Alexander Tomský

“This was an international group indeed, one of my colleagues was Latvian, there were Russians, Americans. But he was absolutely enthralled that I could speak Polish, as a Pole was just elected the pope and he had no department for Poland. So I had Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland and in a year or two I was the director of the whole Central European department. The institution, financed by charity, soared with Poland and I became a key author. I was invited to BBC and then to TV. The so-called Easter Europe business started. Our Central Europe was suddenly very interesting not just for the Soviet-focused experts but for mainstream media too.”

“Well, I accompanied the Austrian chargé d’affaires, we passed in between the tanks and he took a kind of… well a kind of unusual road somewhere in the woods which was no normally taken, and they opened up the bars for him as he had the diplomatic immunity and he drove me to Linz. There I knocked on the door. Unfortunately my uncle was no home, I hadn’t seen him ever, he was on holiday but there was his son, who was dressed in the uniform of the Austrian army. I spent a week with them and then I got visa to England in Vienna, I had to hitchhike, as I didn’t have much money. I got some money from my distant relatives but it was not much. And they refused to give me visa, because the English closed their embassy too and said I didn’t have my close relatives there. But I had two distant aunts, cousins of my father, there was the brother of my grandfather, the only one of ten children to have survived the shoa, the war, as he was on a business trip in London. I managed to persuade, in a very funny way, that lady that although I didn’t have a brother, sister, father or mother in England, I had many relatives in London – four distant cousins and one great uncle, the brother of my grandfather – that they could compensate for one direct relative. She laughed and suddenly I saw the name Winternitz on her lapel. My uncle in London married a German Jew whose name was Winternitz. I asked, “You come from Prague?” And she replied, “Yes, my grandfather comes from Prague.” Well, and suddenly I was a relative. And I got the visa.”