Month: November 2018

ECP students saw their history books come to life last week. They all study the horrors of the Second World War and visit Terezín to see where the Nazis held Jews, Roma and ‘political’ prisoners, many of whom were transported from there to Auschwitz. In total, more than 150,000 Jews were sent to Terezín, including 15,000 children. One of these children came into school last week. Her name is Doris Grozdanovičová.

Transported from Brno

Mrs Grozdanovičová recounted how at first, when the Germans invaded Czechoslovakia, she was happy. “We were happy because there was no school!“ But things in Brno, where she lived, soon changed and in 1942, she was rounded up with her family and transported to Terezín.

She recalled her years in the camp, where she was from 16 to 19, the age of many ECP students. Despite all the deaths and terrible conditions – around 33,000 people died in Terezín – Doris Schimmerling, as she was then, survived. She considers herself to have been very lucky. Many of the prisoners had to work in the laundry or the kitchens but she is well known for her job in Terezín where she looked after the sheep. This photo of her – the only one to come out of Terezín – shows her with them. She now has over a thousand toy sheep in her flat, which well-wishers around the world have sent to her.

Everyday Life in Terezín

She had to work from 7am to 5pm. But she managed to take a book out into the fields with her and she says that although it was hard during the winter and she suffered from frostbite, she thinks that working outdoors made her more resistent to the diseases that were endemic in the camp.

She told the students about the friendships she had with other girls in the camp and how important they had been to her. She also talked about about the secret synagogue that existed in Terezín and offered to accompany them on their school trip to the camp to show it to them.

Liberation

By the autumn of 1944, she was alone in Terezín. Her mother had already died in the camp. Her father and brother, Hanuš, had been sent on one of the last transports to Auschwitz. But just before the camp’s liberation, a Czech gendarme, Josef Urban, who worked in camp, offered to adopt her, as his own daughter had died three years earlier. The adoption never happened, but she still visits Josef Urban’s relatives today. Although their father died in Auschwitz, Hanuš survived and together, they went back to Brno. They both returned to their studies and she graduated from Masaryk University with a degree in English and Philosophy.

Life in Prague

Mrs Grozdanovičová then moved to Prague and worked as an editor with a publishing house and used her English and German translating and interpreting. She is a member of the Terezín Initiative and an executive editor of its magazine. She frequently visits schools to tell her story and we were honoured that she shared it with our students. Eye witness accounts are very important and the ECP regularly invites into school people with important stories to tell.

Her son, Jan Grozdanovič, is one of ECP’s Governors.

Medicine is a popular subject with ECP students. This term, five girls from the Class of 2018 started the journey to becoming a doctor at Charles University.

Our students also study Medicine in the UK and when Michal Barabas offered to come in to speak to current students thinking about a career in medicine, we were delighted to welcome him back. He spoke about his own journey since leaving the ECP. He showed students that there is more than one route to becoming a doctor.

Doctor Barabas first studied Pharmacology at University College London. His plan was to become an academic scientist. But after graduating from UCL, he realised that he didn’t want to spend his working life in front of a bench, pipette in hand. Michal’s horizons were wider; he wanted to study diseases more broadly and their effect on people. He also realised that he wanted more human interaction than is usually available to scientists.

Cambridge University

So he took a rather less well-known route to becoming a doctor. He returned to university, to Cambridge, to study for a post-graduate degree in Medicine. This route is open not only to science graduates, but also to those whose first degree is in a very different discipline. Michal trained with someone who had studied French and Spanish for their first degree. It is a more intensive four-year course, but not so intensive that he didn’t find time to indulge his passion for ice hockey. He played for Cambridge, taking part in the traditional Varsity match against Oxford University.

Training as a Hospital Doctor

Now a qualified doctor, Michal has now just taken up his first appointment as a Foundation Doctor. He is working at Hinchingbrooke Hospital in Huntingdon, just outside Cambridge.

Current students heard Michal talk about how his next few years as a doctor in training will be. He will be rotating around the various specialties in a busy general hospital. This is so he can get experience of all the options open to him. At the moment, he is working in the medical short stay unit. This is suitable for patients who are expected to stay in hosptal for a shorter period of time. They may have contracted pneumonia, sepsis or need further investigations into their symptoms.

Medicine has something for everyone

Medicine has many faces so every single personality is catered for ranging from pathology, radiology through internal medicine to specialties dealing with complex surgery such as neurosurgery or maxillofacial surgery. In the UK, these include specialties less common in the Czech Republic such as palliative care, which deals with the management of symptoms patients experience as they approach the end of their lives.

