An Unimaginable Journey Takes Another Turn
Post date: Aug 9, 2011 1:44:19 AM
By Jennifer Goss, FASD Social Studies Teacher & Misa's Fugue Producer
When we began this project in June 2010, Sean and I both knew that it would be a large undertaking with many twists and turns. Just how many twists and turns we would experience, neither one of us could have predicted at that time but we certainly did not expect the scope of this project to be as widespread as it has become. From the extent of Frank's narrative and the historical paths it has led us down to the relationships we have formed throughout the community of Holocaust organizations, the journey has been extensive. Even with this newfound knowledge, neither one of us expected to receive an e-mail from Prague this past May that would open up yet another door and create a special relationship across the Atlantic.
Tomas P. grew up in the 1960s and 70s visiting his great aunt, Anna, at her villa in Klanovice (outside
of Prague). During these visits, Aunt Anna (pictured to the left of a young Tomas at right) would relay stories of the family who previously owned the villa. The stories were of a loving family who suffered terribly during the Holocaust. The mother and oldest son perished in Auschwitz but the father and younger son survived. After the war, the gentleman and his son fled Communist Prague, leaving Anna their summer villa as a token of thanks for her service as their housekeeper before and after the war and for saving many of their family's belongings when the family was deported to Terezin in 1942. Tomas even recalled a drawing done by the youngest son hanging in his parent's home when he was growing up. This past spring, after many years of searching with incorrect spellings and mis-information about the family, Tomas located the Kickstarter page for "Misa's Fugue." He had finally managed to locate the boy from Aunt Anna's stories...Frank "Misa" Grunwald.
An e-mail to Sean quickly put Tomas in touch with Frank. Although Tomas was born 15 years after the Grunwalds left Prague, he was able to share with Frank some information about his family that Frank had not previously known. Tomas also had several love letters written by Kurt and Vilma while they were courting and some family photographs that Frank had not seen before either. Sean and I were privileged to be kept in the loop on these conversations, which mainly occurred in Czech. Fortunately, Frank was able to help translate them for us because "Google Translate" has its downfalls. One of the initial letters extensively discussed the wonderful qualities of a certain "parakeet." This was confusing because, to date, we were not aware that Frank had a bird while growing up. It turns out that if the correct accent marks are not used in "Google Translate," the word "andulka" (a dimunitive for Anna) can be interchangeable with "parakeet." :-)
In addition to helping us build a more extensive background into the Grunwald's pre-war and post-war lives, Tomas has also become an invaluable resource for the creation of the film. In the past few weeks, he has become our Czech "James Bond" and is helping to track down period music and radio broadcasts and is working with Radio Prague and the Czech national archives to help us gain access to use some of this material. He has spent many hours tracking down information and talking to the appropriate parties, which has been utterly amazing. We are grateful to have him as part of our team and hope to meet him and his beautiful family (pictured at left) sometime in the future!