On 20th March 2020, my eldest daughter and I were to meet our 96-year-old cousin Jan Roček in Copenhagen to mark an auspicious date in our family's history. 2020 is 60 years since he, his wife Eva, her mother, and their two small boys jumped off a boat to swim to freedom in Denmark, guards in hot pursuit, to escape communist Czechoslovakia.
We watched anxiously as the news of Coronavirus got more serious, and finally we all reluctantly agreed it was unsafe for us to travel from the UK (and in fact, we would have not been allowed to enter Denmark by that time), and most definitely not a good moment for a 96-year-old to take a long haul flight, no matter how good his health.
Three days later, and on the day we were meant to be travelling home, lockdown began in the UK.
Jan and his family had been travelling to Copenhagen for the launch of a book telling the story of the Roček family's incredible arrival on Danish shores, and that weekend would have been a meaningful one for us all. I so wanted to share it with my 9 year old, and for her to see history in action. Coronavirus took that from us, and that was a sad thing, though that loss pales in comparison to what the virus has taken from so many others.
Later we would learned it took something else too: a precious family treasure; a gold pendant that belonged to Jan's late wife Eva. It was made for her by her uncle Vilém, who was murdered in the Holocaust. Eva had been separated from this twice before, but it came back to her twice; once after she survived the holocaust and returned to her home in Prague, and a second time after her death, in 2015. Unbeknownst to us, Jan was bringing the pendant to Copenhagen to give to my youngest daughter, who is named after Eva, but because we could not meet, he sent it by post... and the pendant has been lost once more.
This website tells the story of that pendant, in the hope that it will one day return once more, to be worn by my daughter Eva, in memory of her wonderful namesake, as Jan hoped it would.
We watched anxiously as the news of Coronavirus got more serious, and finally we all reluctantly agreed it was unsafe for us to travel from the UK (and in fact, we would have not been allowed to enter Denmark by that time), and most definitely not a good moment for a 96-year-old to take a long haul flight, no matter how good his health.
Three days later, and on the day we were meant to be travelling home, lockdown began in the UK.
Jan and his family had been travelling to Copenhagen for the launch of a book telling the story of the Roček family's incredible arrival on Danish shores, and that weekend would have been a meaningful one for us all. I so wanted to share it with my 9 year old, and for her to see history in action. Coronavirus took that from us, and that was a sad thing, though that loss pales in comparison to what the virus has taken from so many others.
Later we would learned it took something else too: a precious family treasure; a gold pendant that belonged to Jan's late wife Eva. It was made for her by her uncle Vilém, who was murdered in the Holocaust. Eva had been separated from this twice before, but it came back to her twice; once after she survived the holocaust and returned to her home in Prague, and a second time after her death, in 2015. Unbeknownst to us, Jan was bringing the pendant to Copenhagen to give to my youngest daughter, who is named after Eva, but because we could not meet, he sent it by post... and the pendant has been lost once more.
This website tells the story of that pendant, in the hope that it will one day return once more, to be worn by my daughter Eva, in memory of her wonderful namesake, as Jan hoped it would.