Rose Green - May 21, 2008
Life Before the War II
Did anything, did anything happen in...
No, no. Czechoslovakia and Germany is very far, you know, it's not...
It happened in Austria too.
In Austria too, but not in Czechoslovakia. No, no. My father was allowed longer to practice. They didn't have enough dentists and doctors, the Slovaks. So they allowed--they didn't deport us until much later, you know. So my sisters and my brother, they, they stayed much longer than the regular people, you know. So doctors and--the, the, the lawyers, they went right away. They didn't want lawyers, Jewish lawyers. Other, like pharmacists, they left, left longer. They didn't have enough pharmacists of their own.
But lawyers, they deported the lawyers? Is that...
Pardon?
They deported the lawyers?
Yeah, they, they took 'em away.
Uh-huh, intellectuals.
Yeah.
Um, do you remember hearing about the Munich Conference?
Yes, I, I remember. You know, it fades away, it fades away from my memory.
But then the Sudetenland was occupied.
Sude...Sudetenland, yes. First was the Sudetenland.
So, what was your reaction to that?
Oh, it was terrible. It was awful. We were very afraid of that because it's very close to Prague and to Czecho...uh, Czech, Czech border, you know, it's just uh, it was awful. We were scared plenty.
Did anybody think about running away at that point?
Running away?
Yeah.
Where would you run?
Yeah, okay.
See, my, uh, my sisters and my brother went to Budapest. Eventually my father lost his uh, he, he couldn't practice any longer and he wouldn't even stay there because the--his situation was very, very iffy, you know. You, you never knew who was your friend, who was your enemy. They could do anything to you to take away your stuff, take away your, your property and everything. My grandfathers--both grandfathers were well to do people. They had houses, they had fields and everything. And they--my aunts and uncle, they were all taken away. All of them, children, babies.
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