1 10 31 https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/abcb945bd83c12a6dd2965da061a84cb.jpg?Expires=1779321600&Signature=LiIUSEgLLQG9M6MeiKcWEyw4hiB-mqcytruAK5VWlgEOSpUm-A8zEQvl6Bf%7EoTO4qVvT39GvEyOGqXOY1wMrq26Y-iV%7E3a5Qpsc4RUpjG3XHoovnOxHHI-ggEP4T8VgpVuKYm5nSgz%7EOm8RppTwDTQZP07e0Pqmy7ar4QmxpGsqbmypoVF7fOUq88GDljscPyxGu9ZrCb2VC5MljX3YAs-pibTHeBkSA6FKfvY2RJEYTALbzbDo0jMbvk80%7Ek%7EomfAF8yJjwC-EwTIeY-WzPEWh1Fp9h-hD28W8cyhTrMrPhXv3JqsiHbAlnzzoFW0nR3i7UoRlFmC08mF7OKCcYEQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 7d26b4cfce2e17f1aea3e36a286a0699 https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/5c9473a90ef88acb7d5edb4f0548a298.jpg?Expires=1779321600&Signature=jnaTNucZeBFSDKoGHo5hw0-DAEDf6TCNJsP7OZHUobC2irVSUtwqvkv1yQgE3eDYxRgfXFHng4q51PcZh5hzMZANa7c0N2QUusdZQdRukfaQvbV9zptRuZZ3b6Ih4g%7ErecD%7EZmD-7WRGa3-W1Dket51F0ZKIRpmc2xHeNtymAxWvW65P7Ns5zunbn8Z0vubrejJyi1Fdx0drGkl0sEG5Sh0e-I6ahjcrPeF-LEwhtHdgrsDJjuhdUPgyi9M63t26CaYu2VzSNo6tDWJyYQWjtcDrJWh6D9akOyUhDjA5itzSO-O5UUrBFQ8d4wsyyi%7EGAdRgYQBm0PSbXOCFa-wiXw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 682389e5db337ee4b49795e1cc6d4e0c Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans Subject The topic of the resource Recording Voices &amp; Documenting Memories of Czech &amp; Slovak Americans was an oral history project launched by the National Czech &amp; Slovak Museum &amp; Library in 2009. The project captured and preserved the stories of Czechs and Slovaks who left their homeland during the Cold War and settled in New York City, Washington, D.C., Cleveland, Chicago and the San Francisco Bay Area. During the second phase of the project, the NCSML recorded the stories of immigrants who came to the United States after the fall of communism in 1989 as well. By the conclusion of the project in August 2013, the NCSML had collected more than 300 oral histories. <br /><br />Both phases of the project were made possible by grants from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. <br /><br />On the project’s website, you can read biographies of Czechs and Slovaks who began a new life in the United States, watch video clips from their interviews, and view photos and other archival materials they shared with us. <br /><br />Full length interviews are available for further research at the National Czech &amp; Slovak Museum &amp; Library. For more information, contact Dave Muhlena, Library Director, at dmuhlena@ncsml.org. Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound <h4>Ban On Dancing</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/x6sflmN1ivU?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“No dancing. It wasn’t allowed. I know that we had at one family’s house, they knew somebody who was before a dance instructor, so he would come there occasionally and we gathered and we danced, but that was… if we were caught, we would be in trouble. So that was one of those things, and a lot of things were… you know, we were young girls; we would like to have nylon stockings, we couldn’t get them, you know. With a lot of things you had to be very inventive – to make things interesting and fashionable. You know, from old to new.</p><p>“But I think otherwise we were happy. Maybe we were even happier young people than they are nowadays. You know, we didn’t have any expectations. We were taught that we have to work, either physically or mentally, to accomplish things – that nothing comes free in life, and that you should deserve it and be proud of anything, whatever you do. It doesn’t matter how important or unimportant the job is, but you should be always proud of the things you are doing and do it at your best.”</p><h4>Tradition</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/bp9quwp5zi8?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“You know, more or less, I think it was a tradition. You know, nobody talked about it, nobody was so aware of what you are or not. You were a neighbor, you were a friend, you were an ‘Oh, terrible! I wouldn’t talk to him or to her!’ And the kids, we didn’t have any way to get in trouble if we went to Sokol, you know, we didn’t get in any trouble. We got [rid of] our energy, you know, that way.”</p><h4>Life After WWII</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/OIJ6KIN9pe4?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Oh, everything was more open and free. There were more goods to buy and you could plan. You know, I think you do not know what freedom means unless you lose it. You know, we are talking about freedom, but nobody knows what it is, really, until you lose it. You don’t have it, you cannot decide things for yourself, you know. There are so many things which you don’t think about if you live in a free world. And so we were enjoying all those things, and I think we were happy, but it didn’t last too long and then the Communists took over.”</p><h4>Prison</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/oudr5OeHy20?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“That was a horrible thing, because you were in a tiny little cell and even when I went to the bathroom I had to leave the doors open. I don’t know what they thought that I will do. It was terrible. Then they interrogated me there, of course, and in Čtyrka too. And I think at Čtyrka they were very rude, very rude. Actually, that was when I learned how to smoke. They brought me from the interrogation and I was completely out, and the girls in the cell gave me a cigarette so, that’s how… Then I had to undo that habit.”</p><h4>Toilet As Telephone</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WPNGQmKJlKQ?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“We had a good time in the bad times too. We used the toilet as a telephone, because we found out that if we empty it, then we can talk to the people downstairs. And we were sending letters through the windows on a thread. So we had all kinds of excitement. But you know every day somebody had to go through the interrogation, and that was tough. So you had to make it nice.”</p><h4>Perspective</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ESyFco5YGSA?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Once you take that step, you are in the middle, because you miss certain things from the country you came from, and if you are there, you miss the things from where you are: you have comparison. If you live and stay in the same country, you don’t have any comparison. You know, you can see it on TV or whatever, but you have to live it. It’s like if you go for vacation some place, it’s not to live there. It’s different.”</p> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Zdenka Novak Description An account of the resource <p> </p><p>Zdenka Novak was born in Prague in July, 1931. She lived there until the outbreak of WWII when her parents (who owned a delicatessen in the capital) decided to return to their native Kokšín in western Bohemia. In Kokšín, Zdenka’s father Václav set up a feather processing business with a Jewish partner, Emil Goldscheider. Zdenka says her family came under scrutiny because of this partnership and that she remembers the day the Goldscheiders were taken away (none of them returned from the concentration camps they were sent to). During the War, Zdenka remembers attending secret dancing lessons, as dancing was outlawed in the Protectorate in 1941. She says young people had to be ‘inventive’ due to shortages in goods, but that on the other hand they had ‘less expectations.’ At the end of the War, Zdenka’s family moved to Tašovice, near the West Bohemian spa town of Karlovy Vary, where Zdenka started attending ceramic school. She says one of her proudest moments was being selected to paint a vase for President Edvard Beneš on an official visit to the academy. She studied there until one year after the Communist coup in 1949, when she was arrested on charges of helping smuggle secret documents across the border to the CIC in West Germany. She was interrogated and found guilty without a trial. Zdenka spent 18 months in Prague prisons such as Pankrác and Čtyrka (the StB headquarters on Bartolomějská Street). She escaped through a bathroom window en route from one prison to another in 1951 and went on the run – making her way to territory she was familiar with near Karlovy Vary by train and then walking across the border into Bavaria through the woods.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Zdenka reported at a police station in Mehring, Germany, and was sent to Valka Lager refugee camp. She says she was not there long before she was approached by the American government with a job offer. She moved to Oberursel near Frankfurt to work and it was there, in 1953, that she married her husband Frank (a Czech émigré whom she had met at Valka Lager). At the end of 1953, the couple moved to the United States. They settled in New York City. Zdenka first worked as an office hand at an import/export company but soon became a clerk at an insurance firm. She says that she had many Czech friends in the city and that she enjoyed socializing at Sokol New York in particular. In 1956, she moved to Beloit, Wisconsin, when her husband gained a job as a mechanical designer at Beloit Corporation – a factory producing papermaking machines. There, Zdenka and Frank started raising their two children before moving to neighboring Rockton, Illinois. While her children were growing up, Zdenka ran a landscaping business. Today, she continues to live in Rockton. She has traveled to the Czech Republic with her children and grandchildren and says she tries to impress the value of her Czech heritage upon them.</p> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived NCSML Archive 1948 emigrant/refugee Arrest Benes Community Life Ctyrka prison German Jews Koksin Nazis Occupation Pankrac Political prisoner Prison Refugee camp Smrcinova Tasovice Underground Women workers World War II https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/3916c5ca2c4b01980c2a8856797536a5.jpg?Expires=1779321600&Signature=rsEN1dPo4cCHbhttwao1oGJnC9dWu9m%7EQCfPBPuIj5sJ-kkD2bBLSNY72o0cAv03sajX6Y1b9uMZbKA1kc-oYluDm3JWNbqNg9g4yedQPOZ64z5y0PDFWy0uxvnBp6UGk-DVOHW-24vfiucLnuzp6nvShlQHHPP-2lSZ-Rnunt16eHv60B3QspECwwOBFTkOQaiH7Ozz7GVfCbHoprS4PsCzIK2CQ7SQUPEefVYsomgfvux4baPn7wNGPtte6Vjr7zrJmnq7LPp4ZYPtZCPYtC1cSvLp1ku5XALf5hwArIeZEiR4d9ngiJ5gF41wdpwtRe2Zz6dx6WQNTEFuC6FYfg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM eaf2b5bca6a799938eacd4766e0ea507 https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/ebc1ecd4d01aa056a8409485c6456566.jpg?Expires=1779321600&Signature=R-4QZbzLlPCdImaW%7ErbmIDBrAHmMJVmv%7ExPiRRHVHKrmZO7pPokv5GxnufZf8nguZ4zG5%7EvgKzO8KVkSUEJ6rcEbSse%7E-FNZVgTS5aQMaKn8VcYOAPso5rw3LNMDk3ncZOnqUc9QqlnW1KPn0QYCLM6U1dyrV3B-y3OoRMU4hRiX3IdWi2WBk0YkJ6xpdKivFnBbnQb-FXBOTZVpbFmFiX7mhWAzY3dPRd%7ECoecVmxm2cLrpUwMz5sk7RSGIG30ks5NL4YL0uH-4GLKW-VGD1-A845Px5YKPABGxXM7s1poNhpGWxcGyCh1Uu6E51WT30YbJ3GVEtQa3cYqqvzTG8w__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM c1b7b3fc9d75b547b71490a462d2ecf7 https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/8c9002cc4269f4e08fe87b142d291b73.jpg?Expires=1779321600&Signature=YCQM8At7VCOi3vDKAEr-bIgD2Z%7EeKil1O1IroBi5xZKbx0h%7ErJDcEhBxKkvMzFUfQGwh1O2cxbG5mujqkkTKlyzE91J5brf18c8ZhGw%7EK8qNW%7E0tEpvA608861iGvgMQgP1NFV72NKJx2IB1SxKkG9TubXvV-iHs-GxLT0LCUzphzNnsqOdGhzPZ74EfF2%7EpQqlyyW2zTgUAq4-0eM8X2FtMZrvYHkbdIJF5TDxlMcBNk8M8Ii2c60poequM0hkdRTehocMfSEV%7EvLKLaFOSefIdkkd2i%7EIjB9LPKuTXVZ0Qw2Mnz3rkU-elGCzSgMXwNFAKvjiLydwsb7F1EjpSLA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 80d35c5b899d21a60548f25c543e796e https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/a467338e7e739ed0452049ee49169356.jpg?Expires=1779321600&Signature=j-r87h7vbaZ3Xddb%7EGNkIOijZogDaeK2CxmpKvEJAAyJDM6oTLYTZhs6Jr5TqUO648GRCucL0lXo6SHzr95x2WqpdDKAUc-PLWqFB%7EZHacT6CbiX3lx15InySiR2SSxw8G-utI7Gkzdg5whzlb8L0rKE9RqspdzQrQY61e6LlDi63TcjHtLSKf-zxQS91G4Yz2JZMBVnXQ475m7n9GRXwde5Opk%7EgTploZzVtQIbZdJMKWprLbLRtGetd7gYiCr4EhAT6MmlRJrLTH4mjVdQ980zQ9B9Hx-pDBT7Ux71uDnZ-%7ES5Rf51-Ryb7%7EOUWAE9YPLv3oqn5%7EAxnRjOw8AGtA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 8e4ca6b667e5c281526c8793211ac4a3 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans Subject The topic of the resource Recording Voices &amp; Documenting Memories of Czech &amp; Slovak Americans was an oral history project launched by the National Czech &amp; Slovak Museum &amp; Library in 2009. The project captured and preserved the stories of Czechs and Slovaks who left their homeland during the Cold War and settled in New York City, Washington, D.C., Cleveland, Chicago and the San Francisco Bay Area. During the second phase of the project, the NCSML recorded the stories of immigrants who came to the United States after the fall of communism in 1989 as well. By the conclusion of the project in August 2013, the NCSML had collected more than 300 oral histories. <br /><br />Both phases of the project were made possible by grants from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. <br /><br />On the project’s website, you can read biographies of Czechs and Slovaks who began a new life in the United States, watch video clips from their interviews, and view photos and other archival materials they shared with us. <br /><br />Full length interviews are available for further research at the National Czech &amp; Slovak Museum &amp; Library. For more information, contact Dave Muhlena, Library Director, at dmuhlena@ncsml.org. Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound <h4>Jewish Fate</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZM3FiOxM8ms?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“Most of them ended up in the concentration camps. My best friend and schoolmate and his younger brother and older sister, father and mother perished in the concentration camp. I was about 12 or 13 years old. I came to school one morning and he didn’t come. They day before was the last time I saw him, and they never returned back. Most of them did not return back to my hometown. They perished in the concentration camps, which was a very heartbreaking situation.”</p><h4>Limited News</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/SgQh2o6s2wo?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Listened to BBC London. That was the information during the War for people under the Nazi’s control. They used to come listen at the windows – the Gestapo – [to see] if people are listening to the foreign broadcasting. But that was the only information you could get. Nobody could write to you; they opened the letters. They were interfering with broadcasting. But still, there was a possibility to get some news.”</p><h4>Journey to U.S.</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WiCYczcS37c?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“So I didn’t have some problems getting here. Why? I got an American passport because my parents were American citizens, and I got an American passport in the American embassy in Prague. There were some restrictions and we were worried they won’t let us go out, me and my brother – younger brother – because we were born there [in Czechoslovakia]. And if you were born in that country, you were considered to belong there by them. Luckily we made it through the borders by the train all the way to Paris. We were in Paris for two weeks and Cherbourg one week. Why? There was a strike on the boats, and a couple times they sent us to Cherbourg by the trains and they brought us back to Paris, because they said the strike was over but it wasn’t over. So it took me three weeks in France to wait for the trip.”