Helen Stransky - January 31, 2008
Reparations from the War
Is there anything you'd like to add to, to your story?
Well I just wanted to say I did get because of all the trouble um, when our property was offered back there was a lot argumentation between my brother and I. I wanted to sell mine and get a good lease up and put it out as a tender and he wanted to buy the other half of the property back and he would not give me a date of when we could--when we'd be finished with it so in the end I figured, give it to him um, because I'd gotten a settlement from the Jewish community for, for the other half. It wasn't the right sum but it was a sum and I didn't want, I didn't want to make property the focus of my life--argumentation with him. I figured let him have it because there were people living in it. Um, during the Communist era--I don't know whether this is relevant to Kindertransport...
Sure.
There were people living in it and they'd acquired the apartments and there were twenty five of them during the Communist era and they could not be put out only if we put up equ...a sum of money where they would be compensated--where they would be put to another area or compensated could we get the apartment back and I didn't want the hassle of being landlady and working in a language I didn't, didn't know or understand. And I didn't have enough Czech connections here and I didn't want to be--go there. Okay, so that had been where our parents had lived but I didn't want to make that the focus of my life--the apartment. I figured it's too late now. I'm already in my seventies, how much time do I have to live? I don't want to make the focus of my life wrangling with my brother about property so I'm finished with it.
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