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Journey Westward
Journey Westward
Journey Westward
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Journey Westward

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The book gives to the reader a glimpse into the life of a Jewish family in Czechoslovakia from the end of WW I, throughout the Nazi horrors of WW II, to the era of Communist dictatorship and finally to the freedom in the West. This non-fictional narrative is written in chronological order and ties in related political events that occurred during this time.

The authors WW II survival is followed in detail, showing how the will to fight for life aided in the achievement of that vision. Full recognition is given to the good people who took risks, without which the author could not have survived the war. While liberation brought happiness and hope for a better life, there was also a cloud of sadness over the loss of his father, dear family members and friends that can never be eradicated from memory. Unfortunately, the freedom that came with the end of the war was short lived. The establishment of Communist dictatorship marred that gained freedom. Once again, the authors determination to live in a free society, guided him through an adventurous escape to the West, where he finally achieved his dream of freedom.

LanguageEnglish
PublisheriUniverse
Release dateJul 29, 2011
ISBN9781462030514
Journey Westward
Author

George J. Vago

George Vago was born in Czechoslovakia in 1929 and survived the Holocaust during WW II. earned an MS in Mechanical Engineering from University in Prague in 1950. In 1958, he escaped from Czechoslovakia to West Germany and later settled down in the USA. He is married and has two children, presently retired, living in West Orange, NJ.

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    Journey Westward - George J. Vago

    Copyright © 2010 by George J. Vago

    All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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    Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

    Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

    Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

    ISBN: 978-1-4620-3050-7 (sc)

    ISBN: 978-1-4620-3051-4 (e)

    Printed in the United States of America

    iUniverse rev. date: 07/18/2011

    In Memory of My Father and Mother

    To my wife Danielle and my children Michelle and David

    Live and let live…

    Contents

    Preface

    Introduction

    1 Years of Growing

    2 World War II

    3 Postwar Years

    4 Journey Westward

    5 Life in Free Europe

    6 Acknowledgements

    7 Bibliography

    8 Memorable Images

    Preface

    MY CHILDREN ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW more of the details of my life. Their repeated inquiries about my survival of the war and how I managed to end up in United States inspired me to write these memoirs. I realized that simply recounting the story would not give them a lasting picture of my life and that I would have to record my story on paper to achieve this goal.

    This work tries to make the reader understand how the circumstances under which I grew up shaped my life. It is the story of a Jewish family in Czechoslovakia, enduring the World War II, and the survival of a mother and her 13-year-old son. It tells of their desperate fight for life, their hiding and running from place to place, which was their only means of outsmarting the Fascist government. It shows, on one hand, how cruel human society can be and, on the other hand, the readiness of good people to help. It also tells of the elation that came with being freed from the Fascist rule and of the hope for a life in a democracy, which would assure equal rights and freedom to everyone.

    The story continues through the political turmoil in postwar Europe, which developed between the western Allies and the Soviet Union over the control of territorial spheres of interest. In Czechoslovakia, these conflicts culminated in a Communist coup d’etat, under the auspices of the Soviet Union. This brought the country back to a regime of dictatorship. Early on, the ideals of Communism sounded like very promising theories of socialism and equal rights for everyone, eventually restoring the democracy that was lost during World War II. Unfortunately, it soon became obvious that the hope for freedom was gone. Life became a school of hypocrisy wherein one had to play a double game of political correctness versus private beliefs. For true believers and zealots the so-called Communism was a substitute for religion. Their slogan, Who is not with us is against us, ruled out any opposition. It justified politically motivated arrests and the persecution of citizens who were not trusted by the Communists. The Stalinist paranoia sealed off borders to keep out enemies and lock in the population. The iron curtain, as defined by Winston Churchill, was shut.

    I did not want to live under that totalitarian regime, which stifled me more and more. For me, there was no legal way to travel to the West. The only alternative for reaching freedom was to escape.

    Introduction

    MY FATHER’S FAMILY LIVED IN THE small Slovak town of Vrútky. Before World War I, Slovakia was a part of Austro-Hungarian Empire. My father’s parents owned a large house where they operated a pub, a coffeehouse, and a small hotel.

    My grandfather, Leopold Wachsberger, was born in Slovakia in 1862. He graduated from gymnasium (the equivalent to a high school in the U.S.) in the town of Ružomberok. At that time this was a great achievement for a Jewish boy, since there was an enrollment limit of four percent for Jews, called numerus clausus. He became a teacher in the Moravian town of Velké Karlovice, where he met my grandmother, Sofia Hoffmann. They got married and moved to Vrútky, where Jewish families had started to settle in the early 1830s.

