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March 23, 2001/Adar 28, 5761, Vol. 53, No.25
Bittersweet memories return
RUDI KIRSCHNER
Special to Jewish News
For 60 years I have debated with myself whether it is best to leave bittersweet memories untold and untouched or to freely air them. The psychiatrist encourages emotional catharsis - a laxative for the mind. Historians tell us that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it, and yet every day we see those who have not forgotten it repeat it just the same.
I was one of the children who escaped on the 1938 kindertransport, an effort to transport children of Jewish European families from their homes in Nazi-occupied Europe to Great Britain. Our parents selflessly grasped at the opportunity to send us to safety, even as they grieved at our parting. Most of them, like my father, did not survive the war.
Following is the story of my experience, similar to many that were captured in the recent film, "Into the Arms of Strangers," which has been nominated for an Academy Award this year.
Six hundred of us (as it turned out, 10,000 in total) were beginning our journey. We gathered at Masaryk Railroad Station in Prague in the euphemistically called "Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia" - in actuality, German-occupied Czechoslovakia. A train was about to embark diagonally across Germany, eventually to arrive in England. We sat in the train on wooden benches, some of us still clutching the white linen handkerchiefs with which we had waved goodbye until our loved ones were out of sight. We sat with little conversation for usually rather vivacious youngsters. We all seemed to think similar thoughts. Where to, when, how, what, who. You name the question, it was on our minds.
The journey seemed endless, punctuated by occasional slow-downs as we rode through semi-deserted railroad stations emblazoned with swastikas. On and on it went. Finally the swastika flags changed. The train slowed and eventually came to rest at a station where many people ran busily back and forth. We were urged to open the windows and, immediately, were offered cheese sandwiches and cups of hot chocolate. We were in Holland! The best chocolate drink I ever tasted! The best cheese sandwich ever! Hunger tends to make almost any food taste good, and this was good. The Dutch, cheese and hot chocolate have forever been a favorite of mine, forever coupled with bittersweet memories.
Very often, I have wondered if I could have sent my 14-year-old child to a foreign country where he could not even speak the language. My father's decision saved my life (my mother had died a few months before), but I was never to see him again. Even today, I wonder if I could have been so self-sacrificing.
The long journey from Prague on the kindertransport ended in London. About 30 or 40 of us lived in a hostel in Clapton and were sent to attend the Hackney Technical Institute. The teacher spoke only English and very few of us spoke or understood any English at all. On Sept. 1, 1939, we were evacuated to Norfolk where we were literally taken from the door until somebody took us in. This evacuation effort encompassed several hundred children, obviously not all from the kindertransport. I was placed with a middle-aged lady and her old mother. They spoke only English; I did not. I was depressed, anxious, homesick, and three days later war broke out between England and Germany and eventually the rest of the world. I could only send and receive 25-word messages from my father. It was a sad and bitter time. Around the latter part of 1940, the messages stopped coming.
In the small town of Downham Market, lived a physician who had educated his children bilingually by always having Austrian nursemaids for his children, but none were now available. He heard about us, the kinder, and invited me to live in his house if I would speak German with his children. That was easy, as my English was still very fractured. The doctor became my father figure, the emotional anchor so necessary for a teenager.
Eventually, I went back to London. The war was still on. I enrolled at night school at Battersea Polytechnic, working during the day at a metallurgical laboratory. Food was scarce, spam and cheese sandwiches almost the daily diet. Night school finally paid off, and I matriculated at the University of London.
My desire to become a physician was utmost in my mind. Although penniless, I applied to all the British medical schools. I was not accepted by one. The following year, I applied again, and again, I was not accepted. I was depressed. I heard that the American army was looking for "friendly aliens," so being Czech, I applied, thinking I would work, save money and return to England and attempt again to get into medical school. I got the job and was assigned to Berlin in 1946.
The colonel in charge of my unit invited me to immigrate to the United States and arranged for an affidavit. I returned to England in 1948 and a few months later, went on to New York and then to Houston.
I enrolled at the University of Houston as a full-time student and also worked full-time. You name the job, I did it: clean and dirty work, hot and freezing work, daytime or nighttime work. I did it.
A senior, I applied to medical school. Rejected. I graduated and applied again. Rejected. A post-graduate with a master's degree, I applied to medical school again. Rejected. I began to work on a doctorate degree. I applied to medical school. Accepted. Overjoyed! I spent four years of hard work with minimal financial help and, once again, found myself doing those "you name it" jobs.
Four years later I completed post-graduate training and then served in the United States Air Force at Luke Air Force Base near Phoenix. I opened an office here, met and married my wife, Elaine, and children followed.
Perhaps a success story, but a success story built on many sad memories and sad experiences. Had it not been for my father's extreme and utmost self-sacrifice and my English father figure, who knows?
Rudi Kirschner, a retired physician, does paramedical training and teaching.
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