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d88bed6cb0b8ab7bbdcb1eb87294475f
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>Military Training</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/G_QhL7oV-Yw?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“Once I was assigned to the kitchen to wash dishes. I washed them very quickly – they were surprised how quickly – but every one was dirty. They had to delay military lunch for the generals for one hour until somebody else washed the dishes. So they were, I guess, inclined to kick me out, but they didn’t send me home. And once they woke up the whole barracks for military exercises at 12 midnight. So of course, everybody jumps into uniform and was running to the cars and running somewhere. I was running to the cars, made a turn to the garage, sat down, and slept for two hours. When they came back, I joined them and together we went back to the barracks. Nobody noticed me, I was not so important at all.”</p><h4>Summer of '69</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/VUT5ZtXr-08?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I had a car, and every year we used to go to Bulgaria or Yugoslavia for vacation, maybe a week or two weeks at the most. So then we spread the news that we are going for vacation in Yugoslavia. We went simply to the southern border at Komárno and down to Yugoslavia, but we did not go to the Mediterranean Sea, but we turned north to Austria.”</p><h4>Help in the U.S.</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/yTyvA5qzUps?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“[We] landed here in Washington, National Airport, and Albrecht’s family were expecting us, and since then they took care of us because we had to get used to this type of life. Without a car you cannot exist here. You cannot go shopping a mile and carrying back a load. So they were really very substantial friends to us, and I helped them if they needed some repair or advice – technical advice – cars or TVs or radios, everything around the house, like I am doing now.”</p><h4>1st American Job</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/pQV5ntVJlGA?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“So the first job I got was in a radio shop for repairing auto radios, installation and repair. The old one we have to take out and put a new one in. So I worked from January to May – I don’t remember, four or five months – and then I made ten repairs while the other technicians made one or two daily. The owner was quite impressed and told me ‘Hey Ambroz, would you like to become my partner?’ And I told him, ‘Well, I am appreciating your confidence and offer, but I want to go a little bit in a different world, I cannot stay.’”</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
Ambroz Skrovanek
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Ambroz Skrovanek was born in 1928 in Senné, a small village in south central Slovakia. His father, Karol, was a state notary while his mother, Margita, stayed home and raised Ambroz and his two younger brothers, Tomáš and Pavol. When Ambroz was nine, the Škrováneks moved to Modrý Kameň for a short time, then to Devín, in order for Ambroz to attend <em>gymnázium</em> in nearby Bratislava. Shortly thereafter, Devín was occupied by German soldiers, and Ambroz says his family was encouraged to leave the area. They moved to Komárno, a town on the border of Hungary. Ambroz, however, stayed behind and lived in a dormitory while finishing school. From a young age, Ambroz was fascinated with radios and electronics. He attended Slovak Technical University (STU) in Bratislava where he studied mechanical engineering for his first two years, as his chosen field of study, electronic engineering, was not yet available. During his summer holidays, Ambroz worked at TESLA, which led to his being offered a job there following graduation; he subsequently worked as an audio electronic engineer at TESLA for over 20 years. Ambroz married Kamila, the daughter of a family friend, and they had two children together, Thomas and Eva.</p><p> </p><p>Following the Warsaw Pact invasion in August 1968, Ambroz began to consider leaving Czechoslovakia. Through letters exchanged with his brother-in-law who had already emigrated to the United States, Ambroz made plans for his family to leave. In July 1969, the Skrovaneks went to Yugoslavia for a vacation, but instead of returning to Czechoslovakia, crossed the border into Austria. Ambroz says that while waiting for permission to immigrate to the United States, a family friend arranged for them to stay in a private apartment in Vienna. In November 1969, Ambroz and his family flew to Washington, D.C. They lived with his wife’s sister’s family for nine months before renting a home. In 1972, Ambroz bought a house in Bethesda, Maryland. Ambroz’s first job was installing and repairing car radios. He soon found employment as an electronic engineer, and through his career earned several patents. In recent years, Ambroz has become involved in the Slovak American Society of Washington, D.C. Now widowed, he continues to live in Bethesda, 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
1968 emigrant/refugee
Devin
Education
Engineers
Komarno
Modry Kamen
Senne
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5997e1718393fa6e01d34d37b15ebd23
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>Growing Up</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/rTSgNVslQMI?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“Ever since her first child was born she was working. She was a career woman. First we had some help at home, but then after the communists came you couldn’t have the domestic help anymore. So when I was seven, eight, I had to take care of the kids. Over there, they start working at 7:00 in the offices, or everywhere, so my mother and father had to leave before 7:00 – at about 6:30 or so – and my father, at the time he was a [telecommunications engineer] and we had a telephone ever since I remember, so when they went to work, we were still in bed. So then they called us to wake us up over the phone and we got ready to go to school and we had to drop the youngest ones off at the daycare center, or like a daycare center for little ones. The youngest one was like two; the other two were four and five. We had to drop them at another daycare center and then the two oldest ones, me and my sister, we went to school. It wasn’t far, but I was like eight years old. Many times, the two that went to the other daycare center… We went from home and, as we were walking to school, there was a little side street they had to go down to get to the daycare center. So we didn’t go down there with them; we went on to school and they went down to the daycare center. They were supposed to go there and sometimes they just went down to the city. They never went there! Sometimes people brought them home – they had found them somewhere in the city.”</p><h4>Teaching</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/9P0yoNMmtTQ?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“She [Dagmar’s mother] always worked as a secretary, and she had to be at work at 7:00 in the morning and she got done about 3:00. She had some friends that became teachers, and she always envied them because they went to work at 8:00 and by 12:00, 1:00, they were done. Plus they had Christmas vacation for about two weeks, then in January there’s a half year break (about a week), Easter vacation, summer vacation [for] two months, and growing up we were hearing all these things about this being such a great thing to be a teacher that I automatically went to be a teacher because it was the best career to have because of all this free time. So that’s why I went to be a teacher. And, actually, all three of us – we were three sisters – all three of us were in education.”</p><h4>Return to Czechoslovakia</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/-eXjyGHxsxM?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“When we lived there we didn’t realize it, but when we came back for a visit, it was so gloomy. It was gloomy all the time until I went for the first time after communism was over, and it was kind of more optimistic all over the place. I don’t know what it was, if it was just my impression or something, but before the revolution, it was so gloomy all over the place. People were so… gloomy. That’s the only way I can describe it. And then after the revolution it just kind of changed. The mood changed.”</p><h4>Velvet Revolution</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/k-GhvSfpZ8M?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“That was about time. You knew it was going to happen. In ’68, before the Russians came, it was kind of building to that point. So I kind of expected that something like this is going to happen. What really kind of bothered me and shocked me was the fact that they broke up Czechoslovakia. I don’t like that part. As far as I’m concerned, it wasn’t a good thing to do. In 1968, when the Russians came, it was getting better already. I can’t really pinpoint, but it was getting not so… There was times when they would just come, pick up somebody, load them on the truck and move them out from the apartment or whatever, and these things were not happening anymore. In school too – I taught school about seven or eight years – the first few years was a lot of emphasis on doing different things to distract kids from doing religious things, and as time went on that kind of died out. I was glad it happened and it was about time.”</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
