That wasn’t enough for the Germans, so they drafted us to the ‘Arbeitslager,’ it was a work camp in its true sense, in that we could leave, no one guarded us, and so on. For a while I worked near Chotebor, I’m not able to say exactly from when to when, digging water canals.
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Displaying 28651 - 28680 of 50826 results
Jiri Franek
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I left Brno for Vysoke Myto, where at first I went to work for my friend’s father, Mr. Jiracek, in his workshop. We knew that we had to work and that we needed some sort of manual trade. I worked in a mechanical workshop, we repaired bicycles and for a time also manufactured tricycles.
We once went on an outing on our bicycles, I don’t know if it was still permitted at that time or not. He had that German upbringing, you could tell, even if he absolutely didn’t identify himself as such. I remember asking him, ‘Listen, I’m a Czech, that other guy is a Zionist, that one’s a Communist, so what are you? You aren’t anything.’ And he started into me, why does he have to be something.
So, that was the one exception, but otherwise that class of ours in Brno was at an exceptionally high standard, and it wasn’t uncommon that people who excelled in mathematics, geometry and so on, also excelled in languages. They were very well read. Because of this I had to try very hard to catch up, it was quite a difficult situation for me, but I excelled in mathematics, physics and descriptive geometry, which I consider an honor, because it was in that class that was at such a high standard.
At high school I fit in well. I would say that I didn’t have to realize my jewish roots, because I knew them despite the fact that I lived a non-jewish life. But there I did somewhat reflect on them. We would meet and talk about Judaism.
I managed to finish seventh grade. Then in 1940 jews were forbidden to study in Czech schools. Our family conference once again decided: ‘He has to finish his studies. Without graduation he’ll never get anywhere in life.’ Someone in our family found out that there was a jewish high school in Brno, where I could finish my last year and graduate. So I had to go there.
After the war I didn’t live in any particularly jewish fashion, but I always remained a member of the Jewish Community. My wife and I celebrate both Easter and Passover. We celebrate Christmas, but don’t really celebrate Chanukkah. I always took part in the major concentration camp remembrance ceremonies, so in this way I remained in contact with jewishness.
I have my own theory, different from the others, about what jewishness is. According to me jewishness isn’t a nationality nor a religion, jewishness is in my view a ‘pospolity:’ a community, or society. A jewish community; religious jews, national jews, and jews that are religious and national.
I could never have denied my Czech identity, it was too strong in me. I told them that I would at least come and wave goodbye to them: ‘I’ve at least got my fingers crossed for you, even if I can’t do anything else.’ Already from the year 1945 I stood clearly on the side of the jews, on the side of Israel, which didn’t exist yet.
,
1945
See text in interview
The evolution of my opinion, the same as with Viktor Vohryzek, especially like after with Jindrich Kohn, started at first with absolute refusal, that it’s an Arabic country, an Asian country. But if you want, try it, we certainly won’t put up barriers in your way. From outright refusal to acceptance.
,
After WW2
See text in interview
Then, after the year 1989, they took me back to the faculty with a certain amount of ceremony. The first time I did my professorship of Slavonic studies was in Göttingen, Germany, in 1990 I defended my professorial degree and became a professor of Russian and Soviet literature, everything was perfect.
So it was a bit suspenseful in its way, but I managed to finish a nice portion of my work there. I put together a library of literary science, which I wasn’t officially allowed to sign as my work, I wasn’t even allowed to be a so-called responsible editor, I wasn’t allowed to put it together and so on, but I practically created the whole library by myself.
There was a fish cannery in Sedlec, so trains with refrigerated rail cars would arrive, and I had to let them off the main line into the cannery, according to very strict rules. During this I would always be shaking, but not even once did I screw up. I’m proud of that.
I had been away on official business, but despite that, when I returned they threw me out of the Faculty as a German spy. I worked in the Lidove [People’s] Publishers, in fact as the assistant chief editor, but because I had been thrown out of the Party, someone had to vouch for me. One acquaintance of mine did vouch for me, the literary critic Vladimir Dostal, but when he died the director of the publishing house immediately threw me out, and I ended up working for the railway.
After we returned from Germany, they very quickly threw me out of the Faculty, threw me out of the Party, but that I had already been thrown out of. In the critique they wrote: ‘Associate professor Franek comes from a rich jewish family from Prague.’ In those days that was the worst thing you could be.
