There are certain things one doesn’t talk about. Or write about. Out of shame.
One such shameful thing occurred when any kind of help was denied to people who were trying to escape death. At that time, and this is the worst of it all, even sovereign states and superpowers refused to stretch out a helping hand. States and superpowers who, as much then as now, boast of their concern for the threatened and the persecuted.
And because those who could have helped didn’t, some people helped themselves as well as they could.
It is of such a case, and I was a part of it, that I want to speak today. The story has not been told before now.
Only a very few days after the Nazi occupation of Czechoslo.vakia, in March 1939, four enterprising young men from Bratislava arrived in Prague. In an elegant passage a few steps away from Wenceslas Square itself, they opened the Black Rose’s offices. And they were so smart and clever that it didn’t take long for the rumour to spread throughout the whole fallen, Nazi-ocupied country, that something quite unusual was going on in the small passageway with the luxury shops. Before long, the project was referred to as the Black Rose Transport.
The four from Bratislava were, in their own way, quite brilliant. They succeeded in exporting - and thereby saving - hundreds of threatened people.
They knew, as so many other, far more important people also knew perfectly well, that there was a large number of anti.fascists, democrats, opponents of German and Austrian Na.zism, who, having been forced to flee Hitler, had sought refuge in the Czech republic and that now it would not take long before it would be our own peoples’ turn to flee. Creative artists, politicians, professionals, Jews, non-Jews, democrats and others. For all of them, life itself was at stake.
That was also the case for that tiny resourceful group from Bratislava. The Nazi concentration camps and the horror of what took place in them were by then well-known facts all over the world, and still not a single democratic govern-ment in the whole world felt inclined to offer help by granting entry or transit permits, not to speak of a residence per.mit.
They all sat trapped, without a possibility of escape. And then, the four from Bratislava succeeded in obtaining exit permits, from the Gestapo itself, for no fewer than six hundred and fifty people. The Black Rose Transport was nothing short of a miracle.
I don’t know how many people applied, trying to join the transport that was to leave Prague, with an all but unknown destination. I only know that they were many, many more than there were places for.
In every family at risk, and not only in Prague, people talked of the Black Rose. In front of the offices stood daily long lines of people who had already paid an amount that was then a considerable sum; ten thousand Czech koruna. Their names were written on the departure lists, but in the lines there stood also people whose names were not on the lists; they were hoping they still could be included.
The ones who were registered showed up every single day, expecting to be told when their journey would begin. Everyone was obsessed with one thought only: To get out, in any way possible, as fast as possible, away from the reach of the Nazis. It was a question of life or death. And where was the Red Rose Transport going? The destination was Palestine, as it was called then, under Great Britain’s rule.
The British were no exception: Like all the other countries, they were neither inclined to receive the emigrants, nor to issue entry permits. Neither for their own country nor for the land they were administrating and governing.
But the seed of the future Jewish state of Israel was show.ing its first signs of life; and those who were already in the country were making an effort to bring more immigrants in. This is what the Bratislavan quartet were counting on, when they organised their transport. They figured they’d charter a ship that would, in the dead of night, unload its illegal human cargo of emigrants on some lonely Palestinian beach, far from observant British eyes. From there, they would somehow find their way into the land and after that, well, they’d worry about that when the day came.
In the instructions for the trip it said that each traveller was allowed to bring along a ten-kilogram rucksack with the most essential articles, Marseille-soap, that foams in the salty sea water, a small medicine kit, Vasano-pills against sea sickness - and canned food.
FAREWELL
At last came the long awaited announcement: On April 30, 1939, shortly before midnight, the Black Rose transport will be on its way. In its own special train, from Prague’s Masaryk Station. I too have received this information.
From the first day of the occupation, I had known that I would not stay in the Czech republic, that I simply could not breath the same air as the Nazis, who on that very first day had thrown my father in jail. I wanted to leave, no matter what or how. I was hoping that it would soon come to an armed conflict; and I simply knew that I could find a place in the army that would eventually take up the fight against them. And I wanted to join such an army. Our parting with our nearest and dearest, at Masaryk Sta.tion, proceeded with great dignity and calm. The train began to move, we waved to one another, and the German police, who had been keeping a beady eye on everything, began to vacate the platform even as the train rolled away.
