Transcript
Index
00:00:17 - Question: Talk about childhood Answer: Laxova talked about her happy childhood in Brno (now in Czech Republic) lasting 8 years and 15 days—until WWII began, when she was sent to England as part of Kindertransport.1 She then explained the history of Czech Republic, from Austro-Hungary to Czechoslovakia and the cultural heritage of the city where they lived. She talked about W. Wilson’s advocacy of the country’s independence and Tomas Masaryk’s first presidency and his humanism and politics.
00:03:56 - Laxova talked about her parents—her father was an accountant with a good income and her mother was educated. She recalled pleasant childhood memories vacationing, her nursemaid Manya, and being well off. She remembered going to school at 6 years old (1937), but in the next year, children began disappearing from her religion classes. She recalled her father’s birthplace in Slovakia, which has since been taken over by UNESCO.
00:08:49 - Laxova recalled returning to her father’s hometown in fall 1938, where her father was called into the army. She discussed his disappointment that no resistance had been given to the Nazi occupation of Sudetenland (September 1938). She talked about the Munich Agreement and earlier memories of Hitler’s speeches on the radio during the Anschluss (March 1938)
00:12:30 - After the Munich Agreement, she remembered, the family could no longer have the same freedoms to swim, vacation, go out, and play piano. She discussed the numerous decrees being issued. She related how her father began going to synagogue on Friday nights and frequently returned with guests for dinner—she told the story of one couple who’d been evicted by the Gestapo in Vienna and had their children shot. Several months later the Slovak territory was occupied by Hitler also.
00:20:00 - Laxova recalled the next day, Sept. 16, two synagogues being burnt down and things getting much worse—politicians and even her father being imprisoned. She related how her mother wroted to G. Lansbury, a British MP, who took Hitler’s claims to annihilated Jews seriously. Her mother sent a picture of Renata and requested that he get her to safety. Five days later, Grace Beaton responded on behalf of Lansbury pledging to do whatever they could.
00:23:42 - Laxova discussed Beaton’s involvement with the Friends’ (Quakers) international organization War Resister’s International, later awarded a Nobel Peace Prize, and which organized Kindertransport. Before her mother could reject these advances, she received a letter from the Daniels family offering for Renata to come live with them—her photograph had been published in a Friends’ circular. By this time, things were serious enough for her mother to accept.
00:29:36 - Laxova talked about not being allowed to finish school; the demonstrations of Hitler Jugend threatening the Jews; being questioned one day by a woman in the street; and her father’s arrest. She recalled getting paperwork for the Kindertransport train leaving the Wilson station in Prague on July 31, 1939. She explained how few people believed Hitler’s threats because they thought the worst he could do was a mass deportation, and because it was difficult to pick up and move.
00:35:38 - Laxova related how her parents were unable to obtain a permit to leave, though her father tried to learn a trade. She reminisced about her last days in Prague with her parents and visiting the zoo with her father. She recalled realizing in the taxi to the station that she was leaving everything familiar, crying and begging her parents not so send her. At the station, she recalled the organization of the transport.
00:41:36 - Laxova told the story of her mother boarding the train to give her a hug goodbye, though she wasn’t one of those who was allowed to do so. She talked about the train journey to London and the Nazi checkpoint at the border.
00:44:00 - Laxova related the story of Sir Nicholas Winton, who was responsible for the organization of the five Kindertransports, of which Laxova’s was the fifth. Winton formed the British Committee for Children after visiting Prague and realizing none of the aid groups targeted children; and arranged with the Gestapo the release of the children on a guarantee of £50 and a home.
00:50:12 - Laxova remarked that of the 664 Kindertransport children, only 5 had both parents survive and 20 had one parent survive the war. Additionally, a sixth transport was slated to leave on September 1, 1939, but following Hitler’s invasion of Poland and Britain’s declaration of war, the train never left. No one knows what happened to the children. Fifty years later, Winton turned his papers about Kindertransport over to a friend to publish; much publicity followed, including a trip to Israel.
