Hugo Marom - February 8, 2008
Parents Make Decision to Send Children Away
At what point do you think your parents decided it was time to send you off?
As I said to you there was a, there was a lot of discussions which I heard. They were certainly not minor sort of discussions; they were annoying discussions between two very opposing opinions. And uh, I think that uh, from the letters I should most probably...from the documents...I think it must have been, it must have been very close if not after the invasion of...that finally the penny dropped with my father who, who uh, who was not even at home during the Munich-Sudetenland transfer. He was in the army both with ??? in the same unit in Uzhhorod up in...down in Carpathia Ruthenia where their unit was. So, um, I think only when he came back uh, and...
So after the Munich Conference...
It definitely was after and I would say it was closer to...mostly likely after the Germans moved in, in March because I don't think the correspondence dates back to any...I, I would have to look at that. It's a good question. I've never though about it. But um, I have the correspondence to London and I think it's all April, May 1939 after the invasion. I can't imagine my father from knowing how, how very nationalistic feeling he had about the Czechs and so forth and um, he was a strong believe that religion...I was brought up under the understanding that we were Czechs many, many generations, that uh, allegiance was to a country and religion was, was the business of the individual and had nothing to do with uh, with, with uh, the whole arrangement of all the documents that a Czech had to have. Uh, document of belonging to a country, which had no mention of whether you were Jewish, Protestant, Catholic or whatever, a ??? list which is a, a document saying where is your home, in which town where do you belong to and a birth certificate which was the only document which mention what religion you were born in or a census which ask you for your state relationship, your home relationship and your religion. And they had two...if you come one evening I will show you the census document, which speaks of race and religion as two separate things and, and uh, and Mar...Martha's parents register under religion Jewish and under race Israeli.
[telephone rings] I'm sorry about this. How long do you this is on because I have an appointment?
[telephone rings, interruption interview]
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