Our train took us to Vienna; it was early spring. We saw an incredible fireworks, the whole sky was ablaze with differ.ent, but above all red colours and the windows of all the buildings around us shook with every deafening explosion. A kind of foretaste, an omen of the war that was rapidly getting nearer.
On foot, escorted by the police, we made our way down to the Danube docks where we were being expected by Dusan Tsar and Petar Nasledník, two rather large river barges. We cast off immediately, without any delay, and with the first lights of dawn we could read an inscription, written in large letters on the river banks of Bratislava:
“Pressburg will heim ins Reich!”, (Pressburg (the German name of the Slovak capital) wants to join the Reich). Rub.bish!
We are beginning to get acquainted with one another. We are sailing together towards the unknown, old and young, single and married, small children and older ones, Jews and non-Jews, democrats with all kinds of educations, believers and non-believers. What we have in common is that we are, all of us, fleeing from the impending doom and destruction.
None of the super-powers, not a single democratic country in the whole world, would as much as dream of offering the tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, and - as would only too soon become clear - millions of people at risk the slightest form of aid. None felt the inclination to irritate Hitler by admitting the fleeing emigrants. And the four from Bratislava, with their Black Rose transport, wanted to save not only themselves but a further six hundred and fifty human beings.
THE PORT OF SULINA
After a few days’ sailing down the river we reach a Rumanian port, Sulina. It lies on the Danube delta, where the river spills into the Black Sea, and it is a small, dirty and utterly uninspiring town. The good times are over, a thing of the past.
For several days we wait for the steamer that will take us on board and somehow deliver us somewhere on a Palestinian shore, a few days later. The ship is nowhere in sight, but we are told that it is on its way and that it will arrive as soon as sleeping facilities have been installed for us.
A few more days of waiting flow slowly past and, finally, a three-thousand tonnes old tub of a freighter sails into the harbor. It casts its anchor and no sooner has it moored than the skipper of the Frossoula, for that’s the name of the ship, stands in front of us. He looks as old as his ship, and he wears a very small and dirty captain’s hat on his head and a lonely front tooth in his otherwise toothless mouth.
We review the crew. They look even worse that the ship and the captain and every single deckhand is covered in tattoos, from their head to their toes, on every inch of skin. Yes, there too.
The time has come to board. No one feels the urge to hurry, there isn’t a reason. Slowly, with their knapsacks on their backs, they climb the gangway. Doctors, authors, symphonic orchestra and opera conductors, businessmen, lawyers, union and political party officials, Czechs and Slovaks, Germans and Austrians, and who knows who else. They all are fleeing from fascism, many looking forward to the day when they’ll be able to stand up to the fascists face to face.
THE FROSSOULA
The newly appointed sleeping accommodations on board the Frossoula look quite miserable and we have a hard time trying to figure out what they must have looked like before their so called improvement. But the rich always manage to find someone willing to be corrupted. Even under wretched conditions such as ours here. They’ve got their sleeping quarters below deck, in the cargo hull, with some thin sheets and pillows of nondescript colour. The rest of us, who haven’t exactly been sleeping on silk sheets, have gotten our bedding made up on the deck’s metal-sheet plates. We too get a small pillow, but no sheets. And there we lay on deck, side by side, right next to some galleys or closets with a slide that stick overboard. When done with one’s business, the slide is washed down with sea water that is hoisted up in a bucket that is fastened to the railing by means of a rope.
In the rear, the quarterdeck is under the rule of a homosex.ual mess steward. While in stock, he gives those who have any money left all kinds of sweets. Even bread, fresh out of the oven. Eventually, he runs out of supplies and that puts an end to his little business on the side. The Frossoula, probably bilt toward the end of the 1800s, or the beginning of the 1900s, was a Greek ship sailing under a Panamanian flag of convenience. God only knows why. It had presumably also been managed by crooks long before the beginning of our voyage and I suppose that the Greek mari.time authorities had no wish whatsoever to have to deal with her. And Panama couldn’t care less about her bad reputation.
OUT TO SEA
At last we are all aboard, the Frossoula weighs anchor, her propeller reluctantly groans once, twice, and presently we leave Sulina.
To me, the first couple of days sailing are an experience. The sea lays like swept clean, quite calm, the sun is shining, and I am nineteen years old and am given the oppor.tunity to see in real life what I’ve been learning about in school, in geography class, only such a short while ago. We leave behind the Bosporus and the Dardanelles, we make way through the Sea of Marmara and out into the Mediterranean. Yes, indeed an experience. We are neither thirsty nor hun.gry, not yet, and, broadly speaking we are doing quite all right.
