It was after the Anschluss of Austria on March 13, 1938 that we began to worry about National Socialism becoming a problem for us. My parents had decided to convert part of one of the former farm buildings adjacent to our house into a room for my sister and me. On Monday after the Austrian Anschluss, the work was supposed to begin, but it was called off. In May, Mother sent our silver flatware to relatives in the interior of Bohemia for safekeeping. She always tended to be pessimistic; my father, on the other hand, had automatic drinking fountains installed for the cows on our farm about the same time.
Emigration was first seriously discussed concretely in June. Emil Lederer, a friend who lived in northern Bohemia, told us about a friend of his, a Sudeten German Social Democrat, who had emigrated to Nova Scotia in Canada, who urged him to follow. Our Kompanie decided that my father should take a trip to Canada together with Karl Schleissner, a relative who lived in our town, to gain a firsthand impression of the country. My father contacted the Canadian Pacific Railway, which was in charge of the immigration of farmers to Canada. The official who was sent to our farm was enthusiastic about my father and about the farm and recommended that Ottawa issue immigration permits to our mostly Jewish group of prospective immigrants, which had grown to thirty-nine persons. Jara, the wife of our cousin Hugo Ábeles, was Catholic, and Arnold Schmöker, the son of our Swiss cattle breeding expert, was Protestant. Most of the others were Jewish relatives, although some very distant.
My father decided to pair each family of farmers with a family that had hard currency abroad, something that was actually illegal in Czechoslovakia. The pairing was necessary because, in addition to paying for passage, every family had to have $1000 in Canadian currency for a down payment on a farm. None of the farmers had money abroad. Our partner was Alex Lustig, a young lawyer from Prague and his wife Marianne and little daughter. My father succeeded in smuggling a few Persian rugs to England, the sale of which netted $300 for each pair of partners. He gave his $300 share to the partners, I am sure so he could say that he started in Canada without a cent. Mother objected: what if one of us needed an appendix operation? My father assured her that this would not happen, and once again he was right.
Source: Wilma and Georg Iggers, Two Lives in Uncertain Times, New York: Berghahn Books, 2006, p. 14f