“Then he ended up in Buchenwald, which is in Germany again. Before that, he had been transferred from Auschwitz. I don’t know exactly how that happened. But I do know that when the Russians were approaching Auschwitz, it was called a ‘death transport’ back then. He said there were about 1,200 of them. They didn’t want the Russians to find them there. He said only about 80 of them made it. Everyone else died. Dad was young back then—he was 18—and he was apparently in good shape; I probably got that from him. Looking back, I realized that the Jews who survived the concentration camp often lived to a ripe old age. And I always found that strange—after everything they’d been through. Then I told myself that probably only those in the best physical condition survived. Under normal circumstances, a person probably couldn’t have survived that. He weighed about 25 kilos, 30 at most. In fact, they had to take him off the transport. He was already on his way—it was after the war—home, so to speak. But by the time he reached Chomutov, he was in such bad shape that they took him off the transport, and he ended up in the hospital. He was there for a few months until they got him back on his feet a bit. And in the meantime, through the Red Cross, he found out that he actually had nowhere to return to—that there were no Jews left in Gostynin and that no one from his family was left either.”
“But it wasn’t until college that I really discovered what math was all about. I used to think that what people were learning was just arithmetic—that it wasn’t real math at all. And I started to really enjoy it; it struck me as an amazing science, an amazing world within math. And since I saw that you don’t learn anything at the student´s residence—that it was just parties and stuff like that—I signed up for the academic library, and every day, really every day, I’d study there until, say, ten at night, until nine, and then I’d go for a beer and so on. So I really enjoyed it. I really, really enjoyed math. I just realized that it was a completely different world—an amazing one. And I had great teachers. But I couldn’t even bring myself to read Marxism. It was just a bunch of nonsense, gibberish—I think it was about various people, who was this, who was that, who was the other… Dialectical materialism and stuff like that. I was also goiung to get a diploma with honours—I was studying hard. So I had just one “C” in Marxism, and because of that they didn’t give me the red diploma, even though they’d usually forgive two “Cs,” yeah. But it was Marxism, of all things. And I couldn’t even read it, but I told myself, “Damn it, I have to at least read it somehow so I can take the exam.” My wife remembers that I used to play Zeppelin records—that was the band Led Zeppelin—and I’d sing along to the book because I couldn’t even read it… But anyway, he took my student card, looked it over, and said, “So I see, analysis—A, topology—A… You don’t take this as a science, do you?” I said, “Yeah, yeah, I take it as a science.” – “Well, come back next time.” So that was the only real tragedy. Otherwise, it was amazing. I just want to say one more thing about college—that’s pretty much enough. So I was doing okay there; I was there right when things were still going well… Although they did expel a classmate from the year below me who just said something when Husák arrived—someone ratted him out, and they kicked him out of school… So it wasn’t exactly a walk in the park, but we stuck together. So nobody ratted anyone out—we didn’t have any snitches there.”
“So they came and said everything had been arranged. And Dad kept saying, ‘Don’t talk about this to anyone,’ because emigration wasn’t allowed. It wasn’t that simple. We were able to leave like that, but even back in ’68—as I understand it—people were travelling quite a bit; students, for example, were travelling. So I had to have a visa and things like that in my passport. So in ’69… and again, so as not to draw too much attention, I only had a regular suitcase, not much stuff. I knew it had been arranged that Dad would try to work something out and that my brother and I would get there somehow, too. Since restrictions were easing, we thought maybe it would work out. You understand? Back then. Well, in ’69 at the airport, they checked my suitcase, and everything seemed fine. And back then—there weren’t those little booths yet; they were just boxes—there were always some of those, what I call, “grey plague” types… And they took me right from there; I went into some room, and they immediately started asking: where and what. And I said I had an aunt there—that’s how I denied it… Well, anyway, they just gave me my suitcase and I went home. So it was simple. So I didn’t get there.”
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Pynches Narwa was born on 27 January 1952, in Chomutov to Ecaterina, later Kateřina Narwová (née Sasová), and Pynches Narwa Sr. His father was from Gostynin, Poland; during the war, he was imprisoned in the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps and survived a death transport, from which he was unloaded in Chomutov after liberation. After the war, his mother and her family came from the Romanian Banat region to Czechoslovakia as part of a repatriation program. Pynches Narwa graduated from the Secondary Technical School of Electrical Engineering in Chomutov and, after graduating in 1971, he enrolled at the University of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering in Pilsen, where he studied cybernetics. From childhood, he devoted himself to music, first the violin, and later the guitar, bass, and piano. In the late 1960s, he played at the Švermák club in Chomutov. His mother died in 1968. Around 1969, his father attempted to arrange for him to leave legally for France, but he was turned back at the Prague airport on suspicion of attempting to emigrate. In the 1970s, he performed with his brother Petr in the Jazz Section. At home, they hid materials from the Jazz Section as well as samizdat publications. After completing his military service, he joined Textilana in Liberec, where he worked in the computing center and gradually worked his way up to head of mathematical analytics. After 1989, he began running his own business while still employed at Textilana. He developed software for inventory management, item deduction, and document printing. He founded his own company around 1993 and gradually employed about twenty-five people. He collaborated with American and Belgian partners. His brother, Petr Narwa (1955–2009), became involved in politics after 1989—he was one of the founders of the Civic Forum in Rychnov nad Kněžnou and later was active in the Civic Democratic Party (ODS), Lions Clubs International, and the Jewish community. In 2026, Pynches Narwa lived with his family in Liberec.
