Vilém Lederer

“My parents lived with me in Pilsen in Koperníkova Street, we had just the very basic furnishing, it was the second half of May 1945. [We] were on a walk in Pilsen when a Jeep stopped next to us and a friend of Dad’s jumped out, a Pilsener who had come back with the English army and General Patton. His name was Bedřich Poláček, and after the war he even married Dad’s distant cousin, who survived the war in Auschwitz. And there he was: ‘Eda, how are you, Fritzek, how are you...’ Dad told him he’d invite him in if he had a place to do so, and that very evening a lorry stopped in front of the house, and from then on we were never hungry nor cold. And Dad, a heavy smoker, smoked American cigarettes all the way into the Sixties, it seemed.”

“Apparently, the idea came from someone from the family, they took me to the Pilsen children’s doctor, MUDr. Václav Dort. He had been unknown to the family until then, it was the custom to visit Jewish doctors, but there weren’t any left at the time. The doctor was very forthcoming, he wrote a paper that I had some infectious children’s disease and that I should keep away from other people. Apparently, he even left the date blank, for us to fill in, and the details were for a female. I remember his name, and I knew he existed. I met him [later on], it was quite touching. He didn’t want to show any emotions, but it was clear he very much enjoyed having me sign up to his practice for my paediatrics internship as a twenty-three-year-old student of medicine.”