Tamara Sessler - February 4, 2008
Politics Before the War
Let me--I'm sorry, let me just jump back a second. Do you remember any discussion or thinking about the Munich Conference when the Munich Conference took place?
Maybe my mother and my sister talked about it but I don't--I didn't hear anything about it then.
How about Tomas Masaryk? Had you learned about him?
Certainly because he was a friend of this uncle of mine from Czechoslovakia. I knew him because everybody always said Uncle Adolph, yes, he was a friend of Masaryk and Benes afterwards. Certainly knew the names but uh, no, no didn't, didn't--politics were not my forte then, no.
Not at ten.
No, definitely not. My sister would've known more. My sister who is in England now was the only Zionist in Vienna. She belonged to a Zionist group in Vienna.
Must've been a small group.
No, no it wasn't. As a matter of fact, um, there's a person here in charge of the Austrian pensioners. His name is Gideon ???, I don't know whether you've ever heard the name and after about fifty five years they found each other here in my home.
In your home?
Well, not in my home. I, I got in contact with him first time she saw something written by him and said, "I was in the, in the," she called it ??? in Vienna. So I said, "Well, I'll ask him whether you were together." So I phone this chappy up and he said, "No, I wasn't." So, when I was in London she took out a, a album and there were drawings by this ??? and his brother but it wasn't ???, it was called ???. So when I came back to Israel I phoned him up and I said, "You weren't in ???, were you in ???" So he said, "Of course." So I said, "Did you know somebody she was ???" He said, "Of course, small, very intelligent and very nice," and I was very pleased and the same--an hour afterwards he was on the phone to my sister in London. And when she came--the day after she came--she used to come every year--the day after she came he was here to visit her. That was a very nice reunion.
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