Ing. Petr Weber

"When I came to Moscow, I felt a bit degraded. I came from a faculty which was considered exclusive - research-based nuclear physics. There, I came to school, which was purely technically oriented. Made to create engineers. That is, people who were able to design, do the counting and so on. I saw this as a bit inferior. On the other hand, they were mindful of craft competences. I mean that from a university standpoint. We counted a lot of problems, did a lot of exercises and drawings. From this perspective, it was not a bad preparation. And also - it was abroad. It was something else. It wasn't common as it is today. There weren't many who were able to study abroad."

"I know it was another group of Jewish refugees who went on, planning to get to the Balkans, to Romania and from there to Palestine. They were travelling across Slovakia at the time when Jews were already being transported to camps. It was after the Slovak National Uprising and the initial period in which Jews were protected. Still, most were not yet deported to the East. Many of them stayed behind. In Liptovský Mikuláš - one such area of concentration, not a camp - the group found shelter at their peers', before moving on. They assumed a small child wouldn't have made it through. Instead, they left me there. By coincidence, in the family I was left in, the Jewish boy had a Christian friend who visited them and spotted me. She must have thought I was cute or just felt pity for me, I don't know. She took me with her to her mother and father. This was the Weber family who at that time lived in Slovakia, and who took care of me. During the war, they claimed I was their nephew from Prague to conceal my real identity."

"My parents were Polish citizens of Polish origin who lived in the town of Bochnia. They were living there during the war when Poland was occupied, and they became part of the Reich. The town was set into a small concentration camp; a ghetto. Jewish people were interned there, including my parents and the whole extended family. They all attempted to get out of the ghetto. On that occassion, they brought me - 2 years old - along. But the escape failed. I don't have exact information. Only later did I learn about some fragments. Most probably, their smuggler killed them in a forest and left me behind in a deserted cottage. There, I was found by other fugitives who went on and attempted to reach the Polish border with Slovakia. They brought me along, and the story continues."

"From 1966 or 1967, I had been a member of the Communist Party. After my return to Czechoslovakia?" - "What was your motivation?" - "It was an offer. For a young person, an offer not to be turned down unless one had some very strong roots. I hadn't had those. I considered it in a way a honor. As a young, rash boy, I was naive to think that I could improve the world. That I'd use my smart, genious brain to contribute to things. But I was very wrong there. I was a member of the party in my factory, even becoming chairman of our local unit. Then came 1968, 1969. I co-initiated not paying Party membership fees until the Russians had left. Obviously, this backfired. I was kicked out of Škoda and for a long time, was unable to find any job at all. I even have official documents confirming I was unemployed. That was something unheard of - in Czechoslovakia, unemployment didn't exist!"

"The communities were degraded. It came in several waves. First and crucial was the war, of course. Holocaust. Only fragments of people returned, and those who did, often moved to other places. Those living in Prague today mostly came from Slovakia after the war. The second blow came after the establishmend of the State of Israel in 1948 and the first wave of emigration therein. Another landmark was 1956 and the events in Hungary. Once again, there was fear what would happen, and once again there was push for moving abroad - legally or else. 1968, the same story. All of these elements and consequences meant the Jewish communities were losing members, withering and in decline. Most of all in terms of property. They became a state-recognized church, and so they had what the government was so kind to give them. It was paying the salaries of clergymen, essential equipment such as matzos and wine, maintained the remainders of synagogues, and that was it. There was no Jewish education for children. No education for clergymen. A couple chosen ones had the opportunity to study rabbi seminars in Hungary but there was nothing like that here in Czechoslovakia. It seemed the communities would gradually cease to exist. The turnover took place in 1990 with new opportunities. From those remainders, Jewish identity began flourishing and life in Czechoslovakia, or later the Czech Republic.