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2. Foreshadowing the Future

17 2 Foreshadowing the Future When I was twenty, in the summer of 1934, after my first year of medical school in Prague, my close friend from junior high school, Walter Bajkovsky, and I decided to take a vacation. We hitchhiked towards the Italian Alps using all modes of transportation, singly and together, but we tried to meet each evening. Just after spending the night together in Budweis, where Czech Budweiser beer originated, we were waiting on the highway to the Austrian border for someone to give us a lift when a large and luxurious Mercedes convertible stopped. A tall athletic man with a North-German accent offered us a ride but in return asked us each to carry a bundle of bank notes, explaining that he was only allowed to take a limited amount of money across the border. We were obliging, assuming that he was a German refugee who had succeeded in passing the border into Czechoslovakia and was on his way to another country. After we reached the first town on the Austrian side of the border, he asked us to leave, took his money back and, laughing boastfully, said: “You know what I have in my trunk? It is full of high-powered explosives.” Two days later when we reached Innsbruck we heard that the Austrian Chancellor, Dollfuss, had been assassinated by a group of Nazis and that more violence was expected. Bombing, killing and provoking of other political groups had kindled political unrest in Austria. Our unnamed host, who had taken us over the border, was obviously one of Hitler’s emissaries on his way to Austria, the country Germany planned to occupy next. We hiked up the Brenner Pass trying for a ride. The atmosphere was tense; we were ignored. An Austrian letter carrier who mistook our waving arms for provocative Hitler salutes came at us with his fist clenched screaming, “Get out of our country!”When we reached the Italian border, we were surprised to find large units of the Italian army camped in full 18 Unfree Associations alert. We were ordered into a tent where we were interrogated by the Italian military. The intelligence officer wanted to know anything we might have seen of German military movements either towards or inside Austria. We understood later why we had nothing to tell them when we learned from the German newspaper that was published in Prague, the PragerTagblatt. Mussolini was ready to confront Hitler should he, against all his declarations, march into Austria.The German government got the message; it continued to undermine the political situation in Austria, but postponed any occupation. Our personal adventure was exciting for us as students on vacation and provided a more personal view of what was happening in middle Europe. It added a reality to reading the papers and listening to the news. When we returned, we continued to study in coffeehouses and libraries , particularly in winter, when our living quarters were cold and unfriendly. We would discuss the political situation whenever we could find the time. The reactionary press in many countries was favorable to Hitler’swild,fanaticandgrandiosespeeches,punctuatedwithpromisesof peace and declarations of non-aggression.The enormous military preparations in Germany, along with the brainwashing of its population, were never mentioned. We could not ignore it since the expulsion of Jewish studentsfromtheuniversitiesofGermanybroughtrefugeestoourmedical school in Prague. These newcomers gave us firsthand descriptions of the oppression and harassment of Jewish and liberal students on the other side of the border. Those who succeeded in escaping, often with nothing but a briefcase or handbag, were being supported by relief organizations in neighboring countries. Prague became a refuge for many important scientists, artists and writers. Their presence enriched the cultural life of the city and provided us an antidote to the steady poisonous intrusion of Nazi propaganda. After World War I, the economic situation in Czechoslovakia had been better than in neighboring Germany or in the splinter state of Austria. The German population in our new republic, tired from war, was content. Yet they were limited in their loyalty to a national identity and language to which they did not belong. The non-Slavic people had an ever-present undertone of bitterness. Anti-Semitism was present in each culture and was mostly expressed by exclusion from certain clubs and organizations, as well as by making some positions inaccessible to 19 Jews. The new Czech democracy was hampered by the...