Dagmar Lawrenz
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Dagmar Lawrenz was born in Bratislava in 1941. Her mother, Irena, was a secretary while her father, Jozef, was an engineer. The oldest of five siblings, Dagmar was often tasked with watching her younger brothers and sisters when her parents were working. As a child, Dagmar participated in the Pioneer organization and says that she and her siblings were ‘expected…to do well in school.’ After graduating from high school, Dagmar attended Comenius University where she studied to be a teacher. She says that the availability of jobs as well as the attractive schedule led her to choose this profession. Dagmar taught math and physics at a middle school for about seven years.</p><p> </p><p>In the wake of the Soviet-led invasion in August 1968, Dagmar recalls ‘a mood’ brought on by ‘everybody leaving Czechoslovakia.’ In addition to several friends who emigrated, Dagmar’s brothers left, as well as her sister-in-law. Although her brothers returned, she and her then-husband decided to leave the country as well. They crossed the border into Austria on December 28, 1968, only a few days before the borders tightened. After three months in Austria, Dagmar and her husband traveled to the United States and settled in the Chicago area, where Dagmar’s sister-in-law now lived. Dagmar found a job at Western Electric one week after arriving. One year later, Dagmar’s son was born.</p><p> </p><p>After several years in Chicago, Dagmar’s family moved to upper Wisconsin to join some friends in the restaurant business. In 1975, Dagmar bought the Village Square restaurant in Evansville, Wisconsin, which she ran for over 17 years. She also had a daughter while living in Wisconsin. Dagmar then returned to the Chicago area, where she has lived ever since. Dagmar first returned to Czechoslovakia for a visit in the late 1970s, and she describes Bratislava as appearing ‘gloomy.’ Since then, she has returned many times for visits, and has seen a difference in the country since the Velvet Revolution. Today, Dagmar lives in Itasca, Illinois.</p>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
NCSML Archive
1968 emigrant/refugee
Education
Laclavova
Restaurant/hospitality industry
Teachers
Velvet Revolution
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34e06267b8b124b7a86a21701e3e1b99
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>Summer in Vienna</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/au8YNfjgTbc?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“My father was living far away and so I was raised by my grandmother and the relationship wasn’t that great, so I tried to basically – not necessarily for political reasons – get away, and Vienna was the closest city. So I was kind of contemplating going there and working there and saving some money and maybe buying a car. So, that was back in 1967.”</p><p><em>Was it very different in Vienna than it was in Bratislava?</em></p><p>“Looking at it now, I would say yes, because even to a teenage boy, buying a bottle of Coca-Cola was very rewarding. So I guess just living there and seeing all the items which are very, very normal for our kids right now was a big surprise and [I felt] admiration.”</p><h4>Canada</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/93MN7rDwlT0?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I never thought about it originally, but living in Vienna for two months pretty much, from July 2 to August 21 when the occupation took place, a lot of countries opened up their borders to political refugees because then it was obviously a political situation. And all my friends all of a sudden came to Vienna, I mean almost everybody did, and they had all these ideas to go to different countries, so we just pretty much went to different embassies and tried to figure out where is going to be the most, I guess, feasible place for us, or for me, to go.</p><p>“Surprisingly, maybe you don’t know about it but, I went to the American Embassy first, but you had to commit to the draft – not at the Embassy, but once they gave you the entry paper to the United States, you would have to sign up for the draft here. I, as an 18 year old, got scared. So, the next trip was, I believe, to the Swiss Embassy, where we also obtained a visa. Pretty much all the countries, including South Africa, were really accommodating all these political refugees. For whatever reason, we went to the Canadian Embassy where they, you know, gave us the visa and they also paid for the airline ticket which we had to return the money. So that was… We decided to go to Canada. I mean, I’m talking we – me and my friends – and I believe on October 4 we landed in Toronto.”</p><h4>Feels American</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/o7Smb9hKhIQ?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I think that I feel a little more American because I am 62 – I spent here pretty much 42 years, and I only spent in Slovakia 18. And being exposed to the business community here, I just somehow think that we are a little bit more American. I never will forget the Slovak roots or anything, and we are proud to go back there. We still, you know, my wife is Slovak, we speak Slovak at home but somehow I think that I am a little more American.”</p><h4>Learning English</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/23cMNJnAIdI?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“We were very fortunate, I really have to give credit to the Canadian government that, when we landed there in ’68, they pretty much almost advised us not to look and seek work. There were schools – the government, first of all, I guess it released millions and millions of dollars for all of these political refugees, and we were all sent to school, whatever you were, 18 years old or 50 years old. And the school was very intense, it was a daily school, as I said, six to seven hours a day, five days a week. And, after six months, if you felt that you need a little more education, like some people went back to the Province of Quebec, and they said they want to learn French. So, it was like a prescription, then the government just gave you another six months of schooling. And we were compensated for this, this is not [a situation where] you had to go to work. It wasn’t much money, if I remember correctly, it was maybe 40, 50 dollars a week. But keep in mind also that we paid for room and board maybe 15 bucks a week someplace where we stayed in somebody’s apartment or something – it wasn’t an apartment per se, but let’s say two, three guys stayed.”</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 Surovy
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Dusan Surovy was born in Bratislava in 1949. He was raised by his grandmother and says that his upbringing was ‘strict.’ He attended electro-technical school in the Slovak capital and emigrated just days after graduating. In 1967, Dusan spent a couple of months working in Vienna where he stayed with a family friend. He decided to repeat this experience in the summer of 1968, and subsequently claimed political asylum in Canada following the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia on August 21. Dusan says that at this time many countries were ‘really accommodating’ to the wave of Slovak and Czech refugees in Vienna</p><p> </p><p>Dusan arrived in Toronto on October 4, 1968 and moved to Kitchener, Ontario, four weeks later. He learned English through an intensive, six-month course which the Canadian government organized for refugees and then took a job as an assistant electrician. In 1970, Dusan came to Chicago. He married his first wife and became an American citizen eight years later. As soon as he became a U.S. citizen, Dusan made a visit to Czechoslovakia, which he refers to as a “strange” experience.</p><p> </p><p>In Chicago, Dusan established his own electrical contracting company which then expanded into property management. He says he was not initially extremely involved in the local Slovak community, but did enjoy playing soccer with other Slovaks in Berwyn. Now semi-retired, Dusan and his second wife, Ingrid (also a Slovak émigré), spend their time between Chicago and Florida. They have two children, both of whom ‘are proud’ to speak Slovak.</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
1968 emigrant/refugee
English language
Sense of identity
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213ccfdb9ca5eee456fc0c1af3ebb600
