My Train to Freedom

by Ivan A. Backer

  Chapter Two: Childhood Memories from before the Nazis, 1929–1939

  My Grandparents

  Both my maternal grandparents from Dobruška entered Terezín in 1942, and Grandfather died there the following year. My mother visited Terezín with Carolyn, Paul, and me a year before she died. When we entered the crematorium and viewed the ovens where the dead were cremated and the ashes dumped into the river, she sobbed quietly, “So this is where my father ended up.” Grandmother survived and returned home in May 1945, only to die from a burst appendix several weeks after her release.

  My paternal grandmother died in her apartment in Prague in June 1940. During the war my family knew none of these details.

  Aunt Vala, Mother’s Younger Sister

  Vala was an artist, known professionally as Valerie Jorud, and art attracted her to Berlin, one of the centers of European culture. Her two terracotta head sculptures of herself and my mother now sit proudly at either end of my bookcase as a constant reminder of her free spirit. Vala also sculpted in brass and made a chandelier for my family consisting of four twelve-inch figurines hanging upside down by their bent legs on a brass ring. The entire chandelier did not survive the war, but I rescued the four figures featured in it and mounted them on teak wood to make wall brackets. Two of them hang in my study face-to-face as acrobats swinging gracefully toward each other as if on a high circus wire or trapeze that they will ride forever.

  But Vala’s signature pieces were large cloth wall-hangings made with a solid background color onto which she sewed multicolored strips of materials, about an inch in width, in different patterns. I remember one unique work of reds, whites, and yellows with straight and angular configurations intertwined. Vala’s artistic creations helped her eke out a meager living. Her income was supplemented by stipends sent by her parents and my mother. She worked in the studio of Jan Bontje van Beek, and Erich Heckel was her mentor.

  I wondered—how did Vala, a Jew, survive in the Nazi capital? That question becomes even more puzzling since she was also a Communist sympathizer, perhaps a Party member. The explanation may be that her lover, a fellow sculptor named Hermann Bohlau, who was in the German army, shielded her. Bohlau was killed on the Russian front, but since he was away most of the time she had established a network of artists, and they seem to have helped her survive.

  During the spring of 1945 Berlin was subject to deadly night air raids by allied forces, and on April 6, a month before the end of hostilities, Vala elected not to go to the air raid shelter in order to stay with an elderly lady who was not well enough to make the trip to the shelter. That night a direct hit on their building ended the life of my favorite aunt.

  Aunt Mila, Mother’s Youngest Sister

  Mila survived in Bratislava and hid in the countryside of Slovakia where she was reunited with her husband, Boleslav. He was a partisan and was arrested and interred in Flossenbürg concentration camp. The account of his imprisonment and death march experiences in the spring of 1945 is recorded in his own words in Appendix 1. After Boleslav died in 1972, Aunt Mila came to New York several times to visit Mother and I, and my family always enjoyed her visits. Mila died of cancer in 1992.

  Jirka, My Boyhood Friend

  On March 15, 1939, everything changed. Jirka and I, ten-year-old friends, were standing side by side on the main street of our Prague neighborhood watching German troops march into the city. I was Jewish, he was not, and that difference determined the course our lives would take. Within two months I had been shepherded to England while Jirka remained in Czechoslovakia. I learned much later that my father had visited Jirka’s father to ask if his son could leave with me, but the answer was no, and Jirka stayed home.

  There was no contact between Jirka and me all through the war nor when the Communist party took over Czechoslovakia in 1948 and followed the Third Reich with another repressive regime. Not until the late 1990s did I track Jirka down. His English name, George Blaha, is not common in America. so when I heard that one of our astronauts went by that name, I immediately sent a letter addressed to him to the Houston Space Program. When I received no response, I concluded this was not my boyhood buddy.