00:56:02 - Laxova discussed adjusting to life with Daniels, who lived near Manchester and worked for Shell. She related moving with Harry (Daniels’ young son) to the Cumberland area of England during the war, due to the danger of bombing—they attended the Manor School and she talked about later reunions of schoolchildren who were moved to the school during the war. The next year, she remembered, the family moved to Morecambe, where Shell UK was based during the war. She liked grammar school.
01:00:13 - Laxova recalled at the end of the war, her mother was the first civilian allowed to go from Prague to England to convince Renata to return to Czechoslovakia. They allowed her to stay until the end of the 1946 school year, and she received an excellent education in England. She speculated that she would have gone on to study languages had she stayed there. In Czechoslovakia, she took her “maturity” exams.
01:04:16 - Laxova discussed wanting to go to an English school, but her parents insisting she relearn Czech and go to an ordinary school in Brno; so her mother had to find a school where the headmaster understood the context of her fleeing to England. She talked about subjects she learned, but that her parents didn’t see language as a living—part of this was a result of the way they had to survive the war and the camps—so she agreed to go to medical school.
01:08:40 - Laxova discussed the coming of the Communist regime—unfavorable to anyone with Western education—after her graduation from high school and the reign of chaos. She related her experience applying to med school—her building janitor was questioned by a delegation from the school to find out her political leanings and supported her, and then she got an interview at the medical school with a professor, a laborer, and a party member. She speculated that had she applied several years later.
01:13:21 - Laxova discussed medical school, where she studied also Russian and Marxism-Leninism. While the school was rigorous, she received good grades, but she related not being able to graduate with honors because of her political background. She remembered not being allowed to study genetics, because it was considered reactionary under communism; nevertheless, the better professors taught groups of four in secret at their home. She also remembered the destruction of a statue of Gregor Mendel.
01:19:28 - Laxova talked about the ludicrous nature of the political climate—people still received blood transfusions with correct blood-typing, but she talked about political criminals disappearing to the uranium mines. During her fourth year, she decided to specialize in pediatrics because it was so broad. Her first child was born in 1955 and she graduated in 1956. She discussed her husband’s work in the veterinary school, but recalled that the communists assigned her to a position 150 miles from home.
01:24:22 - Laxova discussed writing to excuse herself from the assignment, and receiving a response that they were glad because they wanted a real doctor, not a “graduated childrens’ doctor.” She talked about volunteering at a local children’s hospital until the hospital offered her a paid position.
01:26:44 - She recalled feeling lucky that she went to med school at the beginning, since the communists later purged Western elements from the school; she discussed personal attention paid to each student. She talked about 20 working class and communist party members who were “assigned” to medical school in her class of 300—these people “led” the class politically. She related an anecdote about demonstrations in Brno for better workers pay.
01:34:31 - Laxova related that the students were ordered to vote whether they wanted the students to be expelled. Nearly everyone raised their hand, but several courageous ones objected. That night, the “workers” pressured each member of their class individually. When the vote was retaken the next day, she refused to raise her hand. She remembered a Western-educated physiology professor and surgery professor who were encouraging to her—the latter encouraged her to take a foreign-standard medical exam.
01:40:43 - Laxova continued to talk about Western-educated instructors being well-rounded gentlemen; and told the story about a Catholic friend who was sent much further away from Brno than her. She talked about enjoying her job, having another child, and not having much money, though everything was paid for by the state—her parents helped financially each month.
01:45:12 - Laxova talked about the state opening an Institute for Pediatric Research (IPRB) in 1963. She discussed members of the institute and their desire to research genetics, which by that time was accepted by the government. Referencing British research, the team began looking at twins, specifically hereditary traits. She discussed advantages of the communist system, not needing patient consent.
01:51:28 - Laxova remembered having a great time with these children—activities they did and buying toys for the children. She discussed the vast amount of data they were able to gather—blood types, vision, eye color, foot and palm prints, taste, voice prints, psychology—and conclusions that were able to be drawn from the data. From the study, the parents received a good examination of the children and a family history. Laxova earned her PhD from the study.
