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  1. CHILDREN of STALINISM – The consequences of their parents' imprisonment

    • Category: Children of the Others

    • The documentaries Children of Stalinism for Czech TV depict the consequences on these children of their parents’ imprisonment. The following is a commentary on two opposing points of view.

  2. My prison image was formed by the legends of Middle-Ages Daliborka

    • Category: Children of the Others

    •  Helena Goldstuckerova — Vavrova

      What is your most pleasant memory from childhood? d

      There are many until they arrested dad. The best one was when he returned home, and we had our first Christmas together.

      What do you think was the worst moment?

      The worst was, (long pause) when they imprisoned daddy. I was four and a half and nobody told me anything. Before I started 1st grade, mom decided to tell me because she was afraid that I would find out from somebody else. I cried a lot when mom told me — I never told this to anyone — because when I was a child the prison image was formed by the horrid legends of Daliborka http://www.prague.net/daliborka .

  3. I grew up in the shadow of the Holocaust

    • Category: Children of the Others

    • I was born into a family that hid in different locations in Slovakia during World War II. My parents succeeded hiding with their little girl thanks to false documents showing they were not Jewish. But in 1943, someone informed on them and they were deported to the Terezienstadt concentration camp. When the war was over, the return home was not a happy one. On my mom’s side she was the only one who came back. In my dad’s family, two of his brothers survived the war; one fought with the Slovak partisans and the other with a Western army.

  4. Reflections of Prague: Journeys through the 20th century

    • Category: Children of the Others

    • Ivan Margolius  

        

      On returning to Prague I imagined I had seen my father. His slim figure, elegantly dressed in a dark single-breasted suit, white shirt and blue tie appeared in the distance. He paused at Knihy bookshop in Na Příkopě Street to look inside and check his reflection in the shop window. His hair was swept back, the receding hairline exposing his high forehead. Rimless spectacles framed his grey eyes, glinting in the bright morning light. The permanent smile on his lips, which I so loved, was still there. He checked the time on his Omega watch, lit a cigarette and walked on. Pushing through the crowd, I hurried to catch him but he disappeared into the darkness of Prague's many passageways that criss-cross the inner city. l delved into the labyrinth of shadows to search for him.

  5. The secret police kidnapped me when I was a baby

    • Category: Children of the Others

    • Jarmila remembers:

      “After they arrested our parents, my brother ended up in a children’s institution and I was kidnapped by the security police and placed with a couple somewhere in the mountains. Because they changed my last name. my relatives had a hard time to find me. I didn’t have many relatives; most died during the Holocaust.

  6. When they arrested dad, mom committed suicide

    • Category: Children of the Others

    • I was six years old in 1952 when the secret police arrested my dad. He was supposed to be a witness at the Slansky trial [the accused General Secretary of the Communist Party]. After dad’s arrest, mom injected me with the same stuff that she killed her dad, her sister and then herself. I survived because somebody took me to a children’s hospital. The pediatrician, who saved my life, paid a big price for refusing to let the secret police to take me away. He lost his job and he was forbidden to practice medicine anymore.

  7. How come that dad said such idiotic things about himself

    • Category: Children of the Others

    • Anna …

      Born January, 1942 in Oxford, England Lives in Prague

      After my father’s arrest, we moved out of Prague to live with my grandmother. I was ten and I was the only person my mother could talk to about our situation. 

  8. I was more taken back by persecution of communists

    • Category: Children of the Others

    • Intorduction

      The questions posed to me by Jana Svehlova are more applicable to individuals who were much younger than I was when our parents were imprisoned. In the fall of 1949, at the time of my father’s arrest, I was twenty eight. A year later when my mother was arrested, I was twenty nine. Furthermore, I survived with my brother and my mother the Holocaust in Terezienstadt and in Auschwitz. Although my both parents joined the Communist Party, they did not belong to the upper echelon. My age and the parents’ position in the Party will make a difference in my answers. Most of what I am saying here is already covered in my autobiographical book “Zivot mezi úzkostí a nadejí” (nakl. Paseka, 2002); translated title would be “Life between anxiety and hope.”

  9. The Comrades executed Dad and imprisoned Mom — Karel Sling

    • Category: Children of the Others

    •  Karel Sling

      My father was a Jew, a Communist, and he worked as a medic during the Spanish Civil War. My mother is English. She was a member of the British Communist Party and she is an Oxford graduate. They met in England during the war.