The ship is still on its southward course, her prow aimed at our destination, the beaches of Palestine. The shoreline is still out of sight and all is calm, when suddenly we notice an English patrol boat coming closer.
It is equipped with a cannon and machine guns. A second and even a third such boat appear, with the same armament. They surround us. They must have known about our presence. We admire the patrol boats, suspect nothing, understand noth.ing, wave to the young chaps down there in their sailor’s uniforms.
Suddenly, out of the blue, a bang and then another bang, and in the air above our heads the shining blaze of coloured rockets. The last one, the warning signal, is red. And it means that unless we change course at once and turn back, they will shoot at us.
Our captain, skipper Onetooth, keeps his cool and quickly whispers a few short orders. Immediately we change direc.tion, the water foams all around us, and old Frossoula turns heavily, moans and groans coming from all her shaking, rusty parts.
The British patrol boats swing around and sail away, without as much as a parting salute, making for their coast. For us it is the wretched failure of our first attempt, without even having been able to see the Palestinian coast, let alone having landed illegally.
The Frossoula runs away like a whipped dog and no one on board feels like celebrating. We are however still full of hope, if we didn’t succeed today, perhaps tomorrow. We still have drinking water, only the food seems to be acting a bit like a laxative and we begin to lose weight.
TRY AND TRY AGAIN
Far from every shore, somewhere in the middle of the Medi.terranean, out of the way of war ships and military recon.naissance craft, the Frossoula alternates between moving and laying still and moving again, while skipper Onetooth pa.tiently waits for a suitable moment when he can again take his ship close to a Palestinian beach, where he hopes some.how to be finally able to get rid of his human cargo. We are to him a nuisance that keeps growing and getting worse by the hour.
We’ve now been drifting around aimlessly on the sea for two months. Seasickness has befallen practically everybody. The telegraph operator lets some of us listen to the news from the Republic for a few minutes, in exchange for a new shirt, a sweater or a pair of pants. Some of the women have sex with the tattooed sailors in exchange for food. Our drinking water and food rations have shrunk noticeably from what they were a month ago - and we still don’t know when or where we’ll be able to leave the Frossoula. Day after day we enjoy looking at the sea and the sunshine, otherwise there isn’t a thing to admire. There is no coast to look at on the hori.zon.
A change of pace aboard is brought about by a violent storm and a rough sea. The Frossoula gets thrown this way and that like a tennis ball and everything old on her - and it’s all very old - sighs, screeches and rattles. While the ship thus reels and lurches, rocking and pitching, Anka goes to sit behind the big chimney. She is agitated and she waits for one of the chaps to come over and calm her down. And there’s always someone willing to agitate Anka some more and then calm her down, satisfactorily. Afterwards, she is the most satisfied woman on board.
Night after night we sail with our lights out, hoping to make it difficult for the British to detect and pursue us. Often we don’t sail at all, with only the waves rocking us.
Many, many times we attempted to land along the Palestinian coast. And each time the English patrol boats chased us out to sea again. They were watching us, day and night. In the afternoons, all passengers had to stay crammed below deck, because an English war plane came every day to reconnoitre the Frossoula’s position and the lookout was not supposed to be able to see that there were people on board, so we had to hide. It was sheer nonsense. The English plane came, calmly made its turn above us and returned just as calmly to its military airbase to report on the Frossoula. Day in and day out.
MURDER
We are already going into the third month of this hopeless sailing round and round. Once more, in desperation, we approach the Palestinian coast. In the increasing dusk around us, we press against the railing peering at the patrol boat, as it draws nearer and nearer with all its lights and projectors glaring at us in the dark. It is already so close that we can see not only the cannon and the machine guns, but we distinguish even the faces of the English sailors. Suddenly, a red flare soars into the sky and we hear the rattling of a BREN-26 machine gun, manu-factured in England under Czecho-slovak license. The British gunner was aiming at us. His aim was good.
He killed three men, the fathers of six children, who thus lost their fathers on board of the Frossoula. We entrust their bodies to the waters of the Mediterranean.
