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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 & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans was an oral history project launched by the National Czech & Slovak Museum & 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 & Slovak Museum & 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>Rural Childhood</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/XsTipWLzw4E?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“When my father died, we moved back to my grandmother and grandfather’s and my uncle was over there, and they had a farm. But in Czech Republic, it’s not like here. There’s a village, and the fields are someplace else. Over here you have a house and everything is around it, but over there, you have the village and everything was outside.”</p><h4>Detained by Gestapo</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/5sOM_nqzu3E?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Two weeks later, the Gestapo came and picked up my mother. I was 11, 11 and a half, and I was with my grandfather and grandmother [who were] around 70. My grandfather was 70, my grandmother was 69. I was with them and I was going to school four kilometers away, everyday to school. When it was too much for my grandfather, I had to help. I was doing work that was a man’s doing, because my grandfather wasn’t able.”</p><p><em>So why did the Gestapo claim to come for your uncle and for your mother?</em></p><p>“Because they were listening to the radio from England. Then they sent them to Prague to Pankrác and my mother got thirteen months for that and my uncle got two years. And then they sent my mother to Leipzig in Germany and they sent my uncle to [Austria]. My mother came home and she was so hungry that my grandmother cooked two pounds of beef and she ate everything. She was so hungry; and before they let my uncle out, we had to pay for his food and everything. To the Germans we had to pay for it before they let him out.”</p><h4>Germany to U.S.</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/YiD7rGGQXUw?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“When we left Germany, we went on an old airplane – Flying Tiger Lines. It wasn’t alright; they had to repair it. I was seven months pregnant, and Alice was one and a half years old. We were waiting the whole day; the whole airplane was people with children, small children. And then we came to Shannon [Ireland]. They put us in some hotel, a small one, and they said that they have to repair the airplane again. They were repairing the airplane and we stayed overnight there. The next day, they said we will go. We went on the plane and the pilot came back and he said that the plane is still not alright, so they repaired it again.</p><p>“And then we went to Newfoundland. She [Alice] got strep throat and they had to call the doctor, and he brought somebody who started speaking French to me. I said ‘If you can speak English, or if you can speak Russian, or German, that’s ok, but I don’t know any French,’ and the doctor said ‘Oh my gosh, I speak English, but I thought that you don’t speak English.’ Then he gave her some medicine, and we had to stay over there for two days because it was Saturday, and in America Saturday and Sunday are holidays, so we came on Monday. It took us one week to fly to America.”</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
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Alice Vedral
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Alice Vedral was born near Prague in 1928. Her father, who was Ukrainian, had moved to Czechoslovakia when Ukraine became part of the Soviet Union. Wen she was two, Alice’s father died, and she and her mother went to live with her grandparents and uncle in Nehvizdy, central Bohemia. In the summer of 1940, Alice’s mother and uncle were arrested by the Gestapo. Her mother spent thirteen months in prison in Leipzig, while her uncle was sentenced to two years in Austria. Alice recalls spending much of her free time assisting her elderly grandparents on their farm during this period. When WWII ended, Alice enrolled in the Akademie obchodní Dr. Edvarda Beneše [Benes Business School] to study accounting; she says that her love of mathematics led her to choose this field of study. While attending school, Alice lived with her mother (who had since remarried) in the Břevnov district of Prague and worked in the shop her mother ran.</p><p> </p><p>Following the Communist coup, Alice says that several of her friends were in contact with the CIA regarding uranium mining in Czechoslovakia; when a few of them were caught taking background files from the university, the authorities began arresting members of her group. In the spring of 1949, Alice received word that she too was in danger of being arrested and decided to leave the country. She crossed the border into Germany with three other people in April 1949. In her attempt to cross the border, Alice says she was assisted by a priest and spent part of the journey in a false-bottomed cart.</p><p> </p><p>Alice arrived in Ludwidsburg refugee camp and, six months later, was reunited with her companion from Prague, <a href="/web/20170612093138/http://www.ncsml.org/exhibits/eda-vedral/">Eda Vedral</a>, whom she married shortly thereafter. While in Ludwigsburg, Alice found a job as a receptionist in the camp’s X-ray office. She gave birth to her first child, also named Alice, in 1950, and moved with her husband to Munich in 1951, when he took a job at Radio Free Europe. Alice describes the family’s journey to the United States as eventful, as she was seven months pregnant, they had to make several stops to repair the plane, and the Vedrals’ baby fell ill. In June 1952, one week after leaving Germany, the family arrived in New York and subsequently settled in Chicago. Alice found a job in a factory making coils for radios, but stopped working when their family expanded. Alice and Eda eventually had eight children. Many of their children, and some grandchildren, speak Czech fluently. Alice became involved in the Chicago Czech community and participated in groups such as Czechoslovak Exiles in Chicago and Orel in Exile. She returned to Czechoslovakia for the first time in 1969, and witnessed the Velvet Revolution while on a trip to Prague in 1989. Today, Alice lives in Cicero, Illinois, with her husband, Eda.</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
Arrest
Community Life
Education
marriage
Refugee camp
Rural life
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99dfaa0bd07fec1570a4aeab77b88262
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 & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans was an oral history project launched by the National Czech & Slovak Museum & 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 & Slovak Museum & 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>School</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/97xpUHvEEMk?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“What I remember about school is that the first day of schooling, my official first school experience, was that we had to Heil Hitler when we first started the school day. So these teachers who are all Czech patriots would always do it funny. They wouldn’t do it right, and then the principal would walk down the hall and if he saw a teacher doing it wrong, they could be reprimanded. But they’d do that as a gesture of anti-Nazi [sentiment].”</p><p><em>And the principal was a Nazi?</em></p><p>“No, no, just a Czech that was concerned that a Nazi might be looking over or some inspector would come and see this. The other thing we did was we had to learn German, so as a point of patriotism we made sure we didn’t do well. So I could have very good German, but I don’t because of this. We’d come back with a C [grade] and the parents would say ‘Great! You’re doing great.’”</p><h4>Concentration Camp</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/U1_RboI6iQk?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“My mother, at the end of the War, came back first, and I was living with an uncle of mine. I was so happy to see her; I said I wanted to go home immediately, so we went out on the street and we hailed a truck, and this truck took us home and I was so happy. It had to be one of the happiest days of my life. And then from that point on, everyday my mother would go to meet the transports to see if my father was on a transport coming back from Mauthausen, and for days and days she came back with nothing, so I kind of thought ‘Well, that may be it,’ but then one day she found him.”</p><h4>Mission</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2izCULfcufo?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“My father, in 1947, came to the States on a mission connected with the YMCA, because he was involved with the Y. He went back [to Czechoslovakia] thinking he had done his mission which was to explain to the Americans that Czechoslovakia was going to be the bridge between the two, between East and West. So it might be communist, but it wouldn’t be anti-American, because the Czech communists were different. Bad idea, but at that time he was operating on that idea.”</p><p><em>Did they believe him?</em></p><p>“Well, some people did because Czechoslovakia had been liberated by both, Russians and the Americans, so on that basis there was this thought that it could be the bridge between East and West. And my father believed it at the time. So he made a tour; it was two months or so. And he thought the tour went well as far as getting the idea across, that Czechoslovakia was not part of the Soviet bloc.”</p><h4>Decision</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Qt8PvZmbuzs?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“My father, I think, was very conscious of the fact that he wouldn’t survive another concentration camp or another prison. My mother was aware of that as well. So no, he did not hesitate at all, because other people were already getting arrested. And, actually, when he was being interrogated by the communists, it just happened that this guy came in and he said ‘Oh, you’re here’ and my father said ‘Yes, I was asked to appear at some hearing’ and this guy said ‘You come see me after you’re finished at [a] room’ in this office building. So my father went there and this guy said ‘You remember me?’ and my father said ‘Of course I remember you.’ It turned out that he had been in Mauthausen with my father but he was a big communist now and he told my father ‘Get out as quick as you can,’ so we did. But even if that hadn’t happened, I think he would have gone, because my father felt so strongly that he couldn’t survive another thing like that.”