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>Arrested</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/DLtje_sYlMM?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“My family had a very positive view of the Soviets. Number one, when I was born, my father was already in jail. He was jailed in 1942 – in the spring of 1942 – and he was in a labor/concentration camp called Krems an der Donau in Austria until 1945. And the camp, which was a mix between a labor camp and a concentration camp, was actually liberated by the Red Army. So my father had a very favorable view of the Soviets and the Russians because he was liberated by them, and he, quite frankly, escaped with his life. He was lucky to get home in 1945 and he saw me when I was three years old.”</p><h4>Industrial School</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/iop80fwrN_k?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I think that it was a very good system, because in this industrial school one day week you actually had to work in a factory. Prague in those days had a lot of industrial productions, basic factories, basic Class A factories manufacturing trucks and railroad cars and streetcars and airplanes. So one day a week we have to go to a factory and physically work with the workers. That, I think, was a great experience to learn what really happens in manufacturing, what really happens in a factory, and I think it was a great experience. Whether it was in a metal working shop or whether it was in a tool making shop, whatever it was, you all of the sudden had an experience with the real world.”</p><h4>Jazz Band</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/tz0cegQoR24?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“If you had an orchestra or a club – any kind of a social gathering – you had to have, under the communist law, something called provozovatel in the Czech language, meaning like a sponsor. You couldn’t just simply have a knitting club, just people getting together and knit, you couldn’t do that. You could knit, but you had to have a sponsor. And it would have to be an organization approved by the system. So we found a couple places where the organization – a youth organization or municipal organization – would allow us to practice and play under their logo. So one of our logos was Youth Group of Fidel Castro. My orchestra was known as the Storyville Jazz Band – Storyville was a part of New Orleans, we studied New Orleans in detail, including the maps – but we were playing as the Storyville Jazz Band, part of the Youth Group of Fidel Castro. So I have a photograph here somewhere where we’re playing, and above us is a big picture of Fidel Castro.”</p><h4>Trouble</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/MYZ6fvEui3w?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“One of the laws in Czechoslovakia was you couldn’t put up a poster, because the police immediately figured out ‘If he puts up a poster, he’s organizing something,’ and that was a no-no. Of course, how do you advertise something all of the dances and all of the stuff, you have to have posters. I was one of the guys who made posters, and in known places in Prague I would go and post the posters. And so twice they basically arrested me for the posters, twice they interrogated me, twice I was in jail because of this poster business. But it wasn’t just the poster, because they always suspected something much more sinister. We weren’t really all that sinister. We just wanted to play jazz and have a good time, but the police and the secret police, they thought ‘Hmm poster.’ So I was in jail. And then I was in jail because I had a gun, which I inherited from my grandfather, and in those days in Czechoslovakia you couldn’t have a gun. I showed it to somebody and he reported it and so they came and jailed me.”</p><p><em>How long were you kept in jail?</em></p><p>“With the gun I was there for two days. In interrogation if you will. You know ‘Where did you get the gun? Who gave you the gun? Is there somebody else who has a gun?’ and that kind of thing.”</p><h4>Computers</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Vk9FOLCLapY?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“There were limits on exports and imports of technology. For example, we were not allowed to import Western technology. Czechoslovakia couldn’t do that. So we were relying on Russian computers, Minsk, which were manufactured in Minsk which is today Belarus. That was the main center of the Russian computer industry. So these computers were decimal computers, and we had access already to magazines from the West and literature from the West. We knew that we were ten years behind in technology. So we worked on them, we did our work, but we knew that this was ridiculous, ‘What are we doing here? We’re working with something which is…’ So absolutely it was stifling. You couldn’t really do much. You had to do what you were told, but you couldn’t really innovate. You couldn’t come up with a better idea. The best people who were in the technology business in those days left or emigrated way before me. It was a nice job, put it this way. I got the salary and I had a nice office and I did interesting things. In those days, we wore white coats. The computer guys and gals wore white coats; we looked like physicians. But it wasn’t really motivating.”</p><h4>Warsaw Pact</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Mm01EbluApA?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Most of the regiments came from Central Asia. Most of these guys couldn’t speak Czech or Russian. A lot of these guys were Asian folks. I don’t know what they told them, but I think they told them ‘You’re in Germany or some other Western country defending socialism.’ These guys were crazy. Well, they were not only crazy, they were kind of puzzled, they had a puzzled look on them, like ‘Where am I? What’s going on here?’ but many of them were crazy, shooting guns. All of the sudden in the middle of the city you had tanks and guys with the machine guns and bullets flying. It was terrible.”</p><p><em>Did you have any personal encounters with the soldiers?</em></p><p>“Many, many.”</p><p><em>Did you try to talk to them?</em></p><p>“Tried to talk to them. Well, that’s what we did for days and days. We would walk the city, we would sit there with flags and we would try to talk to them, because most of us spoke Russian. So we would approach them, and they were approachable. Not that they were not approachable, because they were village boys from Kazakhstan and they had no idea, so many of them were approachable, and many of them kind of talked. But they really didn’t know where they were. Well, I don’t think they had an idea. The officers did, but I think the staff, I don’t think so.”</p><h4>Next Step</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WPQOeDs0eE0?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I was also applying for work at IBM in Austria, and it turns out that in the same building where the main headquarters of IBM in Austria was the Canadian Consulate. One day I was up with IBM, and I’m on the elevator from the IBM office and some people get on the elevator speaking Czech and they say that they just came from the Canadian Consulate and the Canadian Consulate said they can go to Canada. I’d tried, early on, to get to the United States, but the U.S. Embassy told us that it would be a year and a half in a refugee camp, and I thought ‘Well, what am I going to do in a refugee camp? I mean, I don’t want to be in a refugee camp,’ and Ota, my wife, thought the same thing. So we went to the Canadian Embassy the same day. She was sitting down in the café on the sidewalk and I said ‘Hey listen, let’s go back to the Canadian Consulate,’ filled out the form, and the rest is history. Ten days later we were on the plane.”</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 Safertal
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Frank Safertal was born in the Holešovice district of Prague in 1942. His father, also named František, had been arrested shortly before Frank’s birth because of his participation in an underground resistance group. Frank’s father was sent to a labor camp in Krems an der Donau in Austria for the remainder of WWII and only saw his son for the first time after the War ended in 1945. During the War, Frank and his mother, Milena, lived with her parents in Holešovice. Upon returning home, František became a manager of a dental sales company, but when the business was nationalized in 1948, the family moved to Jablonec nad Nisou in northern Bohemia where he became the quality control manager of a factory. Four years later, the family returned to Prague. Frank says that his father was passionate about sports and passed the hobby on to him. From a young age, he skied and played tennis and soccer. Influenced by one of his teachers, Frank became interested in music and learned to play piano. After grade school, Frank attended an industrial school, and then enrolled at the University of Economics, Prague (VŠE) for industrial engineering. He says that his time at university was ‘eye-opening,’ both intellectually and politically, and that he began to realize ‘how bad the regime was.’ Frank started a jazz band at this time, and was jailed for advertising dances. He says he was also influenced by Western artists in Prague (such as Gene Deitch and Allen Ginsburg), from whom he heard about life in the United States. Frank graduated from university in 1966 and served one year in the military near the German border in Klatovy. In 1967, he began working as a computer engineer at ‘the nationalized IBM.’ The same year, he met and married his wife, <a href="/web/20170710095022/http://www.ncsml.org/exhibits/otakara-safertal/">Otakara Safertal</a>.</p><p> </p><p>Although Frank had been thinking about spending some time abroad, he says that, following the Warsaw Pact invasion in August 1968, the decision to emigrate was ‘very quick.’ He and Otakara received exit permits and, ten days after the invasion, took the train to Vienna. Frank was encouraged to stay in Austria and even interviewed for a job at IBM, but ultimately, he and Otakara decided to move to Canada. They arrived in Toronto in October 1968, where Frank began taking English classes and became in involved in the Czech theatre group Nové Divadlo with his wife. While working for Hughes Network Systems, Frank lived in Saudi Arabia for four years and Prague for three years (following the Velvet Revolution). In 1998, his employer transferred him to Maryland. While living in the Washington, D.C. area, Frank has been active in the Czech community. He served as the secretary-general of Czechoslovak Society of Arts & Sciences (SVU) for six years and helped organize numerous congresses. Today, he is a consultant for the U.S. Trade and Development Agency and lives in Bethesda, Maryland, with his wife.</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
