All There Is: Book 1 — Homeland

By Rita Willsher

'All There Is' presents, in four volumes, an adventurous life lived over three continents with political and personal intrigues worthy of any spy thriller. As a child, Rita Willsher, was ripped from her Czechoslovak homeland, robbed of her identity and coerced during her young adult years to a life of pretence in Israel, one of the most dangerous countries in the world. Unable to return and make a home in either country, Rita continued her travels through Europe to the other side of the world, seeking safety and freedom. As a twenty-three-year-old she arrived alone in yet another strange country, with different customs, culture and language. She started her life from the beginning once more, without means or support. This time however the country welcomed her with open arms and provided her not only with material support but also with the emotional and intellectual sustenance she craved. Rita made Australia her permanent home, where she also met her soul mate and her best friend.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rita Willsher
• Release date: Jan 26, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005348960

Rita Willsher

I was born in Czechoslovakia, where I spent my first 10 years. Due to dramatic circumstances that changed my life, I subsequently moved to Israel, living there till the age of 21 when I left for Europe only to abandon it two years later to migrate to Australia, where I am happily living today. My hobbies are reading, cooking, and working in stained glass. When not busy doing maintenance around my house, I enjoy writing. I am retired, a widow, and live on the NSW Central Coast.

Book preview

All There Is — Homeland

Book 1

by

Rita G. Willsher

Published by Stringybark Publishing

PO Box 464, Hall, ACT 2618, Australia

http://www.stringybarkpublishing.com.au

Smashwords Edition

Copyright: Rita Willsher, 2022

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the editor, judges and the authors of these stories.

Is that all there is, is that all there is?

If that's all there is, my friends, then let's keep dancing

Let's break out the booze and have a ball

If that's all there is.

From: Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller Is That All There Is? Sung by Peggy Lee

To my family and many friends who over the years urged me

to put my life’s story in writing.

I would like to thank my wonderful husband Trevor for his patience with me,

and all my friends and family for being part of this story.

I am indebted to Jan Royal for checking my spelling and suggesting various corrections, but any errors, omissions and possible inaccuracies are entirely my own.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter One

Where is my home, where is my homeland?

Czech National Anthem

Imagine, she could have been killed! Our daughter’s head could have been split in half, like a melon! With those words, tinged with hysteria and shaking with indignation mixed with real fear, her normally fair-skinned face glistening, displaying a fine red cobweb of vessels threatening to burst, my mother greeted my father as he opened the door.

He was not given time to take off his coat in the dark and narrow hallway, but he questioningly looked at me, as I rushed to hug him. I always listened to the noise that the large house key made when opening the heavy and tall oak door to the apartment, and made sure I was there when he walked in. The relief on his face to see me unharmed and well, confirmed that the disaster announced by mother was after all not as serious as initially presented.

I was almost four years old and we had only days ago moved from our crowded one room apartment on the fourth floor to the first floor in the same building. Our new home was an old fashioned one-bedroom apartment in a building built in the eighteenth century, complete with a Renaissance façade and rented from father's friend who left for America.

The year was 1949; the address was Panská 12, Brno. It was just around the corner from the central town square dedicated to freedom, and appropriately called ‘Freedom Square.’ Brno was the second largest city in the country, dating back to prehistoric times, and settled to its current permanent position about 1000AD.

The country was post-WWII Czechoslovakia, some thirty-two years older than I, and carved out of the Austro-Hungarian Empire as an independent democratic republic in 1918. It united in one country the Slavonic ethnic regions of Bohemia in the east, Moravia, the country’s bread basket in the centre and Slovakia in the east.

It was also the year the population census took place. It would show that we had very little income, owned no property or a car, and I had no fraternal grandparents left alive. My father’s religion was Jewish, my mother was a Roman Catholic and I was christened Rita Gloria. I was named after Rita Hayworth, a Hollywood movie star and siren, and someone whom my father greatly admired from afar.

Robert George Velecký, and Maria Smutná

Alas, my middle name was not crafted after a movie star or anyone famous or even infamous. The explanation was far more prosaic. My father, as all fathers wished before him, was to have someone who would carry on the family name, including the required initials in their name, and since it required starting with G, it was decided on Gloria. As my father’s names were Robert George, the correct procedure was put into place. There was however a small problem with the family name, but I digress, and since the explanation is far too involved and rather complicated, I will return to it later.