</p><p><em>Well that’s very kind of the communist.</em></p><p>“See the reason he did that is that my father had been very good to him in the camp. He would always give him an extra roll or whatever because he liked him as a human being. He was always very cooperative and very kind. He was a nice guy.”</p><h4>No Communication</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/5tziM5eW87I?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“There was always that fear that we would get them in trouble, so we never wrote, and I think at some point they must have found out where we were, but there was no contact. Except one time. One time, the uncle that I used to live with during the War – he was a doctor – he did get out for a conference in Munich and my parents were in Munich. He wrote them, or they were somehow able to communicate and he said ‘Is there anything you want that you left behind?’ Even though we hadn’t told anybody, my mother did tell him that we were going to leave, and he said ‘If there’s anything you really want, bring it to our house and we’ll keep it for you.’ So when my parents asked if there was anything we really wanted to have if we ever came back, I decided to pack up my glass menagerie and it was taken to my uncle’s house, where I lived during the War. Then in the early ‘70s he was able to get out of the country to go to a medical conference and he was able to go to Munich. Somehow he was able to communicate with my parents and he asked ‘Is there anything I can bring?’ They said ‘Bring Barbara’s menagerie if you can’ and he did. So this is extremely precious. And now I’ve added to it a little bit since, and now my grandsons adore this menagerie and they’re so good. They just kneel and look and study and gaze at these wonderful blown-glass figurines.”</p><p><em>So these are examples of Czech glass.</em></p><p>“Exactly. Well, now there’s some other things in there now, but mostly they’re Czech blown glass.”</p><h4>Going Back</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/FGfNjSDG-E0?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“The general atmosphere, even though it was hopeful, seemed grim to me and the conversations sounded like conversations I remembered after the War, like ‘This person’s coming back from prison;’ ‘This person’s being arrested by the communists;’ ‘This person’s being somehow mistreated.’ It sounded so similar that I decided I wouldn’t go back until things really changed. Then it looked like things were going to change, for the better obviously, but that got completely nixed by the Soviets, so then it was another 20 years. I didn’t go back until 1990 and then I started going back a lot. And then in 2007, I had a wonderful swan song of my career. I took 20 Hofstra students to Prague. I was the director of the whole program.”</p><p><em>What was the program?</em></p><p>“Hofstra University in Prague. They got credit for history, art, architecture… We had about five or six courses, they could choose three and they got nine credits, and we also did a trip to Auschwitz. It was wonderful. These kids were so wonderful. I was so proud of them. They were great.”</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
Barbara Reinfeld
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Barbara Reinfeld was born in Prague in 1935. Her father, Miloslav, was a journalist who had also worked as a parliamentary stenographer for the National Socialist (or Beneš) Party. Her mother, Zdislava, who studied in the United States for two years, taught English and physical education before Barbara and her older brother, Erazim, were born. In 1941, Barbara’s father was arrested for resistance activity and sent to Pankrác prison for one year. He was then sent to Mauthausen concentration camp for the remainder of the War. Barbara’s mother was taken to Terezín in 1944. While both of her parents were imprisoned, Barbara lived with her mother’s brother in Prague. Barbara’s parents survived Nazi detention and returned to Prague at the end of the War. In 1947, Barbara’s father, who was active in the YMCA, was sent to the United States on a goodwill mission. Soon after he returned, the Communist coup occurred and Barbara’s parents decided to leave the country. In March 1948, the family traveled to Kvilda in southern Bohemia where they met a guide and other escapees. They crossed into Germany on foot and were sent to Regensburg refugee camp. Barbara’s father, with his connections through the YMCA, secured an apartment for the family in Munich where they stayed for almost one year while waiting for permission to immigrate to the United States.</p><p> </p><p>In August 1949, Barbara and her family sailed to New York City. They were greeted by their sponsor, Mr. Sibley, whom Barbara’s father had met while on his mission to the United States. For a few months, Barbara’s family lived on a farm owned by Mr. Sibley in upstate New York. In 1950, Barbara’s father got a job with Radio Free Europe and they moved to the borough of Queens in New York City. Barbara attended Adelphi Academy in Brooklyn and then Carleton College in Minnesota. Meanwhile, Barbara’s parents moved to Munich where her father continued his work with Radio Free Europe and her mother became a librarian. Barbara received her master’s degree in history from Columbia University and began studying for her doctorate. She married and had two children. Barbara returned to Czechoslovakia twice in the 1960s. She finished her dissertation on the Czech writer and journalist Karel Havlíček Borovský and received her doctorate in Czech history from Columbia in 1979. Barbara taught history at the New York Institute of Technology and Hofstra University for over 25 years. In 2007, she took a group of students from Hofstra to Prague where they took classes and experienced the culture. Barbara has been a long-standing member of the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences (SVU). In her retirement, she volunteers at local landmarks and is looking forward to traveling to her home country once again. Today, Barbara lives in Carle Place, New York, with her husband, Bob.</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
Benes
Child emigre
Community Life
Concentration camp
Education
Journalism
Karel Havlicek Borovsky
Kohakova
Pankrac
school
Teachers
World War II
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6351783dbb262e33226db631933cdf18
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 & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans was an oral history project launched by the National Czech & Slovak Museum & 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 & Slovak Museum & 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>Destructive</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/iHIPu2-Ny_E?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“I am from the pre-communist generation, and there is a huge difference… I feel it even here in the Czech church. We are so different from the ones who were raised under the Communist regime.”</p><p><em>How different?</em></p><p>“Well, it’s different because when we had an enemy; it was someone German speaking in a gray uniform. But with the communists, it could be anybody; your neighbor, your family. You did not have the sense of ‘us’ being in the right. I mean you may have felt it… I really thought it was destructive to the soul of the people. You had to be forever on the watch. It was also that way, I mean, I remember the War very clearly; I was a teenager and I was 15 years old when the War ended, you knew where your safety was. I don’t think the generation that was raised under communism (I mean people my age or a little older who stayed) they did not have that security. They had to learn how to float between all the negatives and all of that.”</p><h4>Teen in WWII</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/v_bu5F_4ITk?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Well, one thing is, we were fairly well sheltered in that we had strong family units. Secondly, I was in a gymnázium, I was in a secondary school. We had brave, imaginative teachers. I did not have history in school, but my mom got history books, and every day I would have to sit by the table and read for an hour, we allowed for that. There was bombing, and the city was burning, and I think there was snow outside. But by golly, on Friday, we went to dancing lessons! There were the gentlemen, and there were the ladies, and you learned how to dance because, we learned that not doing things and giving up would be giving in. And dong things stubbornly… My first formal [ball gown] was cut from three different dresses. We never gave up and I think that was the strength. And even as youngsters, we picked it up.”</p><h4>Amazing Austrians</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/-yie09w9lH0?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“We didn’t have any plan. We needed to leave to save our lives. So when we came, the Austrians hid us in a jail when we crossed because there were agents that would come and kidnap people. In Vienna, my sister and I could not speak to each other in Czech; we spoke German because people were kidnapped. This was the beginning; this was a question of pride for the regime. So, we were brought to Vienna, and there, again, gave us false papers to get into the American zone because we were in the middle of the Russian Zone. They hid us in a jail and they transported us.”</p><h4>Refugee Camp</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/kEllHAD4I_g?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“The first thing when we came to a camp, someone came from the village, said they heard there was a little child. So they took my sister to school. Nobody asked, and they gave her free lunch. It was kind of funny, she came home to the camp and she said “Mom! Guess what! I get a free lunch, I am considered poor!” My mother cried for three days and my sister thought it was just peachy! They only took families. They had the openings so they took us. They were so well organized; Of course they refused to go to Tito, that’s why they remained in exile. They were so well organized, that we had services in Sunday, and they had the army cook who was horrible, but we ate, and we were warm. And someone from the village sent skis to me. We went skiing believe it or not. I mean they were kind of rinky-dink skis, but they were good to us. And of course it was so beautiful. St. Johann is just down the stream and down the valley from where Silent Night was composed. So it’s that kind of a thing. On Christmas, they had the whole orchestra, and you came to church. And there were skis in the snow banks all around.”</p><h4>First Impressions</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/PFboSXjB8h4?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Well the first thing of course was, watching out of the train. And, I come from the Tatras, and around Brno. It was hills and trees, and here I went through this plain. Here and there I would see black people working in the fields. It was different. My family was wonderful, but what I missed most was the age of the buildings. Everything seemed so rinky-dink. Not in a bad sense, just so temporary. The first Sunday, I was loaded into the car, and we went to Independence [Missouri]. And when we came to Independence, we parked the car, and we started walking. And we came to this house, and there was a presidential flag, and an American flag, and one U.S. marine. We walked right up there and nobody stopped us. Here he [Harry S. Truman] was at home. Now that impressed me. You know, being used to castles, and moats, and fences. That impressed me. We went in, and me and Willy, (my father’s friend, Willy and Gilda) took a picture of me with the marine, and nobody stopped us, he just stood there. And then we left, so that was kind of cool. I don’t think that would happen today anymore.”</p>
