Notes from the Translator

Notes from the translator

Dear reader,

My name is Vera Teresa Gomes Votava. I am the older daughter of Oldrich Votava. I am neither a example of a good daughter and even less an example of a human being. But as my father wrote the saying in his introduction, of that wise people who told that the youth lived of dreams, maybe my dreams where  to high for me and maybe in oldness I recognize my true friend who never gave hope of me. Well, it does not matter, just to say...

I am making his writings open to the public not because he had have the pretension of becoming a greater writer, not even to boast that his life was more interesting than any other, no. 

I am making his writings open because they are very interesting reports about the second World War and about people of that time. Anyone can read it in a weekend and know and even recognize throughout his history people like the little german girl named Francis ( Fanny) who although with only seventeen years of age saved my father of a terrible fate! 

The lovely Helena (Czech) and the actrees Sonja  Hammer ( Austrian). And I think, everyone has in his head a image of  someone who is like the marvelous  "Tereza", of the North of Italy, of Módena, a girl so full of energy, so sure of herself, so courageous, knowing all the answers and already carring maybe some political secret, having even to change her name!

Also greateful to the lovely baroness of Autria, who worked in the IRO and help to bring our father to Brasil.

Well, there are even histories of families who survive these terrible war, never loosing their hope, like the marvelous Burda (Czechs) and Wetzlinger (Austrian).

I write in English to greet people who helped our little family so much in Brasil, directors of my father who came to visit our humble house bringing joy to our hearts, like Mr. Max Ledou and his family from Pennsylvania, like Mr. Demanche from Houston, Texas. 

And greateful to a person gone in years who, after my father, brought dignity and security to those people lost in the Austria of old days, like CWO Orel E. Markin Jr.

Thanks also to my father Brazilian doctors, Dr. Emil Hacad and Dr Alfredo Correia Soeiro who encourage him to write his memories.

Well, thank you all readers, a hope you all to enjoy our father writings.

Great embrace and hope in a better world...

If you want to contact us do it in our e-mail 

oldrichvotava@ig.com.br