Drinking water is all but gone and the food reserves are practically used up. The situation is hopeless. We urge the telegrapher to put out a call for help, request permission to enter a port in order to take in supplies. Everywhere they have only cold hearts, deaf ears and dry eyes. Nobody hears us, nobody will help, while the people aboard the Frossoula are struggling to stay alive. Hunger is so evident that many have stopped going to the toilet.
MERSINA
In utter desperation, the captain sets course for a Turkish port, Mersina.
We don’t know that in the meantime Mersina has been turned into a garrison town and wartime harbour. In the early dawn we cast anchor outside the entrance to the port and, as daylight breaks, we find out that on our starboard side lays a German ship, the Levante, flying the swastika astern. For this, I could just as well have stayed in Prague, I tell myself, convinced that also Turkey has been occupied by the Nazis.
Suddenly we see, to port side of the Frossoula, the familiar shape of a military patrol boat, with the cannon and the machine guns. It is of course Turkish and her officer wastes no time on diplomacy: Unless you weigh anchor and leave within the half hour, we’ll shoot you out of the harbour! is his message.
We young ones surround the anchor and make it clear to our captain that there’s no way we will allow that our ship leaves this place. We talk back and forth. But as the Turks shortly after approach the Frossoula with more patrol boats, the machine guns trained on us and apparently ready to be fired, we realise that this thing about shooting us out of the harbour is serious. Deadly serious.
We capitulate, the anchor scrapes and screeches, and the Frossoula sails out again toward an unknown destiny, still without water, without medicines and without provisions. ARAB HELP
Time and again, the ship’s telegraph has been sending our cry of distress addressed to the League of Nations in Geneva. We are simply forced to enter port someplace, no matter where, except Germany. We are in dire need of drinking water, food, medicines. Our desperate calls for help reach wireless receivers in all European states and in the rest of the world.
Our situation is worse than desperate. On top of everything else on board, hungry rats are coming out of their hiding places, more and more of them, as time goes by. We have a seriously ill woman on board.
We decide therefore to go into the Syrian port of Tripolis. They try to chase us out again but the gravely sick patient turns out to be our salvation. She has to be taken to hospital. We dock. And we wait to see what will happen.
We are in for a totally unexpected surprise. Arab women from the Red Crescent, in other words the equivalent of our Red Cross, saw to it that we immediately had brought on board fruit, food, medicines and drinking water. These Arab women showed that they had better hearts than all the politicians, the responsible port authorities and heads of government, who opted to remain blind and deaf to our plight and our calls of distress. They all still wanted to stay on good terms with Hitler.
But we have to leave Tripolis again. We have now been on our voyage for over four long months and our hopes have reached level zero. The bottom. The British are following the Frossoula’s movements step by step. We have no chance of landing in Palestine - or any other place, for that matter.
LAST TRY
I don’t know how our captain heard of the Tiger Hill, an.other Greek freighter who, just like our Frossoula, sailed under Panamanian convenience flag. She too was carrying a cargo of emigrants but she had only been under way for a few days and had not yet been exposed as a smuggler of refugees. Over the radio, the two captains make a deal and they plan a new adventure.
Somewhere in the middle of the Mediterranean the Tiger Hill is waiting for us and the Frossoula makes for it with the greatest speed her old machinery is capable of delivering. We have spent more than four months on the sea, by the time we leave the Frossoula in her lifeboats and, in high waters, climb the rope ladders to board the Tiger Hill. We all change ship, we are all here - except for the three men who were shot and the woman who stayed in the hospital in Tripolis.
While the Frossoula sails away, we wave for the last time our good byes to the ship and maybe also to the rats who stayed on board.
It took the Tiger Hill two days to reach the Palestinian coast. We climb onto the lifeboats and steer toward the beach, the first beach we can set foot on in ages. The English caught us, to the last man, in no time at all. And when I woke up in the morning in the English refugee camp in the desert near Sarafand and drank my first cup of tea and ate the first piece of dry bread I was offered, the second World War broke out.
They kept us in their concentration camp for about a fortnight and then they let us go free. A few days later, many of us from the Frossoula were again sailing the waves of the Mediterranean. On another ship and this time quite legally, to enlist in the Czechoslovak foreign legion.
With us on board were the four from Bratislava, the ones who in March 1939 organised the Black Rose Transport to the Promised Land.
Karel Hájek died on 10. June 2001 at the age of 81.