Aftermath: Part 1

Emery Gregus

Occupation and Liberation 1944-1945
Aftermath: The Postwar Years
Remembrances

Aftermath: Part I

From Kosice to Paris and Montreal

People have often asked us " Why did you emigrate?" I must admit that their question is a legitimate one. There is no doubt in my mind that the effects of immigration-- the absence of relatives, old friends, and schoolmates, the fact that one cannot communicate in one’s mother tongue--renders success in life so much more difficult, and exerts a considerable influence even on the life of the next generation.

Naturally, as world events eventually developed over the last 50 years, the fact that we emigrated from Czechoslovakia turned out to be to our children’s benefit. The comparative superiority of their lives to those who stayed behind was clearly evident to them when we returned as a family in l990 to the visit the "old country."

Nevertheless, it wouldn’t be right to claim that at the time we could clearly foresee the events which were to follow; that is, the absolute power of the communist dictatorship, and to an even lesser extent, did we anticipate the success of the capitalistic system over the planned communist economic model.

In addition, there were other reasons for our emigration, even if the political system at the time didn’t develop to our liking. The fact that the Communist Party, along with the help of the Russian secret police, took power wasn’t a fatal blow to us personally. To a fairly large extent the new government used Jews in their "new order."

There were also other motives for our decision to emigrate. The first one was the manner in which the Communists took power. The Communists literally threw Jan Masaryk, the son of the founder of the first Republic in 1918, and who represented the exiled Czech government during the war in London and now held the position of Minister of Foreign Affairs in the new postwar government, out of the window. This method, known as "defenestration" had precedent in Czech history as a means of getting rid of one’s enemies. Here was a shocking example of the Communist Party’s methods and the manner in which they might actually conduct themselves in the future.

The second factor contributing to our decision to leave was the establishment of the State of Israel. At the time, the Czechs, with the consent of the Russians, were actively supplying the new Israeli army with armaments. These weapons were used against the British occupying forces in Palestine, and on the basis of the idea that "my enemy’s enemy is my friend," the Communists felt that the Jewish army, which was then fighting against the British in Palestine, was serving their interests as well. For this reason, a special relationship developed between these two countries, and consequently the Communists permitted the Jews to leave Czechoslovakia and emigrate to Israel.

Those Jews who survived the war and now returned from the concentration camps, saw an opportunity to escape from hundreds of years of anti-Semitism. Here was an opportunity to escape the persecutions and emigrate to the new Jewish State and live as free men. At the same time, those who hadn’t actually foreseen Israel as part of their future were now afraid to stay behind if so many others had decided to leave for the Promised Land.

A mass psychosis took over the Jewish population. Had the time now arrived to leave everything behind and move to a new homeland? The panic was heightened to a great extent by the first signs of the cold war, which insidiously began to manifest itself.

As well, after the war, nationalism flared up, and those Slovaks who had returned to the city of Kosice would stop individuals on the street if they heard anyone speaking Hungarian. We were obliged to speak Slovak, and although we managed in shops and public places, it was undoubtedly a handicap in our day-to-day life.

With time one would have also been required to join the Communist Party which welcomed Jewish members with open arms, and this even more so as the fascist members of the old Slovak regime were not yet acceptable to them. Consequently the Communists did not have too many people to choose from. I didn’t like the Party’s methods, dogmatism, lies and pretensions. In the eyes of the Party, the slightest transgression, even in daily economic life, could be considered a criminal act, and this absolute control served the purpose of making members more malleable to their cause. There was one way, and one way only, and the Party was completely in control. People were arrested under different pretexts so as to frighten and bully them into submission and it wasn’t any way in my nature to join any cause.

And so, we decided to leave and we gathered our documents and papers, which were quite difficult to acquire under the post-war bureaucracy. One had to prove that all taxes were paid, that no military obligations or criminal record existed, and that none of the State’s government agencies held anything averse to your leaving the country. Only when all these roadblocks were cleared, were you entitled to a one-way passport, and even for this passport one was obliged to produce a visa (real or false), which sometimes had to be purchased so that an exit paper would be granted. Ours was a visa for Columbia, or to be more exact, it was a "promise" of a visa, which was to be picked up in Paris.