  A couple of years later, I saw the name again. This time it appeared in a New York Czech language newspaper article about a group of Czechs who erected a monument to freedom in Toronto. Jirka Blaha was listed. With renewed hope, I called the editor of the Toronto newspaper who directed me to a contact who knew the Blaha family. I learned they had moved from Canada to the now free Czech Republic, and I was given a phone number. My excited transatlantic telephone call was answered by a female voice who turned out to be Jirka’s wife, and she said Jirka was training his hunting dogs, would be home in a while for lunch, and I should call again. Although cautiously optimistic that I had located my friend, I steeled myself that this might be another dead end.

  When we finally spoke, I knew this was “my” Jirka. He was amazed how I tracked him down and was overjoyed to hear from me. He invited Carolyn and me to visit, and in 2000 we did. He met us at the airport holding a bright red rose and we drifted toward each other drawn by a mysterious force. I was touched when he presented the rose to my wife with a little bow. Sixty-one years had passed since we parted and yet we knew we were still friends. My heart beat a little faster as I gave thanks that my long search for Jirka ended in success.

  Jirka and his spouse lived in Kostelec nad Labem, about fifteen miles from Prague. Their house had passed to them through an inheritance from Jirka’s wife’s side of the family and was originally a monastery. It had been renovated into a comfortable, spacious brick and white stucco dwelling, surrounded by several acres of land that included an orchard and a little farm with geese, ducks, rabbits, and a couple goats. We were enthralled with the history of the house, which included a secret underground passageway once used by monks, about half a mile long and now filled in, leading to a little Catholic church. One morning Jirka and I took a walk with his two hunting dogs he trained himself. One whistle, they stopped. Two whistles, they were off again. A long whistle, they returned immediately. I was very impressed.

  During our weeklong visit I learned about Jirka’s life during the intervening years since he and I last saw each other. We both survived perilous times. In his senior year in high school, Jirka wrote a satirical article about the Communists who had just taken control of the country. The authorities did not like it, and he was arrested and imprisoned. A whole decade was lost for Jirka until he was finally released, having been robbed of the joys and opportunities of early manhood, including marrying and having children. He took a job as a factory inspector. Living conditions became more relaxed and lenient in the 1960s leading up to the 1968 Prague Spring, but he was warned of the imminent Soviet Union invasion, so he fled to Canada. There he spent the next twenty-five years and learned English, but he longed for his homeland. He and his wife returned in the early 1990s with a Canadian pension, paid in dollars, that allows them to live in comfort, especially compared to many other Czechs.

  Jirka’s main interest in retirement is building a support group to help former prisoners of the Communists, as many of them are in a bad way. He stays active by keeping in touch with former inmates and providing assistance in any way he can. This has become his chief occupation and purpose in life. As we talked I realized that both of us value commitment to positive causes and act on what we determine to be important in life, each in his own way.

  Our world views diverged significantly, but not surprisingly, due to our different experiences. Politically, he is more to the right and I more to the left, but we had little inclination to probe further. We shared our love of nature, ironic from two city boys, and I realized that our friendship transcended our differences. The visit reconnected and renewed a friendship after years of separate life journeys far from our homeland.

  Chapter Three: The Rest of My Family Escapes, One by One, 1939

  My Brother, Frank

  After war broke out in September 1939,
Frank volunteered for the armed forces and served in a Czechoslovak regiment attached to the British army. He was in France in 1940 when it fell to the Germans and later was awarded the highest French military decoration, Croix de Guerre, for bravery in escaping capture and overcoming obstacles to rejoin his unit. I familiarized Paula with the circumstances underlying this honor bestowed on Frank by the French government since he seldom spoke of it, although I know it meant much to him and he is appreciative. A few years ago on Czech Army Day, the Czech Embassy in Washington, DC, invited him and one other veteran to a reception in their honor to recognize their wartime service, and we attended the event. Frank took out his military decorations and wore them that day. I felt the same surge of pride in him as I had as a schoolboy in England when Frank was serving in the army. Toward the end of the war he participated in the encirclement of Dunkirk where fifteen thousand Germans eventually surrendered, then stayed in Europe to guide relief convoys of secondhand Buicks to Czechoslovakia. Being in Prague often enabled him to trace what happened to some of our relatives during the Holocaust and report back to the family now scattered across different continents. He made a special effort to visit the few members of our family who survived.

