Hugo Marom - February 8, 2008
Feelings on Being Sent to England
??? What do you say?
Uh, we could stop and we could continue some other time.
??? Bye. You understand Hebrew?
No.
I'm sorry to speak Hebrew. Um, 12:15 somebody's going to pick me up, okay? So...
Let me just ask you...
Yes.
...one more thing. Somehow your parents got in touch with Nicholas Winton or with Bill Barazetti...
Yes.
...and they told you they were sending you away to England...
Yes.
...how did you feel at that point?
I think that uh, I've heard this said by quite a number of people. I think we were quite excited about it. Here, I'm learning English for a whole year. England is well known for its soccer and for whatever. And it's a, a uh, maybe as a nation considered an ally of Czechoslovakia in spite of Mr. Chamberlain for instance, in spite of Mr. Chamberlain. Going to a place like London, the largest city in the world, we knew that at that time it had eight million people living in it if it wasn't an underestimate already. I think we considered it...and my parents made sure that we considered it as an adventure. In fact, I'm in the process right now of...as you know there are monuments to the children in London Liverpool Street Station, there are plaques all over place Nicholas...Sir Nicholas Winton...Bill Barazetti didn't get this recognition. There's a long story of my arranging for Bill Barazetti to get recognition at the Yad Vashem and I didn't succeed at it with Nicky Winton who I really started this business with. We deci...believe that the heroes of this whole Kindertransport are not the Barazettis and the Wintons and the Chadwicks and so forth. The heroes of the story are the parents and the parents for two reasons, number one, it's very difficult...if you remember Nicholas Winton speaks of the American's not excepting twenty thousand Czech children because of a decision...because of apparently the president but apparently the true story is that in Congress when the voting came up whether to allow this twenty thousand additional immigrants to come in...children immigrants...that somebody got up which really caused this...prevented this from happening by getting up and saying in Congress that it's against the Holy Bible to separate children from their parents. This was the...this is one of the stories that I've heard.
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