</p><p>“I came to this country December 5 by boat, which was the nicest trip I ever had in my life. Five and a half days being on the boat, the Queen Elizabeth. As a young man, I met other young people there. We had a good time, excellent food, and the trip in my case was too short. I didn’t want to leave – it was so good.”</p><h4>$0.75/hr.</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/LgMVnLQfDUY?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“The people at Garden promised me that after one month I will get $0.80 an hour. I stayed there – a month came, two months came – the raise wasn’t coming. Three months came. Finally I was brave enough to ask what happened to my raise, five cents. I went, on the way home, I didn’t find my punch card at the clock, and I went back to the supervisor. I said ‘Where is my punch card?’ He said ‘You are fired.’ I said ‘Why?’ ‘We can get so many people for $0.75 an hour, why would we pay you $0.80?’ I said ‘I didn’t want to quit, but you promised a five cent increase and that’s all I was asking.’ Nope, I was fired. Despite that I had my cousin in the high position in Garden Electric. But the money was very important to this system.”</p><h4>Major Events</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/1PyLxAQKT54?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I met my wife Sunday evening, the day before. I started my business the next day, and I met my wife at the Sunday evening dances in the Sheraton Hotel on Michigan Avenue. So I did two things in my life – met my future wife and start my business. I rented space and I started a very small tannery, and I was making drumheads for musical drums. First batch I made, I went with the samples to the company who were making drums, Ludwig Drum Company. The owner was a gentleman from Germany. He was very nice and knowledgeable, and he liked my product so much he said ‘I will take everything that you make in your place for my drums.’ So I started to produce more and more until I came to the point that he said ‘You are making too many, I can’t use them all.’ So I had to look for new customers for the existing amount of product.”</p> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Vlastimil John Surak Description An account of the resource <p> </p><p>Vlastimil Surak was born in 1927 in Brezová pod Bradlom in western Slovakia. His father, Matej, had moved to the United States when he was 15, but returned to Slovakia in 1920 and married his mother, Alžbeta. In 1922, the pair went to the United States, but again returned to Slovakia in 1926. Vlastimil’s father owned two tanneries in Brezová pod Bradlom while his mother stayed home raising Vlastimil and his two brothers.  During WWII, Vlastimil recalls hiding in forests and small villages whenever Nazis came through his town to avoid being conscripted or sent to work in Germany.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Vlastimil attended business school in Bratislava and, upon graduating in 1947, returned to Brezová pod Bradlom to work in his father’s tannery. He says that after the Communist coup in 1948 ‘things started going so bad, there was no other thing on my mind, just to leave.’ Vlastimil and his younger brother Slavomil did not have trouble obtaining passports, as their parents were American citizens. They left Czechoslovakia in November 1948 and sailed to the United States three weeks later on the <em>Queen Elizabeth</em>. Vlastimil recalls this trip as a great experience. They took the train to Chicago where they were met by their older brother, Miloslav, who had come to the United States two years earlier. Vlastimil found lodging with a Slovak family, and eventually found a job with an electric company. He says that it was always his plan to have his own business, and in February 1954, following in the footsteps of his father, Vlastimil started the National Rawhide Manufacturing Company (later Surak Leather Company). Initially, his business was making drum covers, but when rawhide was replaced by plastic, he turned to making leather for jackets and gloves; he owned this business until 1995. Vlastimil’s parents arrived in Chicago in 1964, following what he says was years of persecution under the communist regime in Czechoslovakia. Following the communists’ rise to power, his father lost his business and properties and was sentenced to prison for a number of years. Because of his American citizenship, U.S. Senator Hubert Humphrey intervened and was able to secure his release.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Vlastimil has been married to his wife Elizabeth for over 50 years and they have three children. His two daughters were debutantes with the Czechoslovak National Council of America. In 1989, he was shown on television in Daley Plaza, celebrating the Velvet Revolution; however, Vlastimil has not been back to Slovakia because he says he “doesn’t want to change the picture in his mind” of his home. Today, he lives in Lake Forest, Illinois.</p><p> </p><p> </p> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived NCSML Archive 1948 emigrant/refugee American citizenship Brezova pod Bradlom Concentration camp Family business marriage Nazis Political prisoner World War II https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/33faf3b86525fe0089f34722e327ff4d.jpg?Expires=1779321600&Signature=I%7EOHd2N8P-GyTbXfOMPPZVGuK3r8QaI8Pl0VKsmalsitTTNSHtyF382Nvt4v1wRGj%7Ep9iZyS9F-ufFDL02u4E7c%7ERmmHjrxzqZbyikWM8JFUYBqRHIkMY7SAhiRLAiUWhKP000al7tjZ3-ahK8S6TwpI%7E9%7EE9aQATmbKgBorNjqK-JXuL5zGgysP7TJl0U7zhRaQGcbZk0%7Eff15qdvCJMxjNp6PbkIXkfCAPX%7Euezvsiz6P6dN4RiqWK6aKv21sNXU68SKgsK5EutbEHZGGmMFy3J%7EcQ6nP3DEkSyoIR7A4ptJTfUckZzmVJCFqbX0xX3ePHuEmMmgtyjRElW3Tm2w__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM ba45e360a2eb3bec8fc07107f8a19db1 https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/8424cefb8269838ffd90631e4e9433fc.jpg?Expires=1779321600&Signature=dEHT6PR1n%7EEQs3KuTrwJ5H9pQVcZlp1pVbQsFoZzC2YPlyfnMiTqvGHnO06yrSYf-3ULwGp8FkYaVPCPM611MSzgCbdiQ-RjTdtA78kMDhY%7E4LFbHiq-Ny7Lx4GG6sq7LleX6UwiLlNYqIUzJarGJ4MDYHi-pytBPcunkfmhRcqtvyMiZRBPsJnQwvQkCvm76e64SFEMsV7ubs21hjuRv7KH%7E60HQSJ7osQHT0ZgHJLk9p74XSVnvOvURury0gKOJ1rSmSUZ9t9K98NJyxgcSK601N2FMMmyxBYD6sYd-lEtfhV18z3yMaNyt13HIAPqQZZQGhm9vxn5sFuq9wxzag__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 67a23112d655d407d021038422752d75 https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/b89ddc666a5aa3bcea19bbf9c0649910.jpg?Expires=1779321600&Signature=ldwnR3GAZMSNASajp3vUqG7aBSLJ924HgxHDaJFbHYXMxAtwSNvLkdvzzSaphGJEbXtePNeFTWREr%7EptYIUnojGduE7T-MHjWwdowggcK0S4gwtbl88z3xfIGJkw3F0BnYeoL6T4zY4vc6Hwe5W20712yykQjNyP1bYiBmXWUy6pia2j7lLPCEql6hy6B8JsH8HHAXMKz4kAlktS7J-WviQjUK6LnIb1i9EFnrpWSIsJNwbZ0zf7GNJmZy2DJNDFj9ehDWF-rRUDYdKApaJSqmgMYcf4LAMj0lhB4JAuzmR9igsJiET51kszWcDTtKFB261twCBILdF-duzv%7EDq9pQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 5d80a40721609475110f7e43a23f2d2e Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans Subject The topic of the resource Recording Voices &amp; Documenting Memories of Czech &amp; Slovak Americans was an oral history project launched by the National Czech &amp; Slovak Museum &amp; Library in 2009. The project captured and preserved the stories of Czechs and Slovaks who left their homeland during the Cold War and settled in New York City, Washington, D.C., Cleveland, Chicago and the San Francisco Bay Area. During the second phase of the project, the NCSML recorded the stories of immigrants who came to the United States after the fall of communism in 1989 as well. By the conclusion of the project in August 2013, the NCSML had collected more than 300 oral histories. <br /><br />Both phases of the project were made possible by grants from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. <br /><br />On the project’s website, you can read biographies of Czechs and Slovaks who began a new life in the United States, watch video clips from their interviews, and view photos and other archival materials they shared with us. <br /><br />Full length interviews are available for further research at the National Czech &amp; Slovak Museum &amp; Library. For more information, contact Dave Muhlena, Library Director, at dmuhlena@ncsml.org. Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound <h4>Parents Wishes</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4esY6BD8Pus?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“They were very much against that, they didn’t want for me to be a pilot although I started flying in 1946 right after the War. I joined the soaring club, the air club in Bratislava and I accomplished, I got the C exam, which is pretty high, and also the Silver C, which qualified me for Air Force duty. Also we started jumping with parachutes and I had six jumps before I went to the Air Force, so actually I was pretty well qualified there.”</p><h4>Czech Air Force</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Z115ieWmQg0?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Well, we actually started, what was available at that time was, like three years after the War ended, we had the surplus German aircraft, and that’s what we were using. Way back then in parachute jumping, there were old German parachutes sometimes infested with mice. And they had holes in them, we had to patch them in order to be serviceable so we could jump out of DC3s. And that was another thing that we got – we were so grateful to the UNRRA [United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration], which was the help after the War. And we got those planes there, actually they were still with the military colors, and that’s what we were using. And also the German planes of course, they were all surplus material. And we had some problems, we had some people getting killed because of the old structure. But overall we did good training and we went through all the curriculum they had in Britain. At that time, 1948, we still had members of the Royal Air Force, our Slovaks and Czechs that were fighting on the Allied side, and they were our instructors.”</p><h4>Leaving Czechoslovakia</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ofyHEN_DVmc?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“This was in 1952 when I was getting pretty well persecuted because of my political inactivity. We got together with my cousin and a friend from the aero club – we got together and decided there is no way, no future for us. Because pretty soon my flying career ended; they stopped me from flying, and my two friends were mechanics whereas they joined the Air Force for the purpose of flying so that they would get flight training. And so actually when they demanded that after so many years of being mechanics they get flight training they were told no, so they wrote to the minister of defense, and the result was that they put them in jail as they went over the official procedure. They just couldn’t get anywhere, and they wanted to fly so badly and so we decided that it’s time to go.”</p><h4>Escape</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2HRdiK54h-E?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“We had an alternative airport which was Graz in Austria. And we were still not 100% sure if it is in the British zone, if it is safe to land there. But there was from Bratislava another 45 minutes of flight. We wanted to go as far West as Frankfurt or Munich, but we didn’t have enough fuel. And of course then there was a Soviet airbase in Vienna, which, when we were flying over Bratislava they were getting our flight path and then they took off and went after us. But the thing we devised was that we would change direction from Bratislava to Vienna, descend down to tree level almost; it was still night, pitch dark, and then change course towards the British zone, which was, I would say, almost another 90 degrees to the left. And sure enough, in about five minutes, there were MIG 15s that were flying looking for us. We could see their exhausts, the flames from their exhausts, just about, I would say, a couple of miles away. But we were already sneaking out the other way and they were going the direction we were in before. But they didn’t find us, because like I said, we were already heading the other way and disappearing fast.”</p><h4>Accomplices</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/M2G0FC0QF4Q?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“It was such that we landed, but we were still not sure whether it was a British airport or not because of the runways. They were marked – actually they were not runways, there was a grass area which was marked with evergreen twigs, which didn’t look like a civilized airport really. After landing when we were passing by hangars, it did say ‘N’ ‘O’ underlined, like ‘No. 1’, ‘No. 2’, ‘No. 3’ and we couldn’t decipher it, whether it was the way the Russians marked their hangars or not. We were coming towards the quarters and there was a bunch of soldiers that were coming towards us with their rifles, and then ‘Heck, what are we going to do?’ But what happened when we were circling the airport, I noticed barracks where there were soldiers with white belts and white things over their boots, their shoes, which I remember from movies, American movies, that this is actually the MP, the military police. I remember that, and I couldn’t even tell my guys in the back that this is what I saw. So I was pretty well sure that we are in British hands, but I wasn’t sure about the guards, which later came true, that they were Austrians.”</p><h4>New Name</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/KENMo6EFeFc?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“In London, they gave us new passports and also they wanted us to change the names we had for safety purposes because communists were kidnapping people even from England, they managed to kidnap someone and brought him back to Czechoslovakia and executed him, really. So they said, now, this is for your safety, do that, and we agreed.”<br /><strong><br /></strong><em>What was the name you chose?</em></p><p>“The name that I chose I am still using is Frederick Tornil. Tornil was a name of a racing-horse that won the Irish sweepstakes that particular weekend when we arrived there. So it was kind of funny because it took us a long time to pick up names, and so Tornil was the one, and they used to call me Freddie alias <em>potápka</em> in Bratislava, and so I adopted the name Frederick.”</p> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Vladimir Krman Description An account of the resource <p>Vladimir Krman was born in Bratislava in June 1929. He attended business academy in the city as his parents wanted him to become a bank clerk, but dropped out so that he could train to become a pilot in the Czechoslovak Air Force in 1946. He started learning how to fly at the Aero Club in Vajnory, a suburb of Bratislava, and once he gained certification to became a flight instructor, his first posting was at Piešt’any airfield in Western Slovakia. Vladimir was a sergeant in the Czechoslovak Air Force until 1948 when, he says, Soviet rules were adopted and he was elevated to the rank of second lieutenant. Vladimir worked as a military flight instructor until leaving Czechoslovakia in early 1953, though he says he latterly came under increasing scrutiny due to his ‘political inactivity.’ He was also a member of an aerobatic flight team. Vladimir says he was about to be stripped of his right to teach, and indeed fly, which was why he decided to leave the country.</p><p> </p><p>Vladimir devised the plan to leave Czechoslovakia with his cousin Jozef Fleischhacker and his friend, Gustav Molnar (both company sergeant majors in the Air Force), in 1952. It is said the escape was organized at Reduta dance hall in Bratislava while the American tune ‘Domino’ was playing, and so the men later referred to their escape as ‘Operation Domino.’ It was decided that when Gustav found himself on guard duty, Vladimir and Jozef would sneak into a hangar, prepare a plane for takeoff and then, in the early hours of the morning, set off for Graz in the British-controlled zone of Austria, where the three would ask for asylum. The opportunity presented itself on Friday, March 13, 1953 in Piešt’any. Vladimir says that while the plan went perfectly, once in the air, the trio found themselves pursued by Soviet MIG 15s. He says, however, that he managed to shake them off by flying low and changing course.</p><p> </p><p>The three made it to Graz, where they were debriefed and were presented to journalists at a press conference. Around 10 days later they were transported to London, where they were advised by British officials to adopt false names for security purposes. Vladimir took the name Frederick Tornil, which he still uses to this day. After one year in Britain, Vladimir moved to Canada, where he started working as a flight instructor at Toronto Island Airport and, at the same time, for General Motors. In 1958, he moved to the Chicago area. After stints working at Rockwell-Standard and Zenith Electronics, Vladimir again went to work for General Motors in La Grange, Illinois, where he stayed for more than 30 years. He gained a commercial pilot’s license and flew from DuPage County airport as a hobby, he says. In 1967, he married his sweetheart from the Bratislava Aero Club, Ružena. She came to live with Vladimir in La Grange alongside her son Roman (who later joined the U.S. Air Force). Vladimir and Ružena had two more sons; Daniel and Martin. Vladimir says he used to enjoy playing soccer and attending dances at the Slovak Athletic Association in Chicago. Today, he enjoys DIY and fixing scooters and motorbikes.</p><p><a href="/web/20170609161808/http://www.ncsml.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/e-Krman_bio_Slovak_translation.pdf">Vladimir’s biography in Slovak (without diactrics)</a><br /><a href="/web/20170609161808/http://www.ncsml.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/e-Krman_interview_clips.pdf">PDF Vladimir’s interview clips in Slovak (without diacritics)</a></p> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived NCSML Archive 1948 emigrant/refugee Community Life marriage Military service national Piestany Politics World War II https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/099b9f4ab364cfebcf403171b3fe71cf.jpg?Expires=1779321600&Signature=dYP2MnqFErJyksHYhA1GLFxaVL5jShGZZHrCqn4cXJEgjCc1qn3jOvaOgGP5NYmgxpm3HrNDk5q31tFDnWI%7Eudo3kGsbg02epnrYwcHT-8dMBFRTcbqwgTu1%7E7CPAAlnwRNVH9m%7ENlbJ7z0oFOYX7sve8otxz2U-tereHYtSapGya5dGErGA5z2eKel94e-aVPLqfsQHvtgdZLkk2fv1kJyH3Nq3VDuxGt3ydqfuPszc4BQYoWyMDiBU8IcFDveuuVjSnwkZw65yeMQYIVmZw%7EuOA2%7Ex-m2XJOxfl4DWJ8lu9HTo1Uy%7EKJBEhzRo%7E29rL4aqEtwRYoMBne2hW%7EmHtA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM ff7b8f1318a21f44f7e02ffe9011b970 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans Subject The topic of the resource Recording Voices &amp; Documenting Memories of Czech &amp; Slovak Americans was an oral history project launched by the National Czech &amp; Slovak Museum &amp; Library in 2009. The project captured and preserved the stories of Czechs and Slovaks who left their homeland during the Cold War and settled in New York City, Washington, D.C., Cleveland, Chicago and the San Francisco Bay Area. During the second phase of the project, the NCSML recorded the stories of immigrants who came to the United States after the fall of communism in 1989 as well. By the conclusion of the project in August 2013, the NCSML had collected more than 300 oral histories. <br /><br />Both phases of the project were made possible by grants from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. <br /><br />On the project’s website, you can read biographies of Czechs and Slovaks who began a new life in the United States, watch video clips from their interviews, and view photos and other archival materials they shared with us. <br /><br />Full length interviews are available for further research at the National Czech &amp; Slovak Museum &amp; Library. For more information, contact Dave Muhlena, Library Director, at dmuhlena@ncsml.org. Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound <h4>Parent's Advice</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/BnglI0rI3cY?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“I went to the Czech Embassy, or Consulate at that time, in Stockholm and talked to a very unpleasant officer. I don’t remember his name, but he said ‘Slečno Broučková, you are starting to speak Czech with an accent’, and I thought, ‘That’s not possible! Even though I haven’t spoken Czech this entire time’ – I still didn’t think I had an accent in Czech. ‘It’s time that you return home’ [he said], and they would not allow me to stay. So, now I had to make a decision, shall I stay or…? So now I did write home. And I did get a letter from my dad, and he said, ‘You left a free Czechoslovakia, I want you to come back to free Czechoslovakia.’ Of course, he never thought that the communists would take all these years. There wouldn’t be a free Czechoslovakia for another 40 years! So, at that time, I had to make a decision, and I went to the Swedish consulate and asked for asylum. So that was one of these major things that I had to really… which changed my entire life, actually.”</p><h4>Cultural Event</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4k3x57a5I_8?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Somehow I found there was a Czech group – emigrants – who put on a play. I always liked poetry and reading and theatre and I thought, ‘Oh, I’ve got to see this!’ I don’t know who told me or how I came about it. So, I went, and I met this bunch of guys from Czechoslovakia, and they all spoke Czech, obviously and, you know, now it started to hit me. Even though I had Swedish friends and, actually, a Swedish boyfriend, here were these people who could talk about what was in Prague, who is Nezval, who is Seifert. And this guy who then became my husband also wrote poetry and played piano, and all that sort of did it for me. All of a sudden I realized how much I am missing, you know, not being with a Czech, the literature, I mean, the Swedish guy was nice, he was kind, he was okay, but, I couldn’t tell him, you know, ‘Na Václavském náměstí, you know that…’, there was nothing to bind me or bring me back. And then I was helping these guys with Swedish. They did not know the language, they needed help translating or whatever so…”</p><h4>Ellis Island</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/D29pENxdsH8?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“It was not as easy as I was expecting it to be, because when we did arrive in New York, I could see the Statue of Liberty and thought ‘Here we are!’, but we were detained. We were not let go off the boat because of my husband’s X-ray, his chest X-ray. He had a couple of pneumonias when he was a younger man and I guess they left some scars on his chest, and the Americans were very careful, even though we had an X-ray done in Sweden, which was clear, we had to go to Ellis Island. They wanted to check him out, so that he was not bringing any illness into the States. So that was sort of a setback, I thought, I mean, I thought when I saw the Statue of Liberty, that I have just a step and hop over to New York, well, it didn’t happen until three days later.</p><p>“Actually, it was scary, I tell you! That was one place I was sort of afraid because I hadn’t expected this, there were many people detained at Ellis Island, and we were separated – there were women in one section, men in another section, and they did have to take him to a hospital, I believe, or a doctor, and have a new X-ray done and have him proclaimed clear of any illness.”</p><h4>Chicago</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/tiMXdcvxdy8?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I really wanted to stay in New York and look for a job at the United Nations, I thought that with my languages, maybe I could get something. However, people were telling me that there is a great large community in Chicago, and import/export companies – even though I thought, for my languages, I would have been better in New York. But, for whatever reason, because of the Czech community, I guess… In New York, I didn’t know anybody. I had no contacts at all. But here we guessed that maybe we would have an easier beginning, so that was the reason.”</p><h4>Financial Hardship</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ErDJVdeVkew?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“When my husband was sick and I was really hurting for money, because not enough money was coming in and lots of it was going out, I was really, you know how people say ‘You live from paycheck to paycheck’? That’s what I had to do at that time, which was so much against my upbringing, against my thinking. But that is what I had to do. I was praying that I would not get a run in my nylons! At that time nylons could be fixed, you know, but I worked in a downtown office, a very nice office. I couldn’t go to work with a run in my nylons, there was no way!</p><p>“It really was hard at that time. There were organizations – I know for one Christmas that the Czechoslovak National Council of Women in Exile did help me. I mean, I did get some help from the Czech community. And then, after my husband died, actually, financially, it was easier for me. Even though I had to have a babysitter and all that, but somehow I was able to manage better because… It was actually easier for me at that time.”</p><h4> Czech Citizen</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/61lJ1_cQwbA?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I was stripped of my citizenship unfairly. I did not do anything to the Republic causing them to take it away. And, for 50 years it bothered me that it was unfair! Or 40 years – not 50. And then, when it was possible to regain it, I did. So… I am in my heart still Czech and in my existence, I am American.”</p> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Vera Roknic Description An account of the resource <p>Vera Roknic was born and raised in the Nový Žižkov district of Prague. Her father, Jan, was a manager at the city’s main post office, where he met Vera’s mother, Marie, who worked as a long-distance telephone operator in the building. Vera studied at the capital’s Vyšší Dívčí School on Vodičkova Street and then at the Akademie obchodní Dr. Edvarda Beneše [Benes Business School]. Her studies were interrupted by WWII and she was sent to Lyšov, in southern Bohemia, to work on her relatives’ farm. During the War, Vera lost her younger sister, who fell ill with meningitis and was unable to see a doctor, as the hospitals were so full of soldiers, says Vera. After the War, Vera graduated and began working as a multilingual secretary for an import/export company in Prague.</p><p> </p><p>In January 1947, Vera went to Sweden on what was supposed to be a one-year work exchange. She successfully prolonged her stay once, but when she visited the Czech Consulate to extend her stay a second time in the summer of 1948, she was told it was time she returned home. Vera wrote to her parents who told her to come back only when Czechoslovakia was again ‘free’. On the basis of this letter, Vera applied for asylum in Sweden. Later that year, she started meeting other Czechs and Slovaks who had been taken in by Sweden, having fled Czechoslovakia. One of these immigrants was Vaclav Pavel, who became her first husband. The couple were married in 1950, and, on the insistence of Vaclav – who feared the spread of communism in Europe – the pair left Sweden for America in 1952. They moved to Chicago, where Vera quickly found a job at International Harvester. In 1954, Vera gave birth to a daughter, Jana. It was at this time that Vaclav fell ill with Hodgkin’s disease, for which a cure had still not been found. Vera and Vaclav ran into financial hardship and were helped by the Czechoslovak National Council of Women in Exile, among other organizations. Two years later, Vaclav died.</p><p> </p><p>In 1960, Vera married Sava Roknic, another Czech émigré who had settled in Chicago. He adopted Jana, and in 1962, Vera and Sava had a son, David. Vera took a job in the banking sector, which she still works in to this day. Vera, now widowed, is active in many Czech and Slovak organizations, such as the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences (SVU) and Sokol. She works closely with the Czech Mission in Brookfield, Illinois.</p> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived NCSML Archive 1948 emigrant/refugee Akademie obchodni Dr. Edvarda Benese American citizenship Asylum Brouckova Communist coup Czech citizenship Family life German Lysov marriage Novy Zizkov Occupation Women workers World War II https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/50f27df02b4eb1fa896343ffca5cb6f7.jpg?Expires=1779321600&Signature=ZoWpFTNmR3-S8uVq8ppl%7EXquNRaisxxxXT3yDU2ZsLVD%7EjDspnqhyf84%7E8gMaL80gmDOuJmW-%7E1AphOUTnedVISCN8UTy9hkxk9BBXo8KV31T7%7EE09Gen7mKc0U2PsB8G3N583TLiys0uxjl56hD0xcNWBPhEBjkeDIMUOzq46LnhH4qQBHqgfcqGhNZ0sQP4dxCeEBGNSzv5UmVZpVo4h5ok0xysrPO3k2BqY2L2uCXDGt0XD3TrTz4kjEXtszMxIBuUiKa4Mao8xUAW0vzq4tPJFhkPrRptorou9PONPc-eIik0kfSlDEn3sg7ex8V2ZIKA6RWkiLkx0ZYAL7HPg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM c1d12208d7f7e6c37c922345a67e2bd1 https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/f381312fda13b599ad4cc8e363f12364.jpg?Expires=1779321600&Signature=ta2K9F3Ctor9EpCtS0PizbBBKaWA3f3eZgLvpy-KK2csEdFIxu62%7Ex4S46quFlFdffRGkGlFWS8lC5i%7EqETyX7veRRNGtivHjRDMCiURf9n8MZT1Hxd%7Ez3Zauz4z4%7E%7EUkdF3bWvS7ZwJTZDVSzvBgrQ4XrTqVWOEkh6zeU7suQATBtL9UoqhvCjaMz9dT7woSOtfLe3DfEFpZMt9tyY4AYPDaktnLJ0q4FM54A1FJe9fkftk9%7EY6HaBPOvWGq2l62ro1ZETrMlOuoXazwkB0yjV81DIlzKHTGS2kz%7EhhWdTyAtjznO-9OvLo59kDyJoGk7caIZqLgIlw%7EKSyvbnoUw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM c5916299e1a90b153919e7ee9687d218 https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/45e4bd525a70bcb775e71538452695ec.jpg?Expires=1779321600&Signature=bsaCB0-k6j33T2Zhu3HLh60ngFS--O-2zKPWH7wwrP91-tSPR9cCpo1IvbqtfE6TgMbeiukIFsm0yIdnVVqLOCgCD4t-5iqEkzZ7yV4htYwIrxumwzfM9f-abgKPS2jufGHfbRLpjtHiDJ85AxHN8UqbgLQYtsM-ZYl66wKgOR7GrgDChAbG19bYSd7o%7EImS22BLn6OqyIOd4hNGirwrM6azA1xWj8zskvqQW4xBxdydFaIYl47tzGO7087YEx6cGGsbSzusiY6KcLztGus6lALOHHJcLatn%7E8RueA4NC-R7cNK0QM7ufYJv6vr3t%7EVXZ%7EWTe%7ENFHBodBbYZHOVpqg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 985bab0c42174ddbdf9c00ee5bf28e13 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans Subject The topic of the resource Recording Voices &amp; Documenting Memories of Czech &amp; Slovak Americans was an oral history project launched by the National Czech &amp; Slovak Museum &amp; Library in 2009. The project captured and preserved the stories of Czechs and Slovaks who left their homeland during the Cold War and settled in New York City, Washington, D.C., Cleveland, Chicago and the San Francisco Bay Area. During the second phase of the project, the NCSML recorded the stories of immigrants who came to the United States after the fall of communism in 1989 as well. By the conclusion of the project in August 2013, the NCSML had collected more than 300 oral histories. <br /><br />Both phases of the project were made possible by grants from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. <br /><br />On the project’s website, you can read biographies of Czechs and Slovaks who began a new life in the United States, watch video clips from their interviews, and view photos and other archival materials they shared with us. <br /><br />Full length interviews are available for further research at the National Czech &amp; Slovak Museum &amp; Library. For more information, contact Dave Muhlena, Library Director, at dmuhlena@ncsml.org. Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound <h4>Father</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/bKda885FPwo?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“My father was a journalist, but he had to be very careful about what he said. He worked at the Ministry of Information, and of course everything was very strictly audited and basically controlled by the Germans. He got into some trouble with the Gestapo one time by using a sort of pun. He was forced, because he had a good speaking voice, he was compelled to read the news once a week and, on this one particular occasion, they were talking about the collision of the German troops and the allied troops. And the term used in Czech is <em>srazka</em>, which means collision, and there is also a vulgar word very similar to that which means diarrhea. And, of course, his colleagues – when he was rehearsing – his colleagues were teasing him and said ‘What if you said this?’ When my dad sat before the microphone, he blurted that out, and of course, before he was finished, a couple of Gestapo officers were waiting for him and took him into this infamous Petschkuv Palac. My father wasn’t tortured, but he was interrogated for 24 hours. And then, oddly enough, a high ranking official intervened on his behalf and he was released.”</p><h4>Cleared</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/HFlNKVM3Dm4?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p class="wp-caption-text">Tony’s father Antonin in 1946</p><p>“It was a difficult job for him, you know. On one to pretend, you know, that he was not against the German occupation and on the other hand still knowing and feeling that the Nazi occupation will not last very long. And during those days of the uprising in Prague, he was also actively involved in broadcasting and running messages from various centers of resistance in Prague.”</p><h4>The War</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2Gw6EEIWZBU?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“There was a sort of a black market, whereby city dwellers would trade various items. Like my dad traded books and, I think, a bicycle for a goose or a turkey with a farmer that he knew. And of course, you had to be very careful bringing it to Prague during the, usually on weekends, because they would have special civilian officials who would control what was being brought to Prague and quite often it would be confiscated. So yes, for us [children] it was sort of funny, but there was an element of danger, certainly, for the adults.”</p><h4>Communist Coup</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/UTltUpQjLKM?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I got a new pair of skis, and this was a two-week stay in the mountains, near where my father was born. And I was very anxious of course to be there, to try my new skis and so forth. My father knew that the crisis was developing in Czechoslovakia so he was very reluctant to let me go, but my mother was on my side. She begged him to allow me to go. And of course, by the time I returned to Prague, a week or so later – two weeks later actually – my father was gone already. He had crossed the border to West Germany successfully. While I was still away from Prague, and my father was gone at this time, the Communist police would come and look for some incriminating documents against my father, trying to punish my mother for the anti-communist work that my dad did. And of course my mother said that she did not share my father’s views and so on and so forth. She said ‘Well, I’m willing to divorce him because he abandoned the family.’ But they didn’t believe her, of course. And we were not directly persecuted, but obviously, there was no pension, there was no money during this time for my mother to have, but we had relatives and friends who supported us financially for a few months until our escape from Czechoslovakia in September 1948.”</p><h4>Escape into Germany</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/IHWxyBuqBpQ?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“They registered everything. My mother had some valuables, some dollars and some gold rings, I think, that she had sewn into her bra of all places. But they threatened to punish us if we did not turn everything over to them. But be it to the credit of German precision, they recorded everything and it traveled with us from one refugee camp to another and, 27 months later, when we were leaving Germany, all this stuff was returned to my mother!”</p><h4>Refugee Camps</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/U_s8N3S9mQ8?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“For children, it was not the worst of times. I think a lot of adults suffered from various forms of depression, when it seemed almost hopeless, that they would never get out of these refugee camps. We had to go before an American consul in the occupied zone of Germany – the American zone – and he told us, and various other immigration authorities told us ‘Well, why don’t you go to Australia? You can meet your father there, and, after all, this is not going to last forever! The Iron Curtain is not going to last forever! In a few weeks you will be able to go back to Czechoslovakia.’ Everybody was ignorant of how long the Cold War would last, you know, in those days. Fortunately, we did not give in to that suggestion, but, we had to stay for 27 months, or two years and a quarter, in those refugee camps.</p><p>“Children, I think, adjust far better than adults, you know. Even though I had thoughts of perhaps never leaving Germany, I didn’t take it as hard as my mother. But we sort of leaned on one another and, you know, became very close.”</p><h4>American Citizen</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/s1BbEXNzJ24?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I’m happy to be an American citizen, but my heart is still in the old country, in many, many ways. You know, I just cannot forget – I have very vivid memories, as you’ll notice, of my childhood and my recent visits to the Czech Republic have always been very pleasant. So, I like to go back, but I wouldn’t want to go there and live permanently. I just became too much of an American over the years.”</p> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Tony Jandacek Description An account of the resource <p>Tony Jandacek was born in Prague in 1934 and grew up in the city’s Smíchov district. His father, Antonín Jandáček, was a journalist who worked for the Ministry of Information during WWII, while his mother, Marie, worked as a secretary at a glass cutting company during the War. In 1945, Tony’s father was found not guilty on charges of Nazi collaboration and continued to work for the government until the Communist coup. When the Communists took over in February 1948, Tony was away on a ski trip in northeastern Bohemia. By the time he returned from the mountains one week later, his father had fled the country; Tony did not see his father for another three years. The family received no news of Antonín Jandáček until May 1948, when they received a postcard sent from Chicago, bearing no name but clearly in his handwriting. In September 1948, the remaining Jandáčeks crossed the border illegally at Železná Ruda into Germany. They pretended they were hunting for mushrooms, says Tony, who led the expedition.</p><p> </p><p>Tony spent 27 months with his mother, sister and brother in various refugee camps in Germany (including Regensburg, Ludwigsburg and Pforzheim), before the family was allowed to travel to the United States and reunite with Tony’s father. Tony became an American citizen in 1954. He served in the United States Air Force between 1953 and 1957 and later became a Czech teacher at Morton High School, where he was formerly a student. Tony lives in La Grange Park with his Czech-American wife, Carmella, and works as a court interpreter with Czechs in Chicago.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived NCSML Archive 1948 emigrant/refugee American citizenship Child emigre Communist coup Czech language Education German Journalism Mushrooms Nazis Occupation Prison Refugee camp school Smichov Teachers Translator/interpreter World War II Zelezna Ruda https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/c9e7361c7d31450ec68abd073a913503.jpg?Expires=1779321600&Signature=C6SGwrvRkMd-sdls%7E0fPHYDU3gLn%7EU3HAIDwmO5UEkjdcdPCyBlCZuJVF%7EldpZ2bETbPQ85eyMWNse%7EB96X2%7EhEZuKGTiccwp3LQi-HJT5AWI0fT2jECtuUvz0K0XW2f4M93znkfuifWD9bHkA7isS8WdHaMammTh8eVYBu4zJz9ptC%7EHM1lgjECTxA7lgy9uIsgtudk9FE50-J4ASAs1cgRDG5mM912rJDKi5h42B%7EYrrQJ9K2sAS02u7HQpSsMqqaAOx%7Es-tX-epSUhLg1q0RA6sjxqVVq9ikJmPn3yKzTxQClKabP-kyIxx5WmHwnLT-tldsH13IntFRNBMAyyg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 5c7b6d03a9cb07d577f5410deeebfc8b https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/d181649648cd98ca463ddb5049c0ca51.jpg?Expires=1779321600&Signature=UIf-VfXWJqDvlLaImJ35hiEMKLYt5avPBJ4vVqc0Qh7etEhUnWnBGGFlb%7EnkB%7Ecn4acW6vy82tcWJo4Islu0A3xw8MNcBAHP3G7Y1Oq%7EGy6vda4SdpuDAfCYd6YJC5cO6LIc0LAzmx5hNdA2iCtzBEwveL7ahqE%7EeLNbGpO2T1sWhpqp5ywuvB8Cx7SFr-f2fwGb-Nrjmw3DM8CVws9CKMbAX4kp51amdxF0XbapU%7ETQ4VKCis8nC4MhGh4csPg4VJ2TLZgpqmGU1%7EPCi5w6wxmZSnQ-M-TeXMknNtlrSyPz6qmJDL4p9SdEiTKO-0PPTmwjtV5tVNjYjlK43EwM2Q__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 3b74d6ad87c17bc7256749d100c3746d https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/3a5e5cead09fd0e30ea0d93f6c002532.jpg?Expires=1779321600&Signature=TnyLvZAlMR92CRYbt7BJ2lEEK8PToT79SEAlhKZ0L5bgVh3V6n9NzFwVYPA2o4dULn2upftjarJQTBhDDZNuJRgkZcbVUyzvC4sev6j3pztYqMbmTtm8EnScSjdAwHs1YawiCPdiEp6V-yJlkFJ9-5cRanI1kSDCzBBGYf7quaE7RjOCy54V9qj5Ytm68pMGTsBPJESatMHzL6c0pWiAWKAO8R%7EHCCL55UMdkhuJJUa0iY1e1FeTSxORf5DmNZOPRPn1K63PmSsOaJEHKytoeQktJ0hOaXEvWvSwned-5suIOglAw4140H4yvdOtAn5kB3VDcu5qdTYuYkkpknhXNg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM eff3068621ac36aa8d08528c7237c440 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans Subject The topic of the resource Recording Voices &amp; Documenting Memories of Czech &amp; Slovak Americans was an oral history project launched by the National Czech &amp; Slovak Museum &amp; Library in 2009. The project captured and preserved the stories of Czechs and Slovaks who left their homeland during the Cold War and settled in New York City, Washington, D.C., Cleveland, Chicago and the San Francisco Bay Area. During the second phase of the project, the NCSML recorded the stories of immigrants who came to the United States after the fall of communism in 1989 as well. By the conclusion of the project in August 2013, the NCSML had collected more than 300 oral histories. <br /><br />Both phases of the project were made possible by grants from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. <br /><br />On the project’s website, you can read biographies of Czechs and Slovaks who began a new life in the United States, watch video clips from their interviews, and view photos and other archival materials they shared with us. <br /><br />Full length interviews are available for further research at the National Czech &amp; Slovak Museum &amp; Library. For more information, contact Dave Muhlena, Library Director, at dmuhlena@ncsml.org. Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound <h4>Father</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/FyrKcQPwvU8?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“My father, who by that time had been working with the U.S. Army quite a while, had set up an underground, once the communists took over after ’48, they set up an underground, an organization called the Biela légia – the White Legion, whose purpose was anti-communist activities. They were going to try to broadcast into the Czech and Slovak territories, they were going to try to get people out, they were thinking about writing pamphlets and anti-communist literature to be distributed. So they had this active underground and once the communists took over, the underground kind of kicked in.”</p><h4>Mother</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/25Yk2CcSqpo?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“The Communists then arrested her in the summer of 1949. They took her into prison, they kept her in prison. They didn’t torture her, but they threatened torture. They kept her awake for three nights and three days, they would use sleep deprivation, they would use threats against her children, they would touch her skin with razor blades and say ‘You have to tell us this information.’ They were asking her to actually name some people, and, in her confused state, after a few days – after three days and three nights of this – she did name one man, who then, when they told her stand there and then to turn around, she heard a wheelchair coming in and this man was beaten so badly, but he still looked at my mother and denied that he knew her. But, of course she had identified him and that was enough. Even though she didn’t know politics, it wasn’t political in her mind, nevertheless, the association with us was enough.”</p><h4>Adjusting to America</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/99jVSfXl-x0?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I teach at a university, and my students believe kind of ‘the American ideal’ that you can come to America and you can make it – anybody can make it. And I use my story to kind of say yes, and no. Yes, because we came with two suitcases, nothing. My father worked in a factory for a while but then got a job in a company, and eventually – we moved to Detroit two years after we came to Milwaukee – and my dad joined Massey Ferguson, an international corporation and he was Chief Financial Officer at the end for Massey Ferguson in the United States, a branch of it. So yes, the adjustment was difficult, but not impossible. On the other hand, when I tell my students that and they think this validates the American myth, I say, “But you might think a couple things.” We didn’t come as poor refugees. We came as educated people. My father was fluent in English, he had a doctor of law degree. So it’s easier to make it, especially if you know the English.