One was allowed to take one’s personal belongings, but what, and how many of each item, was strictly prescribed. It was clearly stated as to the number of suits, dresses, shoes, undershirts and panties that could be taken with you. The authorities came to the house and one had to pack in their presence after which they locked the luggage with their seal. We were obliged to exchange the silver cutlery for regular ones, the Persian carpets for ordinary rugs, and we were told exactly how many sheets and pillow cases we could take, how many towels and so on and so on, right down to the tubes of toothpaste; and this in itself should have been enough to show clearly who, in fact, were those who were going to govern now. Without compensation of any kind, I was forced to leave behind the optical shop to the State, and for this shop I had paid a considerable sum one and half years earlier.

In reality, conditions changed very fast around us and the atmosphere turned very unpleasant. When I come to think of it, only four years had gone by since the time we were liberated and unburdened from under a terrific pressure and here, now again, we felt we had to leave and venture into the unknown. Even so, we still felt that uprooting ourselves from our home and the country we had known from birth, offered more hope than what we might expect had we stayed, based on our sad past experiences.

It certainly wasn’t an easy decision to leave. Not only was it difficult to forgo all the material possessions we had acquired with difficulty after the war, but it was painful to leave for an unknown and uncharted place, when it could have been so convenient to remain among a familiar milieu, a familiar language, among relatives and friends whose status and position on occasion could benefit you, and to whom one could turn to for help if the situation so warranted.But we looked back and we reflected on all that had happened to us in the recent past and we were afraid.

It was only that one summer of l945 that left us with a feeling of being liberated. After years of suffering, it was only these few short months which offered us some optimism and possibilities and dreams of a new life filled with expectation and hopefulness. We hoped that an ordinary existence would somehow continue despite all that had befallen us. Unfortunately, we slowly came to the realization that the fact that the Germans had lost the war didn’t imply that we had won it. Only the immediate threat of death ceased, and once again, it wasn’t our world and we didn’t feel the future held any safety and security for us. All these factors contributed to our decision to emigrate.

Then one day in October 1949, Eva and I took the train to Bratislava. The only valuables we were permitted to take with us were our gold wedding bands. Eva had sewn the diamond from her ring into her garter, and the rest of our jewelry, along with some money and two fur coats, items which were not allowed out of the country, we took, along with us to Bratislava, hoping that Eva’s cousin would find a way to get them illegally over to Austria, where we hoped to collect them in Vienna.

We arrived to the Slovak-Austrian border and the customs officers entered the train to check the passports and inspect the hand luggage. After everything was found to be in order, they asked Eva to disembark for a body search. I was convinced that we were doomed should they discover the diamond sewn into her garter. Not only would we never make it through the border, but we would spend a considerable time in jail. I waited out the next few minutes in terrible anguish until Eva returned and whispered to me, "Everything is all right!"

What happened when the custom’s officer neared her garter was that Eva said to her. "How really nice you are, and should you approach my cousin on the platform (he was the one who had accompanied us to the border station), he will most certainly reward you for your kindness." It was quite a risk Eva took by making herself suspicious, but the gamble paid off, and the woman stopped searching. Whether or not, the custom’s officer received anything from Eva’s cousin, we never found out, but perhaps the custom’s officer preferred not to find anything either, who knows?

The train rolled out of the station into Austrian territory and we heaved a sigh of relief. We sincerely hoped that we had made the better bargain by leaving than those who had chosen to stay behind.

We spent a few days in Vienna, where for a fee we collected all our valuables, except for the two fur coats, which according to the smugglers, were never handed over to them. Then, in the beginning of November, we took the train bound for Paris and at the border the Russian guards, together with the Austrians, verified our papers. At the time, Austria, an occupied country, was subject to the military division among the four Allied powers, and it was only when the train crossed the border to Switzerland, that we finally left behind the Russian sphere of influence. I stood by the window of the train and gazed into the night at the distant mountains and neat little stations in the Swiss countryside. Here and now, was the world for which I would have given half my life barely five years ago. At this very moment I was here--if only traveling through, for I was not permitted to descend. Even so, this was the world after which I had yearned so much during the war, but at that time, it was an unattainable dream.

In the morning we arrived to the Gare de l’Est and our cousins, who had arrived just a few months previously from Kosice, were waiting for us. We hired a taxi to the room they had reserved in a small pension on the Rue Lafayette. We had arrived not only into a new world, a world of immigrants and the stepping-stone to a new life, but we were fully aware that we had arrived not just to any place, but to Paris!

