Every morning after his father had left for the fields, Lubji would walk up the hill to the rabbi’s house and continue his studies. The old scholar marveled at the boy’s command of languages, and admitted that he was no longer able to keep up with him in mathematics. In the afternoons Lubji returned to the market, and on a good day he could bring home enough supplies to feed the entire family.
He tried to teach his brothers how to trade, so that they could run the stall in the mornings and while he was away. He quickly concluded it was a hopeless task, and wished his mother would allow him to stay at home and build up a business they could all benefit from. But Zelta showed no interest in what he got up to at the market, and only questioned him about his studies. She read his report cards again and again, and by the end of the holiday must have known them off by heart. It made Lubji even more determined that when he presented her with his next year’s reports, they would please her even more.
When his six-week break came to an end, Lubji reluctantly packed his little leather bag and was driven back to Ostrava by Mr. Lekski. ‘The offer to join me is still open,’ he reminded the young man, ‘but not until you’ve completed your studies.’
During Lubji’s second year at the academy the name of Adolf Hitler came up in conversation almost as often as that of Moses. Jews were fleeing across the border every day reporting the horrors taking place in Germany, and Lubji could only wonder what the Führer might have planned next. He read every newspaper he could lay his hands on, in whatever language and however out of date.
‘Hitler Looks East’ read a headline on page one of The Ostrava. When Lubji turned to page seven to read the rest of the story he found it was missing, but that didn’t stop him wondering how long it would be before the Führer’s tanks rolled into Czechoslovakia. He was certain of one thing: Hitler’s master race wouldn’t include the likes of him.
Later that morning he expressed these fears to his history master, but he seemed incapable of stretching his mind beyond Hannibal, and the question of whether he would make it across the Alps. Lubji closed his old history book and, without considering the consequences, marched out of the classroom and down the corridor toward the principal’s private quarters. He stopped in front of a door he had never entered, hesitated for a moment and then knocked boldly.
‘Come,’ said a voice.
Lubji opened the door slowly and entered the principal’s study. The godly man was garbed in full academic robes of red and gray, and a black skullcap rested on top of his long black ringlets. He looked up from his desk. ‘I presume this is something of vital importance, Hoch?’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Lubji confidently. Then he lost his nerve.
‘Well?’ prompted the principal, after some time had elapsed.
‘We must be prepared to leave at a moment’s notice,’ Lubji finally blurted out. ‘We have to assume that it will not be long before Hitler...’
The old man smiled up at the fifteen-year-old boy and waved a dismissive hand. ‘Hitler has told us a hundred times that he has no interest in occupying any other territory,’ he said, as if he were correcting a minor error Lubji had made in a history exam.
‘I’m sorry to have bothered you, sir,’ Lubji said, realizing that however well he presented his case, he wasn’t going to persuade such an unworldly man.
But as the weeks passed, first his tutor, then his housemaster, and finally the principal, had to admit that history was being written before their eyes.
It was on a warm September evening that the principal, carrying out his rounds, began to alert the pupils that they should gather together their possessions, as they would be leaving at dawn the following day. He was not surprised to find Lubji’s room already empty.
A few minutes after midnight, a division of German tanks crossed the border and advanced unchallenged toward Ostrava. The soldiers ransacked the academy even before the breakfast bell had rung, and dragged all the students out into waiting lorries. There was only one pupil who wasn’t present to answer the final roll-call. Lubji Hoch had left the previous night. After cramming all his possessions into the little leather case, he had joined the stream of refugees heading toward the Hungarian border. He prayed that his mother had read not only the papers, but Hitler’s mind, and would somehow have escaped with the rest of the family. He had recently heard rumors about the Germans rounding up Jews and placing them in internment camps. He tried not to think of what might happen to his family if they were captured.
When Lubji slipped out of the academy gates that night he didn’t stop to watch the local people rushing from house to house searching for their relatives, while others loaded their possessions onto horse-drawn carts that would surely be overtaken by the slowest armed vehicle. This was not a night to spend fussing about personal possessions: you can’t shoot a possession, Lubji wanted to tell them. But no one stood still long enough to listen to the tall, powerfully built young man with long black ringlets, dressed in his academy uniform. By the time the German tanks had surrounded the academy, he had already covered several miles on the road that led south to the border.
Lubji didn’t even consider sleeping. He could already hear the roar of guns as the enemy advanced into the city from the west. On and on he strode, past those who were slowed by the burden of pushing and pulling their lives’ possessions. He overtook laden donkeys, carts that needed their wheels repaired and families with young children and aging relatives, held up by the pace of the slowest. He watched as mothers cut the locks from their sons’ hair and began to abandon anything that might identify them as Jewish. He would have stopped to remonstrate with them but didn’t want to lose any precious time. He swore that nothing would ever make him abandon his religion.
The discipline that had been instilled in him at the academy over the previous two years allowed Lubji to carry on without food or rest until daybreak. When he eventually slept, it was on the back of a cart, and then later in the front seat of a lorry. He was determined that nothing would stop his progress toward a friendly country.
Although freedom was a mere 180 kilometers away, Lubji saw the sun rise and set three times before he heard the cries from those ahead of him who had reached the sovereign state of Hungary. He came to a halt at the end of a straggling queue of would-be immigrants. Three hours later he had traveled only a few hundred yards, and the queue of people ahead of him began to settle down for the night. Anxious eyes looked back to see smoke rising high into the sky, and the sound of guns could be heard as the Germans continued their relentless advance.
Lubji waited until it was pitch dark, and then silently made his way past the sleeping families, until he could clearly see the lights of the border post ahead of him. He lay down in a ditch as inconspicuously as possible, his head resting on his little leather case. As the customs officer raised the barrier the following morning, Lubji was waiting at the front of the queue. When those behind him woke and saw the young man in his academic garb chanting a psalm under his breath, none of them considered asking him how he had got there.
The customs officer didn’t waste a lot of time searching Lubji’s little case. Once he had crossed the border, he never strayed off the road to Budapest, the only Hungarian city he had heard of. Another two days and nights of sharing food with generous families, relieved to have escaped from the wrath of the Germans, brought him to the outskirts of the capital on 23 September 1939.
Lubji couldn’t believe the sights that greeted him. Surely this must be the largest city on earth? He spent his first few hours just walking through the streets, becoming more and more intoxicated with each pace he took. He finally collapsed on the steps of a massive synagogue, and when he woke the following morning, the first thing he did was to ask for directions to the marketplace.