“Yes, sir,” said Lubji confidently. Then he lost his nerve.
“Well?” prompted the principal, after some time had elapsed.
“We must be prepared to leave at a moment’s notice,” Lubji finally blurted out. “We have to assume that it will not be long before Hitler…”
The old man smiled up at the fifteen-year-old boy and waved a dismissive hand. “Hitler has told us a hundred times that he has no interest in occupying any other territory,” he said, as if he were correcting a minor error Lubji had made in a history exam.
“I’m sorry to have bothered you, sir,” Lubji said, realizing that however well he presented his case, he wasn’t going to persuade such an unworldly man.
But as the weeks passed, first his tutor, then his housemaster, and finally the principal, had to admit that history was being written before their eyes.
It was on a warm September evening that the principal, carrying out his rounds, began to alert the pupils that they should gather together their possessions, as they would be leaving at dawn the following day. He was not surprised to find Lubji’s room already empty.
A few minutes after midnight, a division of German tanks crossed the border and advanced unchallenged toward Ostrava. The soldiers ransacked the academy even before the breakfast bell had rung, and dragged all the students out into waiting lorries. There was only one pupil who wasn’t present to answer the final roll-call. Lubji Hoch had left the previous night. After cramming all his possessions into the little leather case, he had joined the stream of refugees heading toward the Hungarian border. He prayed that his mother had read not only the papers, but Hitler’s mind, and would somehow have escaped with the rest of the family. He had recently heard rumors about the Germans rounding up Jews and placing them in internment camps. He tried not to think of what might happen to his family if they were captured.
When Lubji slipped out of the academy gates that night he didn’t stop to watch the local people rushing from house to house searching for their relatives, while others loaded their possessions onto horse-drawn carts that would surely be overtaken by the slowest armed vehicle. This was not a night to spend fussing about personal possessions: you can’t shoot a possession, Lubji wanted to t
ell them. But no one stood still long enough to listen to the tall, powerfully built young man with long black ringlets, dressed in his academy uniform. By the time the German tanks had surrounded the academy, he had already covered several miles on the road that led south to the border.
Lubji didn’t even consider sleeping. He could already hear the roar of guns as the enemy advanced into the city from the west. On and on he strode, past those who were slowed by the burden of pushing and pulling their lives’ possessions. He overtook laden donkeys, carts that needed their wheels repaired and families with young children and aging relatives, held up by the pace of the slowest. He watched as mothers cut the locks from their sons’ hair and began to abandon anything that might identify them as Jewish. He would have stopped to remonstrate with them but didn’t want to lose any precious time. He swore that nothing would ever make him abandon his religion.
The discipline that had been instilled in him at the academy over the previous two years allowed Lubji to carry on without food or rest until daybreak. When he eventually slept, it was on the back of a cart, and then later in the front seat of a lorry. He was determined that nothing would stop his progress toward a friendly country.
Although freedom was a mere 180 kilometers away, Lubji saw the sun rise and set three times before he heard the cries from those ahead of him who had reached the sovereign state of Hungary. He came to a halt at the end of a straggling queue of would-be immigrants. Three hours later he had traveled only a few hundred yards, and the queue of people ahead of him began to settle down for the night. Anxious eyes looked back to see smoke rising high into the sky, and the sound of guns could be heard as the Germans continued their relentless advance.
Lubji waited until it was pitch dark, and then silently made his way past the sleeping families, until he could clearly see the lights of the border post ahead of him. He lay down in a ditch as inconspicuously as possible, his head resting on his little leather case. As the customs officer raised the barrier the following morning, Lubji was waiting at the front of the queue. When those behind him woke and saw the young man in his academic garb chanting a psalm under his breath, none of them considered asking him how he had got there.
The customs officer didn’t waste a lot of time searching Lubji’s little case. Once he had crossed the border, he never strayed off the road to Budapest, the only Hungarian city he had heard of. Another two days and nights of sharing food with generous families, relieved to have escaped from the wrath of the Germans, brought him to the outskirts of the capital on 23 September 1939.
