A few words about myself and my family. I was born in Prague on June 24, 1932. My father, Dr. Egon Schwelb, was a prominent Social Democratic attorney who handled a lot of what might now be termed civil liberties cases, and who represented, among other clients, anti-Nazi German refugees who fled to Prague after Hitler and the Nazis came to power in Germany. On March 15, 1939, German troops goose-stepped into Prague -- I still have some slight memory of that -- and on the following day my dad was taken into custody and held at the Pankrac prison. In May, 1939, my father was released, though I have never been able to find out exactly why. My parents were able to obtain British visas and an exit permit, and on August 12, 1939, we travelled by train from Prague through Nazi Germany to Holland. I know that my parents were afraid that we might be taken off the train before we crossed the Dutch border, for events were not very predictable at that time, but cross we did. We travelled in a Dutch ship from the Hook of Holland to Harwich, arriving in Britain on August 13, 1939. The war, as you know, began on September 1, when the Nazis invaded Poland, so we made it by less that three weeks. Those members of our family who did not manage to leave the country, including my mother's younger sister, perished in the Holocaust. My parents were both of Jewish origin, though not practicing Jews. My cousin Charles Pollard and his family live in Dorking, Surrey.
We spent the first few weeks of our stay in Britain in refugee hostels in Surrey. In late 1939 or early 1940, my parents obtained a flat in Mill Hill, in the northwestern part of London. We were in London during the Blitz, and I collected shrapnel splinters after air raids. Eventually, President Benes named my father to the Legal Council (Pravni Rada) of the government-in-exile. My dad served in that capacity until the end of the war. During his service as a legal adviser to the Benes government, my father sensed that postwar Czechoslovakia would not be a democratic country for very long, and (much to my dismay at the time) my parents decided not to go back. After serving in the United Nations War Crimes Commission from 1945 to 1947, my father was named Deputy Director of the Human Rights Division of the U.N. in 1947. Our family came to the United States in 1947, and lived here ever since. My dad had a very distinguished career and earned the nickname Mr. Human Rights. In 1979, shortly after his death, he posthumously received the Dag Hammarskjold Award for his contributions to peace and human rights. He died just a few months before I was named by President Carter to my first judgeship.
Now a little about Egon Schwelb's only son. I attended various schools in Britain, but in 1944 I was sent to the Czechoslovak State School in Llanwrtyd Wells, Wales. Many of my fellow-students were "kinder transport" children whose lives were saved by Nicholas Winton, one of the greatest (and probably the most unassuming) heroes of our time. I assume that you know all about Mr. Winton's work in saving the lives of 669 Czechoslovak Jewish children, so I will not repeat it here. Anyway, you asked if I am in touch with any of my former schoolmates, and the answer is yes, I certainly am. Among those Old Boys and Old Girls I know are Vera Diamantova Gissing, who wrote the wonderful and moving book "Pearls of Childhood" about her rescue through Mr. Winton's efforts and about our school; Lady Milena Fleischmannova Grenfell-Baines, who has organized our reunions; Lord Alfred Dubs, a minister in the Labour government and my fierce schoolboy ping pong rival; Joe Schlesinger of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, who narrated much of the truly magnificent film about Nicholas Winton called "The Power of Good"; Hanus Snabl, who compiled our address list in spite of health difficulties; and many many others. One of them, Franci Smolkova Drazil, who was perhaps the prettiest of the younger girls at our school, lives in your county in Little Chalfont, Bucks! Another schoolmate, Martin Steiner, a retired radiologist living in Sheffield, remains my best friend. My first "girlfriend" (I use the term in a very chaste sense, for we were only 12) Jana Gombaiova Litwack now lives in Montreal. If it would be helpful to you, I can get you in touch with these people and many others, including folks who are active in Czechoslovak organizations here, including the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences (SVU). On Sunday, I am going to visit Juraj Slavik, who lives a mile or so from me; he was at our school, and he is very active now in several Czechoslovak organizations. Juraj's late father, who had the same name, was Czechoslovak ambassador to the United States at the time of the Communist coup in 1948, which brought dictatorship to my native country for the second time. This dictatorship, as you know, lasted forty years, but somehow, mostly through sheer willpower and a patriotic spirit, I hung on to my Czech and still speak the language fairly well. In 1968, I watched TV and heard the Czechoslovak national anthem being played as Soviet tanks were rolling through Wenceslas Square (Vaclavske Namesti), the second time I saw Prague occupied by foreign invaders. Then, in 1989, I watched as a whole nation took to the streets denonstrating for freedom. Believe me, that was very very different, and brought great joy to my heart.
But I am getting ahead of myself. After we came to America, I finished school, graduated from Yale College and Harvard Law School, spent two peaceful years in the U.S. Army (between the Korean and Vietnamese wars), and from 1962 to 1979, I served as an attorney in the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice. I worked on voting rights cases in Mississippi, the staunchest hotbed of segregation and discrimination in America, and I was gratified to see thousands of black citizens gain the right to vote for the first time. For ten years, I was the Chief of the Housing Section of the Civil Rights Division, enforcing the fair housing laws nationwide. In 1979, President Carter appointed me to the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. In 1988, President Reagan appointed me to the District of Columbia Court of Appeals. I am the only person to have been appointed to a judgeship by these two Presidents. My wife Taffy, who knows how to keep my head from swelling unduly, tells me that this proves I have no principles whatever! Perhaps so!
I do not want to subject you to too much more in this already overlong e-mail, but I do want to mention that on June 24, 2006, I will reach mandatory retirement age for District of Columbia judges. I hope to continue as a part-time "Senior Judge", but I will have a lot more time on my hands. I would like to spend as much of it as I can on two aspects of my experiences over a long life that mean the most to me -- my Czechoslovak background and my civil rights and anti-discrimination work. Because I am the only judge in Washington, D.C. with a Czechoslovak background, and because I am reasonably fluent in Czech, legal visitors and other visitors from the Czech Republic, and sometimes from Slovakia, usually find their way to me, so I have quite a lot of Czech contacts of various ages. I do not know if any of this could be useful to you and your organization, but I would like to help. Finally, somewherein my files, I have wartime correspondence between my father and President Benes and other members of the government-in-exile.
Sincerely,
Frank E. Schwelb
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