Jehošua Rezek

“[Q: Did you see your father often?] I hardly ever saw him. He enlisted in 1942, I don’t remember him from then, and the first I saw him next was after the war. [Q: So you didn’t meet up at all as a family?] No. He went to war - that was normal for a lot of people back then. He returned after the war. I didn’t see him till Prague. I don’t have many memories of him. I remember that I was greatly impressed, when I would go to visit him in his office at the Jewish community, how he would speak into three phones at the same time, and that made a big impression on me. Otherwise he was, how to say it, a bit odd, I must say. A pious Jew of the type we see nowadays. He was the only one in Prague to be outside in winter without a hat. He wore a yarmulke but not a hat.”

“As the chairman of Maccabi, he flew to Eretz Israel where they were organising the first Maccabiah after the declaration of the State of Israel. All the preparations for it were being made in December 1948, and Maccabi chairman gathered there from all over the world. Dad, Ervin Diamant, and Kanel flew there from Czechoslovakia - that was the Maccabi leadership. They flew by a Czechoslovak airline, and there was a storm, and the plane set off anyway, and they crashed in Greeze; the plane burned up and no one survived. I remember when Mum came to tell me about it - I was at a summer camp. I didn’t go back to Prague after that but instead made the rounds of Mum’s friends in Hrozenkov, Vsetín, the countryside.”

“My father took a six-week course under Rabbi Arje from Czechoslovakia – I don’t know much about him – and they became the unit’s rabbi. He and the troops crossed northern Africa and then went to England where they stayed for half a year. A Czech brigade was assembled there, and they went with it to liberated France and then to Dunkirk. Practically the whole half-year until the end of the war, the unit was in the siege at Dunkirk and fought with the Germans there.”

“He wore a hat only when he prayed, or ate while praying. I also wore a yarmulke only for meals. You see, Mum wasn’t religious, was anti-religious, but Dad was very pious. Then, later, Mum told me she had quarrelled with Dad a lot over my upbringing. Seeing that I basically grew up without my dad, I didn’t really grow very fond of religion. Mum was very unreligious and a heavy smoker. On Saturdays – when you mustn’t smoke – she’d go to our Christian neighbours for a smoke. I knew it, and I even said it one time, and it was a big scandal.”