“One time he told me that the general and our ambassador agreed that the course, which was already paid for, won’t be for, that it won’t be for pilot who already flew light planes and who knew how to fly a bit, but that they want people who speak Czech. Because their instructors, who were supposed to prepare them, were in Olomouc. All of a sudden I got a call from our ambassador, Ehud Avriel, the first ambassador, that was in early May [1948 - ed.]. He called me and another two three boys who were waiting for a posting like me. ‘You’re not flying to Palestine, you’ll make the rounds of Bohemia, and you’ll bring us forty boys who’ll learn from the very basics. It will be in Czech.’”
“I completed the first course in Israel, and after finishing the course I became an instructor and I taught other pilots how to fly. I was a Spitfire pilot, and they promised me that they were keeping me in a flight, in a Spitfire unit, and that if there was a war, I’d be a pilot of Spitfires. That’s it. I trained pilots and I was content with how things were.”
“In Israel they banned top secret affairs [activities] for those people who had relatives either in Czechoslovakia or anywhere in the Communist (Soviet) bloc. Whoever had a brother, parents, or children with the Communists, was not allowed to take up top secret [jobs]. Joe [Plaček] was the best pilot I ever knew, he was very popular. [...] He couldn’t go up any higher. [...] He was a colonel, he couldn’t receive a higher rank. They gave him command of the school. He became staff colonel. But even so he was not allowed to be party to top secret matters. I headed rocket [development]. They sent me to France. I wasn’t allowed to invite him to my camp. That was the last month that we were friends. He was terribly angry at me for not inviting him. They warned me: Joe has a brother in Czechoslovakia, you mustn’t show him top secret matters.”
“Grandma came back to Frýdek and decided she’d live in Palestine and help her son. But he said: ‘This is no place for Petr.’ Then the Germans came in March 1939, they took their factory, they took everything apart from the house. Grandma arranged for me to get to Palestine. My uncle adopted me, and I got a certificate, and I got to Haifa. My parents had to pay - they paid for my school, my health, my hospital insurance, and so on, but I lived with them [my uncle and his family - ed.].”
“She told me it too late, she said: ‘Either way, don’t draft them into your squadron if they survived Auschwitz.’ I had already done it, I didn’t know. There were seven of them in our course who had managed to survive Auschwitz. I thought I’d watch out [for them], but it was no use. Only one of them lives today, six died. Five of the seven crashed and killed themselves because they were not as afraid as other people. One of them was removed from the course by a Czech psychiatrist, after spending three years in Auschwitz he didn’t know what danger was; they made him a mechanic. One of them still lives, he’s dying of cancer.”
“During the war, half a year after the occupation, my parents sent me to Palestine in a children’s transport to Haifa. At the time Italy had not yet allied with the Germans, it was neutral, and so thirty children went by train from Wilson Station (now the Main Station in Prague - transl.) to Trieste, and then to Haifa. I lived there for three years, with my uncle, who was a professor at the Technion. When I was fifteen, they sent me to a technical school, where I learned woodworking. When the war ended, I found out that the only one of my whole family to return from Terezín was my mum.”
“In those days they had enough pilots and instructors, and so they sent me to university to study engineering. My career wasn’t in piloting any more, I didn’t fly any jet plane. I was twenty-six at the time, they told me I was old - nowadays they still keep them [at that age]. Then I designed aeroplanes. When you fly at least four hours a month, you get a piloting premium. So I transported letters and officers in light aircraft. When I was working in France in Marcel Dassault, I would fly as a member of the crew.”
“I was, I don’t know, lucky to have an uncle-archaelogoist who specialised in Assyria. In 1935 they kicked him out of the university in Leipzig, and the Turks took him in Ankara, he was a professor there. Throughout the war I wrote with my parents, they wrote to Turkey and he would send it on to me here [in Palestine]. The Turks remained neutral until almost the end.”
“My mother was the only one of my whole family who returned from Terezín. She didn’t receive permission to go to Palestine, so I came to her in Prague in 1947. [...] Then the state of Israel was established and they asked me to stay in Czechoslovakia and to mobilise volunteers for pilot courses to pilot Messerschmitt 109s. There were supposed to send volunteers from Israel, who were to become pilots. But then they found out that the Czech instructors didn’t speak German. And the pilots in Israel who were supposed to be trained could only speak Hebrew. [...] So the Czechs and the Israeli ambassador decided that instead of volunteers from Israel going [to Czechoslovakia] for the pilots course, they would mobilise volunteers, Jewish boys, though they didn’t even have to be Jews.”
Yehuda Manor was born as Petr Munk in Vítkovice in 1927. He grew up in Frýdek-Místek. At the turn of the 1930s and 1940s he and his family moved to Prague, where he began attending grammar school. In spring 1939 his parents sent him to Palestine, he lived with his uncle in Haifa, where he graduated from a technical school. Only his mother survived the concentration camps, his father died in Dachau. After the war (1947) he set off to see his mother in Czechoslovakia. By request of the Israeli side, he extended his stay, and in 1948-1949 he helped organise the drafting of volunteers to the new state of Israel. In 1948 he began pilot training in Olomouc. He was forced to move to Israel, where he completed the training; he switched to Spitfire piloting and took part in the last phase of the War of Independence. His career as a military pilot came to an end when the Israeli Spitfires were sold to the Burmese government. The Israeli air force sent him to university, and he was then employed by them as a rocket engineer. During the Six-day War and the Yom Kippur War, he served in the rear, he was responsible for finding targets for air strikes and guiding them there. In the 1970s he left the military and started working in the air industry as a expert on ergonomics. He lives near Tel Aviv.
