大象传媒

Life in England

On arrival in England I had been classed as an alien and was in danger of being deported. Through an interpreter I had to explain that I was Czech not German. The Czech. Republic was set up on the 28th of October 1918 six weeks before I was born. Anyone born before that date would have been classed as a German. (So, I was 鈥淪ix Weeks Lucky鈥�). There was another Czech refugee who was able to vouch for me.
His name was Franz and he had been the mayor of the town where I had worked in the factory. He was now working in Leicester and asked for me to be sent to work with him, so I was told to go to the station where I
was given a ticket and put on the train to Leicester.

I was one of thousands of refugees struggling to learn a new language in a strange country. I lived with a Quaker gentleman who introduced me to a professor and they both helped me. I tried to learn 25 words a day so I soon had a wide vocabulary but no grasp of grammar and found it difficult to put sentences together. The professor's wife taught at Leicester University and I visited her, with another young man, for three hours twice a week to study the language. Learning about dialects was fascinating and proved useful after making my home in Yorkshire.

The authorities bought a large house, Spartan Hall, in Leicester to house all the immigrants in the town. Franz and I went to live there. I bought a mandolin in a secondhand shop for thirty shillings. There was a piano in the house so a group of us would get together playing the songs of our homeland. The Trade Union organised events at which we played and I think this helped us to be accepted in this country. My family had been fairly musical and I eventually managed to organise a 20 piece band which played at various places during the war. In 1942 there was a conference at the Royal Albert Hall to discuss how to restore the destroyed village of Lidice. ( On 10th June 1942 the Germans shot all the men, the women were sent away and the children were taken to Germany to Nazi families). I joined a band of about ten musicians to play for the audience and the money raised was given to the restoration fund.

I wanted to help the war effort with my engineering skills. I had completed a three year apprenticeship in an engineering factory in Czechoslovakia and had just passed my final test to become a fully qualified machine tool engineer, when the prospect of a German invasion arose. Some of my work had involved using Jackson red-label oil hardened tool steel from Sheffield. While in the resettlement camp during Spring 1939, I had been approached by the Czech-British Club and was offered a job working for B.S.A. making guns in Indo-China. The Club had details of the skills of the refugees in the camp. However, the outbreak of the war made travel to the East out of the question. In England the authorities were not yet convinced about my nationality so continued to refuse me a work permit. I had to prove myself a friend of the country, so when they wanted farm workers I volunteered. Franz, another Czech.and I went to work on a large farm at Melton Mowbray. It was hard work but I had been used to the labour required for farm work.

After four weeks on the farm we went back to Leicester and I was told to get in touch with an optical firm in Leicester. The position was supposed to be restricted to someone English but as I was the only qualified engineer to apply for the post I got the job. So, I had a position earning five shillings a week. My first Christmas in Leicester was fun. My mandolin and I teamed up with an accordian player and we went round the pubs playing carols. While working in Leicester I was asked to help Taylor Hobson with the development of a machine that could produce an engraving just three hairs thick on a copper bar to etch onto camera lens parts.
(contd)

(3)

Life in England (contd)

There were quite a few houses on Rustlings Road in Sheffield being used as hostels for refugees. I went there to work on the construction of Ladybower Reservoir with a gang of Czech workers. I worked in the garage overhauling dumper trucks and lorries. One day we were testing crank shaft bearings and the lorry had to be towed across a wooden emergency bridge over the river. I was driving the vehicle being towed when suddenly the clutch on the towing vehicle was released and both lorries fell over the edge of the bridge. The lorries turned as they fell and I fell into the water, this saved my life, but the driver of the other vehicle was killed outright because his fall had been obstructed by the steering wheel. I woke up in hospital the next day; the doctors were convinced that I was going to die. I had three fractures in my spine and was put in a complete body cast. When the plaster was finally removed I had no muscle strength and had to walk with two sticks. A doctor advised me to get rid of the sticks as soon as possible and try to stand straight and walk upright no matter how painful it was. This was good advice because it prevented me from becoming a cripple and 2 years later I was fit enough to play tennis. I was unable to work for a while after the accident and during my convalescence I used to walk in Endcliffe Park in Sheffield. It was there that I met the lady who became my wife. I discovered that her uncle played the organ at Fulwood Church and Sheffield Cathedral.