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Barbara Skypala
Description
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<p>Barbara Skypala was born in Ružomberok, Slovakia, in 1930. She lived there until the age of eight, when she says the family was expelled from Slovakia due to her father’s Czech nationality. The Pellers spent WWII in Brno, where her father worked as a district attorney and her mother made money embroidering. Barbara says she knew the War was coming to an end thanks to the BBC and because ethnic Germans started to leave town before Soviet troops arrived. She remembers stray animals on the street at that time and says her family came to inherit a canary when it flew in through their window and into an open cage they had hanging in the house. The Peller family left Czechoslovakia in April 1948 when a warrant was issued for Barbara’s father’s arrest. They took a bus to Znojmo and crossed the border into Austria, where Barbara says her family was ‘smuggled’ into the American zone with false papers provided by locals. She spent time in St. Johann im Pongau refugee camp near Salzburg before being sent to boarding school in Switzerland with her sister, which she says she disliked, as she was used to much more ‘emancipation.’ Barbara came to America in the fall of 1949.</p><p> </p><p>Upon arrival in the United States, Barbara attended classes at St. Teresa’s College in Kansas, while her family settled in St. Paul, Minnesota. In 1950, she gained a scholarship to study at the University of Kansas. She moved to St. Paul upon the death of her father some two years later, and started taking classes at the University of Minnesota in the evenings after work. After a short stint in New York City (where she met her husband Vaclav Skypala), Barbara moved to Chicago with her family in 1953. Her first job in the city was as an administrative assistant at the Container Cooperation of America. In Chicago, Barbara and Vaclav raised two children, Christine and Madeleine. Barbara gained a master’s degree in theology and began to work with the Archdiocese of Chicago, specializing in religious education. Now widowed, Barbara lives in Elmwood Park, Illinois. She enjoys traveling to Europe and has recently visited Tibet and China, but she says that Elmwood Park is now her home.</p>
Creator
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National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library
Source
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NCSML Archive
1948 emigrant/refugee
Asylum
Catholicism
Education
gymnazium
Pellerova
Refugee camp
Religion
Ruzomberok
World War II
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8d1b7e5985b998d106a330fabf20cfcb
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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
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Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans
Subject
The topic of the resource
Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans was an oral history project launched by the National Czech & Slovak Museum & 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 & Slovak Museum & 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</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/iqS28OF33Mo?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“I remember that the Germans came to my house a few times looking for some revolvers or some guns, trying to catch something that could make problems. It worked out all those years pretty good, thank god. We had the pastry shop, so I never knew what it meant to be hungry after all. For example, I walked with my friend home, and her father was working at the match factory. She opened the door and she was yelling, ‘Mom, I’m hungry!’ I thought ‘How does that feel?’ because I really didn’t ever have to feel that, until later when I was on my own.</p><p>“I had a curfew at 8:00 at night no matter what, so I had to be home. I had friends coming, actually even relatives from Prague, because they couldn’t go to their places in Šumava, so they stayed in Sušice and we had good times, because there was a couple of cousins and they’d bring their friends. I had four cousins in Sušice, so we all ganged up together and it was ok. We just had to be careful about what we were doing.”</p><h4>Immigration to Australia</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/SRjmW9ETevU?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“We boarded a boat in Bremerhaven in Germany and [the ship] used to be a military boat before. It took us 38 days to go from there, through the Suez Canal – I should say Gibraltar first – the Suez Canal, and then we finally made it to Melbourne, Australia, and they had a strike so we couldn’t get off the boat. But anyway, we had a good time on the boat. There was about 18 Czech people, guys and women, and everybody had some little duties and I was an assistant to a doctor who was from <em>Podkarpatská</em> [Sub-Carpathian] Russia and he studied in Prague, so he spoke perfect Czech. And he helped us on the boat; we were able to go to the bridge, and the time passed okay. The sea was pretty nice to us; it wasn’t really too bad.</p><p>“So we came to Melbourne, finally made it out, and the Czech people who came already, who came before us, [saying] ‘Is there any Czech on the boat?’ and this and that. So they took us to Bonegilla which was another camp and we stayed a month. I had a month of a beautiful vacation. Beautiful weather; there were guys who rented horses so we went horseback riding; we had bicycles we could go around on; there was a lake we could go swim in; and they cooked for us! Can you imagine?”</p><h4>Pastry Shop</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/8-8hCD4GmPA?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“We made Czech pastries, Czech <em>kolačky</em> and Czech turnovers. Czech this and Czech that and Czech cookies and Czech rye bread, and it was said that it was a very good bread. So we had a good recipe for it, I guess. I didn’t know how to make bread. My younger son, he would sit in the proof box, watching the bread rise, and when the oven was cleaned up, he would take a rest in there. He would lay down on one of the floors.</p><p>“Cermak Road in the main street in Berwyn and we were close to the crossing of Oak Park – it was like the center of town almost. There were about seven Czech bakeries at the time, and there were different Czech stores, like a furniture store and a clothing store [called] Pivoňka’s, and different things like that. A lot of people spoke Czech in the stores, but they spoke Czech like the Franz Josef Czech was which different. Then came the younger generation, younger emigration. We were not in the store anymore, but we still kept up with all that.”</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
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Dagmar Kostal
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Dagmar Kostal was born in Klatovy (in southwestern Bohemia) in 1925 and grew up in nearby Sušice. Her parents, Karel and Marie, owned a bakery in town. Dagmar attended elementary school in Sušice, but after fifth grade was sent to a school in Hartmanice, a town close to the German border. When the Munich Agreement was signed in September 1938 and Hartmanice (as part of the Sudetenland) was annexed to Germany, Dagmar returned home and finished her schooling there. She then went to school in Písek to learn the baking trade. Following the War, Dagmar apprenticed in Prague, where she also took English classes at Charles University. In 1946, Dagmar continued her training in Basel, Switzerland. When this was complete, she found a job in a pastry shop in Neuchatel where she met and befriended other Czechs. She says that her father urged her to stay abroad, as he was anticipating a communist takeover. When the coup occurred in February 1948, Dagmar knew that she would not be able to return to Czechoslovakia and turned to the International Refugee Organization (IRO). The IRO helped her immigrate to Australia in 1949 where she, after a 38-day boat trip, arrived in Melbourne.</p><p> </p><p>Dagmar stayed at Bonegilla refugee camp for one month – a time that she calls ‘a beautiful vacation.’ She found a job at a bakery and took a room in a house with her fellow Czech émigrés. In 1950, Dagmar married Miroslav Kostal. The pair bought their own pastry shop in a suburb of Melbourne and, shortly after, had their first son, Michael. Eight years later, the Kostals moved to the United States with the idea of going into business with Miroslav’s uncle. In 1959, they sailed to San Francisco and drove to New York while stopping at landmarks throughout the country. After a short time in New York and New Jersey, Dagmar and her family moved to the Chicago suburb of Berwyn where they had friends and had enjoyed the large Czech community while passing through. Dagmar and Miroslav again bought a pastry shop which they owned and operated for a number of years. They were active in the Chicago Czech community. Dagmar says that the family spoke Czech at home and both her sons (their younger son Martin was born in the United States) went to Czech school. Dagmar is a dual citizen of the United States and the Czech Republic and says that despite more than 50 years in the United States, her ‘heart is completely Czech.</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
Cultural Traditions
Hlavata
Refugee camp