  When Frank rejoined us in New York in 1947, he was horrified at my decision to become a Christian missionary. But all his entreaties to change my mind were in vain. For a year we shared a bedroom in our parents’ apartment on Pinehurst Avenue in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan. We both studied there: he, at age twenty-six, at Columbia University, and I at Union Theological Seminary. But we continued to move in very separate worlds that rarely intersected.

  Frank completed his degree in chemical engineering at Columbia University and later added a master’s degree from Stevens Institute in Hoboken, New Jersey. The research facility at which he worked closed in 1971, and Frank, then age fifty, was unable to find employment in America. Making use of his foreign language skills, he moved to Zurich and later to Hamburg with the W.R. Grace Company. In the late 1970s he became the managing director of a company manufacturing adhesives in Tehran, Iran, mostly for the shoe industry. Mother visited him there and told fascinating stories about that country. However, with the Iranian Revolution of 1979 led by the Ayatollah Khomeini, Frank fled for his life once again, taking only suitcases and some Iranian carpets that he later was able to sell. The proceeds from the rug sales provided his living expenses. During the decade Frank lived abroad, I had little contact with my brother.

  Eventually Frank returned to New York City to live and in 2002 he entered the Friends Retirement Community in Sandy Spring, Maryland, where he still resides. I am amazed how he has retained his lifelong zeal to be active and remains determined at age ninety-four to keep fulfilling goals he sets for himself. His present activities at the Quaker facility where he lives include being chair of the program committee, which arranges all variety of speakers for that community and also heading the nominating committee for the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences. But what really keeps Frank occupied is filing claims for the payment of insurance policies bought before the war by those who were murdered by the Nazis. He is driven by this commitment and feels each time a successful claim is paid to the victim’s heirs that a measure of justice has been accomplished.

  Paula and I follow a set routine, driving from Connecticut to Maryland twice a year for a visit with Frank over a long weekend. These are times to help Frank with errands and catch up with his friends and acquaintances and the one Czech relative in the area. During our stay, the three of us plan an evening out by carefully picking a quality movie to see then selecting a nice restaurant in the Washington area with a good wine list; it is a treat for us to us to see Frank enjoy a glass or two of wine on these occasions. Often we have a three-way discussion about the movie afterward. Frank is my closest relative, and I treasure these times with him.

  The Chandelier and the Bookcase

  As Mother recorded in her account about leaving Czechoslovakia, she had our furniture packed and crated to put in storage in a friend’s garage. The most valuable pieces we owned were stolen during the war, but a few favorite household items survived and she had those shipped to New York. Among them were two family treasures, a chandelier and a bookcase, each having its own story.

  The elegant chandelier graced our formal living room in Prague throughout those tranquil pre–World War II days. Light from its six gold-plated arms cast a subtle glow about the room. I used to gaze at it frequently, preferring to look toward the ceiling and examine its intricate design rather than practice my tedious lessons on the piano. But despite its striking presence, I never knew its history. Much later I learned that it originally hung in the dining room of my father’s ancestral home in Kácov in the Czech Republic. In those days most light was from candles and the chandelier must have created a distinctive atmosphere suited for the Sabbath services held in that room. Somewhere in its history it was electrified and became a favored family possession. The chandelier survived the war and crossed the Atlantic with other saved furniture and was finally mounted to the ceiling in the living room of our New York apartment to illuminate it for the next thirty-six years until Mother died in 1984. When we closed her apartment, neither my brother nor I saw any way to incorporate the chandelier into our homes and since I owned a house we decided I should store it in my attic. It remained out of sight for eleven years until we were preparing to sell the house. Again, what to do with the fine old chandelier?

  I very much wanted to sustain its useful life, so I decided to look for an organization that would respect the chandelier’s history and value its Jewish origin from an earlier time. Luckily, the director of the Charter Oak Cultural Center in Hartford accepted it. Finally, our family’s Czech chandelier had a new home lighting the stairwell in the renovated Center. The directors even approved an engraved plaque for the wall to inform all who read it of the chandelier’s origin from the dining room/synagogue in Kácov. Every time I visit the Center for an event, I stop in the stairwell to fondly remember the chandelier’s long journey and its place in my family’s history.

