Renatus Chytil knows firsthand: lost stories are nearly impossible to retrieve. He’s drifting into senility, and not afraid to let you know.
Somewhere in Chytil’s past may lie harrowing experiences and exciting innovations; but to tell what’s true and what isn’t anymore, and which facts are getting mixed up with others, is difficult for an outsider.
He tells me he grew up in a villa in Prague, and fled the Nazis with his family at a young age because of their partial Jewish ancestry. That his father was killed in the concentration camp at Terezin. That he became a lawyer and moved to the United States. That he taught international law and eventually helped found a law school. That he’s spent the last 20 plus years trying to recover the sizable fortune he says the Nazis stole from his family. That he brought the case to the Human Rights Committee at the United Nations. That he now lives in poverty, is unable to provide for his family’s future, and he’s angry about it.
Some of the stories can be confirmed, some have faint traces of records here and there (I may have found records of his father’s death at Terezin), but most of the facts have been lost to the ages.
But Chytil persists. He writes letters to whomever he thinks may have the ability to help. And twice a week, sometimes more, he slowly pushes his shopping cart through the neighborhood to the grocery store, and slowly makes his way back.
Few of the neighbors he passes know his stories.
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