International House Berkeley

95 those council houses: rows and rows of houses stuck together, all exactly the same. If you had had something to drink, you would certainly walk into the wrong one. I didn't go to school in England because of my last schooling in Czechoslovakia. They had given me a passing grade in the report card only because my mother had came to school and cried and begged for at least a passing grade. They relented, on the promise that I never ever go to school again. You see, I never had time to study — I was building radios. Ever since I can remember, I was building radios. I was fascinated by radios, and when my parents gave me twenty kronen a month for a streetcar ticket to get to the school in Pilsen — the one that threw me out — I walked to the school so I could save that money and buy radio parts. I built several radios. Later on, I even built a little transmitter that transmitted from my parents' house to my neighbors, until the police came and had one of my parents questioned about whether there was a secret transmitter somewhere. So I had to stop that. Those are the little things that I remember. As soon as the war ended, I wanted to go back to Czechoslovakia and take over the factory that my parents owned; it was a brick factory. But by that time, my parents had left for America. It was a miracle how they got there. My father had applied for an American visa in 1935. Now, who thought about emigrating in 1935? There are two stories to that. One of them is that my mother kept nagging him to get the American visa – "Just in case, you never know!" So my father finally relented and went. The other story is that he was sitting in a cafe in Prague, and a friend of his came along and said, "Viki, I am going to the American Consulate to ask for a visa." And my father said, "Oh why? Why would you?" He answered, "Why don't you come along?" And my father said, "Why should I?" "Well, there is a very pretty secretary there." So my father went…. And knowing my father, I think the second story is the right one. Anyway, the visa came through in 1940. Now realize that the war had already started, but Holland had not been invaded yet. So my family was able to go on a train from Prague, through Germany, into Holland to the Hague, and to board an American ship that went from Holland to Liverpool and then docked at Liverpool. They sent me a postcard telling me that they were off to America, but the postcard was held up by the censor until the boat had reached America — for safety reasons. They were afraid of German U-boats finding out about the boat's departure for America. So I had the news that they were in America, but I was still in England. After a while in England, there was a family that was looking for a boy to take care of. They interviewed me, and it kind of clicked – they had three sons, and I became a very good friend with one of them, with the youngest one. And I stayed with them in Leicester, in the Midlands, until the end of the war. While I was there, I became a movie-projectionist — with all the electronics around the movie house it suited me very well. Near the end of the war, when I was close to twenty-one, I joined the Royal Air Force. By that time, my parents were not able to claim me as a dependent anymore, so I

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