school
Susice
World War II
-
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51a7cf651c850e40757a1d49ee23ee18
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 & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans was an oral history project launched by the National Czech & Slovak Museum & 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 & Slovak Museum & 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>Czech Legions</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/eVyiC9owWjQ?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“He was a Russian legionnaire. In Russia, the czar encouraged colonization, especially in Ukraine, and so lots of Czechs went there, and some ancestors of my father’s settled down there. They were very prosperous – they had a hops farm. Before the outbreak of WWI my father went there to work as an accountant on the hops farm of his relatives. And when the War broke out, he immediately joined the Česká družina – the cradle of the Czechoslovak Legions – and those people who joined so early were called the starodružníci (the old joiners). And so he fought from 1914; he went through the ranks, came back as a colonel, brought his regiment home – he was commanding the Second Rifle Regiment of Jiří z Poděbrad (George of Podebrady), and he didn’t come home until 1920 because he fought in what the legionnaires called the anabáze; they fought on the long stretch of the Trans-Siberian railway all the way from Ukraine to Vladivostok. And then he came back. When the legionnaires were demobilizing, he became a regular army officer and from then on he went up through the ranks.”</p><h4>Belongings</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/vS58t9Op1ZM?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“He had his officer’s saber and some weaponry from WWI and, as a memento, it was mounted on a board and displayed in the room. And of course, you could not have any arms. Any pretext – any weapons found were punishable by death. [That was the case with a] friend of my father’s on that farm where we were during the mobilization. So, my mother was a tiny little lady, she was short, and she had lots of guts. And one day, she took these arms off, put them in a bundle, and at night – if they would have caught her, it would have been horrible – she went though Prague and dumped them in the Vltava River, because we didn’t want to [give the Nazis any pretext]. Since father was already in hiding, it would have been another pretext.”</p><h4>Action E</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/nWkUrUL7djA?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“They called it Action E, the Gestapo – E as in exulants [exile]– you know? They rounded up most of the families who had anybody fighting abroad, to hold us as political prisoners to prevent us from giving aid to Czechoslovak parachutists sent from Great Britain to attack and sabotage the German occupation. Somebody had to hide them and they wanted to prevent that. So they arrested us all and put us in the camp.”</p><p><em>Do you remember that day when they came?</em></p><p>“Oh yes, and my sister, Milica, she was tiny. She was six years old – she’s what, six and a half years younger than I am. So, they took Milan, my brother, my mother and myself and then kicked Milica out of the apartment and left her standing with the keys to the apartment on the street. And that was it. They took us, and so some neighbors then contacted my aunt and she took her in.”</p><h4>Moravia</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WPVxveZm7uQ?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“My mother was always so feisty and I don’t remember what she did but I think some of the gendarmes tried to help, and I guess they caught one smuggling out her letter. So, the punishment place was the morgue. When somebody died, they had the tables for dissecting – it was very primitive and filthy. She was put into the morgue for two weeks. She picked up there an infection in her leg which really was very nasty. But it didn’t break her spirit. And every so often, the Gestapo would come to the camp which they controlled from Brno. They would line us up, and these goons would go and touch our heads, and do some sort of a genetic exam of the shape of our heads to see whether we are Slavs or what we are – they were always looking for Jews. It was frightening.</p><p>“And finally in 1945, when the front was coming from the east towards Moravia, suddenly they opened the camp and I thought ‘Oh my god, they are going to shoot us!’ But they let most of the camp go except 120 people, among them was I and my mother, and they lugged us further north, again to keep us as hostages in another camp. We were there just a very short time and by May 5, when there was already the uprising in Prague, the partisans came and opened the gates, because sometimes the SS people were shooting people just as revenge. And they didn’t want that to happen to us. So they opened the gate and let us out.”</p><h4>Czechs in D.C.</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/6eQv1cRctvU?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“My parents lived on Park Road, our first ambassador Hanak (he used to be our ambassador to Turkey) – he bought a house there. And then all the Czechs suddenly started buying houses there. There were so many of them that they started to call it Prague Road. And it is just the sort of tail of Park Road before the bridge, and if you cross the bridge and go through Rock Creek Park, you come to the Czech Embassy. It’s right there. It’s a very beautiful place, and now the town, I mean Washington, D.C., about three years ago started to put historical markers everywhere to show how each section developed and the diversity of people living there. There is a large historical marker with my father’s picture, my daughter in the Czech national costume, and other photographs of all the Czechs living there to show why they started calling Park Road ‘Prague Road.’”</p><h4>Teaching</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/MNTiWEFGPI0?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Culturally at that time Colombia started to develop a wonderful symphony orchestra, as a matter of fact, lots of players came from Germany, the conductor was Estonian, and so they were just building up the momentum there – the cultural momentum – and it was wonderful. And I was sitting right in the middle of it!”</p><p><em>And do you remember what performances you had there?</em></p><p>“Two times I was a soloist with the National Symphony Orchestra, in one I was singing French impressionistic music, in the second one all Wagner like Elsas Traum and Senta’s aria and so forth. And then we had chamber music groups in the Museo Nacional. I had a television program with another Czech soprano, she was a coloratura and I was a heavy-type soprano, sort of leaning towards more dramatic, more mezzo. We had a television show sponsored by a Colombian tobacco company. The singer was Adela Geber, they ended up in the United States too, and her husband was a painter. So, when the announcer was telling the story, he was sketching the characters as the announcer was talking, and then we were singing the major arias or duets and so forth. And then we had another chamber music group with flute and harp and voice, so I was singing constantly.”</p><h4>SVU</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/i_BHxQHoYkM?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“In a way, the time is sort of passing, I would say. The SVU was so important during the Cold War. It was practically your patriotic duty to get involved and be involved. But now that the republic is open, the travel of the artists and everything comes here unhindered. And we can go there at will whenever we want. I think the point has been taken out of it a little bit, and we just have to try to rope in somehow younger generations. You know, I know it with my children, or any of the children of the [exiles]. At this time, they are building their careers, They are so involved with their living and their careers that they do not have time for SVU. During the Cold War, we worked hard to uphold the good name of Czechoslovakia, we felt it our duty to work on this. We will see how long [SVU] is going to last.”</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
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Dagmar White
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Dagmar White was born in Prague in 1926. Her father, Antonín Hasal, was a high-ranking officer in the Czechoslovak Army, and so Dagmar and her siblings grew up between Brno and Prague, depending upon where her father was stationed at the time. When WWII broke out, Dagmar’s father joined the underground resistance group Obrana národa [Defense of the Nation]. Dagmar says that when ‘things got too hot,’ her father escaped and joined the Czechoslovak Army in France and later the Czechoslovak government-in-exile. He served as President Edvard Beneš’s military adviser and chief of the military chancellery. In 1942, following the assassination of Reichsprotektor Reinhard Heydrich, Dagmar, her mother, Josefa, and brother, Milan were arrested in their Prague apartment as part of the Gestapo’s Action E. They were taken to internment camps for political prisoners so that they would not, says Dagmar, provide help and shelter to parachutists sent from Great Britain.</p><p> </p><p>Dagmar and her mother spent the next three years in Svatobořice internment camp in southern Moravia, where they tilled the land, washed the uniforms of wounded and dead German soldiers, and made grenades. Dagmar’s brother Milan was jailed in Brno, in dormitories which provided law students accommodation in peacetime. Dagmar says that towards the end of the War, many inmates at Svatobořice were released, but that she and her mother were moved north, alongside another 120 or so prisoners, to another camp at Planá nad Lužnicí. On May 5, 1945, partisans freed the prisoners at this camp. At the end of the War, Dagmar moved back to Prague and was reunited with the other members of her family. Her father returned from London as commander of the liberated territories and became transportation minister in the cabinet of President Edvard Beneš. Dagmar attended Charles University in Prague and the Prague Conservatory and trained to become an opera singer. Following the coup in 1948, her family found themselves under surveillance, says Dagmar, and decided to leave. They crossed the border on July 2, 1948, whilst a Sokol slet was taking place in Prague and diverting police attention. Dagmar says the family was helped by the U.S. Army in Germany; they were accommodated in Frankfurt at the IG Farben building (which served as U.S. Army HQ) until a special military plane flew the family to Washington, D.C. Dagmar’s parents settled on Park Road in the capital, while Dagmar went to University of Kansas to continue her studies.</p><p> </p><p>After completing her degree at KU in Lawrence, Dagmar graduated from the Juilliard School of Music in New York City, and then received a master’s degree in music education from Columbia University. She moved to Bogota, Colombia, for her first academic post and found herself there at a period of great cultural activity, she says. It was in Colombia that she met her husband Lewis White – an American diplomat. The couple married in 1954. As a result of her husband’s job, Dagmar lived subsequently in New Caledonia, the Dominican Republic and Nicaragua (where she taught at the national conservatories) and Morocco. In each location, she conducted choirs and continued the pursuit of her musical career. She has two children. Today, Dagmar lives with her husband Lewis (Jack) in Vienna, Virginia. A long-time member of the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences (SVU), she chairs the organization’s Christmas bazaar. She founded and directed the local Vienna Light Orchestra in which she sang many of the title roles. Dagmar continues to organize musical programs at the Czech Embassy.</p>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library
