One morning I was awakened by a vigorous tickling all over and I knew my aunt Vala, short for Valerie, had arrived for a visit. She had no mercy and kept on till I was out of bed. My reward was a bear hug, which I gladly reciprocated. She took a special interest in me as a young boy, perhaps because she had no children and was not married, or perhaps because I was the youngest of her nephews. I always had fun with Vala as she took me around my grandparents’ little town and told me about the big city where she lived—Berlin, the capital of our enemy.
Other frequent visitors were Mother’s youngest sister, Mila, and her husband Boleslav. They had no children either and that again may be a reason they fussed over me so, which, of course, I enjoyed. Mila was a vegetarian and often prepared her own entrees. She would visit a neighboring farm each morning to get goats’ milk, which she relished but I decidedly did not like. Boleslav was a Catholic, and aunt Mila converted early in their marriage. Boleslav joined the resistance movement during the war, and he was betrayed, arrested, and sent to the Flossenbürg concentration camp. He wrote a gripping account of the death march he was on from Flossenbürg. I translated his manuscript from Czech and include it here in Appendix 1. Boleslav, and later his family, hid Mila and saved her from the Nazis.
When my grandparents’ house was full of guests, I had to sleep in their bedroom on a couch converted to a bed. When Grandmother came into the room after I was in bed and prepared to wash up in the basin full of hot water she carried from the kitchen, she would always first caution me, “Ivánku (a Czech diminutive) turn your head now. I don’t want you to be peeking.” I never peeked.
Also living in Dobruška was Jenda, my cousin just a couple of years older than me. We played endlessly with his collection of cars while he told me about his friends in school, and sometimes we watched activities from his balcony taking place on the town’s main square below. We tried to keep up our friendship by written correspondence between my visits. Jenda was murdered in the Holocaust.
The one source of friction between my grandparents was Grandmother’s expensive tastes. When she took the train to Prague to shop, she would always spend too much money according to her husband. She insisted on being well-dressed and chose neckwear that would hide the prominent goiter growing on her neck. To camouflage it she wore lace collars that always had to be clean; the collar was part of her distinctive uniform. When she was shipped off to the Terezín (Theresienstadt) concentration camp in 1942, she wore her lace collar as usual. In the squalid conditions of living in one room with a dozen others, she still managed to wash her collar each day to keep it fresh. It was her quiet way of affirming her dignity and individuality under extreme conditions. Survivors who knew her invariably commented on that act whenever they remembered my grandmother.
Grandmother’s adventurous younger brother, Frank, after whom my brother is named, was a favorite of my mother, and he knew of Grandmother’s penchant for fine things—including jewelry. On a visit in the early part of the twentieth century after Frank returned from a prolonged stay in America, mostly in Colorado, he waited one evening until the table was cleared after supper then took a small pouch from his pocket. He emptied the contents carefully onto the felt table cover—diamonds, rubies, amethysts, and emeralds tumbled out. He looked at my grandmother and said, “Jenny, choose one!” and with great delight and no hesitation she did. Mother suspected that the precious stones were her uncle Frank’s gambling winnings in the “new world.”
Often on Monday nights in Dobruška during the summer, I could not easily fall asleep because I was anticipating what I would wake up to the next morning. I was never disappointed. The square below my window was transformed overnight into rows of portable stalls selling everything from vegetables, flowers, and clothing to live animals. The cacophony sounded like a carnival with squealing piglets, quacking ducks, crowing roosters, and cackling hens, and in the background was the steady incessant buzz of people heartily greeting each other and bartering loudly. Only the rabbits in their cages were quiet.
I would dress as fast as I could, and after gulping down some breakfast ran outside to wander from one booth to the next, being careful not to interrupt the buying and selling and the accompanying conversations of involved negotiators. The animals were first on my mind and I petted all that would let me get close. The roosters were the dangerous ones as they would charge my hand, so I made it a game to see if I could withdraw quickly enough to avoid their sharp beaks. The bunnies were my favorites, with soft fur that I stroked gently. I knew why they were there but didn’t let myself think about their little lives about to be snuffed out. I spent hours meandering and never ceased to be fascinated by the chatter and commotion that permeated the square on market day.
Grandmother would arrive at the market early to carefully inspect the greens in every stall before finally making a purchase. She would buy fresh eggs, home-baked bread, vegetables, of course, and cheese sometimes if a taste of it met her approval. She had but a short walk to transport her purchases home.
As dusk approached, the square would begin to empty out and I’d be sorry to see another market day draw to a close. Those who sold out their wares left first, and then one by one each stall was dismantled and disappeared. Darkness would settle over the square, and by my bedtime everything would be as it was the day before, hushed after the day’s excitement, the quiet interrupted only by the prolonged chirping of crickets. Each Tuesday night I had no trouble going to sleep after the eventful day. Exhausted but content, I would quickly drop off, eagerly awaiting the next week’s market day. I am thankful that I corresponded faithfully with Grandmother up until war broke out, when all communication ceased. Life in Dobruška continued until the tragic turn of 1942 when my grandparents along with Jews from other parts of the country were herded into the Terezín concentration camp.
