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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans
Subject
The topic of the resource
Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans was an oral history project launched by the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library in 2009. The project captured and preserved the stories of Czechs and Slovaks who left their homeland during the Cold War and settled in New York City, Washington, D.C., Cleveland, Chicago and the San Francisco Bay Area. During the second phase of the project, the NCSML recorded the stories of immigrants who came to the United States after the fall of communism in 1989 as well. By the conclusion of the project in August 2013, the NCSML had collected more than 300 oral histories. <br /><br />Both phases of the project were made possible by grants from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. <br /><br />On the project’s website, you can read biographies of Czechs and Slovaks who began a new life in the United States, watch video clips from their interviews, and view photos and other archival materials they shared with us. <br /><br />Full length interviews are available for further research at the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library. For more information, contact Dave Muhlena, Library Director, at dmuhlena@ncsml.org.
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
<h4>Rural Childhood</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/XsTipWLzw4E?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“When my father died, we moved back to my grandmother and grandfather’s and my uncle was over there, and they had a farm. But in Czech Republic, it’s not like here. There’s a village, and the fields are someplace else. Over here you have a house and everything is around it, but over there, you have the village and everything was outside.”</p><h4>Detained by Gestapo</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/5sOM_nqzu3E?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Two weeks later, the Gestapo came and picked up my mother. I was 11, 11 and a half, and I was with my grandfather and grandmother [who were] around 70. My grandfather was 70, my grandmother was 69. I was with them and I was going to school four kilometers away, everyday to school. When it was too much for my grandfather, I had to help. I was doing work that was a man’s doing, because my grandfather wasn’t able.”</p><p><em>So why did the Gestapo claim to come for your uncle and for your mother?</em></p><p>“Because they were listening to the radio from England. Then they sent them to Prague to Pankrác and my mother got thirteen months for that and my uncle got two years. And then they sent my mother to Leipzig in Germany and they sent my uncle to [Austria]. My mother came home and she was so hungry that my grandmother cooked two pounds of beef and she ate everything. She was so hungry; and before they let my uncle out, we had to pay for his food and everything. To the Germans we had to pay for it before they let him out.”</p><h4>Germany to U.S.</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/YiD7rGGQXUw?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“When we left Germany, we went on an old airplane – Flying Tiger Lines. It wasn’t alright; they had to repair it. I was seven months pregnant, and Alice was one and a half years old. We were waiting the whole day; the whole airplane was people with children, small children. And then we came to Shannon [Ireland]. They put us in some hotel, a small one, and they said that they have to repair the airplane again. They were repairing the airplane and we stayed overnight there. The next day, they said we will go. We went on the plane and the pilot came back and he said that the plane is still not alright, so they repaired it again.</p><p>“And then we went to Newfoundland. She [Alice] got strep throat and they had to call the doctor, and he brought somebody who started speaking French to me. I said ‘If you can speak English, or if you can speak Russian, or German, that’s ok, but I don’t know any French,’ and the doctor said ‘Oh my gosh, I speak English, but I thought that you don’t speak English.’ Then he gave her some medicine, and we had to stay over there for two days because it was Saturday, and in America Saturday and Sunday are holidays, so we came on Monday. It took us one week to fly to America.”</p>
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Alice Vedral
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Alice Vedral was born near Prague in 1928. Her father, who was Ukrainian, had moved to Czechoslovakia when Ukraine became part of the Soviet Union. Wen she was two, Alice’s father died, and she and her mother went to live with her grandparents and uncle in Nehvizdy, central Bohemia. In the summer of 1940, Alice’s mother and uncle were arrested by the Gestapo. Her mother spent thirteen months in prison in Leipzig, while her uncle was sentenced to two years in Austria. Alice recalls spending much of her free time assisting her elderly grandparents on their farm during this period. When WWII ended, Alice enrolled in the Akademie obchodní Dr. Edvarda Beneše [Benes Business School] to study accounting; she says that her love of mathematics led her to choose this field of study. While attending school, Alice lived with her mother (who had since remarried) in the Břevnov district of Prague and worked in the shop her mother ran.</p><p> </p><p>Following the Communist coup, Alice says that several of her friends were in contact with the CIA regarding uranium mining in Czechoslovakia; when a few of them were caught taking background files from the university, the authorities began arresting members of her group. In the spring of 1949, Alice received word that she too was in danger of being arrested and decided to leave the country. She crossed the border into Germany with three other people in April 1949. In her attempt to cross the border, Alice says she was assisted by a priest and spent part of the journey in a false-bottomed cart.