1968
1968 emigrant/refugee
Arrest
Community Life
Czechoslovak resistance during WWII
Engineers
Holesovice
Nove Divadlo
school
Sports
Warsaw Pact invasion
Western/Pop culture
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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>Liberated</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/eMQQgMc6Xk0?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“Well, I can say it is nothing beautiful, but the next day I was going downtown to take a look. The first thing when I crossed the bridge, I saw the dead body of a woman over the side. They say that she was a collaborator with the Gestapo. It means people killed her. When the Army came, they had a rule that for the first two days, they are not responsible for any law. It is a lawless situation. When I went farther into the park, there were dead bodies of these collaborators. People again, people got together and killed them, because they were collaborating with the Gestapo. It was the ugly part, you know, but it was only one day before they cleaned it.”</p><h4>Warsaw Pact</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/5wtcq97Hri4?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“We found another camp where we were only supposed to stay for two days. And when I went to swim in the sea in the morning, (because I don’t have a shower in the morning when I’m by the sea, I jump into the sea) – I went swimming, and when I was getting out of the water, there was a German professor crying, saying how the Russians had invaded Czechoslovakia with tanks, and how this damaged socialism. But I didn’t give a toss about socialism anymore.</p><p>“All the Czechs in the campground sat around radios and listened to the news from the United Nations and in general, so that we knew what was going on. After two days it was obvious that practically nothing is going to happen at an international level. The Yugoslav police paid us a visit; they invited us to a hotel nearby, where they told us our options and said that we can stay in Yugoslavia.”</p><h4>Considering Emigration</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/8cVstlGEjk0?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“[When it came to emigration] one thing was easier for us, because for two years I had already guessed that there will be major economic problems in Czechoslovakia. Our factory was working at something like only 16% capacity. I thought I would have to emigrate for economic reasons. But of course the Russian invasion changed this into political reasons – that’s beyond debate.”</p><h4>Draftsman</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/dfJBIk1RrI0?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p></p><h4>Czech Engineers' Club</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/PJe4JeZ6D3w?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“The Czech Engineers’ Club had meetings every month. I mostly went there from the time that I had a car, which I bought in 1970 (we were here only one year without a car; it took us one year to save for a car). So, when I had a car, I went there every month. They kindly accepted me as one of them, and of course I now had a source of information. The next time I was looking for a job – the head of the club was Eda Vachrlon – I helped him with invites and I did everything, and he helped me get into General Motors and then we were working on the same floor. Unfortunately, what I am talking about is all in the past, because these people were all older than me. Today, I am 81 and they are no longer alive. So, due to an insufficient number of members, this organization no longer exists.”</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
George Knessl
Description
An account of the resource
<p>George Knessl was born in Volyně, southern Bohemia, in 1929. He was raised by his mother in Vsetín, near the Slovak border. George never knew his father as he was killed shortly before George was born. George attended technical school in Vsetín, which he says was severely disrupted towards the end of WWII, with classes being evacuated on account of bomb scares. When George turned 16 towards the end of the War, he received a letter conscripting him as a laborer to help with the German war effort. George says instead of responding to this summons, he remained at home and positioned himself so as to be able to run into the woods should officials come and investigate his whereabouts.</p><p> </p><p>George says he did spend several days in the woods at the very end of the War. When he returned to Vsetín, he recalls seeing corpses of Czechs accused of collaborating with the Nazis. Following WWII, George continued with his engineering studies in Vsetín, as part of which he says he learned English from a Czech soldier who had fought in the British Army during the War. Upon graduation, George went to work at MEZ Vsetín. He moved to Plzeň following his mother’s death in 1954, where he took a job at Škoda. He was employed by Škoda until leaving Czechoslovakia with his wife and son in 1968.</p><p> </p><p>George was on vacation with his family in Yugoslavia in August 1968 when he heard that Warsaw Pact troops had invaded Czechoslovakia. He says that the Yugoslav police informed Czechs and Slovaks in the country at the time that they could stay if they wished. George had a cousin in the United States, however, and so the family tried to immigrate there. The Knessls traveled to Austria, where they were housed at a number of refugee camps, including Traiskirchen, while their visa applications were processed by the American Fund for Czechoslovak Refugees. Within a couple of months, the family had visas and was flown to New York City.</p><p> </p><p>George’s first job was in a hotel in Pennsylvania, which he says in no way used his experience as an engineer. The Knessls ended up settling in Chicago, where George’s cousin found him a job as a draftsman in the factory in which he worked. In Chicago, George became involved in the Spolek českých inženýrů [Czech Engineers’ Club], through which he says he found a job at General Motors. In 1972, the Knessls bought a house in Berwyn, in which George still lives today. He calls his home ‘an American miracle.’ George continues to be active in the Chicago Czech community.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
NCSML Archive
1968 emigrant/refugee
Community Life
Engineers
Refugee camp
Spolek ceskych inzenyru
Volyne
Vsetin
WWII
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338034847b0bab6c28dd7a540bc9a342
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>CVUT</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/dc8QEqHQXAA?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“When I first did computers, those were Russian computers with vacuum tubes. So the full room of vacuum tubes was about as powerful as my little laptop, or even less powerful. Then professor [Antonín] Svoboda – who I knew personally – he left the country and he essentially designed the first family of IBM computers. So, judging from that, we were not that much behind, if a professor of computers from Czech Republic could come here and start a century of revolution in modern computers. Then of course, silicon came, integrated circuits came, and it just kept rolling.”</p><p><em>Were you able to read journals being written in America and Britain? Was that possible at that time?</em></p><p>“If it was strictly technical information, I could get my hands on it. It wasn’t easy, and it was censored.”</p><p><em>So how could you do this? Through the university library?</em></p><p>“Mostly through the university library. And between guys, sometimes, we would distribute things that we’d obtain in a somewhat questionable way and we would distribute it among ourselves.”</p><h4>Warsaw Pact</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/6qdDWD1vsyE?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“We saw it as just the beginning. We thought that Dubček is just a temporary figure that will help us get to where we want to get, but then he would have to go because he was still a communist after all.”</p><p><em>So what did you do on August 21?</em></p><p>“We went to the streets, we talked to them [the soldiers], and it essentially was pretty much hopeless. There were some guys who would throw the Molotov cocktails at the tanks, but it was pretty much useless. You cannot fight the tanks and an armed army with bare hands and with stones. And if you do, they will shoot you. So then I went home.”</p><p><em>Was it scary? How scary was it?