Gérard London

* 1943

  • "My mother's first reaction when we listened to [the broadcast of the process with my father] on the radio was, 'Yes, he is your father. Yes, they are all betrayers. They betrayed us, they betrayed me. 'She believed that absolutely, from the beginning, without any problem. She stopped believing it a little when acquaintances who knew her father said to her, 'This is not right, it is not true what he is being blamed for here, because I was in the resistance in Spain, it is not true.' So, my mother began to have doubts: 'Isn't it true what was actually happening and happened there?' So, her belief that what the party decided really couldn't be otherwise was slowly beginning to decline. And so, when she was offered to meet every six months, she said yes, even though she said at the beginning that she no longer wanted to see my father. So, that unshakable faith was slowly vanishing."

  • "I first saw my father in 1953, I think it was after the deaths of Stalin and Gottwald, sometime in March. We had the right to visit every six months. It was like this - three children, a mother, a policeman who was watching. We had to speak only Czech - the mother spoke very poor Czech, but she had to speak Czech. And there was a conversation with my father, such a cold-hearted conversation. However, in the meantime, my mother learned from her Czech friends that there was something wrong with the trial. And she asked me, 'You're such a cheeky monkey, distract the cop, ask him what he's doing' - I took it completely naturally, I talked to him. And in the meantime, they made a sign to each other in some way - it came from my father, who said to my mother, 'Can you please bring me cigarette papers on your next visit?' They agreed, I didn't know anything about it. The agreement, however, was that my mother brought him papers, he probably really used them for smoking, but he worked in the mangle room and wrote a secret note on the paper in small print, folded it to the size of the paper, pressed it over the mangle to fit it beautifully , and on his next visit, my mother brought him a pack of cigarette papers again, and he took it and left the old one there. And she gradually got the whole report on the process in a year. And when she got it all, my father tells her, 'You can't stay here, you're a French citizen, kids too, you have to ask to move to France.' We moved there in October 1954 and my mother had, of course, all the secret notes with her. And when she came to France, the first thing she did was going to her brother-in-law, who was a member of the Politburo of the French Communist Party - he was a very good man - and told him: 'Now I am giving you a report on what was happening in the process. And if you don't intervene, I'll publish it."

  • "I was born in Paris under very special conditions because my parents were involved in the resistance against the Germans. In 1942, my mother led a propaganda campaign against the Germans in Paris - the so-called Rue Daguerre affair. There were the guards of the French partisans, there was a shootout and a few people, mainly Germans, were a little wounded there. So, an arrest warrant was issued for her and the whole police were looking for her. She was arrested, because someone reported on her. She was sent to a French prison and the death sentence was claimed during the court. One of the jurors rejected the sentence - and it had to be unanimous - that is, the death penalty was transformed to life imprisonment. And the reason he refused was because my mother was pregnant. She was pregnant with me, so I started my life as a prisoner because I was born in the Rue de la Roquette prison, where I spent fourteen months."

  • Full recordings
  • 1

    Paříž, 01.06.2019

    (audio)
    duration: 01:01:44
    media recorded in project The Stories of Our Neigbours
  • 2

    Praha, 07.10.2019

    (audio)
    duration: 01:58:09
    media recorded in project Stories of the 20th Century TV
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I was born in a slightly complicated situation…

Gérard London was born on April 3, 1943 in a Paris prison in a special women’s ward, where his mother was imprisoned by the Gestapo and the French police for the resistance to the occupation of France. Gérard spent the first fourteen months of his life in prison with his mother. After being deported to the Ravensbrück concentration camp, he was left alone for several weeks there, until his grandmother, his mother’s mother, came for him. He had a sister who was four years older, who was born in Paris, and a brother who was seven years younger and born in Prague. The political activity of both parents had serious consequences for the whole family and significantly affected Gérard’s childhood and adolescence. His parents were imprisoned in concentration camps during the Second World War, and his father was sentenced to life imprisonment in a trial with R. Slánský in the 1950s. The family faced persecution; Gérard was the object of a constant ridicule from his classmates. He completed the first four years of schooling in Prague, the next four years in Paris, then the eighth grade again in Prague. After graduating from the eleven grades school (today’s secondary grammar school), he started studying medicine. It is clear that all the life turbulence and hardships to which he was exposed in childhood are stored in his memories, but they also prepared him for the life in adulthood. When he talks about complications or problems, he always adds a word slightly. He graduated from two medical faculties (in Prague and Paris), where he completed his studies together with postgraduate studies in 1970. He thus stood on the threshold of his future career as a renowned nephrologist. He has received significant awards for his scientific achievements. Since 1966, he has been permanently based in Paris, where he lives with his wife, two sons and grandchildren.