On the 5 November  2019 the Institute of Modern Languages Research (IMLR) awarded the Jan  Masaryk Silver Medal of the Czech Republic to Jana Buresova for her book on the dynamics of forced female migration from Czechoslovakia to Britain between 1938 to 1950, published that summer.

The book is based on her doctorate, which Dr Buresova wrote at the IMLR, and for which she was awarded a bursary by the Martin Miller and Hannah Norbert-Miller Trust.  She is a member of the committee of the Research Centre of German & Austrian Exile Studies at the IMLR and is involved with the Association of Jewish Refugees’ audio-visual Holocaust Testimony Archive project. 

The talk Jana gave us in 2013 was concerned with wartime refugees and this latest talk was about the post-war years and more recent times.

The Czechoslovak refugees were by no means a homogeneous group – they consisted of Czechs, Slovaks, ethnic Germans, Jews, Christians and Communists.

In the wake of the Munich Agreement in 1938, whereby the Sudetenland had been ceded to Germany, there had been an influx of refugees to Britain from that part of Czechoslovakia. Some of those refugees were repatriated after the war, but many of them stayed on in Britain.

Some were professional women, some were still teenagers, whose education had been disrupted and others were housewives. Yet others had come in via the Kindertransport and had grown up in wartime Britain.

On arrival they received aid from various groups, such as the Quakers and the Czech Refugee Trust Fund. The latter bought up large houses after the war and turned them into flats for Czechoslovak families.

BFUW (former name of BFWG) played its part by helping women who had interrupted their degree studies or who had been teaching in universities. Education was very important for their self-esteem and further personal development.

One woman became a translator and also wrote cookery books. It was she who introduced the Remoska (a versatile, portable oven that resembles a large pan – actually the forerunner of the slow cooker) to this country. It can now be procured from Lakeland shops. She was awarded an MBE in January 2016.

Czechoslovak legal and medical qualifications were not recognised here, but arrangements were made for Czechoslovak Medical students to complete their studies at various teaching hospitals, thanks to lend-lease terms negotiated by the Czechoslovak Government in Exile in London.

In 1943 the first batch of twenty-three Czechoslovak doctors graduated from Oxford, but only one of these was a woman, Josefina, (a ratio which would not have been unusual in those days) and she stayed on after the war.  Charlotte arrived in 1939 on a Kindertransport. She was awarded a scholarship to study medicine and qualified in 1947. She became a Consultant in her thirties and ended up as a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons.

Refugee lawyers were less fortunate, since our English law is based on precedent, whereas Czechoslovak law is based on a codified system. One woman retrained as a teacher and eventually became a Head Teacher. Along the way she turned down a place for her daughter at a girl’s public day school, perceiving it to be élitist. Interestingly, her father had been of peasant stock, and her grandson was educated at Eton.

Some of the Czechoslovak refugees were repatriated in 1945, but many had lost their relatives and found their homes had been taken over by strangers and their belongings had disappeared; anti-Semitism was still rife. Others were disillusioned and could not settle back in their native land, so they returned to Britain to make a life for themselves.

There was another influx of Czech refugees to Britain after the Communist coup in 1948.  Elizabeth was one such refugee. She had worked for the Czech Government in Exile in London during the war, but had returned to her country after the war and worked as a social worker. She was not comfortable with the Communist regime and returned to Britain in 1949. She did not return to her native land for over forty years!

After the Communist coup some 15,000 Czechs had been languishing in refugee camps. Various refugees including those who had served in the Allied Armed Services were allowed to stay and work in Britain. Olga was the daughter of a former parliamentary official, who died not long after the end of the war. She stayed on and was able to take a secretarial course, with help from the Czech Refugee Trust Fund. She worked at the War Office and later at the National Coal Board. She was quickly assimilated into British society and the British way of life.

Another woman came from a Slovak village in 1946 to seek a new way of life. She earned £3 a week working in a Yorkshire Mill on a special work programme for European refugees. Later she and her husband set up a grocery shop in London, whilst a compatriot set up a successful business selling luxury food imported from Europe.

Yet another wave of Czech refugees came over to Britain after the Soviet-instigated invasion in August 1968. Susanna was one such, except that she was already over here working at a Butlin’s Holiday camp during her summer vacation. She decided not to return home, but to finish her degree in this country. She was able to do this with financial help from Oxford University. After finishing her degree she found work at the BBC Czech Service. There was quite an influx of refugees at that time – many doctors, scientists and musicians left their country, causing a considerable brain (and talent) drain from Czechoslovakia.

Many of the Czech refugees seemed to favour the professions that dealt with people: medicine, teaching, social work etc. Jana herself had come over with her mother as a very young child after the Communist coup and has never lived in her mother country. She explained that the Czech Refugee Trust Fund had set up and run hostels –one of which was for unaccompanied Czech children –which had maintained the Czechoslovak way of life.

During the war the Czech Government in Exile had set up and run boarding schools in order to keep the Czech language and culture alive. Tom Stoppard was a pupil at one such school. Jana attended English schools, but her mother insisted she attend the Saturday school for Czechoslovak children such as herself.