One embarrassing incident blemishes my otherwise happy childhood interactions with other Czech children. I owned a soccer ball, and Jirka and I often took the ball to a nearby playground for use in pickup games. One day when it was not needed, we stuck it under a jacket to act as a goal post then forgot about it. The ball appeared to be missing when we gathered our things and prepared to go home. I convinced myself that a group of older boys playing nearby had taken it. Jirka and I mustered up the courage to approach them; we walked into the middle of their game and directly accused them of taking my ball. Ours was a poorly planned strategy. Annoyed, they stopped their game and brought their ball over, scratched off the dirt to reveal a bright yellow color, and then, glaring, shouted at us, “Is your ball yellow?” It was not, and we hightailed it out of there before they could justify beating us up or at least making us apologize. This taught me a valuable lesson that I never forgot: before you accuse someone, make sure you offer proof.
The agreeable times and happy experiences of my boyhood were interrupted by the 1938 crisis that ended with the Munich Agreement. As Hitler’s threats escalated in late summer, my parents became concerned for our physical safety. No one knew what was going to happen, and as a precaution I was shipped off to friends in the countryside. After the agreement was signed on September 30, 1938, that ceded the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia to Germany, I returned to Prague. While there was a certain relief that the immediate crisis had passed, the air was thick with apprehension and questions of whether or not this agreement would stop Hitler or encourage him. The raging debate in the Jewish community was whether to get ready to leave or to stick it out. That question was answered on March 15, 1939, a day of infamy for my country. I was in fourth grade, walking to school several blocks away on a heavily overcast gray day and made my usual stop for Jirka. As we walked toward the main avenue in our neighborhood, we witnessed people shaking their heads and some were crying. What was happening?
But we immediately understood when we saw armored trucks roll by with huge black swastikas displayed followed by motorcycles with sidecars occupied by helmeted soldiers in gray uniforms that mirrored the weeping sky. In sch
ool we learned the awful truth that our beloved democratic country had been forcefully and illegally occupied by a behemoth mortal enemy, Germany’s Nazi Third Reich. Czechoslovakia was no longer. It fell like a pawn knocked over in a grand international chess game. Having been betrayed by Great Britain, France, and the Soviet Union at Munich, my country was left totally defenseless and now our freedom had vanished.
Without delay Mother began my preparations to leave for the distant shores of England. Two months later I was in a strange land, living with a new family, trying to cope with a language I could not understand, and looking toward a new life that would change me forever.
Chapter Three: The Rest of My Family Escapes, One by One, 1939
MY IMMEDIATE FAMILY was extremely lucky. All four of us—Father, Mother, Frank, and I—were able to escape the clutches of Nazi peril, albeit we fled separately, taking advantage of a relatively brief window in time that was open to us.
My Father, Benno
Father was the first to leave, boarding a five o’clock train from Prague on March 14, 1939. In the early hours of the very next morning, Nazi troops occupied our country. Father’s trip was arranged back in January with the Petzold Company that employed him, and he considered himself to be leaving on a regular business trip. Mother, however, viewed this as an opportunity to begin family escapes. Her insight about upcoming danger came through advice she heard, some given directly to her while she was at her tutoring jobs. Father had his ticket for several weeks before he actually left, and at that time one did not need a visa to enter Great Britain, only a valid passport. Mother insisted he take extra clothing with him when the day for his leave-taking was set and he started to pack, but Father remained ambivalent and unsure about making the trip. In fact, he called my mother from Berlin not long after he departed, in distress. “I am coming home. You are there with the children all alone and I need to come back.” Years later Mother mimicked for me her vehement response—“Don’t you dare!” She said a similar conversation took place from London.
Mother also discovered that, before he left, Father had withdrawn all the money from their bank account in order to repay funds he had borrowed from his very wealthy uncle Emil. She learned later that Father wanted to have a clean financial slate and not owe money to anyone, but he had not disclosed this to her at the time of the withdrawal, and she was furious! It fell to her to ask Emil for the money again. Going to him was painful and humiliating because he did not like Mother. But she was relieved to ultimately receive some of the money back from Emil as she was quite in need of it.
My Brother, Frank
Frank had to get out of Czechoslovakia before April 1. There was still time between March 15, when the Nazis began their occupation of Czechoslovakia, and the end of March, during which a visa was not a requirement to enter Great Britain. But a number of permits had to be obtained for him to make the deadline. Since Frank had already been accepted at Margate College, in England, leaving the country should have been no problem—but it was. The English representative of Margate College in Prague needed to certify that Frank had been accepted and most of the tuition was already paid. Mother tried to call this man to expedite the certification approval, but for a reason nobody could understand, he kept dodging her even though time was running out and international tensions were rising. She finally decided on the following strategy, described in her own words:
I went to my English teacher, Miss Hands. She was an admirable woman, but old and not well. I said to her, “You have to have the generosity to get up at six o’clock in the morning and accompany me to see this man. I cannot budge him, and I cannot reach him. But at 6:00 a.m. the maid cannot say that he is not in. You are British, and you can talk to him in a way which I could never do.”
