Frantisek Frischmann

Frantisek Frischmann

This is my brother Frantisek Frischmann in 1940, as a graduate of the Vysoke Myto high school.

I had a brother, Frantisek, a year older than me, who was more capable, smarter, better at school and was tall and strong, a real looker.

He attracted girls from at least twenty kilometers around. There wasn't a one that he missed, and there definitely weren't any indications of anti-Semitism there.

My brother Frantisek finished eighth grade and in 1940 graduated, in Vysoke Myto.

Our uncle, Josef Pfeifer, a wealthy doctor from Vysocany, wanted to pay my brother's way to the Swiss border. He even found a guide that for a lot of money promised to lead him there.

From Switzerland he was then supposed to go to some addresses in France. God only knows how it would have ended up. It was all arranged, and our family knew about it, but said:

‘In any case he has to finish his studies and graduate.’ It was a month before my brother's graduation, so it had to be delayed by a month. But during this time the Germans occupied Paris.

And it was Paris where my brother was supposed to be going. If he would have escaped, God knows how he would have ended up. One doesn't know, it could have worked out, but he could also have been killed in the army.

In any case I also don't know how we would have ended up, in those days families of escapees ended badly. The family was usually shot.

So in the end my brother didn't escape, he had to go to the concentration camp and didn't survive.

But it's a testament, in this case a sad one, to the value that was placed on education.

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