Prague 1, 43 Wenceslaw Square

Vaňha’s Fish Restaurant · Wenceslas Square 819/43, 110 00 Prague 1-New Town, Czech Republic

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His last supper with his parents

Available in: English | Česky

Asaf Auerbach remembers the last supper he had with his parents before leaving for England. They had gone to the “posh” Vaňha’s Fish Restaurant on Wenceslas Square. Directly after the meal he and his older brother were to leave on one of the trains that had been dispatched by Nicholas Winton. Asaf remembers that the planned journey on 18 July 1939 was a mix of pleasant anticipation and a sense of adventure: “So we left Vaňha’s and headed off to Wilson Station, which was only a short distance away. There we had to say goodbye, it made it easier that my brother was with me. My parents said that they were already negotiating their own means of travel and that it would work out fine – they were planning to emigrate to Ecuador or Peru. So as soon as they got there, we would join them. The way I saw it, it was just a great big trip; traveling abroad as an eleven-year-old when the furthest I had been before that was river camp. I was sad of course, because I didn't know if I would see my parents in just a month or in half a year. My return after the war was much worse.” Auerbach never saw his parents again.

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Asaf Auerbach

Ing. Asaf Auerbach was born in kibbutz Bet Alfa, in today's Israel, in May 1928. His parents came from Czechoslovakia and moved to Israel in 1922. They were influenced by the Zionist movement and its ideals about the settlement of Palestine at that time by the Jewish immigrants especially from Europe. His parents decided in 1930, probably because of health reasons, to come back to Prague. His father worked in an auditory company, his mother was a housewife and looked after their two sons Ruben and Asaf. His father was left-oriented; he was a member of the organization Rote Hilfe that looked after political refugees. After March 1939, Mr. and Mrs. Auerbach learned about the possibility to send both their sons to England. A family acquaintance from the kibbutz Hana Strasserová moved out there. In England she founded a committee that was willing to accept a group of children from Czechoslovakia. Asaf Auerbach, with his brother Ruben, left Czechoslovakia on July 18th, 1939. They were on one of the trains whose departure was organized by Nicholas Winton. They lived in a house ran by the above mentioned committee in the town Stoke on Trent. Asaf Auerbach attended a boarding school founded by the Czechoslovak exile government in 1943-1945. He returned to Prague in the summer of 1945. He met his grandma and his mother's sisters there. His parents were slaughtered in the extermination camp Auschwitz. He finished his Statistics studies after the war and started a family. Mr. Asaf Auerbach lives in Prague.

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Prague 1, 43 Wenceslaw Square

Available in: English | Česky

In 1934, the Prague restaurateur Jindřich Vaňha opened a fish restaurant in the place that is now occupied by the Jalta shopping arcade. It soon became an essential part of central Prague. People could enter the cold fish buffet directly from the square, and the interior housed a well-furnished fish restaurant, a Baltic grill, and a hot buffet. Vaňha’s establishment survived the war, but it was nationalised in 1948 and its owner had no choice but to emigrate. The renowned fish restaurant on Wenceslaw Square turned into a second rate eating place, and its fame gradually faded, until the place finally closed down in 1989.

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His last supper with his parents

Asaf Auerbach