I found Paris to be exhilarating; for this was the world and the milieu of the French writers we had enjoyed so much when we were young. This is the world of Alexandre Dumas, "The Three Musketeers" and the Palais Royale, Anatole France, and the antique book dealers of the Left Bank, the Bastille and the French Revolution, the artists and the Montmartre, the writers and poets and the cafes on the Rue de Montparnasse. All these landmarks served as some compensation and distraction for our worries as to what unknown trials our journey would lead us in the future. On what adventure did we two youngsters embark? I, whose academic studies were cut short, was left without a proper profession, and not knowing the language adequately, nor having the confidence necessary, it was left to me to lead the way. Here we were, without any real connection in the world and little money at our disposal.

Eva, who spoke better German than I, is the one who spoke at the various Jewish aid agencies, who gave us money to pay the rent and vouchers for the Jewish mensas (eateries) on the Rue Richer or the Rue de Medici, and these organizations are the ones as well, who arranged our papers at the Prefecture de Police. This now meant that we were giving up our passports and instead we received permission to stay in France for a limited time as "legals" in "transit". The permits would be renewed many times, but as long as one didn’t request a work permit, the French were willing to accord a temporary visa, and the truth be told, the French were very liberal in this respect. In exchange for their assistance, the Jewish organizations obliged Eva to learn a trade and subsequently she was sent to a factory to learn to sew shirts.

The months passed and we waited for our visa to somewhere. Occasionally, after Eva’s work shift was over and on weekends, we would spend the afternoons at the Café Madelaine across from the Place de la Concorde, where many newcomers congregated to exchange news about visas, permits etc., and it was encouraging to feel that we were not alone with our problems.

The terraces in Paris were always filled with people and it took us quite awhile to be able to distinguish the prostitutes from the ladies, except that the former were somewhat better dressed, and we wondered only how it happened that they were back so soon, while we were still sitting with our coffees or Perrier. I don’t recall that we ever ordered anything more than this, but the restaurant owners looked the other way, and permitted their patrons to sit on the terraces for entire afternoons with just one drink.

Occasionally, we treated ourselves to an evening at the Follies Bergères; and even if we purchased our tickets for the back of the hall, standing room only, the girls were just as naked from there. We would never have experienced anything such as this in Kosice. The Louvre was free on Sundays and tickets for the Opera or the Ballets de Rolland Petit were inexpensive. We visited the Rodin museum and the Exhibition of the Impressionists’ at the Jeu de Pommes. We took in the Hotel et Dome des Invalides to visit Napoleon’s tomb, as well as the Pantheon, where the French literary masters lay in their large sarcophagi. Even with our limited French we could enjoy the cabarets, and "Cyrano de Bergerac" by Rostand with Madelaine Renault as Roxanne, we took in Marcel Marceau, the pantomimist, in Jean Barrault’s Theatre.

Just before Christmas, tents were placed along the Boulevard Montmartre from where all kinds of items were sold for the holidays, and it is now that I hear, for the first time the zither-music of "The Third Man" (Harry Lime) and this melody provided the perfect background to our present frame of mind and to the country-fair atmosphere. Christmas logs appeared in the shop windows, delicacies that I hadn’t seen since before the war. How I would have loved to have some at the time! Now naturally these items are a luxury for us, and as often is the case in life, when much later I could afford them, I realized I no longer liked them anymore.

We couldn’t foresee how long our stay in Paris would last, as we had no firm promise or prospect for a visa. I had a cousin in Venezuela who was willing to send me papers, and we always had the option to go to Israel where my sister, Nelly, now lived. However, we were not keen on either of these two solutions. First of all, Eva wanted to bring out her parents from Czechoslovakia and neither of these two places would have been suitable for them. She also wanted to stay close to her sister, who by now was living in New York, and our affidavit for the States, for which I had made an application several years previously, was now transferred from Prague to Paris, but our place on the waiting list was fairly low.

Eva went to work every morning to the ORT where she continued to sew shirts. Without a work permit, I was left to roam the streets and it was I who cooked the dinner according to the directions she left for me. A little later, when we had moved to another sublet, we had the luxury of a kitchen, and we shared this with the landlady, an old Russian widow, who had immigrated to Paris after the First World War. The apartment still had no bathroom, but at least now we didn’t need to cook on the bidet. The lady bought some contraption that she placed in the kitchen, which served as a shower and she was very proud of her invention. Now our apartment was located on the left bank, on Rue de Tolbiac, and we continued to meet other immigrants to share experiences at the Café Dome on Montparnasse; the very same café where Lenin plotted the Russian Revolution while in exile, or where the literary giants such as James Joyce, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein spent time arguing and where, along with other expatriates, a new wave of English literature was created. The Left Bank also meant we were close to the Boulevard St. Michel which inspired the famous Hungarian poet Ady Endre to create some of his most beautiful poems. We tried to make the most of Paris. We revisited the Lourve again and again; we traveled out to Versailles on a July 14th and witnessed a magnificent fireworks display. We made the trip out to Long Champs, even if it was only to sit in the coffee house and not at the racetrack; we visited the catacombs, and the cemetery of Pere Lachaise, where Chopin and Victor Hugo lay buried in their tombs.