</p><p>“It was much harder for my mother. When she came to America, she literally did not know how to cook – she had had cooks. She literally did not know how to clean, and she went to become a cleaning lady in a department store. And she owned only two dresses when she came, one of which was hand sewn for her, navy blue with white lace, and she went to clean in that dress because that’s all she had. So it was very hard for her. I’m very proud of my mother that she learned to cook, that she learned to do all these things because she was forced to.”</p><h4>Slovakia</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/JuCdmwmdaWY?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I didn’t get a chance to go back until 1965 and for a very short trip, and everyone was really scared. They had me stay in a hotel; nobody wanted me to stay in their house. My older cousin had married an army doctor; he left town so that he wasn’t even anywhere near the fact that this American escapee was in Bratislava, so that his status in the Army wouldn’t be contaminated by being with me.”</p><h4>Bratislava</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/S-O6ldV9Sc8?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I had a grant from the university to research my dissertation and I arrived in May of 1969, spent five months there. So I experienced not the Prague Spring, but the undoing of the Spring by the following year. I arrived in May, there were still signs of some freedom. On every building in Bratislava was <em>štyri-dve</em>, 4-2, because that was the score that the Czechoslovak team beat the Russians in the World Hockey tournament [1968 Olympics/World Hockey Championships]. And every wall in Bratislava had 4-2, you know, the kind of subtle protest that people were doing. They couldn’t protest anymore, the army was still there, the Soviet tanks were still there, but 4-2 on every wall.</p><p>“Over the summer you could see it slowly progressing towards more and more control. I worked in the archives, and we would sit and talk politics in May and June, and by July, as you’re getting closer to the first anniversary of the Soviet invasion, every one of the archivists would come up to me and say, ‘It’s ok to talk politics with me, but maybe we better not in a group.’ And the tragedy was that everyone said that. So none of them was a police spy, but they couldn’t be sure. That system totally undermined any sense of trust you had between people. And so you could see that. And as the anniversary approached, two, three days before, you of course had flowers everywhere – a couple of the people had been killed in Bratislava and then some in Prague. And then on the day of the anniversary of the invasion, a huge silent crowd gathered in the main square in Bratislava, and the soldiers were there with guns and tanks. And I was standing to the side and my cousin Igor came up and he grabbed me and he pulled me out of there, and he said ‘They’re broadcasting on Slovak radio that all these demonstrations are the work of foreign students. You’ve got a foreign student passport here, get the hell out of here.’ So he pulled me out of there, because that’s what they were blaming the people’s protests on – foreign students.”</p><h4>Changes in Slovakia</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qZD4BK3z4ug?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“McDonald’s. Come on, I knew communism ended when there was a McDonald’s in both Praha [Prague] and Bratislava. This had really changed. What particularly impressed me, last summer when I was there, I did an experiment. So sometimes I would pretend I didn’t know Slovak and just try English. Every young person speaks English. There was virtually no place that I went in Prague or in Bratislava where, if I pretended I didn’t know any Slovak, I couldn’t get help in English. If not the actual person who was serving me, then somebody would call over. And so, the presence of a much more international culture, the young people feeling free to go everywhere. The children of my cousins who are in their twenties and thirties, they’ll hop to Barcelona for the weekend. For my cousin’s generation who grew up under communism and couldn’t get to Vienna, the idea of hopping to Barcelona…the young people don’t know that at all. It’s a very cosmopolitan, to me, very European culture now. Very much part of Europe.”</p> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Susan Mikula Description An account of the resource <p>Susan Mikula was born in Bratislava in 1943. Her father, Jozef, was very involved in the Tiso government in the First Slovak Republic and, Susan says, left Czechoslovakia following WWII. She moved with her mother, Edita, and sister, Katherine, to her mother’s native Ružomberok at this time. Abroad, Susan’s father worked for the U.S. Army Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC), gathering information on communist activity in Czechoslovakia. Jozef was also a leading figure in the Slovak resistance, heading the underground group Biela légia [White Legion]. As a result of his activities, in 1949, Susan’s mother was arrested and held in prison for three days. After her release, Susan’s mother decided to escape with her daughters. Aided by the Biela légia, Susan and her family crossed the Morava River into Austria in November 1949. They were reunited with Susan’s father in Vienna.  This was the first time that Susan had seen her father in close to five years. They stayed in Salzburg for three months, and then spent one month in a refugee camp at Bremerhaven. Sponsored by the CIC, Susan’s family arrived in Milwaukee in the spring of 1950 where they were warmly welcomed by the Slovak community.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>After two years in Milwaukee, her family moved to Detroit. Susan says she had a very Slovak upbringing and remembers speaking Slovak at school and church. She attended the University of Detroit for her undergraduate degree, and then Syracuse University for her doctorate in East European history. Susan traveled to Bratislava in 1969 while writing her dissertation on <a href="/web/20170808010124/http://www.ncsml.org/exhibits/john-palka/">Milan Hodža</a>, and remembers the tense atmosphere following the Warsaw Pact invasion.  Now, Susan lives in Chicago and is a professor of history at Benedictine University. One of her specialties is Slovak politics. Susan regularly returns to Slovakia and has kept in close contact with her family there. She says she still strongly identifies with her Slovak heritage and has considered retiring in Bratislava.</p><p> </p><p> </p> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived NCSML Archive 1948 emigrant/refugee Anti-communist Arrest Community Life Education Mikulova Milan Hodza Prison Resistance Ruzomberok Sense of identity Slovak Language https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/a61fb40a6c646dc152ce2548ad7f30e0.jpg?Expires=1779321600&Signature=IB6o9TOfVyZ1%7EVevuR81AWwqNuFGl6gRiboa8ZLh%7Ejq6tmo%7Ehv4pF8nHMQ9bMaT6fhVul6wSuKWwdtk6s566hr1CNi2ZbgzDmnjOSLkiVEK9l1mvRk4mKOeu2wb4x2X1NE9CJw8pnyGdN6E0ALGnjZtaLikA8COa3Y7DSgSKAdl4B9jwqoigMJvxq9pd3MSetK7Hyhx0kgxbdxI2AOIWNq2rWa7m6F00OQy3Uo1saWz8Q-ps9hKfJYncd4pdA20HUWxuynHmePnOxuNzSg8SB%7E7j0nNlrf41YTSRsRDS81eYnpTEmVLrqunFt1ZSq7dRMedEMUBLwr9eE2QMPiqxQw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 7e7321059b0e7b11d0120c02eacdae41 https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/2051d42508de623f13a5ba8a3817e27c.jpg?Expires=1779321600&Signature=NSSWComyNNwNTMJG9YzQmNJ-WVu8rKy8UWHKZ2e7pdj4BMZHDj6PZ1UsCfZaWPULdvUjcT0xaDigNvWrpgrbQkKtYYqO7cX6qIyNQx2KJ5FkJMsGHfUamykRGLT0ST%7EU2P1fO8-YGsdcJ7z6LZfHheodRbKz3lX6YcievQnsUUZimv2fAaOuPQBEP8v8Gw0jeFoaEtk1YGVW-qkY62i2lWuyJxgkkZ2gYrHCz4KjvXtLYcft4HrJJtZhEeE56fu%7E8YdNo1u5GJPTdN9DafYE4CeLPB5zXdRez27Nbh4qxGLqEuAkStLH1Hz0hFtDuTlwSPkNImYpwewKF5L1KxARhQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 19ce48dbff1e09086ca2b700f560bb75 https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/3f38c5da3fee35f302e8e999d1dfdafb.jpg?Expires=1779321600&Signature=KfiotQASVh3eO88Z7Ptv-7%7EMeHOTo9cDbOzo1D4sRI8c2fbBUNb45DMLfyxd9PjMQYp7NI%7ErInB9DJFyiiTjNNacgtRpWj6lrx6-iOqq%7EVNh3v%7E-Kk8GYKAZxB5XVyUzbpN6TX8aw9yHqNys8HD9MsvcZzUxUaTrVfwZTo73yt59AVpKV3Y1Q%7EGoEYS1LtRygqkAACVCjOtleSh9%7EPUCNvvF5jQM3qwW50aVsHjSKpzbzhRbepcpzlRuoSCGzDoP7xLAA0KTG66XUbrNrCA%7EayfWG0MZXN-9T-M5HhnbmDj-XYh94f%7E8UtNC3y-VETCXjg63u5tiFZzmmDW5v8z6-A__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM a4e9ccbc2e3c56a1e219a87ac25a8af8 https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/22378102a16fa7ad0e23d16dc11447fd.jpg?Expires=1779321600&Signature=r25xk2uAowV6jwHOaedCVCO8wfJXAP52A2f-mq2SHqsprrGhb%7ElDYMcqrtb-hSAhat4fbam6jDgbR8RZOiu8GL71g4l%7ENPQfJIcF2k3Ne2KQqvR-ZgqPsyxuYQHNg960D-5k4J9kDXDzhmZ6vAso0gGYZDHbHbV%7ElpNADpldkosGEvB50YlpdMMtfJm87fk9zjIL2JGU-mo9xYPTKe6VCIdv3DemnMDaxIB1cHwTSKoCUy9gzhRW9dixQFsMsmYPOnioY67xWfDGyFktyA1zXxgYws4vf3iaAkZFqENOZuGDrxYPKUgiYmyMw3s9xeQO1VGDLAqmZVALKGx%7Ev1URMw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 848ebe61a81857a0697e7661089cd85b Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans Subject The topic of the resource Recording Voices &amp; Documenting Memories of Czech &amp; Slovak Americans was an oral history project launched by the National Czech &amp; Slovak Museum &amp; Library in 2009. The project captured and preserved the stories of Czechs and Slovaks who left their homeland during the Cold War and settled in New York City, Washington, D.C., Cleveland, Chicago and the San Francisco Bay Area. During the second phase of the project, the NCSML recorded the stories of immigrants who came to the United States after the fall of communism in 1989 as well. By the conclusion of the project in August 2013, the NCSML had collected more than 300 oral histories. <br /><br />Both phases of the project were made possible by grants from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. <br /><br />On the project’s website, you can read biographies of Czechs and Slovaks who began a new life in the United States, watch video clips from their interviews, and view photos and other archival materials they shared with us. <br /><br />Full length interviews are available for further research at the National Czech &amp; Slovak Museum &amp; Library. For more information, contact Dave Muhlena, Library Director, at dmuhlena@ncsml.org. Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound <h4>WWII Memories</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/vNbHAz2Ymh8?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“I remember the War. Where we lived, the Americans used to fly over and drop their bombs on Plzeň, the Škoda factories, and they were flying right over us. I remember one New Year’s Eve, my parents were somewhere and they were coming back, and I think he [a military pilot] was shot or something, so he unloaded his bombs right in the forest by us, there was a big bang. My parents came running home; they thought we got bombed and all that, but no, they dumped them in the forest there.”</p><h4>Escape Arrest</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/T6jDSpNs-K0?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“In the winter time when there wasn’t that much work on the farm, we took the horses to Železná Ruda, right on the border, to work in the woods, to pull the logs. My father was there with two pairs of horses, and they came to arrest him – the Communists took over and they were going to arrest him. But this friend of his got on his motorcycle, went to Železná Ruda, and told him ‘Don’t come home, because they’re waiting for you. Don’t come home.’ So he took a pair of horses and went to Germany. Nobody touched him or anything, everybody thought he was coming home from the fields. So he made it all the way to Munich, and then he had to sell the horses because he couldn’t feed them. And me and my brother and my mother stayed behind, and later on he sent for us.”</p><h4>Refugee Camp</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2sZOSD5NGiw?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“There were a lot of people, a lot of friends. We had a Boy Scout troop and a Boy Scout camp. This was in the mountains, in the Alps and we used to go hiking in the Alps and we had a lot of fun. There wasn’t a whole lot of food, but there was enough to keep you going. I thought I had a good time there. I made a lot of good friends there.”</p><h4>Farming</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/rMEJXIK4rbA?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“In the late ‘50s my parents bought a farm in Michigan. My father had to have a farm because that’s what he left and he wanted to have a farm. So as soon as he had some money, he bought a farm in Michigan, and he was farming on the weekends until he retired and then they moved out there. First there was corn, which was something new. Then he decided to start an orchard, apple orchard. So he stopped doing the corn and put the apple orchard in, which was a lot less work.”</p><p><em>And why did he want to farm here?</em></p><p>“Because he was a farmer. They took his farm, the Communists took his farm and he’s going to get one again.”</p><h4>Visiting Czech Republic</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4H89Nr8YspY?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“People are not used to the idea that this is a free country. Americans know this is a free country, I’m going to do what I want, nobody’s going to tell me what to do. They’re not used to it yet. They have to dress the same, they’re not used to the idea that it’s a free country. I’m going down Václavské náměstí [Wenceslas Square in Prague] and two people stop me and talk German to me. And I said to my cousin, ‘How do they know I don’t belong here?’ He said, ‘Because you’re dressed differently, you’ve got a different shirt than they have.’ I said, ‘Well, this a free country, if I want to dress this way, don’t want to dress, that’s the way it is.’”</p> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Rudy Solfronk Description An account of the resource <p> </p><p>Rudy Solfronk was born in Žinkovy in southern Bohemia in 1935. He lived with his parents and his brother, Václav, in a house on the edge of town until his father bought a farm elsewhere in the same region. Rudy attended school in Hartmanice. He has early memories of WWII, in particular, of American planes flying over the region and, towards the end of the War, interacting with American and Czech soldiers. In December 1948, officials arrived at Rudy’s house to arrest his father who, Rudy says, was reluctant to give up his farm. Rudy’s father was in the woods near the border, and after being warned by a friend not to return home, he crossed into Germany and made his way to Murnau refugee camp. The following summer, Rudy and his mother and brother also joined him there. Rudy remembers having ‘a lot of fun’ in the camp, as he joined a Boy Scout troop and made a lot of friends. Although most children at the camp were taught by Czech and Slovak teachers, Rudy’s father insisted upon him attending a German school to learn the language.