After the accident I applied again for a work permit. There was a shortage of skilled engineers so I was accepted immediately and was sent to a factory in Wembley Park. We designed and created equipment and ammunition directly related to the war effort and was top secret. Throughout the war years I worked on many secret projects, designing and producing various machines. Speed was essential and there were two occasions when we discovered that a worker was deliberately sabotaging our efforts and thereby reducing our output. They were reported to the authorities and removed.

During the time that I was working in London I was asked to contribute to a report on the Czech engineering industry. Refugees, Jews and British M.P.s were preparing for the rebuilding of Czechoslovakia. The meetings were held in Notting Hill Gate in a building owned by the Czech-British Friendship Club. I was living in Richmond with my wife and son when the V2 rockets started in 1944. The V1 'doodlebugs' had been terrifying because of the noise they made and then the silence when the engine cut out, then waiting to see where it would fall. The V2 rockets were silent and after we experienced being woken at 4am by one of them exploding in Richmond, I decided that my wife and child would be safer in Sheffield, but I continued to work in London and attend monthly meetings at Notting Hill helping with the design of vital machine technology.

Eventually I managed to get some information about my family in Czechoslovakia. All of them had their passports marked 鈥漸nreliable鈥�. Some of my brothers were conscripted into the German army and were given 'harmless' duties and were never sent into battle, which probably helped them to survive. My brother Eddie had been a motorbike courier carrying messages for his Nazi commanders. One of the officers happened to be an English spy and advised him to leave when the situation became dangerous. Eddie headed south and joined the Maquis in France. He was excellent with firearms and tracking and he went to Dieppe helping groups to escape the Nazis and get back to British lines. After the war, in a POW camp, he met Yekel who had lived near Velka Strelna. Yekel had met me in England so he was able to tell Eddie that I was alive. My father did not received the last letter that I had written from England before the war started and they believed that I had died. My father was still living on the farm when the Russians bombarded the hillside where the Germans had decided to make their last stand in the final days of the war. The village was flattened, but father survived by hiding in a room at the back of the house, the rest of the buildings were demolished. The Russians killed the last cow to feed the troops. Father had a few sacks of grain, some potatoes and jars of sauerkraut, which meant there was enough food to keep him going until he emigrated to East Germany with Eddie and his other sons, where eventually they managed to buy another farm.

(contd)
(4)

My brother Franz was drafted into the German army and was sent to work in POW camps in Norway until the end of the war. While there he was able to help the Norwegian resistance by giving them information through the camp wire perimeter. Another brother, Josef, had intended to come to England with me, but a motorbike accident, in which his leg was crushed, meant that he was in hospital when the Germans arrived. When he had recovered he was escorted to the factory, where he had worked as chief engineer, and made to work for his new masters. He was in the Czech resistance, but when this was discovered by the German officer who ran the factory he was arrested as a spy. Two soldiers took him away but Jo knew that one of them was not a true Nazi. The threat of death was real so he risked using the gun he had always kept hidden in his hat and shot the one he did not know and fled into the forest, not daring to return home.
His wife was tortured to find out where he was and she eventually committed suicide by drinking sulphuric acid. Jo joined a group of partisans and his final placement was living as a POW in a labour camp where the V2 rockets were being built. His task for the resistance was to destroy the rail tracks used to roll the rockets into launch position, then return to the camp with the slave prisoners. After the war he was treated with great respect. I met him after the war before he eventually died of yellow fever.

I visited my brother Eddie after my father died and in 1995 I went to Germany to visit the family graves.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.