01:55:50 - In 1968, she recalled, Czechoslovakia defeated the Russians in hockey and Dubcek took power, which began the Prague Spring—the liberalization of the communist regime and criticism of Soviet influence. She talked about musical influences on Prague Spring, and explained that seeing the Soviet tanks roll in to repress the movement made her realize she needed to go elsewhere—it reminded her too much of the Nazis. The data were never published.
02:00:45 - Laxova discussed getting her PhD, reviewing research that the IPRB was doing. She discussed screening the child population of Southern Moravia for metabolic disorders as well as mental retardation. During the year, people brought children with retardation to the Institute to find out why this was happening—she discussed the limitations of genetics knowledge at the time, even in the West, compared to what is known today (referring to McKusick’s MIM).
02:07:14 - Laxova remembered being motivated to learn more about genetics by the heart-breaking questions of these parents. She read Stern’s genetics text, but wanted more information, so decided to get a PhD, based on the data the IPRB had gathered on twins and their parents. She explained her thesis which studied isoamylases in twins—prevalence, forms, inheritance, population incidence, and abnormality—and some specific findings concerning diabetic twins.
02:11:50 - Laxova remarked that older geneticists existed, just weren’t allowed to teach—she talked about her five examining professors, her defense, and the sacrifices required of writing a thesis while working full-time. She noted that so little was known about genetics that those who worked in the field knew everything that was known.
02:15:27 - Laxova talked about communism and the incidence of denunciation and spying. She told the story of a lab technician who suspiciously went from complaining about having little money to living luxuriously and having to be careful what you said around him. Also, families of men who were denounced suffered horribly—unable to be employed, etc. She remarked that “communism destroyed everything”—agriculture, nature, the economy—and the “greyness.”
02:19:45 - Talking about the 1967 liberalization, Laxova talked about being able to take a spartan vacation to Yugoslavia in 1966. They visited the Italian border, where they tried to escape to the West (with nothing); but because of their Czech plates, their car was turned back. She talked again about the hopefulness of 1968—Boy Scout movement, Czech flags, etc.
02:24:04 - In the summer of 1968, Laxova’s family received two visitors from the West—renown geneticist Lionel Penrose wanted to visit Mendel’s museum, and Prof. Stamp was a veterinary doctor. As Penrose was leaving, he invited them to London, and as Stamp was leaving, he invited her husband for study leave with him. Her husband was able to get a visa and take their eldest daughter to Scotland. She discussed her plans to vacation with their younger daughter in Slovakia.
02:27:52 - Laxova discussed arriving in Slovakia and the next morning overhearing the radio broadcast announcing the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact forces. She recalled heading home, where she and Anita had valid visas for England to visit her husband. She talked about the resistance movement diverting trains and pulling up tracks, and being forced to walk 25 km to their station because of the resistance movement’s efforts.
02:32:17 - She referred to this as the Czechs’ “finest hour,” them all helping each other; but determining that they needed to leave. She debated whether to sacrifice her children’s or her parent’s happiness, and discussed difficulties making arrangements, but suddenly finding a bus leaving for Vienna. She talked about the buses, the government’s hatred of the Russians, and their charge to tell the world what was really going on.
02:36:16 - Arriving in Vienna, Laxova’s family found centers that had been set up for Czech citizens. They were able to receive money for a trip to London and meet Daniela and her husband; and trying to set up a new life. She quipped about a customs agent who had no clue Czechoslovakia had been invaded. The next week, they called Prof. Penrose, who was waiting for them. She discussed Penrose’s intellect, their hospitality to them—allowing them to stay for three months—and his offer to her of a job.
02:42:43 - Laxova told anecdotes about the Penroses’ “Englishness”—their old broken down car, which died in rush hour in Regent Street. While retired, Penrose gave her a job at the Kennedy-Galton Center at Harperbury Hospital, which was funded from a Kennedy Award for his work (the other recipient was Henry Waisman). She discussed Penrose’s modesty.
02:47:30 - Laxova worked at Kennedy-Galton for seven years. She talked about two significant contributions from those days: one studied all women at the facility who’d born children and their children, studying inheritance of non-specific mental retardation; and the other was an etiological study of mental retardation in school-age children.