Source
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NCSML Archive
1948 emigrant/refugee
Arrest
Arts
Benes
Community Life
Education
Forced labor
Hasalova
Heydrich assassination
marriage
Military service
Obrana naroda
Plana nad Luznici
Political prisoner
Resistance
Svatoborice
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217334de0721a12858d2b148e62f7de5
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 & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans was an oral history project launched by the National Czech & Slovak Museum & 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 & Slovak Museum & 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>Officers Stay</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/lD0vSjMT5Vg?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“When the Germans came looking for my dad, mother told them that he was on a business trip to Prague and that he was going to return shortly. So for about a week, we had two Gestapo men staying in our apartment 24 hours a day, waiting for my father’s return. We had a large apartment but we had no heat except in the kitchen there was a large belly stove, so we all basically stayed in the kitchen – the Gestapo men, my mom and I, except when we went to bed. Now they really didn’t bother me except one who I think enjoyed seeing me cry, and when I cried, he’d get angry and he threatened to make me kneel on thumb tacks. Now, it wasn’t until my mom died in ’78 that I found through my wife that one of the Gestapo men raped my mother.</p><p>“Mother actually pressed charges, and the trail went all the way to court, to the High Court in Vienna, and the man was found guilty. And I believe he was sent to the eastern front. I think it was a very brave thing of mom to do and I was very proud of her because, had she lost, the consequences would have been very dire.”</p><h4>Fond Memories</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/jwEd6gIcxS8?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I had a lot of bad memories during the War, but I also had some good memories. And my favorite memories were Christmas time in Brno. Before Christmas, there’s a tradition – we call it Mikuláš, anděl a čert, it’s Saint Nick, an angel and a devil [that] come calling on the children. And of course, Saint Nick would be dressed in a priestly robe with a high hat and a staff. The angel would be dressed in white, and the devil was all in black; his face was black and he carried a potato sack or something, and chains. And you could hear him coming because he rattled his chains and made a lot of noise and, of course, that would petrify me! And when they came in the apartment the devil would say ‘Well, I understand you were bad and you’ve got to be punished,’ and sometimes he would pull out a lump of coal or a carrot. And the angel always played interference and said ‘No, no, no, no!’ And Saint Nick would pull out some sweets, bonbons, and all was forgiven and it was good for another year.</p><p>“And then the Czechs, the Czechoslovaks – the Christmas Eve meals always consist of, usually consist of fish and potato salad. That was a favorite food on Christmas Eve. And my mother would, a few days before Christmas Eve, she would go and get a, buy a fish, which was a carp. And she had to go early because if you wait too late then there would be nothing left. And she would bring it alive, wrapped in a wet newspaper. Then she would place it in a tub full of water, because there was no refrigeration or anything, and there the fish would stay for several days until Christmas Eve. And that was, I think, my favorite. I watched that fish for I think hours and hours – because it was a big fish, you know, imagine it floating in the tub and I was right next to it. I just loved it!”</p><h4>U.S. in 1948</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/PQj-aSg18A8?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“When we arrived in Washington, I remember, I think it was the very first day in Washington, D.C. My father went to work and then it was just my mother, the domestic lady and I in the house and then, all of a sudden, we heard sirens. So we all went down to the basement waiting for the all clear. We were puzzled that Americans still had air raids when the War is long over. Well, after a while, we crept up, because we didn’t get the all clear, but we went up and later we found out that they were the fire engines. I never… in Europe they don’t use [such] sirens.”</p><h4>U.S. Army</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/VDmJBqGeYPA?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“When I arrived, the town was still split in half; there was the Saarland which was controlled by the French and then of course the other side which was controlled by the Americans. The town was like in a little valley and one side there was the Americans and the other side were the Germans, the third side there were the French and the fourth side were the Canadians. And I remember the Canadians… there was an Air Force base. And the Canadians of course had an ice rink there and played hockey, and we would go and watch the hockey games. And the Canadians tend to be quite rough and they would play mostly German teams and the Germans didn’t like that very well! They always would cry ‘Fuj! Fuj!’ when the Canadians played rough.</p><p>“When I arrived, my sergeant said ‘Well, you’re the teletype operator’ and I had never seen a teletype in my life. I was taught by I think the WAGs, the women [who] were about in another town called Pirmasens. The other teletypists taught me how to work the teletype. I became quite good at it and I became the operator for the base. That was fun duty, I must say. It was some of the best times of my life. We had quite a lot of money in those days, and after hours we didn’t have that much responsibility once we were on our own and I did a lot of traveling. I made sure… We had a, a friend of mine and I, we owned a ’49 Volkswagen, and we traveled whenever we got a chance. We went through the Alps, we… all the way to Denmark, we had to two big jerry cans in the back full of gasoline (which now that I think about it was rather stupid!) We made it all the way to Denmark never buying gas.”</p><h4>Learning About the Past</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/rxYHgYHUOXM?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I remember dad was telling me one time that he was in the Olympics. I think it was in Amsterdam, before the War, I’m not sure when exactly. I remember he was in five events. I think it was like a military thing, it was horseback riding, pistol shooting, swimming, I imagine running and something else, I don’t know what the events were. But I never sort of paid much attention to it – so I mentioned it to my son-in-law one day and sure enough, he looked it up and gave me the website. I sent… I’m not sure where the headquarters is, but they sent me a lot of information about my dad! Where he placed, how many points he got, they even said that he fell off his horse! So it was just wonderful! I still have it, it was great!”</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
Dusan Schejbal
Description
An account of the resource
<p> </p><p>Dusan Schejbal was born in Prague in 1934. He spent most of his childhood, however, in Moravia – in Brno and then the village of Vranov during WWII. His father, Josef, was an officer in the Czechoslovak Air Force who fled to Britain to become an RAF pilot following the Nazi invasion. Dusan’s mother, Dobruška, meanwhile, was sent to a Nazi internment camp in Svatobořice between 1941 and 1943. Dusan and his mother spent the final years of the War together in Vranov, hiding in the woods, says Dusan, during the last few days of the conflict. They were reunited with Dusan’s father upon liberation in Prague in May 1945.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Dusan’s father had risen to prominence in the RAF during the War, achieving the rank of group captain and receiving an honorary award for his service from King George VI. Upon his return to Czechoslovakia in 1945, he became the commander of České Budějovice airfield. In 1947, he was appointed Czechoslovak military attaché to the United States and moved to Washington, D.C. to serve alongside Ambassador <a href="/web/20170612014146/http://www.ncsml.org/exhibits/juraj-slavik/">Juraj Slávik</a>. Dusan and his mother followed in 1948.</p><p> </p><p>Following the Communist takeover in 1948, Josef resigned from his post and the family moved to the suburbs of Maryland. Dusan says his father took a job as a gas station attendant, while his mother went to work as a sales lady at Garfinckel’s department store. Dusan attended Northwestern High School in Hyattsville and then the University of Maryland, where he majored in history and studied Russian as a minor. In 1957, Dusan was drafted into the U.S. Army and spent two years in Zweibruecken, Germany. Upon his return, he worked for the IRS and the Navy as a civilian employee. He married in 1962 and has three children. Today, Dusan lives in University Park, Maryland, with his wife, Krista. The pair travel extensively and Dusan says he still audits Russian classes at the University of Maryland.</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