My mother’s name was Marie, as many other girls named after the saint, with no middle name. The country was deeply Catholic, and many children were still named according to names of saints in the annual religious calendar.

The cause of my mother’s distress was our upstairs neighbours, who just moved into our previous apartment. It was a very small apartment, with an equally tiny balcony just above ours. The year of 1949 saw a very cold and late spring, and in early April there was still snow in the mountains. The weather was also cold in the inner city, and we all had to heat our apartments ourselves, as the ancient central heating in the apartments did not work. The supply of coal for the ordinary folk was hijacked by the newly installed Communist government the previous year, and it was available only at the beginning of each winter.

Each family was assigned a fixed amount for the winter, and should the winter last longer or the supply be insufficient, wood would be the only other means to keep warm. One could buy wood from the country folk that used to come and sell their products in the cities, as Czechoslovakia was the proud owner of magnificent forests which were regularly thinned and maintained by foresters. Excess old timber was then sold by the government or regularly illegally spirited away by fearless hardy country souls for whom economic survival outshone even the most fervent socialistic vision.

But timber had to be cut into smaller and easier manageable chunks before it could be consumed by the myriads of pot-bellied stoves and ovens and that had to be done by the home owner. Apparently our upstairs neighbours had tried to split the wood for their wood stove in the only place available to them, on their tiny balcony.

Unfortunately, the axe head was not fastened securely to the handle and it flew off and landed directly onto our larger balcony below, then bounced off the tiled surface and continued to fly past our clothesline at one end of the balcony to disappear in the yard below.

I wondered whether it frightened the rats that lived in the yard, or may have even hit one of them. Sometimes I used lean over the ledge rail of our balcony and watch them scurrying from one end of the yard to the other, large black city rats with long tails and I speculated where they slept overnight.

I was never allowed onto the balcony when it was cold, sometimes not even when it was quite warm, because mother worried in case I caught a cold. She often worried about such things. I remember father bringing home a large and thick book with drawings I did not understand and telling mother she was a hypochondriac. I did not understand that word either and I asked for an explanation. It is nothing you should concerns yourself with, said my father, and I complied.

On this particular occasion there was absolutely no danger of me getting hurt, as father very diplomatically pointed out to my mother but he had to admit that the possibility of harm was always there. Imagination was always more colourful than reality and my mother had the misfortune to always image the worst possible outcome, an eternal pessimist foil to my father’s consistent and optimistic outlook.

Father was instructed by my now slowly calming mother to promptly: Go straight upstairs, and talk to those people, and tell them that they could have murdered my only child!

My father, ever so patient, even when tired from walking all the way home from work, did as he was bidden. He found out that ‘those people upstairs’ were a family called Gross, and they also had a daughter, called Eva, only a year older than myself. They also revealed that they were Jewish, and that they were in transit on the way to Australia. Leo Freund, a Jewish friend of my father, who was the previous owner of the apartment block and currently lived in America, arranged through some old contacts a short-term rental for them in the building.

We are not staying here any longer than we have to, even the lease of the apartment is uncertain. Our leaving permission papers had just come through and we are now waiting for a booking on a ship. It will not be long now, they said, believing it with all their might. It was not safe to speak openly like that to people one has just met, but the fates of millions of the same religion made them brothers in suffering.

It was true, the private ownership of real estate was indeed not certain or private anymore. In 1945 the government, under influence from the USSR and acting on a decree from the Czechoslovak president Edvard Beneš transferred the ownership of private enterprises into the ownership of the state. It happened in two main phases. In the first phase all private ownership of coal mines, banks, insurance companies, all main industries employing more than five hundred people and specially chosen industries with more than one hundred and fifty employees, especially in the food industries were nationalised, and their assets transferred to the control of the state. A total of 3000 various private companies, which produced about seventy five percent of total production became state companies. These included metallurgy, weapon production, energy production, majority of chemical production, and the majority of the consumer industry.

The second phase occurred after the overthrow of the Czechoslovak National Socialist government by the communist party on 28 April 1948. In that phase, the laws, sanctioned by the Czechoslovak National Constitutive Committee declared that nationalisation would proceed for businesses with more than fifty employees, wholesale food merchants, export and import businesses, and the building industry.

On 5 May 1948 the Czechoslovak National Constitutive Committee voted and passed a further law nationalising the graphic art industry, all travel agencies, convalescent homes and spa resorts, health institutes and hospitals. The remaining private sector was largely nationalised by 1950 and included not only small tradesmen but also the majority of small private retails stores.

