“In 1945, 1946, 1947, there was a certain sense of optimism prevailing in Prague. We hoped that the Russians would let us live. In 1946, some goods were beginning to be available and we could work. But the Russians restricted us very much and most of the country’s production was sent to the Soviet Union. This was slowing down the economy tremendously. Well, I can say that the first two or three years weren’t that bad. We had a fairly pleasant life with my wife. But by the beginning of 1948, the Communist tendencies were growing stronger and stronger. They closed down my wholesale business and I could only keep my store. By then, we were left with only a small amount of goods we could sell at restricted prices. So there was no way you could really profit under these circumstances. Finally, in August or September 1948, the Bratrství, which was a cooperative, offered me to take over my shop. The only other alternative was outright nationalization so I accepted their offer. So they got hold of my store and even promised me to employ me there but I had already made up my mind to go emigrate. That wasn’t easy at all but luckily – due to some connections I had – I was able to get a visa for myself, my wife, my son and my mother in law. We left in December 1948 to London.”
“I don’t have much combat experience since I was a driver attached to the headquarters. I rarely got to see combat operations. However, we had certain complications that I had talked about before. Our units were attacking the Germans mostly on the roads that were within reach of the German artillery. They always eliminated the first tank or two and the rest of the column was stuck and had to retreat. Our company suffered the biggest losses while disarming land mines. It often happened that the Germans set their land mines during the night very close to our base or even directly under our tanks. When the tank crews discovered the land mines they called the sappers to defuse them. We had a certain standard method for dismantling the landmines but the Germans would every now and then change the settings of the explosion trigger and a lot of my friends got killed while they were trying to render such a land mine harmless. On the other hand, we benefited from the huge stretches of irrigated land with human settlements that had been hastily abandoned by the former inhabitants. We often found in the houses food lying on the tables or maybe a hen or a pig. This greatly improved our diet and as we had excellent cooks, I really can’t complain about the food we had there. It was mostly very good. Maybe it was also due to the fact that we ate together with the officers – there was just one cuisine.”
Interviewer: “How did you actually get to Britain? Pavel Vais: “On a train. That was still at a time when there were no airlines flying between Britain and mainland Europe. There was a train going from Prague directly to Hoek van Holland. You usually had to go through Holland. And then from Hoek van Holland on a ship to, I think it was Harwich, a port on the south-east coast of England, and from there on a train to London.” Interviewer: “Did you know anybody in England by then?” Pavel Vais: “Yeah, I had three friends there. I stayed with them till the mid-1940s. We were four young emigrants. In the beginning, it was very hard to make it through. We were struggling since it was illegal for immigrants to work in England. So we had to live on very little. We had a job, but of course my first job wasn’t quite legal. But after one year, the law was changed and I was able to get a regular job there. In England, I became a tailor.”
Interviewer: “What was the general spirit in the unit like at that time?” Pavel Vais: “It was generally very good, very friendly. A high proportion of our unit was made up of Jews because a large part of the emigrants from Czechoslovakia were Jewish. Even officers and reserve officers in the corps often were Jewish. So there was not a hint of Anti-Semitism at any time in the unit. There were also a couple of men who originated in the former Sudetenland. They were Germans and often they spoke German as their Czech was rather poor. However, we didn’t have a problem with them. Anyway, they were mostly Communists who had fought as volunteers in Spain against Franco and then fled to France, where they were initially held in concentration camps but after September 1939, they were incorporated into the Czechoslovak army corps in France which was then transferred to Britain. Of course, there were many Slovaks as well in our company. Many of them had been living in France even before the war and after the outbreak of hostilities they had to join the corps in Agde. But there were no racial or religious complications whatsoever. At least I can’t think of any.”
“I have one funny story for you. I was driving a pick-up truck with a speed limitation. It had a screw on the carburetor that limited its speed to 50 miles an hour. That’s about 80 kilometers per hour. When you reached that speed, the gas intake was closed and the car didn’t go any faster. I didn’t like this, of course, and neither did the others. When we were in France where the control was more lax we simply removed the screw and the car suddenly went 120 km/h instead of 80. Once, the car was borrowed by my superior, a Sergeant, who went on a trip in it. He liked the car as it was going much faster than the others but, eventually, the engine got jammed and it took quite an effort to repair it.”
Pavel Vais was born on July 20, 1921, into a Jewish family in Prague. A year before his graduation at grammar school, he left for Great Britain where he made a living working at various jobs. Also, for a short while, he was living on the dole. Later, he had an apprenticeship as a tailor. Eventually, he joined the Czechoslovak army corps that was being created. He was trained as a combat engineer and served in Dunkirk as a driver from 1944 until the end of the war. After the war, he was demobilized and found out that his entire family had been murdered in a concentration camp. Back in Prague, he was given back his father’s store and he ran it until 1948. After he was forced to enter the Brotherhood Cooperative (Bratrstvo) in February 1948, he decided to leave with his wife, mother in law and son to go to Argentina. Mr. Pavel Vais died on October the 17th, 2014
