Born May 26, 1920; Died November 24, 2010.
Jan Wiener, who has died aged 90, was a Czech Jew who fought in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War after fleeing Nazis in Germany and Czechoslovakia. Born in Hamburg, Germany, Mr Wiener’s life reflected the turbulence of the 20th century.
His family fled Hitler’s Germany for Prague, but Mr Wiener found himself on the run again after Czechoslovakia was occupied by Nazi troops. He managed to escape to Britain through Yugoslavia and Italy, where he was captured, to join the Royal Air Force’s No 311 Czechoslovak Bomber Squadron.
Mr Wiener’s father committed suicide to avoid ending up in the hands of the Nazis. His mother died in the Theresienstadt Nazi concentration camp. After the communists took over Czechoslovakia in 1948, Mr Wiener spent five years in communist prisons, a fate shared by many of his colleagues because the anti-Nazi fighters who fought in the west were considered the enemies of the communist state.
In the mid-1960s, Mr Wiener settled in the US and became professor of history at the American University in Washington, DC.
After the collapse of communism, he returned to his homeland on a regular basis and became a guest lecturer at Prague’s branch of New York University.
He is survived by his wife, Zuzana, a son and a daughter.
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