prof. MUDr., DrSc. Karel Raška

“Our relationship - it was also an interesting thing. There was a gap between the old and the new emigrants. Many of them [emigrants after 1948] perceived us [emigrants after 1968] in a peculiar way. Because when we came there, we had already been trained, we had passed the secondary school leaving exam. So we got jobs. However, when they left, they mostly had not finished the studies. Their beginnings had been much worse. It was much easier for us.”

“Just at the end of the war, the Germans used prisoners from the Little Fortress in Terezín to dig trenches against the proceeding Red Army that was already in Germany at that time. There was an outbreak of an unknown disease between prisoners. They were transported to some hospitals where they did not know what illness it was and their blood was sent for examination to my father to The National Institute of Health. My father found out using serological examination that it was typhus fever. And after a meeting with some people from the illegal Czech national committee he decided that he would go to Terezín. And indeed, he and the regional doctor from Roudnice Mr. Slach arrived at the gate of the Small Fortress on 2 May 1945 and demanded to enter. They were forbidden the entrance at first. My father managed to get to the Small Fortress after negotiations with the SS man. He met there with professor Syllaba who was imprisoned there. He did not know what disease it was because typhus fever did not occur in Czechoslovakia after WWI. He got to the casemates and he saw the horror there. He of course knew what it was. He asked professor Syllaba to get him blood from twenty prisoners. He came there the following there, Syllaba had the sera and he examined the sera. The leader of the camp, Jöckel appeared there at that time and yelled at them. My father did the Weil–Felix test and nineteen sera tested positive.”