Lubji couldn’t believe the sights that greeted him. Surely this must be the largest city on earth? He spent his first few hours just walking through the streets, becoming more and more intoxicated with each pace he took. He finally collapsed on the steps of a massive synagogue, and when he woke the following morning, the first thing he did was to ask for directions to the marketplace.
Lubji stood in awe as he stared at row upon row of covered stalls, stretching as far as the eye could see. Some only sold vegetables, others just fruit, while a few dealt in furniture, and one simply in pictures, some of which even had frames.
But despite the fact that he spoke their language fluently, when he offered his services to the traders their only question was, “Do you have anything to sell?” For the second time in his life, Lubji faced the problem of having nothing to barter with. He stood and watched as refugees traded priceless family heirlooms, sometimes for no more than a loaf of bread or a sack of potatoes. It quickly became clear to him that war allowed some people to amass a great fortune.
Day after day Lubji searched for work. At night he would collapse onto the pavement, hungry and exhausted, but still determined. After every trader in the market had turned him down, he was reduced to begging on street corners.
Late one afternoon, on the verge of despair, he passed an old woman in a newspaper kiosk on the corner of a quiet street, and noticed that she wore the Star of David on a thin gold chain around her neck. He gave her a smile, hoping she might take pity on him, but she ignored the filthy young immigrant and carried on with her work.
Lubji was just about to move on when a young man, only a few years older than him, strolled up to the kiosk, selected a packet of cigarettes and a box of matches, and then walked off without paying the old lady. She jumped out of the kiosk, waving her arms and shouting, “Thief! Thief!” But the young man simply shrugged his shoulders and lit one of the cigarettes. Lubji ran down the road after him and placed a hand on the man’s shoulder. When he turned round, Lubji said, “You haven’t paid for the cigarettes.”
“Get lost, you bloody Slovak,” the man said, pushing him away before continuing down the street. Lubji ran after him again and this time grabbed his arm. The man turned a second time, and without warning threw a punch at his pursuer. Lubji ducked, and the clenched fist flew over his shoulder. As the man rocked forward, Lubji landed an uppercut in his solar plexus with such force that the man staggered backward and collapsed in a heap on the ground, dropping the cigarettes and matches. Lubji had discovered something else he must have inherited from his father.
Lubji had been so surprised by his own strength that he hesitated for a moment before bending down to pick up the cigarettes and matches. He left the man clutching his stomach and ran back to the kiosk.
“Thank you,” the old woman said when he handed back her goods.
“My name is Lubji Hoch,” he told her, and bowed low.
“And mine is Mrs. Cerani,” she said.
When the old lady went home that night, Lubji slept on the pavement behind the kiosk. The following morning she was surprised to find him still there, sitting on a stack of unopened newspapers.
The moment he saw her coming down the street, he began to untie the bundles. He watched as she sorted out the papers and placed them in racks to attract the early-morning workers. During the day Mrs. Cerani started to tell Lubji about the different papers, and was amazed to find how many languages he could read. It wasn’t long before she discovered that he could also converse with any refugee who came in search of news from his own country.
The next day Lubji had all the papers set out in their racks long before Mrs. Cerani arrived. He had even sold a couple of them to early customers. By the end of the week she could often be found snoozing happily in the corner of her kiosk, needing only to offer the occasional piece of advice if Lubji was unable to answer a customer’s query.
After Mrs. Cerani locked up the kiosk on the Friday evening, she beckoned Lubji to follow her. They walked in silence for some time, before stopping at a little house about a mile from the kiosk. The old lady invited him to come inside, and ushered him through to the front room to meet her husband. Mr. Cerani was shocked when he first saw the filthy young giant, but softened a little when he learned that Lubji was a Jewish refugee from Ostrava. He invited him to join them for supper. It was the first time Lubji had sat at a table since he had left the academy.