Tag #139054 - Interview #78559 (Viola Rozalia Fischerova)

I had three brothers. My oldest brother was born sometime in 1917, but died at birth. My second brother was born on 17th May 1919. His name was Sandor [Alexander, Sanyi] Stern. After high school, he began studying medicine in Prague. Sanyi was studying medicine, but when the anti-Jewish laws [15] were enacted, they expelled him. At one school they said that they’d take him for law, but I don’t know how much money would have had to been paid, and my parents didn’t have the money for that. When he returned home, he apprenticed as an auto mechanic. But soon the Hungarians took him away for ‘munkaszolgalat’ [forced labor] [16]. He died very early on, even before they deported us. He was injured, and they had to amputate his leg. He got some sort of mental illness from that. We didn’t even tell my mother about it, she wouldn’t have been able to bear it. We learned what had happened from the brother of a girlfriend of mine. Her name was Kleinova. Her oldest brother, Zoli Klein, was with him on ‘munkaszolgalat.’ After they amputated his leg, his friends were carrying him around on a stretcher. But he didn’t want to let them do that, so in the winter he sat down on the ground and said that he’d die there. He died, too, he froze to death.

My other brother, Jiri Stern, or Juraj Stern, was born in 1921. He died in 1999. After the war he graduated as a mechanical engineer. He was an excellent student. Back then the Letnany airport in Prague had announced a competition, because they needed a mechanical engineer, who they’d then put through aeronautical engineering school. My brother applied and they took him, too. He devoted himself only to math and some calculations. He wrote books and had all sorts of professional articles published. His wife worked as a secretary at CKD Sokolov. They were childless.