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strategy.
    Victor shrugged. “What if people suspect that we are trying to run away?”
    â€œYour business takes you to Prague every week,” Marie replied quickly. It was true that Victor traveled to the capital city every Tuesday to sell his grain crops on the commodity exchange. “If anyone asks, we’ll say that you are tired of staying in hotels,” she continued, detailing an explanation that sounded as if it was already well rehearsed. “People will understand that a flat is a more comfortable place to stay.”
    Victor finally relented and, with his consent, it appeared as if the family might actually abandon their home and flee to a safer place.
    No one in Karl’s hometown suspected that his family was fashioning an escape plan. They shared no information with friends or other family members. Marie in particular did not want to implicate anyone else in their arrangements; she did not trust that anyone would be able to keep their plans a secret. As for Karl, he said nothing to any of his classmates. No one in any case would have cared about the intentions of the only Jewish boy in class. Besides, this was the septima , the last year of high school, and Karl’s matura , the final exams, were fast approaching. They would be tough, a long set of oral and written tests that would determine his readiness for university. This should have been the most important time in Karl’s academic life. He should have been solely focused on his studies, day and night, analyzing mathematical problems, memorizing historical dates, conjugating verbs in Latin and French. But Karl was thinking of none of this. The unrest that had begun in Austria was finally and inevitably moving inside the borders of Czechoslovakia.
    The three million German-speaking citizens living in Sudetenland continued to claim that they were oppressed under the control of the Czech government. The reports that appeared in the local newspaper told of increasing clashes on the northern border between Sudeten Germans and Czechs. The leader of the Sudeten German Party was Konrad Henlein who had come to power in 1935 in an election that had been largely financed with Nazi money. On March 28, 1938, Hitler instructed Henlein to increase Sudetenland’s demands for autonomy and its union with Nazi Germany. If the Czech government did not accede to these demands and turn over this part of Czechoslovakia to Germany, Hitler was threatening to support the Sudeten Germans with military force. The Czech government led by President Edvard BeneÅ¡ turned to Britain and France, hoping that these powers would come to his country’s aid. But this was to no avail. Britain and France were determined to avoid war at all costs. Britain’s Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain said, “How horrible, fantastic, incredible it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas masks here because of a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing…. However much we may sympathize where a small nation is confronted by a big and powerful neighbor, we cannot in all circumstances undertake to involve the whole British empire in war simply on her account.” 2
    In the end, Czechoslovakia’s allies did not stand up for her at all. The Munich Agreement, signed by Germany, Italy, France, and the United Kingdom, stipulated that Czechoslovakia must cede the Sudeten territory to Germany. In exchange, the understanding was that Hitler would not make any further demands for land. Chamberlain held the signed document in his hand, waving it above his head as he addressed the British public and read aloud the details of the accord. “We regard the agreement signed last night as symbolic of the desire of our two peoples never to go to war with one another again…. My good friends this is the second time in our history that there has come back from Germany to Downing Street peace with honor. I believe it is peace in