Tamara Sessler - February 4, 2008
Feelings About Leaving Family
Think your father had a suspicion that there was a danger that he might not see you again?
That I couldn't tell you. My father wrote wonderful letters describing all the time he had in Yugoslavia and in Hungary and I had such a pack of his letters but many years ago--before 1960 we lived in a small--very small flat with both children and I just didn't have room for everything so one day I decided--my father was alive, yes? My father died in '58 and I thought, you know, I have to get rid of something and I threw the letters away. And you know, he was a marvelous letter writer--very, very talented with the pen but they were gold and he explained everything in detail which was very interesting.
So you didn't regret leaving Vienna, obviously. Did you regret leaving Prague?
No, not at all, not at all because we could see the danger. We could see the Germans were coming. By, by then we knew. I mean, the minute my father had to scrub the floor, there was danger in the air, yes? I mean, my father was very, very Viennese even though he was born in Budapest but he left there when he was ten years old but the minute he had to do that, he was scared stiff and of course the obvious reaction of the family, obviously. But uh, leaving Czechoslovakia just thought now we'll go to a haven. England's taking us in. We had no, no thought that, you know, what we were going to go through in the bombing in England.
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