</p><p> </p><p>In January 1951, Rudy and his family arrived at Ellis Island. Although they had been sponsored by a Catholic convent in Pennsylvania, Rudy says his family was released from their obligation to the convent and stayed in New York City. His father began working in a sausage factory and his mother found work as a seamstress, while Rudy and his brother attended school. He remembers receiving help from a German teacher, as he did not know English very well. After about six months, Rudy’s father was offered a job in Cicero, Illinois, maintaining a building owned by the CSA (Czechoslovak Society of America). They moved into an apartment in this building, which also had a movie theater, shops, offices, and a meeting hall. Rudy finished high school in Cicero and went to community college for one year before starting a career in printing. He worked in a print shop part-time for the last two years of school and, because of this experience, was able to secure an apprenticeship. After working at several different places, he got a job at the <em>Chicago Sun-Times</em>, where became a foreman in the print shop; he stayed there for over 30 years. Rudy also served for eight years in the Army Reserves and received U.S. citizenship through this service.</p><p> </p><p>Rudy and his wife are active in the Czech community around Chicago, regularly attending events, picnics, and dances. He has been back to the Czech Republic several times. Today, he lives in Downers Grove, Illinois.</p> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived NCSML Archive 1948 emigrant/refugee Community Life English language German language Military service Rural life World War II Zincovy https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/3c3a314ea3d7e9c9b70f4baaf57fede1.jpg?Expires=1779321600&Signature=Y7JWrU7HmiyfWQ3bi5-MnCeaQLbsTdRiIWsZlNkZL99K9OcfxIPUDqWzQcjUamd1LarxCM8p5x0mP5F7qG905ZHKJrsjBnySMQJwEuM8y0m1dDlWDSMojWTKr5DeJEH4ZFcr7jJgA0xESRFahWnBr21IigbegANK9TlQPaI4-Wz12%7Eeg9INfsoRs24d4v0E8Y7PzNIIeCwOhivLRtIBGP4sdHNfmm9fXomSIg9%7EbW18IsN46Wjs0%7Eg5--LFGDnU7xHC6XAp9yx7HL75fw0D2MgRASqDqLC5UtD3S6dB9tKB%7E5N4UqgxN85hJTO0zD9FcSmYZPTuy3%7EWOO50fCyIZtw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM f3ee5648229f83714664df063074c427 https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/c720d26510c19bd056d3fb696531b56a.jpg?Expires=1779321600&Signature=aRQBXYqEiJyUx6c-EorhOKp5UqNdIzX2qMSoDMTdTYLGQCsA0uDyJHcsRRgbo0Bxqg63kYUuzj68QlzVjxVdo%7Edb6y0hCpmkTVRwuhCM-rpaUpmFwycK2ZxVLbmGeRQ3HgtIlhO4eF8cqJOe1ZyipEPhtFJA714GDxj2P5v14jUYqsD2ARILoYDpLedcCDxBKrJB7he5jVZeD2MBBCFXvtz1MDHe4k%7EEFIt0GCiSdRh4Toa5hzUq4CRc0iISx%7EPYq01WFK58%7EA0iAKrqx%7EZ3xG4yGDQF%7E8K2vij0flVThAlljvHQ58Xx%7EhTX0TtMkFna%7EY1dOwAlkJLojj1Fb7IkZg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 2aa1c1bdc4e1767ce4fb17f4ce2d3cc4 https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/78e5124dae3a9650a46dbced299b449d.jpg?Expires=1779321600&Signature=OolR2WwLcYnIPm7Lz7Ikq6qX1rPyrn6TT8y3-iD4MB28xbCIAXpECjEeYZStUu%7EDDgvgDdDxnuN2xC%7EfbnT1BXDRANwwtP4ZgmUAXh6NuLxhBy2JHvXEg1zGWIqiYohTd1-627WJs2FRPq79ByLo5gK02mNcveBVPfhMwbycytR3EWvQxC49WhVtrFOw9hfxH7sVZXESzO6s0Iefc3k1Z13Hs60QtcIu6AfuxMiKoxzU3vaUVcCBHUlTUJlo8jw8VoI%7E1lwkrVL4JmBF%7E8qOOVHI3Di3vkkrpUpK7R%7EzKRpbBIIdNLoEig2XhNwc0husM%7ELW-Fpo4GIy1mY54tzZrg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 2286f851bc87c4c29cad4c1dff5b29f2 https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/83c81575eaf753b8514255c93390f5c0.jpg?Expires=1779321600&Signature=Q360VPzFh-4AC-oLs8fTmJckLZvbcr3ENilf3rFDr6AqWRLmMQe5EtXRA%7EvDX0KKtyMdbOTZdcnhIP5eq%7ECvVGmyVhMLXjlIOHC%7EeXJDDYZ1-P10xhQJyrRHPP2KW-XqxQ50tXlXW0%7EwwNwYAwUmBqBMCQmuYhz41BuTbdo4GUD%7EaO3TP1KA4FRX%7E1kFvrVuq0BavZvWpQzGKyQgxf1Xa6DSbq2UbyM4wumUa%7EFor3d9gAEOink-Dh92VU264pN07IZ32vKpM8xBpGk4gsd60RLey5rAjGbooamzGVYUSjWUs1%7ETq4cSFY5EuTn-f1rUTT5Un5nY9cTJfAYnFJd4aw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 7f89f1ec4d7c3ca9dfae46f2b37aae5e Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans Subject The topic of the resource Recording Voices &amp; Documenting Memories of Czech &amp; Slovak Americans was an oral history project launched by the National Czech &amp; Slovak Museum &amp; Library in 2009. The project captured and preserved the stories of Czechs and Slovaks who left their homeland during the Cold War and settled in New York City, Washington, D.C., Cleveland, Chicago and the San Francisco Bay Area. During the second phase of the project, the NCSML recorded the stories of immigrants who came to the United States after the fall of communism in 1989 as well. By the conclusion of the project in August 2013, the NCSML had collected more than 300 oral histories. <br /><br />Both phases of the project were made possible by grants from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. <br /><br />On the project’s website, you can read biographies of Czechs and Slovaks who began a new life in the United States, watch video clips from their interviews, and view photos and other archival materials they shared with us. <br /><br />Full length interviews are available for further research at the National Czech &amp; Slovak Museum &amp; Library. For more information, contact Dave Muhlena, Library Director, at dmuhlena@ncsml.org. Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound <h4>Anti-Communist</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/cJL7jr6ksHA?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“After ’48, he joined the underground and worked through a front firm – it was a French firm, but it was a front for the underground – and he was like a courier. In ’49, October ’49, he received information from a friend of his who was in the local police department that they would be arresting this group of spies in the underground. He left Prague in October after he got word that they were going to arrest him and he spent a month in hiding. Part of that was in Jevany in a mortuary in a cemetery for a week, where he hid out in the mortuary where my uncle would bring him food, until he was able to make his way to [České] Budějovice. [He spent] a total of a month hiding out and then he and a good friend of his made their way into Germany and he was in a camp there, and he tried to get my mother over and the three boys as soon as possible.”</p><h4>Trouble</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/zRyjQImt4p8?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“In January, my mother was visited by two gentlemen who told her that they had met my father at one of the refugee camps in Germany and that my father had sent word through them for my mother to give them money for my father. My mother said ‘I don’t have that kind of money. My husband wouldn’t ever have asked for that money’ and the guy said ‘Well, we had a letter from him but we lost it crossing the border.’ So my mother, being the charitable person that she was, gave him some money because he said he needed money to go and visit his wife in Bratislava. So she gave him some money for the train and she gave him a change of clothing and fed him, and then later that day he returned with another gentleman and again asked her for more money. She said she didn’t have any more and, with that, he said ‘Well, you will regret this decision,’ and he left.</p><p>“Next thing you know, my mother was arrested, January 25, and was detained in Pankrác in solitary confinement for two months. At that time, we didn’t know this story – when we were here in the States. My family didn’t really talk about what they went through in Czechoslovakia. My mother never spoke about it and my father very rarely spoke about it. But later, through my brother’s investigations in the archives, he found this story about the two guys who visited my mother and tried to shake her down and blackmail her. Well, instead of going to Bratislava, what they did was they went to the local bar, got drunk, and started bragging about how they go back and forth from Czechoslovakia to Germany and, naturally, there were spies there, communist spies, and they were arrested. When they were arrested, they mentioned my mother giving them aid and, as a result of that, my mother was arrested. All along we thought, prior to this story coming out, that my mother was detained there because of my father, but they had come to arrest my father the morning of October 7 in ’49 – they didn’t find him there – and my mother claimed that she had no knowledge of where my father was. That he left for work that morning and never returned. So in a way, they were not looking for her because of my father; they arrested her because she aided these two guides or blackmailers.”</p><h4>Yorkville</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/O1C6VPwfopo?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“[My father] became a machinist. The first few years were rough before he was able to get a machinist job. He painted; he was a waiter; he did handy-man work; he did whatever he could. My mother was home with us; however, the first apartment that we got in New York City, we were janitors, so my mother had to clean the building while my father was at work. So there were many times when my mother would be washing the hallways on her hands and knees with a bucket and a scrub brush; my brothers relate those stories to me. Later on, when I was older, I would go with her cleaning offices, things like that. Much later, my father got my mother a job at the machine shop where he was working, and she worked in the assembly area, putting together the parts that were being manufactured there.</p><p>“But my mother worked at Sokol Hall in the kitchen, weddings, making dumplings, whatever they needed, and my father was a porter there at times. My father worked at [Bohemian] National Hall, on 73rd Street, as a waiter during affairs. My brothers did [too]. My father always had two jobs when he was working; the machine shop during the day and a waiter at night. He was a waiter at Vašata’s on 75th between First and Second [Avenues]; he was there for many years. We wound up living in that apartment later on before they retired. We bounced around Yorkville as janitorial jobs became available. We were not janitors at Vašata’s but we moved to 71st Street after 76th and we lived across the street from Sokol Hall. I became very involved there starting at the age of six, and we were the janitors there as well, until we had to move because they renovated and then we lived on Second Avenue between 73rd and 74th around the corner from National Hall. By that time, my father had been working strictly as a machinist and still working nights as a waiter. All my brothers, we all worked. I worked at the restaurants in Yorkville – Vašata, Ruc. My brother Charlie went to school. He became a pharmacist; he worked in a Czech pharmacy in Yorkville.</p><p>“Yorkville was a wonderful place to grow up. It was an area where there were ethnic groups. You had your Slovaks, your Czechs, your Hungarians, your Germans. It was like a little Central [Europe sic] there. Czech butchers, Czech bakers, Czech doctors, optometrists. It was like being home away from home for us.”</p><h4>Sokol</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/imM7karwRls?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I went to Sokol camp in Connecticut. They had a beautiful camp there, and I spent a few summers there, fortunately, to get out of the heat of the city. I had memorable occasions over there. It was a lot of fun [being] amongst other Czech immigrants, and we even had a few Hungarian boys who were there. It was a wonderful experience. Being part of Sokol, the entire organization, was a great experience.”</p><h4>2005 Return</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/-nh-nYc5RsQ?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“My youngest daughter, the schoolteacher, when she was going to school at New Paltz, she decided to study a semester in Prague, at Charles University. So, actually, she’s the first one from my family to go back, because I didn’t go back until she was studying there. That was my first trip there. It was 2005, so that’s going to be seven years ago, and so we went to visit her. Her sister went to visit her before we did, and she came and said ‘I can’t believe you were born there and you didn’t go back yet.’ So I said to my wife ‘Ok, we’re going to go there while Jill’s studying’ and we spent two weeks there, and then I returned there again two years ago. It was an emotional trip for me, naturally.</p><p>“I got to visit Strašnice, and I got to go to Kostelec nad Černými Lesy where my cousins live. My father came from a family of butchers, so they’re all butchers. His father was a butcher, his brother was a butcher, my first cousin’s a butcher, his son’s a butcher. Naturally, during the communist years, my uncle was arrested as well. After my father left, my uncle Joe was in the uranium mines for awhile. He suffered a stroke and thank god that they released him early. But being that they were not of the Communist Party, they weren’t allowed to do certain things. [If] you were a butcher, you’re going to be a butcher. You can’t be anything other than that. Educations were stifled; they started school at a later age. So it wasn’t easy for them having stayed back. So I visited them. I went to Tehov where my mother was born. Naturally you visit the cemeteries. I went to Jevany where my father hid out in the mortuary. I saw that little hutch there that’s run down. I couldn’t imagine him spending a week there in the middle of a cemetery waiting to get out of the country.”</p> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Pavel Paces Description An account of the resource <p>Pavel Paces was born in the Strašnice district of Prague in 1949. His father, Karel, owned a liquor distillery and his mother, Marie, was the office manager for the business. After the distillery was nationalized following the Communist coup, Pavel’s father became a courier for the anti-communist resistance. In October 1949, (shortly after Pavel’s birth) he was warned by a friend on the local police force of his imminent arrest and left Prague. He spent one month in hiding and then crossed the border into Germany where he stayed in a refugee camp. Pavel’s mother, meanwhile, aided two men who claimed to have met her husband in Germany and said they were traveling to Bratislava. The men were arrested by communist authorities for their illegal cross-border trips, and named Pavel’s mother as an ‘accomplice.’ She was subsequently arrested and held in Pankrác prison for two months. She was released in March 1950 and, one month later, had a guide assist her and her three sons (Pavel and his older brothers Karel and Miloslav) across the border near Cheb. They were reunited with Pavel’s father and lived in Germany for 18 months, first in refugee camps and later in Munich. The family sailed to New York City in November 1951 and settled in the Yorkville neighborhood.