Ceske Budejovice
Child emigre
Cultural Traditions
Diplomatic service
Juraj Slavik
Mikulas
Military service
Nazis
Sports
Svatoborice
World War II
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f585b21c00e6f9f2cf0df3b95540e065
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 & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans was an oral history project launched by the National Czech & Slovak Museum & 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 & Slovak Museum & 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>Early WWII</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/rpSaCWCJ2tQ?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“I remember that, yes, for sure. We remember the Nazi occupation for sure. Even as kids, we know how the situation is, we understand it. Even if we were young kids, it didn’t bother us much, but we knew it was a really serious thing, especially after the Heydrich assassination and so on. ‘Keep your mouth shut and be careful.’”</p><h4>End of WWII</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/T2rS4nlwgqQ?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“The end of the War came, so we, who were working for the firefighters, we got this stuff [weapons], and we started taking the Germans together, something like that, so I had a machine gun.”</p><p><em>So, were you rounding up Germans at the end of the War?</em></p><p>“Well, they wanted some of those prisoners, they have to move them to other cities for example. So we have to accompany them, watch them, or watch them at the barracks in Mladá Boleslav, so that’s why we had to have guns. And I had it at home, and my brother almost killed me.”</p><p><em>Did you use this gun? Were you shooting people?</em></p><p>“Well, I started to. Once, one of the prisoners tried to escape and I saw him. Now, you are a young man, you never had something, and he’s an old soldier, he knows what to do. I didn’t shoot him, exactly, I shot over his head. It was nothing funny, I tell you. Now I make a little fun out of it, but at that time it was nothing funny.”</p><h4>Radio Free Europe</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/7OrkirlLJh4?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Some of those people [from RFE] went through those camps, Czech camps, looking for editor-writers and so on. I had luck – it was luck – they thought I was my father, because [we have the] same name, and the guy was from Mladá Boleslav, he knew my father. He knew me personally, so he said ‘Hey, this is it.’ He said ‘You have to go to Munich and have an interview.’ So I went over there, I interviewed in English, he spoke a little bit of Czech, this English guy. ‘Ok, dobrý.’</p><p>“I was an editor-writer for announcements in between [pieces], continuity. You have to find out what the guy wrote about, say it in two sentences, and they put it between programming. So the people in Czech Republic will know ‘Hey, tomorrow will be this,’ because they don’t want to listen to it eight hours a day; it’s dangerous. But if you are interested in this program – that was my job, to tell them what the program practically is.”</p><h4>Tramping</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/XS9thgFlNfo?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Tramps are practically wild Scouts. The Scouting organization is organized. Tramps, not. Everybody knows about everybody or what’s going on, but you have no organization. That’s why the Nazis and Communists could ruin up Scouts or other organizations, but they couldn’t ruin up tramping. So most people going with the tramps enjoyed themselves or covered what they were doing, because nobody could catch them, even the Communists. And when they sometimes went over there and beat the people, they wondered ‘How come there are so many people here? How come you know there’s something here?’ Nobody had to send anything because everybody knew from Czechoslovakia, from the First Republic, every Sunday, every second Sunday in April, we’re going there. But otherwise, it’s like Scouting. But it’s wild because there’s no organization. You can change it, you can switch it, you can close it up, you can start a new one. There can be one man, there can be two, there can be thirty. Nothing’s written either. But you love nature. The real tramps, they really love nature and enjoy it. And clean up after themselves.”</p><h4>Montage</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qxU5l9-ufiw?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p><em>(Video courtesy of Studio Na Koleni, Chicago) </em></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
Eda Vedral
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Eda Vedral was born in České Budějovice in 1927. His mother, Ludmila, was a teacher and his father, also named Eduard, was a journalist. When Eda was six, the Vedrals moved to Mladá Boleslav where his father worked as writer and editor for the local newspaper. Eda says that the year before he graduated from <em>gymnázium</em>, his class was sent to dig trenches for the German war effort. Since Eda had knee problems, he was sent back to Mladá Boleslav and became a firefighter to provide assistance in case of a bombing. At the end of WWII and in light of his training as a fireman, Eda took part in watching over and transporting Nazi prisoners. In the summer of 1945, Eda’s father again changed jobs and became a political writer for a newspaper in Liberec. Eda graduated from <em>gymnázium</em> there in 1946 and began studying journalism at Charles University in Prague. After the Communist coup in 1948, Eda switched his course of studies to law; he says he was eventually kicked out of university in 1949 because of his father’s political background. Back in Liberec, his uncle helped him to find a job as an accountant in a factory. He was fired three months later, but soon became an accountant for Liberec’s municipal services [<em>komunální služby města Liberec</em>].</p><p> </p><p>In April 1949, Eda’s future wife <a href="/web/20170612093232/http://www.ncsml.org/exhibits/alice-vedral/">Alice</a> (whom he had met in Prague while she was at business school) escaped from Czechoslovakia. He spent the next several months attempting to join her. On October 14, Eda crossed the border into Germany with 12 other people. He was sent to Ludwigsburg refugee camp where he was reunited with Alice. They soon married and had their first child, Alice. In early 1951, Eda joined the ranks of Radio Free Europe as a writer on the Czechoslovak desk and moved to Munich. In June 1952, the Vedrals received visas for the United States and arrived in Chicago. Eda says that they were helped by the Czech community there and he quickly found a job in a steel factory, which only lasted a short time. He then started working on the assembly line at Hotpoint, making washing machines and dryers. The Vedrals moved to Cicero, Illinois, and Eda and Alice had seven more children. Eda says that he made a point to speak to his children only in Czech; today, most of them still speak the language fluently. Eda also became very active in <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20170612093232/http://recordingvoices.blogspot.com/search/label/Tramping" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">expatriate tramping circles</a>. He has been the ‘sheriff’ of a group called Dálava for many years and has traveled to places like Canada, the Czech Republic, and the American West for tramping get-togethers.</p><p> </p><p>Eda became an American citizen in 1965; he says that he waited so long because he believed he would be returning to Czechoslovakia to live. In 1972, he made his first trip back to visit his mother in Písek. His father, whom Eda had not seen since he left the country, died shortly before his visit. Eda says he feels at home in both countries and, if not for his children living in the United States, would consider returning to the Czech Republic to live. Now retired, he lives in Cicero with his wife Alice.</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
Ceske Budejovice
Czech language
Dalava
Education
gymnazium
Journalism
komunalni sluzby mesta Liberec
marriage
Mlada Boleslav
Tramping
World War II
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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
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Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans
Subject
The topic of the resource
Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans was an oral history project launched by the National Czech & Slovak Museum & 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 & Slovak Museum & 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>Trilingual</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/eTsDYNyUA2s?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“Prague English grammar school was I think the very best thing that happened to me in my life. Yes, I’ll tell you, if you speak English… when you speak any other language, and especially if it is one like English or like German, so many people know it, speak it, use it – you’re half a step close to them. So when I left over the border illegally, leaving Czechoslovakia, I knew English. So when they asked me ‘Do you speak English?’ I said ‘Yes, of course I do!’ And they were of course surprised, because they didn’t expect that. And that was one of the first times I started thanking and thinking of my mother; how bright, how farsighted she was, to steer me to a foreign language, because my maternal grandmother – she was not Czech, she was German, but at that time when my grandparents got married, such close, close-by intermarriages were no surprise, no nothing. The Germans were right here, and we were right next to them and they were right next to us, so the mingling was very… ‘Yeah, of course, sure, why not?’ No problems, no friction, no nothing.”</p><h4>WWII</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/IOZt9HPwC4U?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“They had to stay with us, in our home, and never move out, never even open the window when mother and I were gone to the office in the morning. They knew they cannot move because you can hear on the lower floor that somebody is walking up there. My first thing here in America, anywhere I went, I would always listen – can I hear the people from above? No you can’t, because your building is different! But you know, here we are laughing, but it wasn’t laughable. But well, we just felt, we must be lucky enough, because that means there will be four people alive after the War – my mother and I, and the two ladies we were sheltering.”</p><h4>WWII Over</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/r_flfVN8ViE?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Well, we just sat down, and first and foremost my mother said ‘I know this is my last cigarette, but I know I’ll be able to buy them easier now, so I’ll just smoke this one to celebrate.’ So my mother celebrated for all of us, because she was <em>the</em> smoker.”</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