The facts however were that the government, at this stage, could not throw somebody in possession of a formerly signed legal lease contract onto the street, just because they did not support the current government. As long as the tenants paid the rent on time, their flat was safe. For now! The conversation continued for some time, as the men compared their experiences during the war and their existence since they returned to their homeland.

Meanwhile mother paced up and down on the dark tiled floor of our narrow and tiny white kitchen, the upper part of which was painted with a delicate blue fleur-de-lis pattern. Apparently, the blue colour was disliked by house flies and was supposed to repel them from food preparation areas, but our huge, fat and noisy houseflies must have been especially dumb not to know this rule. One way of reducing their population was an old fashioned fly-paper, but the supply of this innovation was sporadic and off-putting, to say the least.

If one was sufficiently observant, one could also see a minute misalignment of the pattern on the wall, directly over the small white dinner table which was facing the wall. Sitting on any one of the three white wooden chairs surrounding the table, I could always instantly find the small gap in the pattern, the fleur-de-lis seemingly floating in space, unsupported by its comrades.

The whole kitchen was freshly repainted, and the pattern was magically produced with a patterned roller by my favourite and only grandfather (who was a house painter), on his last visit to our apartment. I always watched and marvelled at his skill to match the pattern perfectly, so this one imperfection was my very own secret.

My grandfather Jan and me

The kitchen was just long enough to take six long paces before having to turn around. I watched my mother intently. Mami, can I have some watermelon please? I just looove watermelons! Please, please, when can I have some?

My mother’s earlier outburst still rang out in my ears. It was unusual, as my parents never voiced their disagreements in front of me, and their rows were always in the privacy of their bedroom. The problem was, that we only had one bedroom, and my cot, (at this stage beginning to be too small to contain me) was there as well, so my parents had to be in a different part of the home if they wished to argue, or wait until I was fast asleep before discussing any burning issues. I had never heard them like this before. Slightly confused and not sure what to make of it, all I could concentrate on and see clearly in my mind was a red watermelon, split in half, sweet and red, dripping with juice.

Red was my favourite colour. The colour of field poppies, the lower field on the national flag, the colour of blood and mother’s red glass beads, which she loved, but never wore. The forbidden colour, the colour of pioneers’ ‘kerchiefs, the colour of the hammer and sickle flag of the USSR, the colour of communism intent to take over the word, the colour one was not supposed to love.

Watermelons only grow in summer said my mother, distracted and distraught once again at my father’s tardiness, but then I heard him opening the door once more.

My father wasn’t very tall, with a solid body, dark eyes and hair, and a sharp nose betraying his pure Jewish ancestry. His light olive complexion complimented my mother’s fair skin and straw blonde hair. My skin colour was a melange, a mixture from both my parents, neither too fair nor too dark. I inherited my mother’s curly blonde hair and my father’s large round dark brown eyes and a small mouth. I must have been very young when once I went with my father to visit a lawyer acquaintance of his, to discuss some legal issues. I sat quietly in a very large and heavily stuffed easy chair while the men talked, not understanding much of the discussion when the lawyer turned to me and said: You had not washed your eyes this morning! I protested that I did so, feeling slighted that he would think me such a bad child that would neglect a daily washing routine. Their laughter pacified somewhat my indignation as they explained that it was meant purely as a joke.

Father’s usual charming smile was absent this time as he entered the apartment, and my mother went straight onto a verbal attack: How dare they, what did they have to say, who are they, did they apologise, what are they going to do?

Let’s calm down, love, and sit down, and I will tell you all about it, replied father. Please, is there anything to eat? He asked gently, postponing a conversation over a subject, now resurrected, which had troubled him for some time, and one he had cause to revisit often, particularly over the last two years.

I had already eaten, as traditionally all around the country the midday meal, the main meal of the day, was consumed at noon. It had to include soup, main meal and a desert. Dinner was a lesser affair, bread spread with lard or sometimes with butter, with a light snack such as slice of processed cheese, a hardboiled egg, topped with sweet and sour mustard, a link of frankfurter sausages or mother’s homemade pig’s brawn. On occasions we had to contend ourselves with a slice of shallow fried rye bread, rubbed with a clove of garlic and a glass of milk. I still remember the smell and the sharp taste of the fresh garlic mixed with the butter and the light sprinkling of salt.

