Vilém Klíma was born on 10 April 1906 as Wilhelm Kauders in
Sládkovičovo. He completed studies with distinction in 1928 at the German Technical University in Prague (today named "České vysoké učení technické v Praze" or
Czech Technical University in Prague). He then started to work for the company
ČKD (Českomoravská Kolben-Daněk) in Prague. In 1932 he received his
Dr.-Ing. for his dissertation entitled
Systematik der Drehstromwicklungen. After the
Munich Agreement in September 1938, Germany annexed the
Czech boundary territory, and later (in March 1939) occupied the whole of Bohemia. Because of the hated
German occupation of Czechoslovakia during the
Second World War, Klíma changed his name from Wilhelm Kauders to Vilém Klíma. (At the time Czech families with German names frequently changed their names to Czech-sounding names.) In the references listed in the last paper by Klíma, there is an entry entitled
Systematik der Drehstromwicklungen and the author is given as V. Klíma (Kauders). To supply a name between brackets is not typical, and the only paper with this title was written by Wilhelm Kauders.
In the Theresienstadt ghetto In November 1941, the Germeans ordered Klíma to leave for the concentration camp at
Terezín, which was a holding camp for Jews from central and southern Europe, and was regularly cleared of its overcrowded population by transports to death camps such as
Auschwitz. Klíma's name appears in a list of lecturers in the
ghetto of Terezín. The entry details for Kauders record the following: Klíma is also mentioned in the book
University Over The Abyss: The story behind 520 lecturers and 2,430 lectures in KZ Theresienstadt 1942–1944 by Elena Makarova. The book relates how Dr. Goldschmied and Dr. Kauders were secretly taken to Germany to improve the performance of German radar. A witness, Gerda Haas, remembered the following:
One day, the two were ordered to prepare themselves to leave Terezin. Their suitcases must have been cleaned of any signs and numbers, yellow stars were torn off. They were told that they would be employed for a large industrial concern in Germany. Their dependents stayed in Terezin. Soon, Kauders sent a postcard saying that he was in the [concentration camp] Rosenberg (or -burg), where he was freezing terribly and where he worked on his books all day. During April 1945 Vilém Klíma survived the so-called
death march (a miracle at that time). ==Scientific work==