Eva Lutovsky
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Eva Lutovsky was born in Vysoké Mýto, eastern Bohemia, in 1922. Her father, František, owned a flower shop, while her mother, Hana, worked as a secretary at the local courthouse. When Eva was still a toddler, her mother moved to Prague without her father and started working at the Supreme Court in the city, raising Eva on her own. Eva was sent to the capital’s English <em>gymnázium</em> to study, for which she says she was subsequently extremely grateful to her mother. During WWII, Eva and her mother sheltered two Jewish women active in the Czech resistance movement PVVZ (Petiční výbor Věrni zůstaneme) for 22 months in their apartment until liberation. One of the women, Heda Kaufmanová, wrote about this experience afterwards in her memoirs, entitled <em>Léta 1938 – 194</em>5 {<em>The Years 1938 – 1945]</em>. Eva says the women had to lock themselves in the bathroom when she and her mother had visitors, and that the hardest part of hiding the women was that Eva’s rations and those of her mother had to be split in half and shared amongst the four.</p><p> </p><p>Following liberation, Eva went to work as a clerk and translator at the British Embassy in Prague. She left Czechoslovakia with the help of a guide shortly after the Communist putsch in 1948, crossing the border into West Germany, where she says she went to work for Radio Free Europe in Munich pending admittance to the United States. In 1954, she was duly granted a U.S. visa and flew to Chicago, where she has lived ever since. She wrote of her adoptive home to the <em>Chicago Tribune</em> in 1995: “After 40 years, Chicago is my home, my favorite city which I watched grow from a duckling into a beautiful swan. More power to it.”</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
Americanization
Czechoslovak resistance during World War II
Education
English language
Ethnic diversity
gymnazium
Jews
Kaufmanova
Malkova
Peticni vybor Verni zustaneme
Vysoke Myto
Women workers
World War II
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cd779269d15b2cb365f4e3d79562e042
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 & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans was an oral history project launched by the National Czech & Slovak Museum & 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 & Slovak Museum & 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>Village Fire</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/aIGEhi9ku7s?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“The whole town went down in the fire. I remember that very well. I was eight years old and some kids were playing with matches and making… and there was a haystack. The firefighters from the beginning refused to – they said ‘Let it burn to the ground.’ Okay, then a strong wind came and the haystack [blew] from one place to another place. In no time the whole town was on fire, many families were unable to rebuild. Yeah, it was very much so. And our house too went down, but we rebuilt it within one month or something like that. But they had to take a loan from the bank. So it was difficult, it was.”</p><h4>School Teacher</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/iWWePT1tDKI?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“We had some Lutheran, evangelical schools and some even Jewish schools. It is interesting that the father of my wife, he was a doctor in Bánovce in Slovakia, he went to Jewish school. I said ‘How is it possible?’ He said ‘Because [the] school was good.’ No religion or something like that. The school was good, his parents sent him over there. So it was kind of tolerance and the difference was that the school cannot finance itself by itself, the local community. So they made a compromise: the state paid the teachers and the community provided the physical needs like a classroom and furniture and stuff – many times with the help of the state. But it was very good cooperation between the state and the church in this sense.”</p><h4>Slovak University</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/xBfg8zOyzDs?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Many people don’t realize how free university – Slovak university – was. It was debated in the faculty of philosophy, for instance, against Nazism. In Czech-occupied Bohemia, they abolished, completely closed, all institutes of higher learning because of student demonstration. In Slovakia, students could not only demonstrate but they could openly debate, openly speak against Nazism. I remember well, Germans were coming when Slovakia was declared independent. Okay – independent? Yes, it was in internal matters. The only thing was, you know there were strong German minorities. Even those [who] were not German, but who realized their ancestors were German. And they pushed, and they were ‘fresh’ [Germans]. And we had often conflict. In Bratislava, for instance, on the corner of the street there were collections of money for the war effort of Hitler. So, ‘<em>bitte, eine kleine Spende. Bitte, eine kleine Spende</em>.’ And students [would say] ‘Go and ask Hitler! Go and ask Hitler!’ And things like this. Open conflict.”</p><h4>Red Cross</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/kdyIbSFBG0c?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“In Plzeň I went to a restaurant to eat. And suddenly in front of me [there’s] one young man in civilian clothes sitting without asking, you know, etiquette or morals – mores. He sat next to me like he wants to eat something so… ‘You came from Switzerland?’ ‘Yes, how do you know?’ ‘Oh, I saw your tags.’ And then he started to talk, and I asked him ‘Are you Slovak?’ ‘Oh yes, of course I am!’ He was speaking Slovak. I said, ‘You are lying, because ‘G’ in Slovak is pronounced a different way!’ G – you know – guttural. And he became bright red, you know, he was embarrassed. And then, ‘And you are a bad spy, because you are red!’ So, it was finished.</p><p>“They asked for a permit [to enter the Soviet zone], called the following day, the following day, the following day, no. He said, Prime Minister Fierlinger it was at that time, and Minister Masaryk – both of them intervened for permission [for us] to go through. The Russian general signed all the permits on his desk but yours – so there you are – this was the report of their spy.”</p><h4>Foreign Ministry</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/SVwF7HDOe08?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“They wanted to test employees over there. First, they wanted me to join the Communist Party. I said ‘No way!’ Absolutely. Then second was, they tried to… trade union. Zápotocký was president of the <em>odbory</em> – the trade union in Czechoslovakia. It was communist – an arm of the Communist Party. So, every morning I came to my office and on the desk was an application for membership in the trade union. I threw the application into the basket. The following day; the same, a third day, fourth day… I said, ‘Who will win this Cold War?’ They were bringing me every day for one week, and I didn’t react. They found it in the basket. So they stopped, which means you are an enemy of socialism.”</p><h4>CIA</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/bWoz1qUatiw?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Eventually the group was dissolved, because the man who was the supervisor one day showed up in Moscow. A double agent. So they had to disperse everybody. Everybody was sent somewhere away, and what happened was that then I could have gone to a foreign country and I said ‘No. I want to raise my family here.’ So I started with Voice of America. In Voice of America I was for 29-30 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
Frank Lysy
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Frank Lysy was born in Spišské Vlachy in eastern Slovakia in 1916. His father worked as a maintenance supervisor on the Košice-Bohumín Railway, while his mother stayed at home raising Frank and his six siblings. As a child, Frank was involved in Boy Scouts, and enjoyed playing soccer and skiing. Of his childhood he remembered in particular a visit that Czechoslovak President Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk made to his school on its anniversary, and a fire that caused severe damage to his town when he was around eight years old.</p><p> </p><p>Frank attended teacher training college in Spišská Kapitula, where he says he received a ‘unique’ education as graduates were trained not only to work as village teachers, but as organists in the local church as well. Frank graduated and became a teacher for a short while, but was taken away from his job in 1938 when he was drafted into the Army. He says that when he reported for duty in Košice, however, he was turned away as no new recruits were being accepted (as this was at the time that the Munich Agreement was signed). He traveled to Bratislava, where he became a student of Slavistics and philosophy at Comenius University. In 1943, Frank was accepted as an exchange student at the University of Padua in Italy. He had a friend who was then the Slovak cultural attaché in Rome and, as WWII progressed, he moved to Venice with his friend and the few remaining representatives of Slovakia in the country. In the last days of the War, Frank moved to Berne, Switzerland, under the protection of the International Labour Organization. By this time, he had already carried out a couple of diplomatic missions and says he worked with the International Red Cross to deliver donated medicines to Terezín concentration camp in Bohemia.</p><p> </p><p>Following WWII, Frank took a job at the Czechoslovak Foreign Ministry in Prague. He says that Foreign Minister Jan Masaryk was a ‘weak man’ and that there was a fear throughout the ministry that Communist Deputy Foreign Minister Vladimír Clementis was aiming to take over the department. Frank remembers employees being ‘tested’ at that time with invites to join the Communist Party and trade unions. In 1947, he was posted to Olso, Norway, on a diplomatic assignment. When the Communist coup happened in February 1948, the Czechoslovak ambassador to Norway resigned but Frank stayed on at the Embassy. He resigned himself in February 1949 when he received an order to return back to Prague.</p><p> </p><p>Frank arrived in the United States on July 10, 1950, as he said staying in Norway would have been ‘too dangerous.’ His first job was as a researcher and analyst at Radio Free Europe in New York City. He moved to the Washington, D.C. area in 1952. The following year, Frank took a job with the CIA which he held until an intelligence leak outed him in 1956. Thereafter, he went to work for Voice of America, where he became a senior editor of the Czech and Slovak service. He retired in 1991. Frank was a member of the Slovak League of America and the First Catholic Slovak Union. He returned to Slovakia to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Matica Slovenska in 1988. Frank lived in Delaplane, Virginia, until his death in November 2011.</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
