Albert Fein - February 19, 2005
Hearing About Hitler
And what had you heard about the Germans? In 1938 did you know anything about what...
The Germans...
...what was happening in Germany?
We had to be--we heard the Anschluß to Austria because, you know, this was uh, then. And then Hungary want to spread like before it was, you know, before World War I. So they was dreaming about taking part of Romania, part of Czechoslovakia, part of Carpathian Rus and Slovensko--Slovakian part, that needed the border--the part to the border from Hungary, it was spreading.
But had you heard of Hitler?
Oh yeah, so--oh yeah. You see, the Germans want uh, they was starting to demand, demand, demand, demand the Sudeten...Sudetenland. And the Czech army was mobilized. So this give, you know, like the--before the Hungarians came in even, the mobilization was--and there was a lot of people--Hungarians--living in this area who says, "We won't go to fight for the Czechs, we are Hungarian" and so far, you know? Only still it was order and they have to, have to put on uniforms and, and stay by weapons. The Czech--they couldn't--they was not ready to fight. They had very good military equipment, better than the Hungarians have, better than Poland has. We had an airport in the city what has more planes in our city than Hungary completely in, in the whole country.
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