“My parents gave me their savings book and said: ‘buy yourself whatever you want’. They must have known that the sweet life they’ve had was over. Life in the First Republic was wonderful, indeed.”
Otto Grant was born on August 17, 1923, in a well-to-do assimilated Jewish family. His father was a higher bank clerk and his mother was the daughter of a doctor. Mr. Grant has an older brother. He studied grammar school in Prague and in 1939 he left to Great Britain following the advice of his uncle. He continued his studies in England. Eventually the whole Grant family managed to emigrate from Czechoslovakia. In 1942 Otto Grant joined the Czechoslovak exterritorial army as a rank and file soldier. Later he was also trained as a tank crew. He participated in the battle for Dunkirk in 1942. After the war he returned to Czechoslovakia (he came to Prague in his tank on May 30, 1945). He got married in 1948. In 1959 he was sentenced to four years of prisen, which he served in a coal mine in Mostecko region.