A Day in the Life of a Foundation Doctor

Michal described a typical day on the unit. It begins with the ward round, led by a senior doctor. They will see each patient on the ward and decide on their treatment plans for the day. It is then the job of junior doctors like Michal to ensure that the plans are carried out. This might involve arranging new drug regimes, performing special blood tests or procedures such as a lumbar puncture or arranging more complex imagining such as magnetic resonance, CT or ultrasound.

His working week is a manageable 40 hours although like all other doctors, he says that NHS staff tare stretched to cope with the growing demand. He regularly has to work an extra hour or two to complete his patients’ plans. And not all those hours are 9-5 as patients are ill 24 hours a day. When Michal works overnight, he is responsible for five wards, each caring for around 50 patients. It is to Michal that the on-duty nurses will bring their concerns about their patients.

Michal answered students’ questions. He generously said that he would be happy for them to email him as they continue to contemplate a career in medicine.

Memories of the English College

One interesting question was ‘why did you chose to study Pharmacology at university?’ Michal said: “I enjoyed my Chemistry lessons with Mr Emmerson and my Biology lessons with Ms Kerr so I knew I wanted to study a scientific subject. Mr Emmerson and Ms Kerr were obviously very pleased to hear that Michal is now a doctor, helping to heal sick people.

And what did Michal have to say about his first visit back to his old school? “It was great to be back after so long and to get to meet my former teachers. A lot was the same as I remembered it – the friendly, family atmosphere, the thoughtful students and the committed teachers.”

Impressive Laboratories

“But a lot has changed as well – the revamped refectory and especially the new laboratories. They are very impressive and almost approach the standard of those I got to experience in the pharmaceutical industry. Current ECP students are very privileged to be able to use them and I am certain that they will help to inspire many students to pursue science or medicine at university, just like they did in my case.”

Meeting of the Heads

Remembrance Sunday

Remembrance Sunday is an important day in the ECP calendar. This is because students represent the school at the annual Remembrance Day ceremony at the Commonwealth War Cemetery at Olšany.

Royal British Legion Poppy Appeal

All last week, we had been remembering those who had died, not only in WWI but also WWII and subsequent conflicts around the world. This now includes Aghanistan, where soldiers from both the UK and the Czech Republic have recently died. Remembrance Week is about remembering those who died, their families and their sacrifice. Linda Novobilská and Alexandra Brízová led the assemblies in school, explaining why this week is so special in the UK. The Royal British Legion organises one of the biggest charity collections in the country. Volunteers sell the red paper poppies to raise money to help ex-servicemen and women and their families.

Flanders Fields

The red poppy is the emblem of the charity that helps ex-servicemen because it was the first flower that grew back in the fields of northern France and Belgium after WWI. A factory was opened in south London in 1922 and wounded ex-servicemen worked there, making the poppies. Every year, volunteers sell around 36 million poppies up and down the UK. They stand on street corners, outside shops and railway stations, with their collecting tins and trays of poppies.

ECP representatives

Then on Sunday, Student Council President, Michael Best, joined Linda and Alexandra. With the help of other Student Council members, Michael had organised the sale of poppies around school. Also attending the ceremony were Dr and Mrs Brown, Mr Straughan, who served in the Royal Navy, and Ms Hearn, whose Czech father had been a member of the 311 Squadron of Czech pilots in the RAF during WWII. A ceremony just like the one they attended here in Prague takes place in every city, town and village in the UK, commemorating those from the area who went off to fight and who never came back.

100th anniversary

This year’s ceremony was, of course, particularly special because 2018 marks the 100th anniversary of the end of the First World War. It was a war that claimed the lives of 16 million people. The date and time of the ceremony was significant: the eleventh hour of the eleventh month reminded us that it was on that day in 1918 that the guns finally fell silent. During the ceremony, Linda, Alexandra and Michael helped members of the 1st Prague Cubs and Scouts to lay religious symbols on the graves of those who had died in the service of their country. They paused briefly by each grave as they did so, to remember the son, husband and father who was buried there. Some of them were not much older than our students when they died.

Invitation from the British Ambassador

After the ceremony, they all went back to the British Embassy for the traditional curry lunch. They were able to see the splendid Thun Palace, with amazing views over Prague, as well as sample the tasty dishes prepared by the Ambassador’s chef.