</p><p> </p><p>Alice arrived in Ludwidsburg refugee camp and, six months later, was reunited with her companion from Prague, <a href="/web/20170612093138/http://www.ncsml.org/exhibits/eda-vedral/">Eda Vedral</a>, whom she married shortly thereafter. While in Ludwigsburg, Alice found a job as a receptionist in the camp’s X-ray office. She gave birth to her first child, also named Alice, in 1950, and moved with her husband to Munich in 1951, when he took a job at Radio Free Europe. Alice describes the family’s journey to the United States as eventful, as she was seven months pregnant, they had to make several stops to repair the plane, and the Vedrals’ baby fell ill. In June 1952, one week after leaving Germany, the family arrived in New York and subsequently settled in Chicago. Alice found a job in a factory making coils for radios, but stopped working when their family expanded. Alice and Eda eventually had eight children. Many of their children, and some grandchildren, speak Czech fluently. Alice became involved in the Chicago Czech community and participated in groups such as Czechoslovak Exiles in Chicago and Orel in Exile. She returned to Czechoslovakia for the first time in 1969, and witnessed the Velvet Revolution while on a trip to Prague in 1989. Today, Alice lives in Cicero, Illinois, with her husband, Eda.</p>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
NCSML Archive
1948 emigrant/refugee
Akademie obchodni Dr. Edvarda Benese
Arrest
Community Life
Education
marriage
Refugee camp
Rural life
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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>Germany</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/xHovWyTt8Uw?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“1924, the year, the people who were born in 1924 were given as a gift to the Third Reich. And everybody had to be shipped to work for whatever they needed. And I had the papers already to Kassel or Essen, and that was bombarded by Americans, so I already had my friend, and he said ‘How about we get married? And that way you don’t have to go to Germany. You can stay in Czechoslovakia (or the Protectorate at that time).’ And so we got married in 1943, the last… no, December 30. And at New Year right away I went to Prague, they shipped me to Letov, and I was working making airplanes for the German Army.”</p><h4>Kobylisy</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/pDqRnd0y91E?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“When I was in Prague, there were those parachutists, they killed Heydrich, and it happened in Kobylisy. So actually, I was living through it, and we got German soldiers coming in the apartment at any time, during the night, during the day, with bayonets looking for something, [or whether we had] somebody here hiding. You know, it was kind of hard.”</p><h4>Air Raids</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/MIrVmzXWWOQ?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I don’t even remember what I did there, they were always giving me something to do, I don’t remember exactly what, and we were mostly talking because we were waiting for those airplanes to come and then we had to run out. So that’s about it and, as I said, about two months… the War ended on May 5, or something like May 4-5, 1945, so about two months before the end, I stopped going there to Strakonice, because they were shooting into trains and they were killing people in trains, those airplanes. You know, they dived and…”</p><h4>Bank Work</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/PRlij3WtTCU?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I worked in the neighborhood where we lived, so I could walk there, and it was a nice job, you know like from 9 to 3, so I was home in the afternoon when Hana came home from school already, so it was okay. Then we merged with First Federal Savings, which was, I don’t know, 1965 I guess. And they, I was still there for a while. I had five hold-ups in that neighborhood. Well, I survived, as you can see. And then they closed that bank, they closed that little branch and they shipped me [between] two other branches where they needed [me] and then I was working downtown in 1970, we moved downtown from Broadway, in 1973 I think, and I stayed there until I retired.”</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
Milly Voris
Description
An account of the resource
<p> </p><p>Milly Voris was born in Bělčice, Bohemia, in 1924. Her father, Václav, was an architect and realtor while her mother, Kamila, stayed at home raising Milly and her younger brother, also called Václav. Growing up, Milly says her family played an active role in Sokol and that she remembers them being ‘extremely patriotic.’ Milly attended school first in Bělčice and then in Prague, where she stayed with her aunt (in the city’s Kobylisy district) and studied at the Akademie obchodní Dr. Edvarda Beneše [Benes Business School]. When Milly graduated from high school in 1943, she says that she and her classmates were ‘given as a gift to the Third Reich’ and that she received papers to work in Germany. She managed to remain in Bohemia, however, by marrying her husband, Ladislav. Instead of being sent to Germany, she started work at the Letov airplane factory in Prague. Shortly before the end of the War, Milly moved back to Bělčice and began work at Česká zbrojovka in the nearby town of Strakonice. She says that not a great deal was accomplished as air raids often meant employees had to evacuate the factory.