We were Czechs of Jewish religion, not Jews living in Czechoslovakia
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Dr Felix Kafka was born on 28 June 1925 in Prague as the second son of a Jewish family. His father Emil Kafka (1880-1948) worked as a lawyer and also served as the chairman of the Jewish Community in Prague; his mother Eliška taught French and later stayed at home as a housewife. On 28 June 1939 the two brothers, the older Jiří Pavel (1924) and Felix, joined a children’s transport to Great Britain, organised by Nicholas Winton. Their father also managed to reach England in September 1939 - he later worked for Beneš’s government in exile. Their mother remained in Prague. Felix and his brother had a brief stay in a refugee camp, then in a school in Southampton, and finally in a boarding school in Cheltenham, where they spent three years. His brother joined the RAF in 1942, he underwent training and took part in combat. Felix later moved to London, where he studied chemical engineering. After the war, in summer 1945, he visited Czechoslovakia and was reunited with his mother, who had survived the ghetto in Łódź and the camps in Auschwitz and Bernsdorf; however, he returned to England to finish his studies. His brother Jiří Pavel also returned to England in 1947; after the death of their father (1948), they were joined by their mother. Felix Kafka worked as a chemical technologist, his job took him to the Netherlands, Australia, and Belgium; even as a pensioner he worked as an EU consultant in Brussels until recently. Felix Kafka is a widower; he and his wife raised a son and daughter; he now lives in York, England.
