two sons, Martin and Tomáš. Jan studied chemistry and later worked at the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences.

On 24 July 1960, the family escaped communist Czechoslovakia by jumping from an East German ship into the water at Gedser, Denmark, each parent carrying a son. They eventually settled in the United States, where Jan built a distinguished academic career, spending nearly thirty years at the University of Illinois Chicago.