During that year I was allowed to work on only my own things, then I went to Tübingen. I worked at the foremost German universities, and lectured for a total of four years. In 1970 they wrote me from the CSSR that I have to decide, to either immediately return, or be considered an emigrant. I was in Germany with my entire family, so I guess it was my free choice that we returned.
I used to go to meetings of the Terezin Initiative, meetings of the Freedom Fighters, and also did a lot of work in the Schwarzheide Society, of which I was almost the founder. Schwarzheide was my next to last concentration camp, and a relatively large number of us survived it, a large number even to this day – although there are maybe only two or three dozen now – we became very close, and I came up with the idea of forming a group, which exists to this day.
Have I brought up my children to be jewish? In fact during the Slansky trials [22] we did keep it a secret from our son, but our relatives soon let him know the truth. They called him ‘jew-child,’ in a kindly fashion: ‘Come here, I want to hug you, my little jew-child.’ and so on.
Those were our first words that we spoke to each other. With this a completely new life began for me, because we soon moved in together, then got married, and very soon upon that came our first son, Franta [Frantisek]. My wife is a magnificent woman, all of a sudden I had a home, her parents accepted me, I called them Dad, Mom. Suddenly I was living a normal life. They were such an amazing family, they took me in as their own.
We all called each other comrade, and so I said to her, ‘Comrade, can I offer you one?’ And she said, ‘And you smoke?’ and I said, ‘Well, I smoke, I’m not happy about it, but I smoke.
My return from the concentration camp was probably more pleasant and easier than that of my acquaintances, because I was welcomed by my old friends, and I even found some girls in Vysoke Myto. They all recalled my brother, everyone would run over to me and ask what had happened to Frantisek. I had lots of worries with the house and didn’t know how I would come up with money.
I ran over to them, like a proper party member I had been studying Russian, so I spoke my Slavic pidgin to them, which I know to this day and which I call Russian. I talked with them and they were all happy. I’m probably the only person that got a watch from Russian soldiers. The one said, here you go, ‘Davaj, beri, beri.’ [I’m giving, take, take]. And gave me a watch, the second one gave me chocolate, American cigarettes, and a raincoat, which I wore at home for a long time afterward. That was my liberation.
When the front was collapsing, trains carrying jews to the gas chambers had priority over army trains – that’s something not widely known.
We wounded left Schwarzheide by bus because we couldn’t walk. I got shrapnel in the knee, so I had it straightened out and had to sit beside the driver, who was Dutch. My leg was freezing but I heard and saw everything. We drove through burning Berlin, which as a humanist shouldn’t cause me joy, to see what a bombed-out city looks like.
There wasn’t all that much solidarity, in the last concentration camp it was horrible, there was no place to lie down, nothing to eat. This is all described in Jiri Frankl’s book ‘The Burning Heavens.’ Jiri lived through it all along with me. He describes those last few days, when we were completely starved, because no one gave us anything to eat and we were emaciated. He describes how he crawled among the refuse, picking through it to try and find a bit to eat.
If we had arrived a few hours earlier, I would have died in a gas chamber. While a similar coincidence, completely senseless, took someone else’s life. So we stood there in front of that gas chamber, and not until that SS soldier came and said, ‘You can go, there’s no more gas,’ did we find out why we were standing there. Of course we scattered.
During one of them, when I was running from the factory to be at least in the camp, I was wounded. It was 17th March 1945 and I got what was perhaps a piece of shrapnel in the legs. I couldn’t walk any further, and an SS officer wanted to shoot me, but I got up and ran – it was about fifty meters – I ran those fifty meters all the way.
Our factory was bombed. Always when the tall factory chimneys started to give off smoke, that meant that production had started. So when they started smoking, that same day a reconnaissance plane appeared, made a little smoke circle in the sky, and in four to five hours planes appeared and dropped bombs on the plant. I lived through many air raids there, some of them also hit the concentration camp, which cost additional lives and wounded.
On 1st June 1944 I boarded the transport and was in Schwarzheide that same day or the next. There, there were no children’s homes, there I had to work extremely hard. It was dangerous as well. But the food was a little better, because they wanted us to be able to work. These were small differences. The knowledge that the front, which we could sometimes hear, was approaching, that was fabulous.
The resistance in the main camp wasn’t interested in our planned uprising though! Here there was a real rivalry, because the main camp [Auschwitz I.] said: the end of the war is approaching, and such an uprising will cost more lives than if we wait for the war to end. Even in the eventuality that departure for the gas chambers will be drawing near, and we rise up, they refuse to join us; that it doesn’t make any sense any more, the end of the war is approaching, and more people will die than just waiting for the end of the war.