Jehošua Rezek

“My father took a six-week course under Rabbi Arje from Czechoslovakia – I don’t know much about him – and they became the unit’s rabbi. He and the troops crossed northern Africa and then went to England where they stayed for half a year. A Czech brigade was assembled there, and they went with it to liberated France and then to Dunkirk. Practically the whole half-year until the end of the war, the unit was in the siege at Dunkirk and fought with the Germans there.”

“He wore a hat only when he prayed, or ate while praying. I also wore a yarmulke only for meals. You see, Mum wasn’t religious, was anti-religious, but Dad was very pious. Then, later, Mum told me she had quarrelled with Dad a lot over my upbringing. Seeing that I basically grew up without my dad, I didn’t really grow very fond of religion. Mum was very unreligious and a heavy smoker. On Saturdays – when you mustn’t smoke – she’d go to our Christian neighbours for a smoke. I knew it, and I even said it one time, and it was a big scandal.”

“Then, when the war was over, I travelled with Mum to Czechoslovakia because Dad had stayed – as it is described in Karel Stein’s eulogy – in Prague as a representative of Joint. He worked as the secretary of the Jewish community and a deputy to Rabbi Aladár Deutsch, who was the chief rabbi at the time and was very sickly from his time in the concentration camp, so Dad saw to the everyday duties.”

“[Q: Did you see your father often?] I hardly ever saw him. He enlisted in 1942, I don’t remember him from then, and the first I saw him next was after the war. [Q: So you didn’t meet up at all as a family?] No. He went to war - that was normal for a lot of people back then. He returned after the war. I didn’t see him till Prague. I don’t have many memories of him. I remember that I was greatly impressed, when I would go to visit him in his office at the Jewish community, how he would speak into three phones at the same time, and that made a big impression on me. Otherwise he was, how to say it, a bit odd, I must say. A pious Jew of the type we see nowadays. He was the only one in Prague to be outside in winter without a hat. He wore a yarmulke but not a hat.”