  • • •

  A NEW BOOKCASE arrived at our apartment in prewar Czechoslovakia, and it was examined and approved by all. Custom-made of walnut, it was just the right fit for its spot in the library. Below the adjustable shelves for books was a cabinet with sliding doors, a perfect spot to hide things. Eventually the bookcase, like the chandelier, arrived in New York to be moved into a place of honor in Mother’s bedroom. When I lived there, and later visited, I would sometimes stop to admire it.

  When Mother died and my brother and I were dividing her belongings, I wanted the bookcase and so did he. But Frank wanted only a few things and I was taking most of Mother’s possessions, so obviously it was only fair for him to get the bookcase. Later Frank moved into a retirement home, and Yvonne, the woman with whom he had lived for thirty years, refused to let him take the bookcase with him since he was leaving her and it was in her apartment. Years passed and Yvonne died. Frank could then reclaim the bookcase, but he couldn’t fit it into his efficiency unit. So, it was finally my turn to take possession of the bookcase.

  The trouble was that I knew I no longer needed another bookcase, and after doing some measuring, I realized I had no room for it. But still I wanted it. Why? The bookcase was showing its age, it wasn’t in prime condition after so many moves, including the long transatlantic one, and it certainly wasn’t valuable. But I was obsessed with it and never entertained the notion of leaving it. Then a solution presented itself. One of my daughters was setting up a new household for herself, and I thought she would surely take it. She agreed.

  But how could I get this huge piece of furniture to another city from the twenty-sixth floor of a New York City co-op apartment? For a single piece of furniture I found moving companies to be prohibitively expensive, yet renting a U-Haul would necessitate finding strong helpers willing to donate their time and labor to such an undertaking. Luckily fortu
ne shone upon me and my project when Yvonne’s daughter moved the bookcase with other furniture to her house outside of the city. My good friend, Jim Reed, and his son agreed to help with the move using a U-Haul van. On a cold November day following challenges I never want to reenact, the bookcase passed to the third generation. It will stay useful and I will still be able to admire it from time to time.

  Chapter Five: From School to School to School, 1939–1944

  Hilton Hall

  Carolyn and I drove up the winding driveway I had so often walked along as a boy, and suddenly the big brick building popped into view. When I first knew it, the building housed the school that the Czechoslovak government in exile established for refugee children like myself. Now it stood before me as a solid bastion of security. That is just how I felt about Hilton Hall back in the days when I attended school in its stately rooms. I recognized at once the remains of the stone balcony on the second floor, which collapsed under the weight of my friend who daringly climbed out on it while the building was being converted into a school.

  At the time, in our 1985 trip to England, my wife and I had stopped at Hilton Hall as part of retracing where I lived after leaving my country during the war years. Reaching Hilton Hall that calm sunny day, I parked next to a flat-bed truck that was being swept out by a young man about thirty. I wondered who was living there now and what Hilton Hall was being used for. The young man jumped down from the truck, extended his hand in greeting, and introduced himself as the son of Mr. Lewis, brother of the John Lewis I knew as a boy who ran the surrounding farm. Carolyn and I were delighted when the young Lewis invited us in to meet his parents, and I learned his father had served in the British army during the war. I felt a pleasing sense of continuity.

  Inside of Hilton Hall I noted that the grand staircase seemed much smaller than I remembered, and I found the center hallway with its fireplace having just normal proportions although forty-three years earlier it seemed huge and outsized. No longer did it conjure up boyhood fantasies of knights gathered around a blazing fire with crackling logs twelve inches in diameter, or more. I was startled to discover that small metal plaques still remained fastened on each door with writing in Czech to indicate the use for that room: Dining Room, Music Rehearsal Room, Principal’s Office, and Classroom. I was glad the Lewis family had not taken them down.