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Following the War, Milly moved to her husband’s family home in Stará Role (in western Bohemia) and commuted to Karlovy Vary, where she was employed in a bank. She returned to Bělčice again in 1947 to give birth to her daughter, <a href="/web/20170612094115/http://www.ncsml.org/exhibits/hana-voris/">Hana Voris</a>. Throughout this period, Milly’s husband was attending university in Prague. He left Czechoslovakia immediately following the Communist coup in February 1948 and settled in Paris, where he had traveled once before as a student and had made contacts. He procured an exit visa for Milly and Hana, who joined him in France in June 1948. The Voris family came to the United States in 1952, but Milly says that after several months in New York City her husband decided to return to France. She traveled with Hana and Ladislav back to Europe. They stayed in France for another couple of months before deciding finally to settle in America in the autumn of 1953. The Voris family spent just over four years in Jackson Heights, New York, before moving to Cleveland in 1958.</p><p> </p><p>Milly found work in a bank with a large Czech clientele in Cleveland and remained an employee of the organization (which became First Federal Savings & Loan following a merger) for more than 30 years. She and her husband both became active in Sokol in Cleveland, and in the Czech American Committee of Greater Cleveland [<em>Krajanský výbor</em>]. They taught their daughter Hana to speak fluent Czech. Milly says she is happy to have settled in Cleveland, which she calls both a ‘huge village’ and an ‘amazing city.’ Now widowed, Milly lives with her daughter in South Euclid, Ohio.</p><p> </p><p> </p>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
NCSML Archive
1948 emigre/refugee
Akademie obchodni Dr. Edvarda Benese
Belcice
Ceska zbrojovka
Community Life
Cultural Traditions
Jenickova
Krajansky vybor
Stara Role
Women workers
World War II
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22c9104e6f61ad2781173632e87cb41e
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>War Restrictions</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/avgmEr7S_CI?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“I think I was mostly inconvenienced, being a teenager, by the restrictions on our lives – social lives – and curfews at night. I tried to go to ballet school and I couldn’t go because you had to be home before dark. Everything was all closed up without lights, because they worried about the Allied planes going over and bombing.”</p><h4>Illegal Groceries</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/EtzNW_TpOJA?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“It sort of goes with you, I think all these people that you might talk to and who spent their childhood and young adulthood through those time, those difficult times… I can’t throw any food away and I always am looking for something to save, and how would I do if I can’t go to the store? Because we would go out in the country and buy illegally on the black market food so that we could survive. But then, when you went through the train station, we would carry, let’s say, five pounds of pork, or something somebody in the country would sell us. And the Germans had German shepherds, and I remember one instance – and I think after that I didn’t do it, I didn’t want to go anymore – they caught the people before us. They were involved with whoever it was, I don’t remember, and they just sort of descended on them and we just sneaked by, it was another friend of mine.”</p><h4>Translator</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/DB-e8b-sp5g?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I remember being on the town square, the beautiful town square, where there was a big parade for General Eisenhower and Bradley, Omar Bradley, and I was there with my cousin. We went down to see the parade. And I was trying to peek over the tops of the people in front of us and I couldn’t quite see. And an American soldier brought me a chair from somebody’s house, and I said ‘Well, thank you very much!’ And he said ‘Oh! There is a fräulein who speaks English!’ Well, I right away got involved in that and I was working as a translator for… that was the Third Army that went through Plzeň. And then they had to leave Plzeň, pull back, and they stopped in a town which is a beautiful resort town called Mariánské Lázně, Marienbad. And they offered me a job. I was, I think, 17 years old.”</p><p><em>So you became a translator for the American Third Army when they were in Plzeň, and when they withdrew to Marienbad you went too?</em></p><p>“Right. I had a lovely apartment in a hotel and every morning a Jeep would come and pick me up, and then at noon I would have one lunch in the enlisted men’s mess hall, and then I would be asked by somebody to have a lunch with some upper officers. Pineapple, bacon or coffee, it was just fantastic. So, I was for I guess six or seven months in Marienbad and I love that town.”</p><h4>Benes Decrees</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/isAZ4UQHuOA?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“In this town Marienbad where we were – our headquarters – there were people, older Germans, who lived there for x number of years and all of a sudden they were told ‘Pack your suitcase and go.’ And some of them, when they were elderly or ill, they would commit suicide. So, I was involved in finding out what was happening and then the American Army was working with the Czech police, so, some of it was not very pleasant. And I think I was doing it for only five or six months, and then they got some men to take over.”</p>
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Title
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Paula Moss