</em></p><p>“It was scary, but it was extremely frustrating. Extremely frustrating that a big country like them can come and do this and there is zilch you can do. You just shut up and pretend it didn’t happen. That was the worst part of it.”</p><h4>Leaving Czechoslovakia</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/6ZJNeAgJ2o4?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“My father, he had a lot of connections, so he found a so-called uncle in Vienna that sent me an invitation. You had to have an invitation, so I got an invitation from the imaginary uncle in Vienna to visit Vienna for five days. So we could take with us only what was for five days. At the time, my son was four years old. I had my university papers and everything and I put it in his teddy bear. I sewed it inside and he was holding it. Then we stopped on the border and the Czech army people with Russian soldiers were going through the train and checking your papers. So I showed him my papers and he knows that I am escaping. He talked to the Russian guy and then the Czech guy said to my son ‘Hey, where are you going?’ He said ‘No, I won’t tell you,’ and holding his teddy. And then I looked at the Czech guy and I said ‘Please, let us go’ and he looked at the Russian guy and said ‘Oh, they’re ok. Let them go.’ People in the next compartment, they took them out, they lined them up in the railway station, and they took them to prison, so it was this close.”</p><h4>Prague</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qdK7G65YKOw?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Well, there were two reasons. One reason was, I wanted to do something for the Czech Republic. I wanted to set up a company there; I wanted to get Czech people and pay them good salaries and help the country in some way, and this is a good way to help. The second reason was, quite frankly, Czech programmers are extremely good, but still pretty reasonable. I studied at university; I have a lot of contacts there; I knew people. The guy who is leading my company in the Czech Republic, he is one of the leading figures at university, so he could find me people who were the best of the best. I treated them well; they come to the U.S. for one year or so for a visit and for training, and I did something for country this way.”</p><h4>World Citizen</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/9ZTHtkMgaQk?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I like Czech food. I cook it whenever I can. We like Czech music. We like music in general. We like Czech composers. Smetana is one of my favorite composers; Dvořák, of course. But so is Bach, so is Vivaldi. I don’t really see myself as being a citizen of some specific country. I see myself as a world citizen. Wherever I am, I am happy as long as they treat me well and I return the favor.”</p>
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Title
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George Malek
Description
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<p>George Malek was born in Tábor in southern Bohemia. His father, Jan, owned a factory that produced auto parts while his mother, Marie, stayed home to raise George and his two brothers. Shortly after the Communist coup in 1948, George’s father’s business was nationalized and he was sent to prison for over one year. In the meantime, George’s mother began working at a co-op making stuffed animals. As a child, George was especially interested in woodworking and mathematics. He attended a technical school in Tábor where he studied building construction and equipment. Although he hoped to study at university, George was not initially admitted and, instead, joined the military. After training for one year as a paratrooper, he was stationed in Aš where he was tasked with manning a radio system and intercepting German military conversations and transmissions. George was then admitted to ČVUT (Czech Technical University in Prague) where he studied computer engineering. He began to think about leaving the country to improve his job prospects and, shortly after the Warsaw Pact invasion in 1968, crossed the border into Austria with his wife and young son, Robert. George’s father had helped them to secure visas under the pretense of visiting an uncle in Vienna.</p><p> </p><p>George and his family stayed in Vienna for just over a month while awaiting immigration paperwork. They arrived in Hamilton, Ontario, and settled in Toronto in 1968. After taking English classes for six weeks, George began working and was admitted to the University of Toronto where he earned his doctorate. It was in 1976 that George first returned to Czechoslovakia to visit his parents. That same year, his company transferred him to California. By 1981, George had switched jobs and was sent to work on a software project in Japan. There, he met his second wife, Yuko. The couple married in 1983, returned to the United States, and had a son, Alan. In 1988, George set up a company in California’s Silicon Valley called Apogee Software Inc; he remains the firm’s president and CEO. Ten years later, he set up Apogee.cz in Prague as an out-sourcing partner of Apogee Software. He and his wife Yuko (the firm’s CFO) often visit Prague, both for business purposes and to enjoy the opera, ballet, and concerts that the Czech capital has to offer. The couple are proud of an apartment they own in a 14th-century historical building in Prague’s Old Town. George and Yuko are planning to ‘retire partially’ in the Czech Republic in 2013. They are in the process of reconstructing an old hunting lodge in Mirovice in southern Bohemia, which was owned by the Schwarzenberg family until 1938. George and Yuko currently live in Los Gatos, California.</p>
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National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library
Source
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NCSML Archive
1968
1968 emigrant/refugee
Arrest
As
CVUT
Dubcek
Dvorak
Education
Engineers
Military service
Prague Spring
Prison
Sense of identity
Tabor
Warsaw Pact invasion
-
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4fafc3aba0db90bcb43b77ec4bcd3eea
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>Hungary</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/eaVlC8jn7Hg?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“Then came the Viennese Arbitrage, you know, and then Košice on November 11, I think, fell to Hungary – and we were packing to go to Slovakia, you know, as [we were] of Slovakian origin. But my father had a stroke, you know. And he was paralyzed for one and a half years. So we went nowhere. We had to switch allegiance or whatever, and we stayed in Hungary until 1945 – that means in Košice, you know. Because this is not the only… many towns changed state; it was Austro-Hungary before, then it was Czechoslovakia, then it was Hungary and then again back Czechoslovakia. And the citizens stayed there, because that was there home.”</p><h4>WWII</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/UfVZDEz0mcc?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I don’t know, you know we were, at that time when the screws were kind of tightened up with food… and like many of my professors at school were taken to the army. Then the two high schools were connected because there were not enough professors, you know. So the fourth year and the fifth year of the high school – especially the fifth year – was kind of shaky. And then 1944 – then it was tough, you know. Then it was tough.”</p><h4>Yugoslavia</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/GaBFZHDtNvQ?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I had a very good position at the children’s hospital in Bratislava and so… but then we went for vacation, to Yugoslavia, you know. And after we finished vacation we came to Belgrade on August 19, 1968 with two small children – daughter two, son five. And the 20th or 21st, we were ready to go home. And we were living with a friend and he went to the market to buy some fruit for the kids, and suddenly all the microphones in the city of Belgrade were sounding ‘Invasion, invasion, invasion, blah, blah, blah’ and we did not know what is going on! Well, my friend told me ‘Well, you go nowhere – the Soviet Army, the Warsaw-Pact armies invaded Czechoslovakia. My God! We didn’t have any money! Just for gasoline! But, when I was in Bratislava, I was teaching cardiology to Yugoslav doctors from Belgrade… <em>Náhoda</em> [coincidence]… And so I went after them and they told me, you know, ‘Listen, we need you.’ The Party and the union had a meeting. ‘We’ll give you a monthly payment ahead and you will start to work with machines.’ And I really did. I did diagnostics and whatever.</p><p>“But, you know, there were tremendous demonstrations in Belgrade. The Yugoslavs were fantastic. There were a couple of thousand, I don’t know, 50,000 Slovaks and Czechs in that area because people were coming up from the sea, you know, going home. This was the end of August, the end of vacation. They gave gasoline to people, food, lodging, you know, everything – hat down! They were extremely helpful. And, the funny thing is, I went to a demonstration with my wife and there was half of the Czechoslovak government! Šik was there, Hájek was there – I don’t know who else, you know, all on a balcony all, and we were all chanting, you know!”</p><h4>Medical School</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/mkWDEK71f6I?