in Zidenice, a suburb of Brno.
We moved to Brno during the early part of 1938, an astounding city as far as I was concerned. The scope and cosmopolitan diversity surpassed anything else that I had experienced before. It was, and still is, the administrative and cultural capital of the Province of Moravia, and the second largest city in the country.
We had barely settled into our new home, when father was forced to leave for several weeks. It was not Zlin that required his presence that time. Being a reservist, he was recalled to temporary duty in the military. Czechoslovakia was determined to defend its borders against a potential german invasion.
I may be prejudiced, but father really was a dashing dragoon, and I have a picture to prove it. The photograph shows him in a standing position; he has a cap with a short visor on his head, a thin moustache on his upper lip and he is attired in a belted jacket, with a long sword clipped to the left side. He also holds a riding crop with his left hand, and a cigarette with the other. This is definitely a picture of the neatest cavalryman I had ever seen.
As I said before, Czechoslovakia mobilized because Hitler wanted to annex the Czech territory known as Sudeteland. It was ready to fight, even against the worst of odds, to prevent the break up of its territory and maintain its borders. It even formed alliances with France, England and other countries in the hope of safeguarding its independence. Unfortunately, nothing helped. In September of 1938, at the infamous meeting in Munich, the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain surrendered to Hitler’s demands and sacrificed Czechoslovakia in the name of peace. Hitler had promised during the meeting that the Sudeteland would be his only territorial demands in Europe. But, as the World found out, this was just a ploy on his part. He grabbed the Sudeteland on September 19, 1938, and overran the rest of Czechoslovakia on March 14, 1939.
Fortunately for us, we managed to leave Czechoslovakia at the end of January, 1939, and narrowly escaped the Nazis by the skin of our teeth.
This is how it all came to pass.
After the reserve forces demobilized, and father returned home, he notified the office in Zlin that he wanted to get out of the country without further delays. He made it clear that he did not care where he would be transferred, as long as he could leave within weeks.
And so, as I mentioned at the beginning of this Memoir, the first position that became available was the one in Romania. Father “grabbed” it without hesitation, and arranged to have our travel documents processed on an emergency basis. At the same time, our parents started to grapple with another dilemma. They had to think about what to take along to our new destination, and what to leave behind. Eventually, practicality won over sentimentality, and they decided to leave most of our possessions in the good care of relatives. We were going to take only what we could fit in our personal luggage. After all, it was not as if we were leaving for good. A couple of years, at most, and we should be back home, reunited once more with those cherished possessions.
However, things did not work out as planned. To father’s dismay, the family passports were lost during visa processing at the Romanian Embassy and, by the time new ones were issued, the Romanian position had been given to some one else. Of course, this was really a blessing in disguise because Romania eventually became as unsafe as any other country in Europe.
The very next opening that materialized was the one in the Congo, and that was how we landed in Elisabethville, the major town in Congo’s southeastern province of Katanga. Father’s assignment was to open the second Kotva branch in the colony. The first one, in the capital city of Leopoldville, was performing beyond all expectations, and the company wanted to cash in on that success.
Our new travel documents were issued during the month of December 1938, in a passport office right in downtown Zlin, By the way, this clearly shows the clout that Bata wielded with the Czech authorities. Think of it, in order to accommodate the company, the government maintained a passport office in Zlin, a private company town.
Father spent a couple of weeks in Zlin, for final briefings and for some general information about the Congo. However, once we reached our destination, it became obvious that the personnel in the export department had absolutely no clue about that particular area of the world. For instance, when father expressed his concerns about starting a brand new Kotva office in a strange country with a foreign language, he was told that there was nothing to worry about. To start with, the retail manager in Elizabethville had already been instructed to rent a good suite of offices for Kotva, and a suitable home for the family. Second, problems related to actual business could be worked out during frequent visits to Leopoldville. All father had to do was hop on the train once he closed the office on Friday evening, get all the advice he needed during an overnight stay in Leopoldville, and be home by opening time on Monday morning. Little did they know that there was no direct train connection between Elizabethville and Leopoldville, and that the round-trip journey would have taken father several weeks to accomplish. It is a rail and river route, where trains are used only to get around the non-navigable portions of the Congo River. Most of the trip is spent on paddle-wheel boats that sail cautiously over the ever-changing navigation channels during daylight hours, and drop anchor near riverbanks the minute it gets dark. This trek stretches for some 1500 miles.
By the way, in accordance with Congolese regulations, the company had to give father a three-year contract, so he could become eligible for work and residency permits in the colony. Another part of these rules required that, at the end of the three years, employees were given six-months of paid leave in a temperate-climate region (usually the employees’ country of origin), before resuming work in the tropics. This was deemed essential for the continued good health of employees and their dependents.
The immigration rules also required that we submit to thorough physical examinations, and be immunized against various tropical diseases. All of this took place over several days in the outpatient section of Zlin’s large hospital, and so we stayed at the company’s hotel for the duration of the procedures. It was not a lavish hotel, but it was thoroughly modern and exceptionally well run. It was regularly overrun with businessmen from all over the world.
In any event, we finally left on the first leg of our long journey at the end of January, 1939. We took the train from Prague to Antwerp, by way of Brussels. I remember Uncle Arnold standing on the quay and waving goodbye as we pulled out of Prague’s railroad terminal. Little did I realize at the time that it would be another thirteen years before I would see him again, this time in the USA, at the opposite side of the Atlantic Ocean. It was when Harry and I flew from the Congo to the States, early in 1952, to visit our relatives and to see for ourselves what that famous country was all about.
It was during that trip that I became totally captivated with the States, and decided right then and there that I would return, for good, the minute I could make it happen.
Anyway, after the train emerged from Prague’s cavernous depot and we eventually tired of gaping out of the window, we stowed our luggage in the overhead rack and made ourselves comfortable for the long journey. Harry and I played a board game while our parents remained unusually quiet, or so I thought, as the train rolled toward our first stop, the German border. They were evidently sad at leaving, but they must have been relieved that we were finally getting out of harm’s way.
Some time later, the train stopped across the border, right inside German territory, the country ruled by Hitler and his Nazi hordes. And yet, I do not remember experiencing any particular bouts of foreboding at the time, not even after what I saw next. The compartment door opened abruptly and a huge man, he must have been well over six feet tall, stepped boldly inside and instantly gave that hideous Nazi hand salute. He was dressed in an impeccable uniform, complete with the ugly swastika armband on his left sleeve and a side arm at his belt. Nonetheless, he was quite civil and actually processed our travel documents with professional courtesy. When he was done, he gave another Nazi hand salute, and firmly closed the compartment
