Tom Stoppard / Tomas Straussler (M / Czechia, 1937), Holocaust survivor
Tom Stoppard / Tomáš Straussler (M / Czechia, 1937), Holocaust survivor
Peter Stoppard / Petr Straussler (M / Czechia, 1935), Holocaust survivor
- KEYWORDS : <Refugees> <Singapore> <India>
Biography
Tomáš "Tom" Straussler was born July 3, 1937 in Czechia to Eugen Straussler and Martha Becková. On 15 March 1939, the day the Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia, the Straussler family fled to Singapore. Before the Japanese occupation of Singapore (February 1942), Stoppard, his brother, and their mother were sent on to Australia. Stoppard's father remained in Singapore as a British army volunteer, and died in the war. He and his brother spent three years (1943–1946) in a boarding school in Darjeeling in the Indian Himalayas.
In 1945, their mother, Martha, married British army major Kenneth Stoppard, who gave the boys his English surname and, in 1946, moved the family to England. After being educated at schools in Nottingham and Yorkshire, Tom Stoppard became a journalist, a drama critic and then, in 1960, a playwright, writing for television, radio, film, and stage.