02:51:53 - Laxova remembered that in 1972, Prof. Penrose died suddenly. Upon his death, a consultant clinical geneticist position was created, and she explained what a consultant was in British medicine—she became the first person in Britain to hold this position. She talked about enjoying building clinical genetics in her region and hiring new scholars.
02:56:00 - She recalled her husband not fitting in with the wealthy British veterinary establishment; so he took a job at Ft. Collins Medical School in Colorado, where he taught for two years, but didn’t receive tenure. At a veterinary conference, he learned about Wisconsin and was offered a job which he took sight-unseen. At this point, John Opitz offered her a job at UW-Madison through one of Laxova’s British colleagues.
03:04:40 - Laxova discussed enjoying working with Opitz, who left UW in 1979 and was a leader in delineating syndromes in genetics. She described her office in the Waisman Center, built partly with Kennedy money; about Waisman; about “university-affiliated facilities”; and about Kennedy’s desire to eradicate mental retardation within his lifetime. Kennedy’s sister was a resident of a facility in Wisconsin.
03:08:59 - Laxova described work when she came to Waisman; some research was done and it was also a DTU (Diagnostic and Training Units) for people in pediatrics, occ. therapy, phys. therapy, speech/language, social work, dentistry, genetics, etc. When a child was brought in, they were evaluated by each of these disciplines, which Laxova hated because it was overwhelming for the parents and the children and because she only saw a couple patients a week.
03:12:28 - She talked about being involved in England with early prenatal diagnosis through amniocentesis (which interested Penrose) and work with alpha fetoprotein. After continuing this work, she decided (1976) to start the Genetic Contact Network, people trained at UW who knew their communities and would refer cases for genetic testing. She discussed the growth of this, and her conviction that many genetic disorders were going unnoticed.
03:17:29 - Laxova also discussed the establishment of the Prenatal Genetics clinic at Meriter Hospital (where most babies were delivered), to which cases were referred from around the state. She described the increase of tools available—amniocentesis, alpha fetoprotein, and ultrasound, which has grown more and more sophisticated. She explained that the purpose of these was to maximize the outcome of pregnancy, which she outlined in “Pathology of the Fetus,” a textbook chapter published in 1992.
03:22:03 - Laxova described work at the clinic—counselors took family histories and educated families; help for people who decided to terminate pregnancies, diagnosing in advance things that could be dealt with immediately after birth, etc. Around 1990, however, things changed with the hiring of someone who said she was a high-risk obstetrician, but wanted to be independent and refused assistance from UW’s clinical geneticists. She was later fired but UW had been separated from Meriter by then.
03:25:30 - In 1992, Laxova recalled moving on to study genes involved with cancer, from which a genetics clinic was established at the Comprehensive Cancer Center. She talked about Meriter initially hiring two genetic counselors of their own, and some cooperation between UW and Meriter since then in complicated cases. From 1976 on, she had been involved in a MS degree genetics counseling training program with Joan Burns, one of the first of its kind in the US.
03:30:42 - Laxova talked about her staff, many of which were trained in her program, liking each other and having very little turnover. The staff later became involved in accreditation of programs, training postdocs, and having every area involved in genetic education. She outlined the staff, from herself and Joan to secretarial work. Laxova responded that women comprised a majority of the staff and added that early on, the genetics department didn’t really didn’t value genetic counseling.
03:36:14 - Laxova talked about her conviction that there isn’t a family that exists anymore that hasn’t experienced a genetically-implicated loss. Laxova explained the origins of the project in her research in England, where all factors of a child’s medical condition needed to be accounted for; so they considered environmental factors that cause fetal abnormalities (teratogens)—infectious diseases, thalidomide, alcohol (most common).
03:40:59 - Laxova recounted how her clinical studies began documenting various kinds of teratogens; this later became a special clinic because people were inquiring what kinds of things could affect their pregnancies, and they kept records, hired genetic counselors, etc. They went on to publish a teratogen training manual for genetic counselors.
03:43:36 - She outlined a project they’d conducted studying diagnoses in the 1970s—2/3 of people given a diagnosis of severe abnormality requested to terminate the pregnancy. She then discussed how genetic counselors dealt with people—always face to face, always giving them all the information, sending them home to think about it.