</p><p> </p><p>Pavel says that the area where they lived was home to many Central and Eastern European immigrants, including other Czechs. Pavel’s father found work as a machinist and his mother held cleaning and janitorial jobs. His whole family was active within the local Sokol chapter – Pavel and his brothers attended gymnastics and language classes, and his parents worked as a cook and a waiter during events. The family spoke Czech at home and Pavel enjoyed attending Sokol summer camps. Today, Pavel is still active in the Czech community in New York; he is on the building committee for Sokol Hall and attends events at the Bohemian National Hall.</p><p> </p><p>Pavel majored in education at NYU and became an industrial arts teacher for the Yonkers Public School district, a job which he held for 34 years. He married his wife, Vicky, in 1976 and the couple has two daughters. In 1979, they bought a house in Yorktown Heights, New York, where they still live today. Pavel first returned to the Czech Republic in 2005 when his younger daughter was studying at Charles University. He says that the trip was ‘emotional’ as he visited his family home and met his cousins for the first time. Now retired, Pavel hopes to travel to Europe more frequently.</p> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived NCSML Archive 1948 emigrant/refugee Anti-communist Arrest Child emigre Community Life Cultural Traditions Kostelec nad Cernymi Lesy Pankrac Strasnice Teachers Vasata https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/a7c73ae0f30dd628887ddaa6defa6b6e.jpg?Expires=1779321600&Signature=c7rf7-oGqySEYLllHfTQNCBZp6uUZGeG03Ny2k7OWqH2b6taFOwnDOyfpn6CLklQoMMmOdE4-G9lA1-pyxyMH4LyegjfSpJKIsbEtR9DEB9HWM8EivROzmSxhZrhh1CLToWOzKlJb2p4rHyaczOoVxgoJvKz0WvMLKP5mmb7XRXOe7r2K-SoKwBZax%7EfBKjoll67DK-593dgybGB5hzot8kRmURAwVIfnEbDQnRu9rNxQptU3slIQP-MwlysFqfpL1gh%7Esvjl6EtwnkiOOdidDjNpawpTj%7EPxfvR-y%7EKlhr9JsVVG7H8479DkYeCufh%7EaPUIb6W48vzrd4S1P-pfxg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 4a83faba5f3feeaff6f32dd9769a1c40 https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/7c742c946cbbd730aeb2ac874f942e63.jpg?Expires=1779321600&Signature=e%7EW6XYNXOPl%7EJ2iJv-K8guOpz482jLn2aTbzt2EfOj9oRP6PDe6QxxUHLcbSty6Anafhj7BsgYD6S2DIphIMuVXtRW9-2uOC3BzU4vP24beXWTdE8s06530jSTnTzdpj7CxFG%7EUTxCQLyJr5ZqhXd80FLxm492sk5lQzzGDASrvxpB2bLYQHMxHpejU3akUCA%7ESlf4xOHLpK-T-54qINfFWo0us%7EakFjxyP5bYMWNMulaNS%7ElRvndm3HwYW7NjE2DkWcLS6lXQV7cUbT2GiiHuJlR9qMac0KKDkr2Y6db5RXuHug%7ECMbSufdAea2eGlDNIQyib7sC-T3U6F3zx9qhQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 1f3bab71bc911aeceb0e5ac64594cb19 https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/a11c69eb80490fa294fbd670d90af7fa.jpg?Expires=1779321600&Signature=tLmo%7EHwtrnfMzCi8Qsq-pQ3k7ha2Unqv9swuS8HLkMj7PIfEDCGzLqZdkZAiSFTGooEAUmcqBLUXYR-PTS7T0nyLAJ5daCprpsYdIf4LC5UqayBNDGm1JiwNlOA2TnyMNpRsIPQT0zoDA6U4vvrgWkJSNdv%7EU163P44qlZ2JArocJ5LHTkRYu17x96yu3CKRQEu%7Eq4VpxxFUIlpWm%7Ef9156mP%7E2g4jwGx3t97xNVdHN9JG-cEnF5glzoetKIyhR1UE%7EGJp8GvK9RVzw2FgWeqCkg2olW5m2DlWypzbAoXX146ANmkTZ0Dp3a8lnt3DKBKByKQK9M7SwOfHKRgXIjQQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 1a089219fc988057135193888dc8b305 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans Subject The topic of the resource Recording Voices &amp; Documenting Memories of Czech &amp; Slovak Americans was an oral history project launched by the National Czech &amp; Slovak Museum &amp; Library in 2009. The project captured and preserved the stories of Czechs and Slovaks who left their homeland during the Cold War and settled in New York City, Washington, D.C., Cleveland, Chicago and the San Francisco Bay Area. During the second phase of the project, the NCSML recorded the stories of immigrants who came to the United States after the fall of communism in 1989 as well. By the conclusion of the project in August 2013, the NCSML had collected more than 300 oral histories. <br /><br />Both phases of the project were made possible by grants from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. <br /><br />On the project’s website, you can read biographies of Czechs and Slovaks who began a new life in the United States, watch video clips from their interviews, and view photos and other archival materials they shared with us. <br /><br />Full length interviews are available for further research at the National Czech &amp; Slovak Museum &amp; Library. For more information, contact Dave Muhlena, Library Director, at dmuhlena@ncsml.org. Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound <h4>Munich Agreement</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/AtUadtBdvgE?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“When you are 16 or 15, you don’t know or feel that you are a participant in a great enterprise, but when you are hit, or when that enterprise is hit, as it was by the Munich crisis and what this implied for the future – because this was one event and, my generation, we were aware enough to see and to know what to anticipate… We were finishing at the gymnázium, the country became occupied by the Germans, we lost our building, we had to share a building with other schools which were not occupied. My gymnázium, which was a very modern building – opened, I think, in 1928 or 1929 – was immediately occupied by the German state security.</p><p>“But at the same time, you know, we were at that time when we were going to take dancing lessons, which meant for the first time to be with girls. It was a very important moment in a 17-year-old’s life, and then you didn’t know what was going to happen after that. You graduated, and after my graduation, the Germans began to recruit – to simply conscript, rather – young people to work in armaments factories.”</p><h4>Relations</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/JSTs8000wMM?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Our neighbor was a decommissioned officer who had been in the Czechoslovak Army, who had two boys, roughly my age and my cousin from that same villa’s age. When we were kids we would play in the street, soccer and that, we had scooters and we would borrow and lend them and all that. The next neighbor was the principal of a German school in Czechoslovakia, his two daughters were teachers there. Come the crisis, the daughters turned out to be Nazis and very unpleasant. In my memory, the symbol of this was that they began to wear white stockings. The two boys appeared in the uniform of the SA [German Sturmabteilung], were immediately mobilized; that decommissioned officer was taken into the German Army. We never saw the boys again because, we learned, they were killed on the Russian front. So that’s a different kind of relationship, you didn’t hate them but they became alien, and I think that it was this alienation which was probably the worst part.”</p><h4>Liberation</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/rWeeK_nESuE?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“The pilots were very young boys, 21, 22 years old, you know, and cheerful kids. And they simply took a bedroom and slept in the bedroom until when they were going to leave. And you know you welcomed them, you were glad that they came. We had two of them, and one day the two of them came and left in the morning and locked their bedroom. My mother [normally] sort of made their beds and cleaned up after them and when they came back, mother said ‘Well, why did you lock the room?’ They said ‘Don’t worry about that, grandma, we will do it;’ she said ‘No! Leave it open! I want to clean the room.’ Well, the next day, again, it was locked. So she said ‘No, no, no – you leave the room open! I’m coming in,’ and she wedged her foot or something in the doorway. And then she smelt an unpleasant smell. And they sort of gave in. So she went to the armoire and they had two rabbits in it.</p><p>“So she said ‘Where did you get those rabbits?’ ‘Oh!’ they said, ‘we were given the rabbits.’ ‘Who gave you the rabbits? Nobody gives people rabbits!’ ‘Well,’ they said, ‘we found them in another house.’ ‘So you take them back!’ They were, you know, kids and she was a woman of 50. So she sent them to give the rabbits back, but then they left her a very touching thank you note written on a piece of paper, giving us the address to visit them at in Moscow.”</p><h4>Leaving</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/x9lP4P3SpZo?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I had complete confidence in those people, we were working together. And so I was told ‘You be on this particular evening at the streetcar station, there will be a car and two people and they will take you to the border, and so I did go. So, I went there, there were two young men, one of them was in the [Beneš Party] youth movement, and we drove to the border. There was a border guard, who stopped us, got in the car and took us all the way practically to the border. We saw the barriers on the road and he said ‘Well, we’ll have to stop here. You get out, and walk about a quarter of a mile/half a kilometer along that road here, and then you will see on the other side the lights of the German village. You cross the fields, and in the German village report to the German police.’ The border guard wished me good luck and said ‘come back and don’t forget us.’</p><p>“Now, after the Communist regime fell, it came out that the escape was arranged by a branch of [Communist] state security, who wanted to get me out in order to eventually become their agent or something.”</p><h4>More American</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/szip2ohhVlg?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“My mother was afraid about me going to Chicago with all those gangsters and worried whether I would survive. Well, you know, at midnight after the last lesson and the last coffee we would walk to Jackson Park and the lake, and come back safe to start the morning fresh. And I had to study also, one of my fields was American diplomacy and diplomatic history and for that I had to look into the larger picture of American history. And I found it rather inspiring and encouraging, especially in the situation in which we found ourselves. Somehow I learned to understand America and its shortcomings and the way that it gets out of them, because the country, the people, the nation has a cushion, which is several layers. One is the cushion of values and ideals. One is the cushion of resources, and especially in those days, you know, 60 years ago, who would have questioned America not having the resources? And of the institutions, however imperfect they were, they somehow worked. So [my wife] Joy keeps saying ‘You’re more American than a native American.’ And I say ‘Well, it’s a compliment!’”</p><h4>Activism</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/FqXFA4PMhyg?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Hundreds and thousands of us left thinking that we are going to be back in five years time. People lived in this kind of provisional state for years and years. Now, as I said, I was young enough, I was lucky enough, I could study, I could establish myself. So the hope that fed you in the beginning of the homeland to which I’m going to return began to play a secondary role in your planning of your life, in your orientation. I think the trick is, under those conditions, to transcend from the provisorium. It is no longer, however limited it may be, a provisional phase of your life, but you do the best with your life that you can. The trick was then to combine it with a certain amount of living devotion to the cause for which you left. And you know, maybe if you lived in the provisional, maybe you would be more tenacious and more active and more this, but that’s not how life sort of works. And you know, I found a wife who was very supportive, we agreed when we met in 1955 that if I go back to Czechoslovakia, she will come to Czechoslovakia. But if you asked her 10-15 years later, when those little kids were all around running about here, then I don’t know.”</p> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Mojmir Povolny Description An account of the resource <p>Mojmir Povolny was born in Měnín, a small village near Brno, in 1921. His father owned a local liquor store and his mother stayed at home, raising him and his younger brother, Bořivoj. When Mojmir was old enough to go to <em>gymnázium</em>, he was sent to Brno to study, where he lived with his aunt and uncle. Mojmir’s studies were interrupted by WWII. He was sent to work in the Minerva munitions factory in Boskovice for the duration of the War. In 1945, he enrolled as a law student at Masaryk University in Brno. As an undergraduate he became involved with the Czechoslovak National Socialist or Beneš Party and, within that, an influential group of students and professors called <em>Oddělení pro vědeckou politiku</em> [The Section for the Scientific Study of Politics].</p><p> </p><p>After his studies, Mojmir was invited to work for the Beneš Party at its headquarters in Prague. He worked there until just after the Communist coup d’état in February 1948. He left Czechoslovakia two months later; he says he found out afterwards that the Communist secret police had helped him escape. Mojmir was sponsored by the American Fund for Czechoslovak Refugees to come and study at the University of Chicago in 1950. He became an American citizen in 1956. From 1974 to 1989 he was chairman of the Council of Free Czechoslovakia. Following a career in academia, Mojmir retired and lived in Appleton, Wisconsin, with his wife Joy. He died on August 21, 2012. He is survived by his wife of 56 years, Joy, and their two children.</p> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived NCSML Archive 1948 emigrant/refugee American citizenship Benes Party Communist coup Community leadership German Helsinki Accords Morals Munich Crisis national Nazis Occupation Politics World War II https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/36242e847c84a04bba6d37892e35fc58.jpg?Expires=1779321600&Signature=gnAlR09%7Eppipp1oLPuMZ9aKwEFDy6EcVDtwyi%7EIZLQ9x7QViHh73QAaZO%7Ezm5zxSTWFRIdR4hPReSDzgyR-ExSpjfzjlFl5rFiR96t65C2n1KoKrq6R0fSOa2rXy2%7Ew5PiTEesIhuIn7pXAbLlH-H8f1rVCBdFITzSMqep2D8m6wNQF6CZwM8jzuApr2yJZ-%7EHiPvtNqXWyb0GtoZ1d6Vik98IjBbMmm69OxkNPX41fgSrzqftjmEBJ2PcOU4I9rv2C3NZzz7QHkjbhOCL1nFfNTb4X0E63CbAaMvpZ6dRAml1KnzT1QjSdCdF-PcmczWym7kEwDJxxTQei1wMNXXg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM d3f422c5472f9515aa48521cf0ae1eef https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/e7974e7d0f5d50380ea9bd3118e716da.jpg?Expires=1779321600&Signature=bz%7EUKd4WOtoykrFcSjy0dlFIfh2AU4BnCyal%7Eoo013UBOejA8tzMCnf5lRVT6LibOUigQ8FWs8q%7EkDocONw2%7EotU3tph3xDJ7xlkdrJNyzXL1tIQw3yKY1gLpvh9JatnoLmu8V5yK4M-rKvI3FOq1NaVTp8KLekuu7nEaMwlLtq5LdXQK91ihH4L%7E%7ELNt2hgOk8U0YsYsrSfaHIszeObGMCcev9vfyCR8nv%7EdKfzzYQeSdrn6w9KWcfgXnbX9Dver3cxTgY586EkrcSqkFYPJj5pLvZCQLZ4w7ZRuJ-T%7E96CXN6ubQ5QCLwS8B-isrYHmkwrka%7Et-3mnLj7iHgLW7w__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM a07a1a7a92defc796a9f523c87179394 https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/dc7c7ae8702a958fc456b5bc261c3278.jpg?Expires=1779321600&Signature=CGUvLZHkEHH4sZQkDI4PQ4bI3QO6fo-GfGl3L5nTfkcrgmhAxpN-tIOXCsnwUI3yPj9B--pKywciP52UwdpJLkX6CI3DUvPYJy0nAmZcTzomtfLCTMAWkIsnHSydFgVx4t4SGR3-KB3-KYdkNKBq5avaofvNA1QV60NrloUIusRTvJzApLwt5XVKjzsdgungdMcZfTNY60Nk8wySNVyu9BObFpM%7EVVP%7EjE1hgijnr8YUQMv7HgkC05abkDSAm%7EJN0Ry-2aytBu2TIsm8S03vfolOaXBydf-%7EcPM4Sce5mKLMYENwjlVMxf0eU1URbMEAhmXBHwi2e%7EoUVX6DK6ouqw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM cde9364c61b409f6528b494cba99dbfb https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/e94728d548e3ba0fbabf732f1114ba94.jpg?Expires=1779321600&Signature=dquf9zfBTu04nSMzXb0cvmfoP3xmaQgzGS-MMT6tLTYuGHYU7omgVm-2-x03maWAwPuC91Y6oBfWKajDy%7E4qo6B64cgB62FzXTcrOqThtlm9PMo10robu8KQPVupzB88aQRdt%7Et0-V18D6x64KeZmx8nmaUSayBA66FzyVsdIzuBJSzFfsAiRx%7ECfyfpVGImJQ4PpF22jyeqh5fiSM-e2X68M9ICL9ydKMZBJvSmNi9IBPPeDlp3kvxJNRTCt56qo7A1%7EDE3aGlHro4Ehd396zaQkdWQVMrILSvFK8afD-fEWgAe132fBkLCgJew708m6X5CXumiT1qZRdlpyPq6fA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM d1805ab3ff30b4bfbf3566e21df48e3d Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans Subject The topic of the resource Recording Voices &amp; Documenting Memories of Czech &amp; Slovak Americans was an oral history project launched by the National Czech &amp; Slovak Museum &amp; Library in 2009. The project captured and preserved the stories of Czechs and Slovaks who left their homeland during the Cold War and settled in New York City, Washington, D.C., Cleveland, Chicago and the San Francisco Bay Area. During the second phase of the project, the NCSML recorded the stories of immigrants who came to the United States after the fall of communism in 1989 as well. By the conclusion of the project in August 2013, the NCSML had collected more than 300 oral histories. <br /><br />Both phases of the project were made possible by grants from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. <br /><br />On the project’s website, you can read biographies of Czechs and Slovaks who began a new life in the United States, watch video clips from their interviews, and view photos and other archival materials they shared with us. <br /><br />Full length interviews are available for further research at the National Czech &amp; Slovak Museum &amp; Library. For more information, contact Dave Muhlena, Library Director, at dmuhlena@ncsml.org. Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound <h4>Horse Cart</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/EZropicbPkU?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“In those days, even though cars were already in existence and trucks, we did not use them. We used just horses to pull the wagons with flour. We went as far as Mladá Boleslav, I don’t remember how many kilometers it was, but we had to go to Mnichovo hradiště – that was seven kilometers – and then normally you would take a train. So I don’t know, it must have been about three hours, I would say. So, we would go as far as that, but we had one person who was handling the horse and he had a sort of system whereby, at every village, his wagon would stop in front of a pub and he would go to get a beer. I remember this. I was quite young then, but it was sort of curious.”</p><p><em>And you would go along as well?</em></p><p>“Oh yeah. I was frequently… not frequently, but sometimes I went along. It was just interesting, you know? At the time when I didn’t go to school, obviously, in summer time. It was an interesting experience.”</p><h4>Illegal Food</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/c3RAyJwH76I?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Under the Nazi era, I think the farmers in a way, I would say quite often illegally, supported people in the cities. And I know that for instance in our mill, my father had a reputation that he would give flour to even people that he did not know that came from Prague. And he would give them, as I recall – I remember even the number – five kilos of flour, which was at that time quite sizable for the period. Because otherwise you had to purchase four using tickets – you had special tickets. But my father made this flour available to them for good prices. He didn’t ever overcharge them. And I did not know about this, I learned only about it in the last maybe 30 years. When I established some contact [with the Czech Republic] people started coming to me and saying ‘I remember your father from WWII, this is what he did.’ So, I know that this was not unique, because people in the countryside were very helpful.”</p><h4>Escape</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/8viCQjPK0JQ?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I was not doing it on my own, but somebody was helping. I did not even know the person, nothing, because we called him ‘mister engineer,’ and I don’t know what he was.”</p><p><em>Was he a colleague of your father?</em></p><p>“Yeah, he was a friend of him. Anyhow, then there were problems of some sort, and he was supposed to take me over the border, and he didn’t. At the last minute he sent me on my own. And I was in the middle of nowhere. I ended up – he just pointed me in one direction, and I ended up in a house which was still on the Czech side. And they called the police and whatever else, so I ended up in jail where I was actually, according to the Czech laws, I was quite young. I was below the age or whatever. I was never tried, I don’t know how many months they kept me there. And then they let me go because of my age, because the newly-elected president, Gottwald, issued an amnesty for young people. And I sort of fell under that category and they released me. And fortunately at the time… prior to that I was going to gymnázium, and fortunately, the gymnázium let me come back, although, for a price as I found out later. I received for my effort to escape; they gave me a so-called dvojka z mravů, which meant, in Czechoslovakia you got a grade for behavior, either good behavior or bad behavior. And so for good behavior you got one, and for bad behavior you got two. So I got two; I got dvojka z mravů. And that was pretty bad, you know, to have dvojka z mravů, that didn’t look good on your record. But nevertheless, I have a feeling that maybe this was some kind of a compromise some of my professor friends were able to do so that I could get back. This was maybe one way of doing it – they gave me a dvojka z mravů and I was able to come back.”</p><h4>6 yrs in Prison</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/uYNfKs479no?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I made efforts lately to clear her name. And I went through the process, [sent the request to] the Ministry of Justice or whatever it was called, and they wrote me an official letter telling me that according to then-existing laws, she committed a crime. According to then-existing laws. So they still, unfortunately, recognize communist laws today. To date, I have not been able to clear her name. It is incredible. And, I mean, she is not the only one. There are many people who are in the same category, for instance, let’s say people that crossed the border and didn’t go to the armed services. That was considered a crime. This still, on their books, is considered a criminal offense. Even these people could not clear their name, because according to the laws that existed at that time, this was a criminal act. So, this is one bitter thing I have against even the current Czech Republic – they cannot rid themselves of the past and get rid of these communist laws. It is incredible to me, absolutely incredible to me.”</p><h4>State Dept.</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/MgeOOMdrNYc?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I was hired initially as a senior nutrition adviser. And then I was there a few months and they said ‘Well’… They offered me a job to be the chief of a research division which, in a way, had responsibility for handling and the research sponsored by AID in various developing countries in different fields. And eventually from this job I was elevated up to a director of whatever else. And my job had a number of facets, because we were responsible for not only research but we were also responsible for supporting institutional grants to various universities in a given field in our area. And this covered a number of fields, and interestingly, my background was very helpful to me in as much as I was involved in agriculture initially, and in the medical field at NIH. That gave me a fantastic background, because AID was supporting projects in agriculture; they were supporting projects in medicine and health, and of course they were supporting projects in education.”</p><h4>SVU in D.C.</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/vBZkcL5Y3qw?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“After I came to Washington I became… They established a Washington chapter at that time. And they made Dr, Feierabend, whom you probably know, Ladislav Feierabend, became the chairman of the local chapter. And I was elected the secretary of the chapter. So that was my first entrance into the society, which eventually grew into more and more responsible positions. And I was, from the very beginning, I was in constant contact with Dr. Nemec, Dr. Jaroslav Nemec, who worked for the National Library of Medicine, which in the meantime was transferred to NIH, and I worked at NIH, so we used to meet quite regularly for lunch. I don’t know, once a week or whatever, we met for lunch. So we talked and talked and talked. So, in the process I obviously learned quite a bit about it. And I had some ideas of my own. And eventually, I guess, it must have been within two years, I came up with the idea of the society holding these conferences, which we then renamed congresses. So actually, originally, it was my idea. And I sold Dr. Nemec about it, and he sold others, and we indeed proceeded and had the first congress. The first congress – I ended up being the person who was responsible for the program. So I prepared the program for the first congress, and I ended up being responsible for the second congress, and so I was the one who was inviting all of these people and the first congress was quite decisive. It was an important milestone because it, in some ways, put the society on the map, because then people took it more seriously and then… In the first congress I know we had 60 speakers, which was unheard of at the time. And these people came from different universities or whatever. And again, my contribution at the time was an insistence upon English. I said it has to be in English, because until that time it was all in Czech.”</p><h4>SVU Founded</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/AAmknUA8CaE?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Many people don’t realize why the SVU actually started and under what conditions. The reason was that at the time, there were lots of political disputes in the Czechoslovak community. And there were numerous organizations and clubs. And the politicians, if they belonged to one particular group; they wouldn’t talk to politicians in another group. They just wouldn’t talk to each other. And it was sometimes quite nasty, you might say. And at this time, the situation in Czechoslovakia was going from bad to worse. So this was the time when the intellectuals of Czech or Slovak descent and Czech or Slovak intellectuals decided ‘Enough! Let’s focus on something positive which unites us instead of dividing us!’ That was the society. We created a society where anybody can talk who wishes and explore different issues and what have you. And from the very beginning, it was meant to be a non-political organization.”</p> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Mila Rechcigl Description An account of the resource <p> </p><p>Mila Rechcigl was born in Mladá Boleslav in 1930. His father (also named Miloslav) was a miller who became the youngest member of parliament in Czechoslovakia when he was elected as a representative of the Agrarian Party in 1935. Mila was raised in and around the family mill in Chocnějovice and remembers traveling by horse and cart to nearby Mladá Boleslav in order to sell flour in town. During WWII, Mila says his father was unable to continue his political work, but became president of the Czech Millers Association and was active in the resistance group Obrana národa [Defense of the Nation]. Mila himself remembers people traveling to the mill from Prague to buy flour there on the black market.</p><p> </p><p>Between 1945 and 1948, a period which he refers to as a time of ‘illusionary democracy,’ Mila attended <em>gymnázium</em> in Mladá Boleslav. Following the Communist coup in 1948, his father escaped Czechoslovakia when a warrant was issued for his arrest. Mila also tried to leave the country, but was caught at the border and jailed for a number of months. Mila says he was released as there was an amnesty announced which affected those legally considered to be minors, and he was allowed to return to <em>gymnázium</em>, though he received a <em>dvojka z mravů</em> – a poor grade for personal conduct. In 1949, Mila tried again to leave Czechoslovakia and this time succeeded. He was reunited with his father at Ludwigsburg refugee camp in West Germany, where he stayed until February 1950. Mila says he never saw his mother, Marie, again. In the late 1950s, she was imprisoned for taking grain from the Rechcigl mill (which had been nationalized) and feeding it to her chickens. She received a prison sentence of ten years, though was released after six. Mila came to New York City with his father in 1950. The pair’s first job was at a small jewelry factory, making earrings and bracelets using Czech glass beads. After a couple of years, Mila’s father started working for Radio Free Europe in the city, while Mila himself received a Free Europe scholarship to attend Cornell University. He gained his BS, MNS, and PhD degrees there, specializing in biochemistry, nutrition, physiology and food science.</p><p> </p><p>Mila worked for the National Institute of Health, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and then the State Department, where he became chief of the Research and Institutional Grants division. His involvement with the Czechoslovak Society of Arts &amp; Sciences (SVU) dates back to 1960 when he became the secretary of the society’s Washington, D.C. chapter. He was president of the international organization between 1974 and 1978 and again between 1994 and 2006. One of his proudest achievements was the establishment of the biannual SVU World Congress, which began in Washington, D.C. in 1962 and continues to this day. Today, Mila lives with his wife of 58 years, Eva, in Rockville, Maryland.</p><p><a href="/web/20170609150111/http://www.ncsml.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/e-Rechcigl_Final.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Full transcript of Mila Rechcigl’s interview</a></p><p><a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20170609150111/http://www.authorhouse.com/Bookstore/BookDetail.aspx?BookId=SKU-000419564" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">A link to Mila’s personal memoir ‘Czechmate: From Bohemian Paradise to American Haven’</a></p><p><a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20170609150111/http://www.rozhlas.cz/svobodne/kdobylkdo/_zprava/miloslav-rechcigl-1904-1973--866956" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">A profile of Mila’s father Miloslav (in Czech)</a></p> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived NCSML Archive 1948 emigrant/refugee Arrest Chocnejovice Community leadership Community Life Education gymnazium Journalism Mlada Boleslav Mnichovo hradiste Obrana naroda Political prisoner Resistance Rural life