Miss Hands agreed, and she did it. I can still see her before me. She took a taxi and met me at the door to the man’s apartment. It was 6:00 a.m. and we got him out of bed, quite literally. Miss Hands spoke beautifully. She said, “You cannot do this. You have accepted several thousand francs. This boy has to get out. It was promised after all.”
I cannot recall the words, of course, but it was an inspiring confrontation—the man in pajamas and Miss Hands in righteous indignation. And he did it. He wrote out the confirmation, there at that moment, that Frank was accepted and that he has to be in England for the beginning of the term.”
But there was one more hurdle for Frank—to obtain an exit permit from the Gestapo, which was necessary to leave the country. Because the certification of acceptance to Margate College was now official, the Gestapo eventually stamped Frank’s passport, but to accomplish this he had to stand in line for twenty-four hours at the Gestapo office. Mother brought him food so he would not have to give up his place in line. With Frank’s departure from Czechoslovakia, half of our family unit was now safe in England.
My Mother, Alice
After I boarded the Kindertransport train in May of 1939, my mother alone remained in Prague, and she had the most difficult escape of us all. Mother described her dangerous and harrowing flight to England in an interview I recorded with her years later. The following is the account in her own words:
I was waiting for a domestic [work] permit. Britain was being flooded with refugees and new rules were put in effect. You had to have proof that you would have a job when you arrived and would not be a public charge. That permit was not forthcoming. Through the owner of the boarding house where he was staying in London, Father was trying to get a permit for me. Finally, I got a letter that I was being hired by a Mrs. Barrett in Berkhamsted, in Hertfordshire, about one and a half hours by train from London. She was going to pay me thirty pounds a year.
I got the work permit at the beginning of August, but by that time, the Germans had made stricter rules about letting Jewish people go. You had to apply at a large office in Dejvice [a section of Prague]. The Jewish community itself ran the office.
You know, all through the Nazi reign, one of the many despicable aspects of their operation against the Jews was that they used the Jewish communities to run the red tape of their own persecution. Here was an early example of it: a Jewish committee made to administer the Nazi laws on Jewish emigration.
But, at that moment, I was too preoccupied with my own problems for general reflections. I had to get to England and a whole new list of rules applied. The Gestapo permit on which Frank had left was no longer available. The Jewish Committee had to issue a permit. They checked that your taxes were all paid, and any number of other details. The permit then went to the Gestapo for a final approval. The Gestapo had an office in the same building.
You had to wait to receive official permission to come to Dejvice. It was forbidden to try to speed up the process. I would have liked to go to the committee and explain that my British visa was valid for thirty days, and that it would expire on September 1st. It was forbidden. And I knew that after September 1, I would have to apply anew for the British visa. The process would go back to step one. I might never get out.
On August 31st I went there, knowing it was forbidden, and stood in line outside. The man at the gate was a friend. He looked the other way while I smuggled myself in. Once inside, I skirted all of the tables of the Jewish Committee and went around to the back to the Gestapo room. There I stood in the corridor in front of an open door, and, of course, I did not go in. What I was doing was forbidden, but an unauthorized entry into a Gestapo office was more forbidden than everything else put together. I waited for hours.
The Gestapo man in charge was Officer Lederer. He was famous throughout Prague for his power, his ruthlessness, and his good looks. He had seen me standing there without a word. He himself would not say anything. It was a standoff until they wanted to close up. Then he finally said, “What about you standing there all this time?”
And then I spoke up. I poured out my entire story. He reached into a compartment, picked out a document, stamped it, and threw it at me. He knew exactly where it was, and he saved my life. It w
as the day before Hitler moved into Poland on September 1st.
Of course, I could not know for sure that he would have my passport. But there was a good chance that the Jewish Committee had processed it. It had been there for a month. And that Gestapo office was the next step and the last required. And, indeed, it was there. They had been sitting on my passport.
In the morning of September 1st, I went with my maid to Wilsonovo Nádraží. [This was another railroad station in Prague; it was named for President Woodrow Wilson, who helped found modern Czechoslovakia through the Versailles Peace Treaty in 1918]. She was very decent and helped me with the luggage. At the station, we were told “no trains, no trains.” Hitler had invaded Poland and no passenger trains were running.
I telephoned Miluška [the wife of Father’s younger brother, Leo] and she saved me at that point. She telephoned the Šmolkas. They were already in England. She knew that Mr. Šmolka’s driver had the car (in Prague) and this driver took me to the border beyond Pilsen. Miluška went with me. I had two heavy suitcases and one small one.
I just left the apartment. I told the maid she could have the dining room set. The apartment was half empty. I had sold the piano. The “lift” [the shipment crate] with the furniture had been packed for the move to England. What was left was the entire kitchen and some couches. There wasn’t much there.
The “lift” was also saved thanks to Miluška. The movers could not move it now because of the war. Miluška had it stored in Mr. Šmolka’s garage. There it survived the war, in a way. By the time it came to the United States, half of it was gone, robbed. The best pieces were gone. [Two good items survived, a bookcase and a chandelier. See Chapter Fifteen for their interesting fate.]
My Train to Freedom Page 3