    The name Vrútky means merging, characterizing the flow of the river Turiec, running from south and merging into the river Vah, which runs from the east. As the buildup of railroads started to take place throughout the Austro-Hungarian Empire, two of the main arteries were constructed along these two rivers, crossing in Vrútky. The small town became an important railroad junction with a depot, fueling station, and repair shops. The town began to grow economically, creating many job opportunities for new settlers, including members of my grandparents’ family. My grandfather came from a family of eight siblings; four brothers and four sisters. Three of his sisters also settled in Vrútky. Grandfather’s business became well established and he began to entertain many entrepreneurial ideas. Unfortunately, he lost money on most of them. First disaster struck when floods destroyed the workers’ housing colony, which he had built. Later he founded a brick plant corporation, which went bankrupt when they ran out of clay deposits. It became evident that the geological survey of the area had been faulty or even fraudulent. Beside of his business activities, he was an active member of the Jewish community and a supporter of the Zionist movement. He contributed to land purchases in Palestine and helped young Jews to settle in kibbutzim.

    My father, Arpad, was born on 9 October 1893 and was the oldest of five siblings (three brothers and two sisters). He received his education at the Business Academy in Vienna and became employed by the National Bank in Budapest. At that time, he changed his last name to Vago, which was a good Hungarian name and was more acceptable by the bank than the Jewish- sounding name Wachsberger. His brother Leslie followed suit. In August 1914, World War I broke out. Shortly after, my father was drafted into the army. He was an officer with the rank of first lieutenant and was sent with his infantry unit to the Russian front. He was wounded by a bullet to the thigh and had to be hospitalized. In 1918, after the end of the war, he was demobilized and returned to Vrútky, joining my grandfather to help run the family business.

    My mother, Blanka, was born in the town of Ružomberok on 6 July 1907. She was the youngest of her three siblings; a brother and two sisters. Her parents, Adolf and Wilma (nee Steiner) Biheller, owned a grocery store and a manufactory of seltzer water and sodas.

    The war had ended with the victory of the Western Allies and consequently the Austro-Hungarian Empire fell apart. President Wilson’s widely endorsed declaration of national self-determination encouraged the nations of the fallen empire in their fight for independence. Czechs and Slovaks united and established the Czechoslovak Republic on 28 October 1918. Czechoslovakia, with their natural resources and developed industry, allowed the new country to prosper.

    My parents met in 1927 and got married in Ružomberok in 1928. After the wedding, they went on a honeymoon trip to Venice. Afterward, they settled down in my grandparents’ house in Vrútky, where I was born in 1929. In 1930, my father and his business partner ventured into the coffeehouse business in Kosice, where we eventually moved. In 1938, my father’s business went bankrupt and we moved back to Vrútky. Soon after, my grandfather, Adolph Biheller, died. We had to move again, this time to my grandmother in Ružomberok, who needed help running her business. There, in 1939, World War II caught up with us and changed our lives drastically.

    My father perished in a Nazi death camp, but my mother and I survived the Holocaust by running and hiding in different places throughout the country, until we were liberated by the Red Army. It was a happy time when we regained our freedom, but it was also mixed with sorrows over the loss of my father and many members of our close family. Our life continued in the reestablished Czechoslovak Republic, which promised freedom and democracy. That promise was shattered by the Communist takeover of the government wherein Czechoslovakia became a satellite of the Soviet Union. The democracy came to an end and we were back in a regime of dictatorship, officially called dictatorship of the proletariat.

    I continued my education at the Textile Trade School, which I completed in 1950. In September of that year, I began my studies at the Technical University in Brno and later in Prague where, in 1954, I graduated with MS in Mechanical Engineering. After my graduation, I worked at the Thermal Technology Research Institute in Prague.

    Life under the totalitarian regime became unbearable for me. One had to live a life with two faces: official and private. For me, the only way out from behind the iron curtain was to escape. That task turned out to be a long process, which encountered many twists and turns along the way. In the end, with a little bit of luck, I made it to the West.

    After achieving my goal, I had to start a new life and build up my career. My final destination became the United States of America, which was as far west as I intended to go.

    1

    Years of Growing

    Move to Košice

    MY PARENTS GOT MARRIED ON 12 February 1928 and settled down in Vrútky, helping my grandparents to run their business. I was born there on 15 June 1929 and, as I was told by my mother, it was at nine in the evening. Not that the hour would make any difference but, for the astrologists’ sakes, it could be useful information.

    In 1930, when I was about one year old, we moved to Košice, the metropolis of eastern Slovakia. That was the city where my father, together with his business partner, invested in a coffeehouse. Its name was Grand Cafe Astoria and it was one of the largest coffeehouses in town. This great entrepreneurial undertaking promised to be a financial success and a good investment. Based on that assurance, they got financial backing from a generous bank loan.

    In Kosice, we moved into a nice apartment on Tabakova Street. There was a large yard where I used to play with Karl, the son of our next-door neighbors. They had a friendly, big dog called Daras, which was the first animal I had encountered. It was a Dalmatian, and a good hunter, taken along by Karl’s father on hunting trips.