03:48:00 - Laxova also described how, as ultrasound became more common, misdiagnosis became more common and it was difficult to convince parents that the baby was healthy and that they shouldn’t terminate—especially the men. She described the process of counseling fathers as an invigorating challenge and recalled teaching students of the power and the honor of their counseling—one wrong word could cause great damage.
03:53:49 - Laxova observed that she never felt different from her male colleagues. She remembered being struck by it when she was informed she was the lowest paid professor in the department; but she had earned so little under communism and in England that she thought her US salary was a kingly wage, and she felt very privileged, and she didn’t care about the money.
03:58:18 - She noted that when she started, the number of chromosomes had just been discovered, and no one knew what a gene was; and now, our genetic diagram can tell us to what drugs we’ll be susceptible. She described this as the change from looking at the body as a whole to looking at the molecules.
04:01:28 - Laxova distinguished between the information being available and it being understood. She noted that it worried her that while they can test for susceptibility, people often react strongly to risks that may not become reality. She remarked that genetics is extremely complicated, and that one of the difficulties is to explain this to people—she used the example of mothers of boys with muscular dystrophy who refused to let their daughters date, etc.
04:07:58 - Laxova mentioned that she never went to meetings, though they were often held at Waisman Center, because she felt she didn’t need an excuse (that she was a woman) to do the best she could—though she did feel women were discriminated—and gender discrimination wasn’t as noticeable in Europe. She felt she never really thought about it, and felt she was wrong to not care.
04:13:50 - Laxova remembered loving teaching, and endeavoring to make it personal, even in large classes. She taught medical genetics to med students and clinical genetics to genetic counseling students—she recalled being bothered that med students knew a lot of genetic theory, but no practical knowledge, and thought she was the first to invite patients to speak in class—these were some of the most powerful moments in teaching.
04:17:51 - Laxova related the story about a former chairman who attended a lecture by a Huntington’s patient and said he’d never forget the experience. She talked about other types of cases who were willing to come to class—especially Downs—and also talked about the flexibility of her exams. She felt more gratified by teaching genetic counseling students, who loved hearing her stories of real cases she was working on, which she opened sometimes to students.
04:22:46 - She related easing genetic counseling students into real-life counseling situations. She also taught courses in cancer genetics, teratogens, and human genetics; and presented many times at meetings or guest lectures. Follow up: Have students changed over the years? Answer: Laxova thought not, but that the abundance of information out there has caused students to be less excited by genetics. She told the anecdote of students congratulating her on her citizenship in 1976.
04:27:59 - Laxova talked about how she taught, by constantly asking questions to all the students, using slides, and telling stories. She noted always being worried and therefore always being prepared. She quipped about a colleague being honored at a ceremony who noted “when you stop being scared, you’re not worth being listened to.”
04:31:39 - Laxova called these “professional sons and daughters,” geneticists and counselors who she sometimes encounters out of the blue. She talked about discovering a rare horrible disease in 1980 from a Rockford, IL family—she talked about the Huntington’s-like disease and about what little help they could provide for them—and about reuniting with one of her students, now in Utah, through the family. She also related another anecdote of a high-school girl whose father was a MD in Appleton.
04:39:17 - Laxova thought the most meaningful one was involvement in the Genetic Contact Network—she talked about county coordinators who loved the people in their area with whom she’d become close friends. She also talked about the Perinatal Foundation (PF), founded by Dr. Leonard, who was always helping students—she was the head of the committee that decided on grants for perinatal research.
04:43:52 - Laxova talked about this activity being gratifying, and used the example of establishing clinics among all the Indian tribes of the state (one of which was funded by the PF). She went on to discuss a fund founded in Mrs. Leonard’s name which pays for child-care for students with small children to go to school.
04:45:35 - She noted that she was busier in retirement than ever, but that because her work is no longer within the boundaries of a job, she feels more tired from the diverse projects she’s involved in. Laxova commented on being privileged to enjoy everything she did, including writing grants and work at the national level—writing guidelines for genetic services. Wisconsin, she noted, was at the cutting edge of clinical genetic services, though not the science of it.
