Jan G. Wiener (1920–2010)

Jan Wiener was born to a Czech-German Jewish family in Hamburg, Germany. His parents were Franziska (Grünhut) and Julius Wiener. In 1933, after the Nazi regime rose to power, the family moved to Prague, where he attended the Akademic Gymnasium. He was an avid athlete and a member of Sokol, the Czech gymnastics movement, but quit after witnessing anti-Semitic behavior of other members. When Nazi Germany invaded in World War II, Wiener fled to Yugoslavia, where his father and stepmother were already staying. His mother was deported to the Nazi concentration camp at Terezin (Theresienstadt), where she died in 1942. When Germany invaded Yugoslavia in April 1941, Wiener's father committed suicide in front of him. Wiener decided to go to the UK to enlist in the Czech military in exile. Traveling through Italy, he was captured and imprisoned in an internment camp for foreigners. In 1943, after the Allied invasion of Sicily and southern Italy, he succeeded in escaping from the camp, and finally reached England. Between 1943 and 1945, Wiener served with the Czechoslovak Army and with British Royal Air Force bomber squadrons as a radio navigator and gunner. He completed dozens of raids on European cities and patrol flights against the German fleet, especially against submarines over the Atlantic, the Bay of Biscay and the North Sea. After the war, he returned to Czechoslovakia and studied history at Charles University. While still a student, he taught English in the evenings at a language school. After the Communists took power in 1948, he was sent to forced labor in a camp near Kladno for five years. It was a fate shared by many of his anti-Nazi colleagues because those who fought in the West were considered enemies of the communist state. he was released from the prison camp in 1955. In 1965, with the help of relatives and Eleanor Roosevelt, Wiener emigrated to the USA and taught history at several schools and universities. After the collapse of Communism in 1989, he split his time between the USA and Czechoslovakia, and became an advisor to President Václav Havel. In 2001, he was awarded the Medal of Merit (Medaile za zásluhy) of the Czech Republic. He was a visiting professor of modern history and took his students to places where historical events took place. His published works included a 2007 autobiography. Wiener's life was also the subject of a 2009 feature film, A Son's War, and the 2000 documentary film Fighter.