    My parents were busy with running the coffeehouse seven days a week, which kept them fully occupied. They alternated morning and evening duties with the partners and I usually saw them only every other week, when they had afternoons off. We had a housekeeper named Anna, who ran the household, cooked, and took care of me.

    She was from Gelnica, which was a small mining town settled by Germans in the middle of the thirteenth century, when there was a great demand for artisans and miners. They maintained their German identity and spoke in a dialect, which had roots in the German language. In addition to the dialect, Anna also spoke standard German, which was how she communicated with us. I liked her very much and she became a part of our family.

    The reason for speaking German at home was that my grandparents on both sides had been educated in German, which had been the official language of the Austro-Hungarian Empire during the years of their education. At the time of my parents’ education, the official language in Slovakia became Hungarian. At home and with my grandparents we still spoke German.

    In Kosice, we lived in the apartment on Tabakova Street until 1934. At that time my father’s business started to run into financial difficulties and we had to tighten our belts. That apartment became too costly to maintain and we had to move to a smaller and less expensive place. The new place was on 13 Rumanova Street. The apartment was located on the first floor in the back of the courtyard, with windows facing the garden. There we had one master bedroom, a living room, a bathroom, an entrance hall, and a kitchen. Anna had her room in the attic, which had to be entered by a ladder from the kitchen. One memorable day I climbed up that ladder to the top. I slipped and took a big fall, knocking out my breath. I was lucky to end up with only a couple of bruises on my back, but I cried so horribly that the whole neighborhood gathered at our place.

    Kosice is the metropolis of Eastern Slovakia, with a National Theater and beautiful parks. It was a pleasant town to live in. Many members of my father’s family lived in Kosice. With them, we maintained close family contacts. They were all descendants of the Fisch family and cousins of my father through my grandfather’s sister Netti. It was a very complicated family entanglement. Their children were Julius, Arpad, Janka, and Manci.

    Julius was married to Margit, who was my grandmother’s sister from my mother’s side, and they had three children; Laci (Ladislav), Tivi (Theodor), and Elly, who were first cousins to both my mother and to my father. The Fisch family lived in a nice house with a garden and fruit trees and it was an adventurous place for me to play. They had a housekeeper, called Mali, whom I loved for her readiness to play and horse around with me. She was also from Gelnica and always chatted with Anna in their German dialect.

    Arpad Fodor (he Hungro-ized his name from Fisch.), was married to his cousin Aranka, who was the daughter of my grandfather’s brother Max and to my father they were double cousins. Their daughter, Dori, who was as old as I, was my classmate at the Jewish elementary school in Košice.

    Manci was married to Sandor Strausz and they had a son, Riki (Richard), who was one year older then I. Dori and Riki were my closest playmates and we regularly got together, alternately at Dori’s and Riki’s places. Dori lived in a house with a large garden where we had plenty of space for playing. There we were under the strict supervision of Dori’s nanny, called Babka, who had also raised her mother, and because of this counted as a member of the family.

    In our family, I was known as a bad eater and a nervous child who was always picking up bad habits. When I was five years old, I started to get migraine headaches, which usually ended with me throwing up. This problem once created a very embarrassing situation for our Anna. It happened in the National Theater when, during the performance, I threw up on a mink coat belonging to the woman who sat in front of me.

    The greatest pleasure for me was when my parents had their afternoon off and I could go with my father for a walk. He loved nature and he instilled this love into me. Our favorite outing was to take the streetcar to the final station, from which we walked up to the top of the Bankov hill. There we used to stop at the coffee shop for refreshments. On the way through the woods we examined little creeks, flowers, and anthills. On one of those walks, he showed me how to get refreshed from the acid produced by the ants. He wetted a twig and stuck it into the anthill and, when he pulled it out and shook off the ants, he gave me the stick to lick. It tasted refreshingly sour like a lemon. The greatest attraction for me, though, was when we went together to see circus performances. I still remember their names, like Kludsky and Medrano. Going together to the movies was the tops, especially when seeing Disney’s Mickey Mouse and Shirley Temple. Actually, when I was asked what I would like to be when I grew up, I said, Mickey Mouse. Later, I advanced to the movies of Laurel and Hardy and Charlie Chaplin.

    My father, having been an avid skater in his younger years, always wanted me to learn to skate. When I was four years old, he took me to a sporting store and bought me my first skates. They had to be attached to the bottom of my high shoes by cranking the jaws tight onto the heel and sole. He took me to the skating ring in the city park, where I got my first lesson. Every lesson ended with some crying when I fell on my behind. In the end, I mastered the art of skating.

    I loved to visit my parents in the coffeehouse and especially to go to the kitchen, where I always got some goodies such as ice cream with whipped cream. As a special treat from the partner’s wife, Mrs. Tardos, I got a mouse formed out of chocolate. The biggest treat was to go to the souterrain, where the nightclub and the bar were located. There was a colored glass dance floor, illuminated from below, and a reflector with changing colored lights shined from above it, creating an intimate atmosphere.

    In summer, we used

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