About the contributor

This contribution was written by my father Herbert Lowit who served in the Czechoslovak Independent Brigade from 1941 to 1945.

He arrived in England in December 1938 as a 15 year old refugee from the Nazi invasion of the Sudetenland, Czechoslovakia. He and his mother joined his trade unionist father who had fled a few weeks earlier. His older brother and sister managed to get themselves to England after the complete occupation of Czechoslovakia in March 1939.

As soon as my father was old enough he joined the free Czech Army based in Leamington Spa (from where the assassins of Heydrich - the Nazi ruler of Czechoslovakia - were recruited for their terrible mission). As his story shows, his ability to speak 3 languages meant that he played an important role in the German surrender of Dunkirk at the end of the war.

My father lived in Prague for a couple of years after the war but decided to settle in England when he saw that the Communists would be taking over. He married my mother in 1948 - she was also a Czech refugee, in fact they first met on the boat that brought the families from Poland to England. She had served in the WAAF during the war. My parents became British citizens in 1955.

They first visited Czechoslovakia after the Cold War in 1992. Ten years later my sister and I joined them and saw the places where our parents had been born and grew up. They now live quietly on the outskirts of London.

My father is very pleased that his story can now be told both in England and in the Czech Republic.