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<p> </p><p>Paula Moss was born in Prague in 1925. Her father, Josef Hubka, served as a senator for the Czechoslovak National Socialist Party for three terms until Parliament was dissolved before the outbreak of WWII. Her mother, Anna, was a housewife. Paula attended Jan Masaryk Elementary School in the Prague district of Vinohrady and then the Akademie obchodní Dr. Edvarda Beneše [Beneš Business School], where she specialized in languages. Paula says her father wanted her to focus on studying French, but her first choice of foreign language was English, which she learned, she says, to improve her comprehension of Walt Disney films. Paula remembers food shortages in Prague during the War and says she would travel to the countryside to buy items such as pork illegally, until she came too close to being exposed, and so abandoned such activities.</p><p> </p><p>Upon liberation in 1945, Paula traveled to Plzeň to visit one of her cousins, where her English-language skills were discovered by a member of General George Patton’s American Third Army during a victory parade. She was immediately taken on as a translator for the troops and followed the Third Army to the spa town of Mariánské Lázně when they withdrew to western Bohemia shortly after the end of the War. Paula says part of her work in Mariánské Lázně was with local authorities implementing the Beneš Decrees, which displaced thousands of ethnic Germans from the Czechoslovak border regions.</p><p> </p><p>Paula moved to Germany with the troops about six months later and remained in Heidelberg when they left, working for the Seventh Army (which replaced them) instead. It was then that Paula met her husband, Captain Richard Moss. The pair were married in Prague in June 1947 and moved to his native Chicago upon his discharge the following year. They first lived with Paula’s in-laws on Lakewood Avenue before moving to the Rogers Park district of the city. The couple had three children. Richard worked in a number of roles for NBC Chicago for 35 years, while Paula worked as a librarian and in real estate. She became a U.S. citizen in 1956. Now widowed, Paula lives in Highland Park, Illinois. A long-term member of the Czechoslovak National Council of America, Paula has donated several historic garments originally belonging to her grandmother to the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library.</p>
Creator
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National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library
Source
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NCSML Archive
Akademie obchodni Dr. Edvarda Benese
American citizenship
Community Life
Czech-German relations
Education
English language
Marianske Lazne
marriage
Plzen
Translator/interpreter
Women workers
World War II
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Dublin Core
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Title
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Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans
Subject
The topic of the resource
Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans was an oral history project launched by the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library in 2009. The project captured and preserved the stories of Czechs and Slovaks who left their homeland during the Cold War and settled in New York City, Washington, D.C., Cleveland, Chicago and the San Francisco Bay Area. During the second phase of the project, the NCSML recorded the stories of immigrants who came to the United States after the fall of communism in 1989 as well. By the conclusion of the project in August 2013, the NCSML had collected more than 300 oral histories. <br /><br />Both phases of the project were made possible by grants from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. <br /><br />On the project’s website, you can read biographies of Czechs and Slovaks who began a new life in the United States, watch video clips from their interviews, and view photos and other archival materials they shared with us. <br /><br />Full length interviews are available for further research at the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library. For more information, contact Dave Muhlena, Library Director, at dmuhlena@ncsml.org.
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Transcription
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<h4>Parent's Advice</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/BnglI0rI3cY?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“I went to the Czech Embassy, or Consulate at that time, in Stockholm and talked to a very unpleasant officer. I don’t remember his name, but he said ‘Slečno Broučková, you are starting to speak Czech with an accent’, and I thought, ‘That’s not possible! Even though I haven’t spoken Czech this entire time’ – I still didn’t think I had an accent in Czech. ‘It’s time that you return home’ [he said], and they would not allow me to stay. So, now I had to make a decision, shall I stay or…? So now I did write home. And I did get a letter from my dad, and he said, ‘You left a free Czechoslovakia, I want you to come back to free Czechoslovakia.’ Of course, he never thought that the communists would take all these years. There wouldn’t be a free Czechoslovakia for another 40 years! So, at that time, I had to make a decision, and I went to the Swedish consulate and asked for asylum. So that was one of these major things that I had to really… which changed my entire life, actually.”</p><h4>Cultural Event</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4k3x57a5I_8?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Somehow I found there was a Czech group – emigrants – who put on a play. I always liked poetry and reading and theatre and I thought, ‘Oh, I’ve got to see this!’ I don’t know who told me or how I came about it. So, I went, and I met this bunch of guys from Czechoslovakia, and they all spoke Czech, obviously and, you know, now it started to hit me. Even though I had Swedish friends and, actually, a Swedish boyfriend, here were these people who could talk about what was in Prague, who is Nezval, who is Seifert. And this guy who then became my husband also wrote poetry and played piano, and all that sort of did it for me. All of a sudden I realized how much I am missing, you know, not being with a Czech, the literature, I mean, the Swedish guy was nice, he was kind, he was okay, but, I couldn’t tell him, you know, ‘Na Václavském náměstí, you know that…’, there was nothing to bind me or bring me back. And then I was helping these guys with Swedish. They did not know the language, they needed help translating or whatever so…”</p><h4>Ellis Island</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/D29pENxdsH8?