Petr Deiml

“When one judges one’s life, then I have attained a lot in the field which I had chosen. I think that I have. Whether I have achieved everything? No. I will retire in half a year and I have not even started preparing for it. I think that from nearly nothing - because when we came here to Israel, we only came with our bare butts as we say, and we set up our lives here from nothing - and I cannot say that I would not be living a good life here. I have been through several wars which took place here, and I was mobilized until the age of forty, after I had returned from Germany. I think that I cannot complain.”

“I remained in touch with this friend and with others, too, but only very infrequently, because I did not want to do them harm and I did not believe that I would be able to return. But then there was 1989 or 1990 and I could not wait any longer and I immediately went to my wife and we travelled to Czechoslovakia. We visited all friends, and the way I did it was that I just knocked on their doors and they knew immediately what was happening and it was a surprise for all. It was something that one has to experience, I was inviting everybody and I was being invited by everybody and I had to answer so many questions. It was a beautiful time, although Prague at that time was still very grey and apart from the subway it was nearly in the same state as when I had left it.”

“The way I was involved was that I used to go to the Jewish community, and I knew that apart from being a Czech and being happy as a Czech and having my group of friends, my boat dock, the summer camps, I had something else as well, and this was my Jewishness.”

“We packed our apartment within two days. We were not able to take many things. My mother said: ‘We need to forget everything that was and we need to make everything knew, so take only the most, most, most important things, several photos and things like that.’ It was interesting that we lived there in blocks which had been built after the war for political prisoners. We lived there and those houses were called Žiďárna (Jewish houses – transl.’s note), because really there used to be a large concentration of Jews who had received those apartments. On August 30, there were two small Fiat cars on the street and a friend from the neighbouring street with his mother and we were leaving at the same time. Although we did not coordinate anything, such as telling the other family about something. Our whole family was leaving on August 30 because my brother was already in Israel and he stayed here.”