Hugo Marom - February 8, 2008
Story of Wife's Survival
She participated in a death march, survived with her sister and her mother who was very, very young and um, came back to find that father had not come back and nor, nor her brother didn't come back and many other relatives didn't come back but the three of them survived and uh, when they came back they discovered that the Russians...that the that agreement at Yalta between Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin was that if the Russians got to Prague before the Americans that the Czechs were for...would allow this part of Czechoslovakia to become part of the Soviet Union, which they did. They closed the borders and they didn't allow...the made uh, they made a census of who wanted to go to Czechoslovakia and when they found that the percentage of people who didn't want to stay in the...I'm speaking about 1945...when they found out that the majority wanted to be part of Czechoslovakia they closed the borders and didn't allow anybody to leave. Now obviously the Jews were among those as opposed to the Ukrainians who wanted to leave so um, there were organized, organized escapes across the border through Romania, Hungary, back to Slovakia or whatever...Czechoslovakia. And uh, my sister...my wife, her sister and her husband...she was married...and the mother with a group of people decided on Rosh Hashanah of 1946...that's a year and a half after the war...to escape to Czechoslovakia and on the border...I'm sorry about this. I'm just sorry about this.
[telephone rings, interruption in interview]
Israel is playing in the Degas Cup against Sweden today...
Today?
...so that's my daugther. Uh, where was I?
They escaped to Czechoslovakia.
Yes, they...on the way in no man's land three or four o'clock in the morning...it was still dark...they hard the words ??? and the Russian Army opened fire, killed...well, nobody knew what had happened. My wife and sister were close to each other, they ran...everybody ran in some direction. My wife remembers her brother-in-law throwing off his heavy coat and also running and uh, more than a year or two year...later when they got through Romania...it's a long story, my wife if she wants to she will tell you about it. They got to Czechoslovakia and then they discovered that the Russians had shot her mother and the...and her brother-in-law and actually hung them up in Sevluš with a notice, "This will happen to anybody who tries to get away." And she doesn't know where...we haven't been back since although I've wanted to go back. They had a hotel and a restaurant there and uh, something is preventing her from wanting to go back. Um, don't know...
What did your father do?
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