My dinner consisted of a slice of light rye bread, a small piece of pickled herring, and a cup of hot cocoa. Cocoa was a luxury, the one and only indulgence my mother kept entirely for me. I hated it because of the milk skin on the top of the cocoa, but otherwise I ate whatever my parents ate, there were no special meals for me, save when I was a baby.

I remember a time when mother fed me sweet semolina (typical baby cereal) by the spoonful. I enjoyed the top layer, sprinkled with sugar, cinnamon and some melted butter, but was not too keen on the remainder of the rather flavourless gruel.

My mother, however, was determined that I should grow big and strong in spite of my protests of being already full and not wanting more. One more spoonful for grandmother, she used to say, and when I relented, shoved a full large soup spoon into my already full mouth. I turned my head away, not wanting anymore, but mother was persistent. Only one more for your grandfather, she said. I liked my grandfather very much, and did not want to upset him, so I swallowed another spoonful. The last one for your daddy, said mother. My father was my hero, he was the man I was going to marry, he was the one I could spend the whole day listening to, telling me about his adventures, and of course I did not want him to get upset! I swallowed once more but then I decided that enough was enough. No more cousins, uncles and aunties would make me open my mouth again. Mother did not give up easily, but on that day the victory was all mine.

Father worked in the outer suburbs as a book keeper in a private company that so far had escaped nationalisation, but only because it was too small to be of any value to the government. The company was in its last death throes anyway, and father knew, he would have to look for another job soon.

He normally took his lunch to work with him, as he worked too far from home to return for lunch. Most workers in larger government run places could utilise the work’s canteens, where they could buy the day’s lunch at a nominal price but the offerings were usually not very tasty or nourishing.

If father was very lucky, his lunch would be a paper thin cold veal schnitzel, sandwiched between two thick slices of light rye brown bread. Alternatively it might be a couple of slices of salami, and a hard-boiled egg with brown bread slices. White bread was reserved for special visitors, and it was never sold sliced. Mother cut the bread on the wooden surface of another table, which served as the food preparation board, and doubled as the washing up table. It had a pulled out drawer that contained an enamelled basin where the dishes were washed.

Soup, the required first course in any midday meal was not very portable, and father had to do without until Sunday. He however never missed on his desert. Mother always packed two or three unfilled sweet yeasty buns for him, which he loved. When apples were in season, he would have a slice of handmade apple strudel, or a cottage cheese strudel when mother could get some cheese in the shops. Unpredictable shortages of all kinds of food made cooking very interesting and challenging to all the housewives at that time.

I was going to make potato pancakes for dinner, she said, but I picked up some pickled herring today from Rozkvět department store food department, when I went to buy bread. It was lucky I went there early in the morning, and they just had a delivery. The queue was very long, and I was not sure if there would be any left by the time my turn came, but I was able to buy two pieces. I shared one with Rita and yours is here. I will cut you a slice of bread, she said, her nurturing instinct taking over, her concentration now slowly shifting towards providing the basic needs of her husband.

My mother was a very good housewife, and fully dedicated to feed and to supply comfort to her family, doing her utmost with the meagre income my father earned, and with basic food supplies never keeping up with the demand. As most housewives in those days, they made miracles with little variety of food, and absolutely nothing was wasted.

It was not father’s fault he could not supply his family with the income he would have wished. He was an economics college graduate, with experience in food production, commerce and a fully accredited accountant; however, that was not classified as a ‘proletariat’ occupation. As a result, his middle-class background eliminated him from the classification of the ‘worker’ class, and with it access to more responsible jobs. Instead of being able to work in a job reflecting his capabilities, he was reduced to the low and menial job of a bookkeeper. He did not mind, well, not too much anyway, as it was safer to keep your head down and not make yourself noticed by the authorities.

Well, what did they say? Mother continued, by now getting impatient again. After cutting two thick slices from the still fresh rye bread loaf, bought that morning, she lightly spread them with butter, trying to find the balance between what would be considered a too skimpy smear of butter and an extravagance which would mean the hundred grams of butter bought two days ago would not last as many days as she hoped.

We still had to use food ration coupons for essential food groups, as the supply was sporadic and butter as well as sugar and flour were part of the foods which were strictly controlled. We had a crock of lard from my grandmother, given to us once a year, when their pig was slaughtered, and that was to last for most of the following year supplemented by butter, when it was available.

For breakfast I used to have a thick slice of bread spread with lard and lightly sprinkled with salt, with the inevitable cup of cocoa, or very milky and weak coffee, made by mixing chicory