Turning point #1, 1949: Arrival in the United States

            My father gave me strict instructions upon our arrival in the United States as refugees: to forget everything that had happened to me on the other side of the Atlantic and to concentrate all my efforts on becoming a “100% American”.

Turning point #2, 1988: My father’s death

Papa had been battling heart disease for many years, a result of having contracted malaria while fighting in North Africa during World War II. In 1988, heart valve replacement and cutting away a portion of the heart muscle were considered major open-heart surgeries, with only two surgeons considered experts at performing it. One of them, Denton Cooley, operated on Papa in Houston in January. Tragically, Papa did not survive the operation.

Turning point #3, 2011: Publication of my first memoir

            In 2008, I decided to write a memoir in order to tell the world of my parents’ bravery as they fought against, first the Nazis and then the Communists. I was determined to tell the story of their incredible courage and determination as they began a new life in America, starting from nothing as they pursued—and eventually achieved—the proverbial American Dream.

Turning points #1 and #2 were events out of my control. The third was based on my own decision. Yet, all three would be closely related in a pattern that greatly affected my life.

Turning point #1: Stepping onto US soil as we disembarked in New York harbor was one of the most important turning points of my life. Earlier that day, my father brought me onto the deck of the refugee ship, General M. B. Stewart, and pointed toward a beautiful lady rising out of the mist. “That’s the Statue of Liberty,” he told me. “Remember this moment for the rest of your life. That lady is a symbol of everything your mother and I want for you in America—happiness and freedom to be whatever you want to be.” Then, as the New York skyline began to disappear into the morning fog, he gave me instructions that would be constitute my mantra for the foreseeable future. “Do you remember how I taught you to swim after the war?” he asked me. “We waded into the river and then I threw you into the middle. You had two choices: sink and drown or figure out how to swim back to me. You learned fast and you were brave. Life in America is going to be a lot like that. You’re going to be thrown into the river and will have to swim in order to survive. I want you to forget everything that happened to you on the other side of the Atlantic and to become a 100% American.” From that day, my parents made it clear to me that we were not going to discuss memories of Europe. They did everything possible to convince me that the only things that mattered were being alive, being together, and resuming the lives we once had, but now in a different country. If we were to have a future, we would have no history. They were determined that I must become totally assimilated in America and that I must do it without carrying any baggage from our difficult past.

 

Turning point #2: My father’s passing brought about another major turning point in my life. While sitting in the front row at Papa’s memorial service with my family, a startling truth struck me with the impact of a lightning bolt. I had never before dealt with death and had not attended the funeral of anyone in my family. Other than my maternal great-grandmother Louisa, who passed away when I was a baby, not a single person in the Heller or Neumann family who had lived during my lifetime, had died a natural death. Every single one—at least twenty-five of them–had been murdered by the Nazis in some far-off place. Rather than being honored at the ends of their lives, their bodies had been thrown into ovens or mass-burial holes in the ground. I closed my eyes and saw the faces of those who had been closest to me: Děda – my grandfather Artur; Strejda – my great-uncle Ota; and Dědeček – my best friend and great-grandfather Gustav. I could sense their presence in the stark, cold chapel, and a feeling of guilt came over me because their departures from this world had been so undignified. In a flash, years of denial melted away. In the months that followed, in the middle of a business meeting or sitting behind the wheel of my car, I would recall the time I ventured outside the farm wearing the Star of David, only to be stoned by kids who had once been my friends. On television, I would see a film about the Holocaust, and I would think about the grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins I no longer had. The incidents came to me as pieces of the puzzle of a proud family history, one that I would no longer deny.

 

Turning point #3: Following the Velvet Revolution in 1989, Americans seemed to take a special interest in the small, far-off country of Czechoslovakia. I responded to frequent inquiries of friends, acquaintances, and various organizations with stories and speeches about my youth: anecdotes about life during the Second World War, our liberation from Nazi oppression, the Communist take-over, our escape, and life in refugee camps. I was told: “you must write a book” several hundred times. I dismissed the idea. After all, who would be interested? It took several years to change my mind, mainly from reading that millions of people knew nothing about the war and the Holocaust and worse, about people—many of them know-nothing anti-Semites, but also a few who were articulate and educated—denying the existence of the Holocaust. With such denial and ignorance rising just as the Holocaust generation was disappearing, I knew that I had to speak out, to bear witness, to help in setting the record straight. When I looked into the faces of my grandchildren, I knew that I must record the story of the Heller/Neumann family and how it was affected by the upheavals of twentieth-century’s greatest tragedy. After all, in a few more years, there would be no one left to provide personal testimony.