Eva had a second cousin, a fellow named Gomery, who had immigrated to Paris in the thirties as a painter. Not long after we arrived, I went to visit an old teacher of mine who was now giving Hungarian language classes at the Sorbonne and by chance inquired whether he, as a fellow expatriate, might know where Gomery lived. As it so happened he knew Gomery and gave us his address in St. Germain en Laye. One Sunday, Eva and I ventured out to visit him and his wife. He wasn’t very successful as a painter in Paris, and they lived in a rather old villa, but they welcomed us affectionately and over the next few months we spent many a pleasant afternoons with them in their beautiful garden. His wife tried very hard to make ends meet and they generously shared their spartan dinners with us. He had an occasional exhibition, but they lived mainly from work he did as a portrait painter. He painted a portrait of Eva as well, which we were pleased to accept. They were most helpful and kind to us, and it was through their friendship that we met many other expatriates from before the war. These connections led not only to some contract work Eva and I could do at home to make a little extra money, but also to a life long friendship with Gomery’s sister-in-law, who had come from Prague and later immigrated to Montreal.

It was in the fall of 1950 when Eva’s parents received their visas to come to France on the way to London where their son lived. One day they arrived to the Gare de L’Est. It was a most strange situation. The roles were now reversed; the parents had become dependent on their children, when not so long ago, the parents were the ones who were well established and lived in a large home taking care of everybody who came back after the war. It was a sad, yet satisfying feeling that we hadn’t abandoned them. They moved in with us for a few weeks. Our Russian landlady graciously left the second room for Eva’s parents and moved in with her daughter who lived in the same building. It was obvious that she would like to help another struggling immigrant family, as it was not so long ago, that she too was in a similar position.

In the meantime, one day Eva discovered that she was pregnant which was no small worry in France where abortion was illegal and taken very seriously. My sister suggested that we come to Israel where there would be no problem for such things, but we didn’t like this option, and luckily we discovered a doctor who gave Eva some pills he said would provoke a miscarriage. As a result of this medication, or by pure chance, Eva lost the foetus and was admitted to the Rothschild Hospital for a few days.

As much as we tried to take advantage of our stay in Paris, we are constantly worrying as to what to do, and where to go? Should we accept the promised visas to Venezuela or Israel, or should we hold out for some other place that we feel would be better suited for us? Finally, in the spring of 1951, the Canadian Consulate called us to prepare our documents for presentation. This now means that they are willing to consider us as prospective immigrants. We undergo the chest x-rays, fill out the questionnaires and attend various hearings. We received our Canadian immigration papers, our "titre de voyage" and the Joint Agency provided us with two tickets for August on the ship, the SS Nelly, an old American 10,000 ton troop carrier.

I initially began by recalling the reasons that made us decide to emigrate, leave everything behind and embark on such a precarious and unpredictable adventure, and ended by recalling the nearly two years we spent in transit in Paris. Maybe if we would we have known what we were entering into with our immigration, we probably would never have dared to leave, but fortunately we had no idea what lay ahead of us. On the other hand, we never for a moment regretted our decision even in the most hopeless and desperate situations. We considered our difficulties as still part and consequence of the tragedy befalling us during the Second World War, and consequently I couldn’t help recalling what we would have given at that time for the inconveniences of the Parisian hotel-rooms, or for the strange smelling foods at the Jewish mensas on the Rue Médici; how gladly we would have gone to the Preéfecture de Police for an extension to our visas instead of waiting our call up to the labour camps and watching in deadly fright whether the postman would turn up our lane to deliver the call-up notice. If only we could have taken the shaky ships overseas, instead of the trains which took us to places from which there was no return. Now, perhaps, it was through our immigration that we tried to fulfil our unreachable dreams at the time; but unfortunately for the many who never returned, it was too late to take upon themselves the miseries of an emigration.

In a sense, every migration by a Jew should be called successful by virtue of his having survived the Holocaust but, as far as our future was concerned, we paid a very high price because freedom sometimes meant the "the freedom to sleep under the bridges." We paid dearly for any future material success with the price of our rootlessness, loneliness, the difficulties of a foreign language, and the constant worries about our future – but – even with that, it was worth it.