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“That was the so-called <em>kádrovanie</em>, you know the sort of political… x-ray, you know, who you really are. But the funny thing is, they didn’t find out who you really are. I was lucky that my father was dead. If my father was not dead, I am out of medical school. You know, that’s what your origins are – you know, your belief, your religion – this is what counts. If you were not on their side, on the left side then, that’s it.”</p><h4>Secret Wedding</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/xJcq4Y7aWws?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Well I was married… we just celebrated, with my wife, our 50th anniversary. I was married in Banská Bystrica and they knew in Sliač that I was a Catholic, so they were snooping [to find out] when I am going to go to church. And so in November we went, with my wife, to a congress in Budapest, you know, and I had there an aunt of second, third degree, and she arranged that we were married in church, in secret, in Budapest, where the altar boys were our witnesses. And our son was baptized in secret in Banská Štiavnica, you know, in a small town in Southern Slovakia – a beautiful little town – and our daughter was baptized in Modrý kostolík in Bratislava, it was kind of not a big deal. But they were all baptized.</p><p>“You just go to some kind of remote town where nobody knows. And we went to the church, we knocked on the priest’s door, and I told him that we have a two month-old son and that we would like to baptize him. And the priest had his sister there as a housekeeper, and so she was the godmother, and he baptized him, so that’s how. And I think he wrote a certificate or something like that, you know.”</p><h4>Gifts</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/sAEeo8k-E3Q?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“It started with a bouquet of flowers. You know, I go here to my cardiologist. He is paid, but on Christmas, he got a bottle of Bordeaux. But I am not corrupting him, I just express my gratitude. But this kind of gratitude which was in<br />
Košice a bouquet of flowers or a bottle of wine… when a <em>babka</em> [old woman] came from, I don’t know, Palárikovo or whatever, so she gave you a chicken. But this was not there to corrupt you, but to be thankful to the doc. But it degenerated. That’s where the problem is, you know? And when in Bratislava somebody needs a bypass, before the euro, I have a Canadian friend and he paid 30,000 <em>koruny</em>, you know, extra. But this started under Communists – you know – I should correct [that]… it degenerated under the Communists. That’s how I would look at it.”</p>
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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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George Mesko
Description
An account of the resource
<p>George Mesko was born in Košice in March 1928. His father worked as a senior official on the Košice-Bohumín Railway, while his mother stayed at home and looked after George and his older sisters. With the signing of the First Vienna Arbitration in 1938, the Mesko family found itself living in Hungary as Košice was handed over to Regent Miklós Horthy. The family made plans to move to Vrútky, Slovakia, where they had relatives, but George’s father had a stroke and so the family remained in Košice for the duration of the War. In 1944, George and the other 16-year-old males in Košice were summoned to Germany to man the country’s understaffed factories. George did not end up going as he suffered a serious allergic reaction shortly before being dispatched, which his mother then used as a reason to send him to Slovakia to convalesce with relatives (and therefore avoid enlistment).</p><p> </p><p>Upon graduation shortly after the War, George began his studies in Bratislava at the Medical Faculty of Comenius University, where he remained for six years. He has written a book about the atmosphere he remembers at the medical school in the early 1950s, entitled <em>The Silent Conspiracy</em> (published in both Slovak and English). Following university, George returned to Košice to work at the city’s children’s hospital. This job was followed by stints at the children’s hospital in Sliač and then back in Bratislava. In 1960, George married his wife, Judith; the couple had both a civil ceremony and a church wedding in secret in Budapest, he says. At the time of the Soviet-led invasion in August 1968, George was on holiday in Yugoslavia with his wife and two children. In light of the invasion, the family decided not to go home.</p><p> </p><p>A leading cardiologist, George accepted an Alexander von Humboldt scholarship in Tübingen, where he and his family subsequently stayed for ten months. In 1969, the Meskos came to Boston, when George was offered a position at Harvard Medical School. Twenty years later, George set up the Heart to Heart Foundation with other members of the Slovak-American Cultural Center – an institution based in New York City. The fund sponsored, among other things, study visits for Slovak healthcare professionals abroad. George retired in 1996. He now lives in McLean, Virginia, and devotes much of his time to writing, primarily about 20th-century Slovak history.</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
1968
1968 emigrant/refugee
Banska Stiavnica
Catholicism
Cultural Traditions
Education
Healthcare professional
Kosice
Kosice-Bohumin Railway
marriage
Modry kostolik
Sliac
Slovak citizenship
Teacher
Vrutky
Warsaw Pact invasion
World War II
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58561b0d1b5560fb6d4c3d7ab5b31967
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 Schooling</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/z1tMB0d0RLM?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“I have to say one thing for the school system, since the third grade we were exposed to the classic music and arts, and that was incorporated into the education. Every month we had to go to the concert hall and see the opera, and so that’s what I think, for the education, that was pretty good.”</p><h4>Warsaw Pact Invasion</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/YUELHTEzxV8?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“We lived on a corner; one side was a park and the other was a main street where the trolley was going, so the Russian tanks were lined up and pointing the tanks right to your windows. It was shocking. And the Prague radio was still working and they were saying ‘Don’t go to the window. They’re shooting the windows, people are getting hurt, people got killed. Don’t open the window,’ So we were listening to the radio and all of the sudden you heard shots and silence, and I’ll never ever in my life forget that silence. It was dreadful.”</p><p><em>Did you go down to Wenceslas Square?</em></p><p>“Yes, we went down. My mother said ‘Don’t go anywhere’ – my brother was still in the army – ‘Don’t go anywhere; they’re going to kill your brother. Don’t get involved.’ But my ex-husband, with his friends, they were already down there and by the time I went down there Prague radio was done. It was damaged. It was in smoke. We went to Wenceslas Square and it was pretty…First of all, you could feel how much power a crowd has. You get sucked in it and I thought that we were indestructible. We can turn those things and everything. It’s funny what it does to you in that crowd or in that situation. But we went there, it was sad, and people started to talk to the soldiers. Thinking back now, so many years back when everything settles inside me, the first troop of the soldiers they sent, they were probably hard-trained soldiers. They shot everything that moved. Second [wave] that came were like kids. They were probably 17, 18 year old Russians, scared the hell of everything that was moving. I didn’t see it then, because then I was full of hate, like ‘How dare you? What do you want?’ But thinking back, they were probably so scared too.”</p><h4>Leaving</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/tnC4CqqMMM8?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I said ‘I’m not going to leave. I’m going to fight for the freedom and I’m staying here.’ I did not want to leave. When we got occupied by the Russians, I was involved in it and [when] I went back, second day, to the hospital, we put posters there and we all wore black because we did that at midnight when the Russian tanks were all around the streets. So I was involved in it and I was hoping that the Prague Spring, nobody is going to kill it because we were going to win.”</p><h4>Arrival in U.S.</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/-jLAkcPZGP0?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I didn’t work because I didn’t speak English. It was funny back then – from New York we came to Boston and we were looking for an apartment, so what we just went door to door and we asked ‘Do you have an apartment for rent?’ and somebody did. There was no checking or anything [so] we got an apartment. Lev was working to work, washing dishes [at] Cottage Crest restaurant in Belmont, and I was home. And for the first money we could have, we bought a television, so I would watch television and learn English because my friends sent me a tape of English but it was [British] English so it had nothing to do with American English, so when I went out I couldn’t understand because I had this Oxford English in my ear and it was like ‘What? What language is this?’ So we got a television and I remember watching I Love Lucy and I remember the first time I got some joke, I laughed and I thought ‘Boy!’ I finally understood. So it took me a few months learning and then I thought I had to go to work, so I went to the hospital and I started to work in the kitchen.</p><p>“In the meantime, I tried to learn English; I went to take some lessons, so little by little I started to understand, and I got work at Glover Memorial Hospital in the lab, drawing blood and doing chemistry tests. There was a pathologist who was going to open the lab in what’s now Brigham and Women’s Hospital – it was part of the old women’s hospital in Boston – there was another location and he said ‘Helena, I want you to go and open the lab with me.’ And that’s how I started at Brigham and Women’s. And I worked there for 40 years.”</p><h4>Traditions</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/W1UvCNw_Pw8?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“For Christmas or any holidays we would get together with my ma and father, my brother, his wife and his son and celebrated every holiday together, Czech way. My ma was a very good cook so she made those elaborate cakes and anything. The food, like knoedl [dumplings] and sausage, was just…[so good]. I kept the Czech tradition for Christmas and for Thanksgiving we went to Frank’s parents because we never had Thanksgiving in Czech, so we celebrated American Thanksgiving. So it was always in Frank’s parents’ house and Christmas was in our house.”</p><h4>Tough Decision</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/RW5HFe9hffs?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I got over my homesickness and being here, and I am very thankful that I was here because I learned a lot which I would never learn if I never emigrated. My view of the world is much wider and I am very thankful for that because in the beginning it was a very narrow view, [I was] very homesick and I didn’t want to see anything, but little by little you learn and, all of the sudden, now when I go there – I don’t mean it in a bad way – you can see they’re looking at the world through a very narrow view. And me being here and meeting so many different people, being exposed to so many different cultures, so many different things, all of the sudden I feel very rich that I learned so much and that my view is so much bigger. So I am very thankful for that. And I am happy. For the first time, and it took me a long time, I realized that I am very happy that I am here.</p><p>“That was a big, big thing for me to come to this conclusion. Prague is always my city and always will be my home, but, all of the sudden, I don’t think I could live there. I would love to live there two months of the year now that I’m retired to get everything that I like, but I could never live there. My home is here now and that’s a huge step for me. To come to that conclusion was a big thing for me. A big relief. Because up till then, I felt, I cannot say guilty, but I felt like I missed something. I wish I was there for all that upbringing and all that feeling of freedom; that I would really appreciate it. So all my life, I felt like I deserted whatever I believed in. But it’s not there anymore. I reached my peace. I reached my point and I am happy I’m here and I learned a lot.”</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
Helena Stossel
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Helena Stossel was born in Prague in 1946. Helena’s parents both worked at a small silk-screening operation – her father as the manager and her mother as a silk-screener. Helena and her younger brother, Tomas, were watched by her grandmother and spent a lot of time at the <em>chata</em> her grandfather built outside the city. Helena says that she learned to ‘appreciate nature’ from camping, canoeing, and white-water kayaking. She also enjoyed reading and poetry. Helena went to <em>gymnázium</em> where she focused on the sciences and then studied chemistry at the Institute of Chemical Technology in Prague. She married her first husband, Lev, in 1967. The Warsaw Pact invasion in August 1968 left an impression on Helena, as she congregated on Wenceslas Square with other young people and talked with the Warsaw Pact troops. Her parents and brother immigrated to the United States in July 1969 and, although Helena was reluctant to leave as she wanted to ‘fight for freedom,’ she joined her husband when he decided to leave in the autumn of 1969. The pair lived in Vienna for one month and then flew to New York City in December 1969.</p><p> </p><p>After spending two weeks with family friends in Ossining, New York, Helena moved to the Boston area where her parents had settled and opened a Czech restaurant. Helena spent a few months becoming comfortable with the English language and then began working in a hospital kitchen. Her next job was in the lab of Glover Memorial Hospital and, at the request of a pathologist, she transferred to what is now Brigham and Women’s Hospital, where she worked for 40 years, retiring only a short time ago. Helena gave birth to her daughter Johana in 1974 and bought a house in Holliston (a suburb of Boston) in 1976. She married her second husband, Frank Stossel, in 1981 and first returned to Czechoslovakia in 1987. She has visited her home country many times since. Helena says that it is only recently that she became ‘at peace’ with her emigration, citing her reluctance to leave Czechoslovakia in the first place as preventing her from feeling at home in the United States. In her retirement, she hopes to travel more and go on a canoe trip in the Czech Republic. Today, Helena lives in Holliston with her husband Frank.</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
1968
1968 emigrant/refugee
Arts
Cultural Traditions
English language
gymnazium
Healthcare professionals
school
Sense of identity
Warsaw Pact invasion
-
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93fc960141fa60c3f95ca4510ce03b7e
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>Persuaded to Leave</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/SCTiLue3Tpc?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“I really didn’t want to leave because I had a good life there, I like Slovakia. Just my friends [were] bugging me ‘Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go to America or Australia!’ We decided the year before the Russian occupation came to the country, and we left a year later, ’69 – ’69, September we left from Slovakia.”</p><p><em>How did you go? Where did you go?</em></p><p>“I went, I ran away with a car, we went to Austria and to Vienna. And we stayed there for a short time – three, four months and then flew to the United States.”</p><h4>Chicago Restaurant</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/YdpJ_tJAFjU?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“We had a restaurant north of downtown – 2525 N. Clark – we had a Czechoslovak Bratislava restaurant. And we did very good. Because there was a big thing about Czechoslovakia [at the time] and it was open from 5pm to 10pm in the evening for dinner. We served chicken paprikash, roast duck, goulash – Anicka, what else? And apple strudel. And people would stand in a line, 20-30 people…”</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
Ivan Vaclav
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Ivan Vaclav was born in 1943. He was raised in Bošáca, a town famous for its slivovitz, in western Slovakia. He says he had a happy childhood there, and remembers stealing plums from the numerous fruit trees around the town. His father was the head of the local recreation area and Pioneer Camp. Ivan says that he took over this job when his father died. Ivan’s mother, meanwhile, worked at a restaurant and bar in nearby Inovec. Ivan has one older sister, who also came to the United States.</p><p> </p><p>Despite ‘having a good life’ in Czechoslovakia, Ivan decided to leave the country with his wife in September 1969. The couple spent four months in Austria, where Ivan’s wife gave birth to their oldest daughter, Jackie. The family arrived in New York City on December 29, 1969. Ivan remembers the city was ‘dirty,’ and that there were cockroaches in the Manhattan hotel in which they were accommodated. Almost straight away, the family bought a car and drove to Chicago, where they have lived ever since. In 1970, Ivan started a painting and decorating business in the city, which he ran for almost seven years. Ivan and his wife also became partners in the Czechoslovak restaurant called Bratislava which was located on North Clark Street during the 1970s.</p><p> </p><p>Eventually, Ivan set up a construction and remodeling firm and founded a car business, which he refers to as ‘practically my hobby.’ He says that the United States has provided him with a ‘great, great opportunity’ to pursue his interests and ambitions. He became an American citizen in 1976. Over the years, Ivan has been active in the Slovak and Czech communities in Chicago – he has been associated with the CSA Fraternal Life organization, as well as with the Slovak Athletic Association. Today, he lives in Glenview, Illinois, with his wife, Anna.</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
1968 emigrant/refugee
Bosaca
Community Life
Restaurant/hotel industry
-
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cb390bbb119e44c5e51f74cbc5bd32ff