Boy Scouts
Community Life
Diplomatic service
Education
Journalism
Spisske Vlachy
Teachers
World War II
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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
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Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans
Subject
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Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans was an oral history project launched by the National Czech & Slovak Museum & 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 & Slovak Museum & 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>Family Farm</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/9Vw-D89vpbY?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“As boys we went to school, we came home, we had food on a plate in the kitchen, and then already it was time to line up and we went out and we were working. Even though sometimes we were rebelling, it was good. We learned. Every one of us had a certain job we had to do. Me, as a young boy – I am talking about when I was 12, 13, 14 – we had about five or six cows that I had to take to the pasture. That was my job. Oh, I didn’t like that; I’d say ‘Daddy, today’s Saturday, I want to go running around with the boys,’ and so on. But that was my responsibility. And at home, of course, we had to take care of the chicken and geese and all that stuff we had back at home. But it was a good education. It gave us a certain accomplishment and certain responsibility, and that goes with you for the rest of your life.</p><p>“We were very self-sufficient because we had all the meat; I remember on Sundays, we usually had a rabbit or goose or duck. We were self-sufficient. It was good. Looking back of course, we would say it was all good times; well it was difficult and hard work, without any question, but it was peaceful living in the countryside day after day, and it was a nice way of living.”</p><h4>WWII Education</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/yZ_5PUKE31w?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“If I want to be honest, I had a bad education because those three or four years when I was in high school, we were learning about the Germans, and what was actually produced in Germany and history in Germany, every city in Germany, and we were actually neglecting quite of bit of education that we should have. Except maybe mathematics, but the rest of them – it was really poor education at that time.”</p><h4>Liberation</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/LD6D7cMIMUI?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I was with a couple of my friends in the fields behind my home, and we were watching what we called – American pilots, they used to fly two of them, we called them – hloubkáři, they used to go down and shoot everything that moved. And we were watching that from the top and we had to be careful because they could even start shooting at us, and if any German transports were moving on the highways, they’d shoot everything down. We were watching them maybe for a couple hours and it was a beautiful show for us boys, 15 years old. And then suddenly, we were standing next to a road coming from another village, Kramolín, to Maňovice, and then suddenly, two Jeeps and a truck with machine gun came in. And that was the first time I saw an American soldier.</p><p>“They came to us and they asked us if there are any Nazis, because there were wooded hills. They were interested if in our village there were any Nazis. We told them ‘No, there are not any Nazis here, we are okay.’ ‘Then you are okay?’ They saluted to us and they left. And I was standing with my friends, and I didn’t mention it to them, but I said to myself, ‘Boy, that would be really something to be an American soldier.’ And that was it, because they had a Jeep and they were dressed up nicely, and I mean, we were all excited because we were free. And I said ‘I would like to be an American soldier.’ And in my wildest dreams, I did not realize in six years, I would be an American soldier. Me, a 15 year old boy, in a village in Czech Republic in Bohemia, it’s impossible. Completely impossible! And it happened.”</p><h4>Boy Scouts</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2aqNM8gwsf4?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“In 1945 we established [the group]. We had three villages and we had about maybe 45 boys. In 1946 the government gave us actually, after Germans on the border left, a nice cottage in Šumava under Boubín – Boubín is a big hill, forest, it’s a beautiful countryside – and we used to spend summers there. And later on when I was 16, 17, I became an assistant leader of our district group, and I was especially taking care of Cubs. I had about 15 young boys, and that was my life. It was my life, and I used to take my boys to that summer camp for a couple weeks, and that cottage was in a beautiful meadow and there was a little creek next to us, and it was an ideal situation.”</p><p><em>And why did you like Boy Scouts so much? Why did it become so big a part of your life?</em></p><p>“During the second World War, we cannot have anything like that, and we were receiving, or you could buy a magazine about Boy Scouting – it was Mladý Hlasatel – and any young boy has ideals and dreams and so on, and we were [in to] Winnetou, Indians and all this stuff and we want to express ourselves. But like I said, the Germans were very strict and you cannot participate and we never had anything and everything, universities and schools closed down, and when the second World War was over, of course that desire of the youth came up. And here we were.”</p><h4>Reasons</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/GV6OUlIbfpo?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“The reason for my flight abroad: I always had an anti-communist attitude. After the Communist coup in February 1948 in Czechoslovakia, I was deputy chief of the Boy Scout section Chlumy-Maňovice. It was announced to me by the local communist youth organization ČSM – that was Československý svaz mládeže, it was a communist organization – that the Scout organization were to become a branch of ČSM, which was under communist indoctrination. I opposed this strongly, declaring that the Scout organization had been, and always should be, an international and non-political organization. Though I had been threatened, I did not submit to their demands. Therefore, I was declared as a member of the reaction, enemy of the people’s democracy, and unreliable person. Later, information against me was sent to the court, and this was the first step to my arrest – as I was more or less expecting. Therefore, I decided to escape abroad, and I escaped from my country on July 30, 1948.”</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
Frank Schultz
Description
An account of the resource
<p><img class="wp-image-4022 alignright" src="http://web.archive.org/web/20170808051333im_/http://ncsml.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Handler-252.jpg" alt="Handler-2" width="400" height="317" />Frank Schultz was born in Maňovice, southwestern Bohemia, in 1930. One of five sons, Frank grew up on a farm run by his father, Vojtěch, and mother, Marie. He attended elementary school in nearby Mileč and went to high school in the larger town of Nepomuk. Frank says that his education during WWII was ‘poor,’ as the German-centered curriculum was not comprehensive. He spent much of his time helping on the farm. After completing high school in 1944, Frank became an apprentice for his uncle who was a cabinet maker. He traveled by train to Plzeň daily, and recalls his trip being interrupted in the waning days of the War due to bombings of the city. After WWII, Frank became involved in Boy Scouts, which had been banned by the Nazi authorities. He spent a few summers at a scout camp in Šumava as an assistant leader. Frank says that when the Communists came to power in 1948, the Boy Scouts were going to be absorbed by the Československý svaz mládeže (ČSM), a communist youth organization. He says that his opposition to this move branded him an ‘unreliable person’ and, fearing arrest, he made plans to leave the country. While at scout camp in July 1948, Frank crossed the border into Germany.</p><p> </p><p>Frank spent two and a half years in refugee camps in Germany while waiting for a visa to the United States. The majority of that time was spent in Schwäbisch Gmünd, where he established a Boy Scout troop, and in Ludwigsburg. Frank says that he was not given refugee status straight away because he lacked the proper documentation, and that his visa was delayed because of this. In March 1950, Frank received refugee status and a sponsor, and began the process of emigrating. He arrived in New York on December 21, 1950. Sponsored by the National Catholic Welfare Conference, Frank helped on a farm and worked in the carpentry shop at St. Procopius Abbey in Lisle, Illinois. In 1951, Frank joined the U.S. Army and served in Korea for one year. As a result of his service, Frank became an American citizen in 1954 and attended St. Procopius College (now Benedictine University) on the G.I. Bill. He studied political science and economics and began his career as a public health advisor. In 1959, Frank married Pavla Bouzová, whom he had first met ten years earlier at Ludwigsburg; they raised their six children speaking Czech. In 1967, Frank returned to Czechoslovakia for the first time. He says he had an emotional reunion with his four brothers who were at the airport to greet him. Today, Frank lives in Woodridge, Illinois.</p>
Creator
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National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
NCSML Archive
1948 emigrant/refugee
Boy Scouts
Ceskoslovensky svaz mladeze
Child emigre
Manovice
Military service
Rural life
school