Leo Mayer’s short biography written by Leo Kramar

My father was born 1900 on February 21 in Hodonin. After completing grammar school in Hodonin, he moved, around 1919, to Prague, where he studied civil engineering and architecture at the Czech Technical University and got his degree in the same year I was born, 1923. At the time I met him first, in 1938, he ran his own architect’s office with a few employees at Soukenicka 14, Prague II. During the 1930’s his business was running smoothly and he was beginning to make himself a name as an architect.
He met my mother on a visit home during a college vacation at the beginning of 1923. Their love-affair – and it was true love between them – was undesirable for many reasons, mainly social ones. Among others, because my mother’s father had all the popular prejudices against the Jews. In any case, although my father and I met very late in our lives, I have a clear memory of him as a very tender and caring father, something I find confirmed rereading his letters half a century later.
He never married. I didn’t know, but I learned from his sister Irene after the war, that he had had a friend, a Czech lady in Prague whom I met once very briefly after his death. I was very young and shy then and I regret very much that I did not ask her more about my father’s life.
The last two letters from my father are dated September 9th and 10th, 1943, immediately before his transport to Terezin. After that date, I heard nothing from him. I am sure that he did not want to endanger me by sending letters to me from Terezin. After the war I learned from the Czechoslovak authorities that he was transported from Terezin to Auschwitz on September 29, 1944, with transport E1-1410.