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>Art & Language</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/SEE3YItFE7Y?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“He really loved languages and he spoke about three, and my mother two. They all spoke, of course, German, and my father actually learned Russian because he loved Russian literature. So he read Tolstoy and Pushkin in Russian. So he always wanted us to learn languages. My brothers were not really oriented, but I liked it very, very much. He loved poetry. He recited poems and, as a little kid, I learned all the poems by heart. So when we went for a walk, which was usually on Sunday to the museums because he was a big art collector, we would recite poems on the way.�?</p><h4>Studies</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/H757yO7cGAU?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“After I graduated high school, I applied to Charles University to study languages, and I was probably the most nervous because I kind of had to lie in my resume. I could never be truthful about my father’s past. Of course I said he was from a family of 14 and that kind of thing, but I never really talked about his business success. After the communists actually nationalized his business, he worked for quite a while at some business ministry because the communists didn’t know how to run things, so they needed people like my father, so he had a pretty good job. That was all in my resume and to my greatest relief I did get [admitted] to the faculty of philosophy to study linguistics. I wanted to study English and German or English and French, but they wouldn’t allow you to study two Western languages; you had to have one Slavic language. So I took Russian because we had Russian probably since the fifth grade, so it was no big deal. I was fluent already in Russian, so it was at least easy.�?</p><h4>University Games</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/RWyD5FbCRkg?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“That was awesome. I won the gold medal, and we were a very small Czech team. We only had one tennis player – that was me – and we had a men’s volleyball team and a runner, and we won most of the medals and the Brazilian government decided to give us a special prize and invited us for nine days to Rio de Janeiro. It was fantastic, and all the Czech immigrants who left before the War, after the War, they all looked us up; we were all over the newspaper. They celebrated us so much and we were not used to it. With the communists, you won and they never said a word of praise. They would almost say ‘Oh she won because the other one played so badly.’ That was their usual approach, and there, when I won, they lifted me up and carried me through the town and there were big billboards with a photo double my size. Wherever we came, they said ‘Oh my god, are you the tennis champion? Would you like some coffee?’ So that’s something I will never forget. The most precious victory.�?</p><h4>Taught English</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/oBSzQ_u59BE?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I started teaching on a university level. First I had to learn all the expressions for mechanical engineering, because that was something I never knew much about. So I studied the scripts and learned words in Czech and then in English. The great advantage was that at the university level, you only taught eight to ten hours a week and that was all, which was wonderful because I had all the time in the world for training for tennis. I had a special deal that I taught double the amount in the winter semester and I took off for tennis tournaments in spring. We started usually on the French Riviera, and then it was Italy, and then it was Paris, then it was London – Wimbledon – and then it was all in Germany and Austria, and then we always had some special trip, like to China. So I traveled, and then in September I resumed my teaching again. So that was wonderful.</p><p>“The other was, in the ‘60s, things were getting looser and looser so we were not feeling the communist oppression that much. People started traveling and the deans of the technical faculties in Czechoslovakia started traveling and they were very smart guys, engineers, but they were totally at a loss when they were traveling. They didn’t even know what “entrance�? and “exit�? were. They didn’t understand. So they were looking for somebody who could teach them English and they hired me. I had five deans from various faculty [and I was] teaching practical English to these guys, which was great fun, because I made my own vocabulary for them, and I taught them through jokes. It was just wonderful and they loved me to death. And then, I taught only four hours a week and just one class of students, so that was great.�?</p><h4>Tennis Student</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/fWxvI8bkJKA?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“He wanted a lesson and I said ‘I’m sorry, I can’t give you a lesson.’ He said ‘What is so important?’ I had no idea [who he was]; I never ask people what they do. I said ‘Well, they have a painting at Christie’s at auction which I want to bid for,’ and he said ‘Christie’s? Did you know that I’m the head of Christie’s?’ He was the chairman of Christie’s! I had no idea. So I went and I got the piece and we became kind of more personal, and then they offered me a job at Christie’s at the Russian department, because they said ‘There are Russians who come from Russia and they have lots of art and they bring it to Christie’s and nobody really speaks Russian. So you could actually accept that art and stuff.’ And that was a very interesting part of my life and I said ‘Yes, I will do it, but only if I can do it only in wintertime, because in summer I want to keep that job on Long Island.’ And that’s what I did for a few years. I worked at Christie’s and I learned more. It was fantastic because there was so much art every day. I would learn about antique furniture and paintings which you never saw because they went into auction, so that enriched my life too.�?</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
Jitka Volavka-Illner
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Jitka Volavka-Illner was born in Prague in 1939. Her father, Václav, was a successful businessman who owned two coal mines while her mother, Věra, who had studied law, stayed home to raise Jitka and her three siblings. Jitka’s parents were avid art collectors and she remembers walking to museums and galleries with her father each week. Her family often went skiing in the Krkonoše mountains and, at the age of 14, Jitka won the junior national championships in giant slalom and downhill. That same year, Jitka was the national singles champion in tennis and she says that she had to decide between the two sports. Her father eventually steered her towards tennis and she went on to have a successful career on the international circuit; she first played at Wimbledon at age 16 and several times was ranked in the top 20 in the world.</p><p> </p><p>Jitka studied linguistics at Charles University, focusing on English and Russian languages. After graduating, she taught at a high school for one year and then began teaching English to university students studying engineering. Jitka says this job was ‘great’ as it gave her time to train for tennis and compete internationally. In 1967, Jitka and her husband moved to London for one year where she taught English at an elementary school. They returned in the fall of 1967, a time which Jitka calls ‘wonderful’ because of the reforms that marked the Prague Spring. Immediately after the Warsaw Pact invasion in August 1968, Jitka and her husband left Czechoslovakia. While waiting for permission to immigrate to the United States, Jitka lived in Munich where she learned German and worked as a nanny. In March 1969, the pair moved to New York City. For one year Jitka worked as a Russian interpreter for the United Nations. She then began teaching lessons at a tennis club in Manhattan where her clients included Robert Redford and Walter Cronkite. Jitka says that her first years in the United States were ‘lonely’ and that she sought out Czech connections. She joined the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences (SVU) in the 1970s and is currently the president of the New York chapter. In 1973, Jitka had her daughter Nicole and moved to Long Island where she continued to teach tennis. She became the tennis director at Cold Spring Harbor Beach Club and worked there until the late 1990s. For a short time she also worked for Christie’s interpreting for Russian art dealers.</p><p> </p><p>Since moving to the United States, Jitka has become an art collector and has exhibited the work of Czech artists. She has been involved in charity work and often uses the connections she has made from tennis and with her fellow Czech émigrés for fundraisers and other events. Jitka has also hosted Czech students and opened her home to newly-arrived Czech immigrants. Although she loves to visit Prague, Jitka says that she ‘feels more American than Czech.’ She lives in Manhattan with her second husband, Pavel.</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
1968 emigrant/refugee
Arts
Community Life
English language
Horcickova
Krkonose
Russian studies/speaker
Sports
Teachers
Translator/interpreter