Marketa Goetz-Stankiewicz was a neighbour and colleague to Rudolf Vrba and a friend to his wife, Robin. As the Department Head of Germanic Studies at the University of British Columbia from 1980 to 1985, she contributed some thirty essays on German, Comparative, Czech and Polish literature to books and periodicals. Several of her essays have been reprinted in collections of literary criticism or translated and reprinted in other languages. In 1972 and 1992 she was awarded UBC Excellence in Teaching awards. She received the Order of the Ordo Scriptores Bohemici in Prague in 1988. In 1992, she was awarded the Boeschenstein Medal of the Canadian Association of University Teachers of German.

In this first video Marketa Goetz-Stankiewicz speaks of walking and talking with Vrba on the UBC campus where they both lived.

Rudolf Vrba could not speak easily about his much-missed daughters but he was not always serious. Much of the time, Goetz-Stankiewicz found him to be light-hearted and fun.

Because they had so much culturally and linguistically in common, Marketa Goetz-Stankiewicz and Rudolf Vrba had a friendship that was usually effortless.

Marketa Goetz-Stankiewicz attempts to describe Vrba’s often strange form of laughter.

Marketa Goetz-Stankiewicz describes Vrba as sociable, formidable but occasionally modest. He took his Pharmacology very seriously. He occasionally down-played his importance as a Holocaust witness. Once when he traveled to Germany, he said that he would tell them what he remembered but that “I don’t remember much at this stage now.”

In this video, Marketa describes her relationship with Rudolf Vrba’s wife, Robin.