Avraham Talmi

“I was on the Atlantic, and so [when] we arrived, the English knew it. Palestine was still under English rule. The secret service knew there were illegal immigrants on the way, so they prepared a big ship that sailed from Toulon and Saigon, the Patria it was called, it could fit three thousand people. Our transports were three ships, that was about three thousand emigrants, they were loaded straight on to the Patria. We arrived in Haifa.”

“We were there for a year, the youth, the Czechoslovak youth got in touch with Beneš’s government in London, they reached out to the British government and obtained permission for the emigrants in Mauricius to be able to volunteer into the Czechoslovak army. So there were eighty of us boys wo volunteered and left Mauricius and went to South Africa. There, the English gave us uniforms, and Mr Kováč, who was a pilot, was chief of this group, and I was his deputy. The English made me an acting sergeant. So we came to Suez, there we were welcomed by a Czechoslovak officer, and so we who were already in the army, we went to Haifa. There was an anti-air unit in Haifa, and those who weren’t there, say me as a new recruit, we went to Sidi Bishr, near Alexandria, where they had a boot camp.”

“The English were looking for some fifteen thousand new pilots. So even Czechoslovak boys could sign up, so I applied for a flying course. There were about eight of us boys who passed the exams. We were to leave Haifa for the course in England on 1 October 1942. We arrived in Haifa on 25 September, we were immediately given leave, a five day pass, and we were to return to the camp on 1 October. But I didn’t return, because the new contact officer declared that we weren’t going to fight, we weren’t going into combat, we were the core of the next Czechoslovak army in Czechoslovakia after the war. So I reckoned - I spent three years travelling to Palestine, that journey, suffering from hunger, just so I could become the core of the next Czechoslovak army? So I went to my friends in the kibbutz, who I’d been with for the Hah Sharrah in Ivančice, and I joined the kibbutz.”