Browse Items (27 total)
Sort by:
Zdenek Hruban
Zdenek Hruban was born in 1921 in Přerov, Moravia. His father was a mathematics professor who had studied in Austria while Czechs were still subject to Austro-Hungarian rule. By the time Zdenek himself was old enough to attend university, WWII had…
Zdenek David
Zdenek David was born in Blatná, South Bohemia, in May 1931. He moved to Prague at age seven, however, when his father Václav (a judge) was appointed to the capital’s circuit court. Zdenek spent most of WWII in Prague and remembers his schooling…
Vera Borkovec
Vera Borkovec was born in Brno in 1926. She grew up in Prague with her parents and younger sister until 1934, when her father became the director of Škoda Works in Tehran, Iran. Vera remembers Tehran as a progressive city, and the schooling she…
Thomas Hasler
Thomas Hasler was born in Prague in 1941. His mother, Charlotte Jurdová, was a linguist with a doctorate in philology from Charles University, and his father, Karel Hašler, was a very popular Czech songwriter, actor, director, and playwright who,…
Savoy Horvath
Savoy Horvath was born in 1933 in Brno, Moravia. Six years later, his family moved to Hradec Králové where his father worked at a German airport as an interpreter and accountant for the Nazis. Savoy’s father was also the leader of a Czech resistance…
Peter Hruby
Peter Hruby was born in Prague in June, 1921. His father, Petr, owned a shoe shop in the Prague district of Karlín (which Peter says went bankrupt as shoemaker Tomáš Bat’a cornered the local footwear market), while his mother, Marie, stayed at home…
Peter Demetz
Peter Demetz was born in Prague in 1922. His mother, who was Jewish, was a seamstress and his father (of German ethnicity) worked in a theatre. When Peter was about five years old, he moved to Brno with his parents and lived there for ten years.…
Paul Brunovsky
Paul Brunovsky was born in the spa town of Piešt’any, in western Slovakia, in September 1930. His father Štefan was a builder, while his mother Katarína stayed at home raising Paul and his five siblings. Paul says Piešt’any was ‘peaceful’ during the…
Miroslav Chybik
Miroslav Chybik was born in Jalubí, Moravia, in 1935. His mother Josefa and father Miroslav met in Chicago, Illinois, in the 1920s, but had returned to Europe to care for their ailing parents in 1930. Miroslav’s father retained his American…
Michlean Amir
Michlean Amir was born in Nîmes, France in 1940 to Czech Jewish parents. When her father Oscar joined the Czechoslovak Division of the British Army, Michlean and her mother Gertrude traveled with him to various training camps in England. At the close…