František Elston (Epstein)

“I came to England where I was adopted by a family, the Smiths, they had a daughter and a son and they behaved very nice to me. With their help I could apply for the English graduation exam at a technical school. The War started shortly after my arrival to England and I immediately volunteered at the Czech Embassy but they told me to pass the graduation exam first, which came right with my eighteenth birthday. Then I was called in where I was promised to fly the planes, and I flew as an instructor on the ground.”

“I was young, I stuck to flying like a limpet. So I didn’t tell that I can’t see the runway properly let go other things in the air. It was quite irresponsible to fly like this as a fighter. And then I turned the Spitfire over during the landing. I was sent to the ophthalmologist and he said that flying with my sight is a suicide. I had a cataract and problems with orientation in space. I must have hit the edge of the runway and the plane ended up with its nose in the mud. I had to undergo another two or three operations. Then I was sent to an Australian bomber squadron as a tactic instructor where I flew with Hurricanes all day long. I flew a lot but I kept on persuading them to send me back to the fighter squadron. So in 1945, the squadron had the privilege to welcome me back. But it wasn’t due to my involvement that the War ended soon after. I got to the Orkney Islands, then to Shetland where we patrolled against the intruders. It was a kind of a passive activity. In 1945 I mainly guarded bombers that attacked ground targets. I was lucky not to get into a fight with any German planes.”

“In our family we were very superficial concerning the religion. The main feasts like Jom Kippur were still held but nothing else. If I have visited the synagogue ten times in my life it was a lot.”

“I opened a phone book, I wanted a name beginning with E. And Elston caught my eye, the right one. So I took that name.”

“So what it was like when I came back after the war… My father survived, my mother was killed by the Germans. The rest of my family, seventeen people, were killed as well. People reacted either with hysterical praise or said: ’You were having a good time in England, and what about us here on the barricades?’ That was my first impression."

“The Germans were pigs no one can match, but they had their principles and doctrines. The Czechs were pigs no one can match because they had no doctrines. They made them out on the spot and prosecuted people who didn’t really deserve it…”

“My father managed to get me into the transport organized by Sir Nicholas Winton. I was over the age but my father obtained a false birth certificate. I was told that it is my own enterprise and if I get caught by the Germans they would pretend it is not their business. The transport went on quite smoothly. We went by train from the Central Station, then we waited at the German-Dutch border for almost 24 hours. It wasn’t anything pleasant to be just waiting. There were a lot of small children and for me, any other minute of waiting meant danger to be caught.”

“My father had a visa but my mother didn’t have any. The English were fiddling with the visa for my mother until the war began, but that was too late. My father had two options. To accept a position at the university in Oslo or in Stockholm. He did an interesting research on tuberculosis in Oslo, so he chose Norway instead of the neutral Sweden. The country was invaded three weeks after they moved there. In 1942 they were arrested and taken to Auschwitz. My mother was killed right away, my father was chosen as an assistant to the infamous Mengele. My father reported than Mengele treated him well and called him Herr Professor. My father then suffered with typhus and so on. In 1945, after Auschwitz was liberated by the Russian Army, my father entered the Svoboda’s army, he fought in Slovakia, came with the army to Prague where he subsequently served as an epidemiologist for some time.