Tag #136384 - Interview #96529 (Antonie Militka)

My brother hadn't been in school for three years, he'd just been hiding wherever he could, but on the other hand, he knew how to repair cars. All I saw was the problem that he was supposed to attend school. I was terribly worried. I was 17 at the time, right away I ran to the school board and there I asked whether they could advise me as to what I should do for my brother, that he was supposed to start school, but he'd be at the absolute bottom of the class, which would be terrible. At the school board they told me that over here, by the convent, is something like an orphanage. There were abandoned children there, being taken care of by the nuns. They said to me, if we give you a letter for reference for them, you could take your Karlicek there, and we'd ask them to take care of him every day, and prepare him for school. They'll do it, because there are child care workers there. Karlicek wasn't thrilled by this, because he was free, he'd managed to take care of himself even when the Gestapo had been looking for him. But I convinced him that this would be no good, and so I took him there. He always came home for one day. After two months, around the middle of August, he announced that he no longer wanted to stay there. He'd learned a few things, and then started attending first year of council school. It's true that he was supposed to start in second year. His education wasn't all that, three years were missing of course, well, he did what he could. He dreamt about leaving for the Palestine; he yearned for it terribly. At home, he attended the Hashomer movement [14], where he was preparing to leave for the Palestine. In 1948 he succeeded; he was 17 at the time.