Casgliadau Arlein
Amgueddfa Cymru
Chwilio Uwch
Recordiad sain / Audio recording: Ruth Valek
Oral history recording with Ruth Valek collected as part of The Hineni Project, an insight into the life and stories of a Jewish community in all its diversity. Hineni was a collaborative project between Cardiff Reform Synagogue and Butetown History & Arts Centre.
I was born in Brno, which is the capital of Moravia. Brno was wonderful, surrounded by forests. My father had a leather-goods business. He worked very hard and it was a very comfortable Jewish existence. We learned piano, we played tennis, we skated; those were things you gave to your Jewish children. There were loads of theatres, pictures, everything we went to see. And, of course, it was in two languages; we had a wonderful German theatre and a Czech theatre, opera – whatever you wanted. We had a very good life. I mean, you always had to let them know that you were Jewish but you were left to be totally free and do what you want. We had a very good education because in those schools, you really had to learn. I had Czech and German, and in school we learned Latin and French. My sister and I came here at the end of 1938 to a boarding school in Weybridge, near London, which my parents had been able to arrange before we left. And in most subjects we were better than the English girls, except when it came to empires. We didn’t know anything about India and things like that. But we knew where India was, whereas they didn’t know where Czechoslovakia was. So we had to learn English very swiftly. My parents left on the last train from Prague in March 1939. My uncle had a factory in Glasgow, and they worked together, which enabled my father to be earning within a very short time. We came out from the school after a year and a half and went to Glasgow and stayed with them during the war. I went back to Prague in 1945. My husband Charles had to go back; he was an officer in the Czech Air Force. Until 1947 I worked for the Hebrew Immigrants Society, putting refugees in touch with their relatives in America. The Russians were beginning to come and it was going to be really hard to get back to England. I could have got back but I don’t know whether Charles would have been able to come back. If he hadn’t he would have been in dire trouble because the Russians locked up everybody who had served. King George VI had an edict and said whoever had sworn allegiance to him – which they did in the air force – can come back. Charles got a job with a friend who had a very well-going factory in Treforest making watch straps, so that is how we came to Cardiff. President Havel was the first to invite the heroes, from Britain and from all over the world, who had helped to free Czechoslovakia. We started going back in 1990 to Prague and it was wonderful, especially in 1990. We went back several times but Charles went back every year. There were young people all the time taking photographs and he used to say, “My hands were aching from young people just wanting me to sign.” The medals and the adulation and everything started about 1990 and went right on to his death.