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“It was not as easy as I was expecting it to be, because when we did arrive in New York, I could see the Statue of Liberty and thought ‘Here we are!’, but we were detained. We were not let go off the boat because of my husband’s X-ray, his chest X-ray. He had a couple of pneumonias when he was a younger man and I guess they left some scars on his chest, and the Americans were very careful, even though we had an X-ray done in Sweden, which was clear, we had to go to Ellis Island. They wanted to check him out, so that he was not bringing any illness into the States. So that was sort of a setback, I thought, I mean, I thought when I saw the Statue of Liberty, that I have just a step and hop over to New York, well, it didn’t happen until three days later.</p><p>“Actually, it was scary, I tell you! That was one place I was sort of afraid because I hadn’t expected this, there were many people detained at Ellis Island, and we were separated – there were women in one section, men in another section, and they did have to take him to a hospital, I believe, or a doctor, and have a new X-ray done and have him proclaimed clear of any illness.”</p><h4>Chicago</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/tiMXdcvxdy8?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I really wanted to stay in New York and look for a job at the United Nations, I thought that with my languages, maybe I could get something. However, people were telling me that there is a great large community in Chicago, and import/export companies – even though I thought, for my languages, I would have been better in New York. But, for whatever reason, because of the Czech community, I guess… In New York, I didn’t know anybody. I had no contacts at all. But here we guessed that maybe we would have an easier beginning, so that was the reason.”</p><h4>Financial Hardship</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ErDJVdeVkew?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“When my husband was sick and I was really hurting for money, because not enough money was coming in and lots of it was going out, I was really, you know how people say ‘You live from paycheck to paycheck’? That’s what I had to do at that time, which was so much against my upbringing, against my thinking. But that is what I had to do. I was praying that I would not get a run in my nylons! At that time nylons could be fixed, you know, but I worked in a downtown office, a very nice office. I couldn’t go to work with a run in my nylons, there was no way!</p><p>“It really was hard at that time. There were organizations – I know for one Christmas that the Czechoslovak National Council of Women in Exile did help me. I mean, I did get some help from the Czech community. And then, after my husband died, actually, financially, it was easier for me. Even though I had to have a babysitter and all that, but somehow I was able to manage better because… It was actually easier for me at that time.”</p><h4> Czech Citizen</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/61lJ1_cQwbA?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I was stripped of my citizenship unfairly. I did not do anything to the Republic causing them to take it away. And, for 50 years it bothered me that it was unfair! Or 40 years – not 50. And then, when it was possible to regain it, I did. So… I am in my heart still Czech and in my existence, I am American.”</p>
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Title
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Vera Roknic
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Vera Roknic was born and raised in the Nový Žižkov district of Prague. Her father, Jan, was a manager at the city’s main post office, where he met Vera’s mother, Marie, who worked as a long-distance telephone operator in the building. Vera studied at the capital’s Vyšší Dívčí School on Vodičkova Street and then at the Akademie obchodní Dr. Edvarda Beneše [Benes Business School]. Her studies were interrupted by WWII and she was sent to Lyšov, in southern Bohemia, to work on her relatives’ farm. During the War, Vera lost her younger sister, who fell ill with meningitis and was unable to see a doctor, as the hospitals were so full of soldiers, says Vera. After the War, Vera graduated and began working as a multilingual secretary for an import/export company in Prague.</p><p> </p><p>In January 1947, Vera went to Sweden on what was supposed to be a one-year work exchange. She successfully prolonged her stay once, but when she visited the Czech Consulate to extend her stay a second time in the summer of 1948, she was told it was time she returned home. Vera wrote to her parents who told her to come back only when Czechoslovakia was again ‘free’. On the basis of this letter, Vera applied for asylum in Sweden. Later that year, she started meeting other Czechs and Slovaks who had been taken in by Sweden, having fled Czechoslovakia. One of these immigrants was Vaclav Pavel, who became her first husband. The couple were married in 1950, and, on the insistence of Vaclav – who feared the spread of communism in Europe – the pair left Sweden for America in 1952. They moved to Chicago, where Vera quickly found a job at International Harvester. In 1954, Vera gave birth to a daughter, Jana. It was at this time that Vaclav fell ill with Hodgkin’s disease, for which a cure had still not been found. Vera and Vaclav ran into financial hardship and were helped by the Czechoslovak National Council of Women in Exile, among other organizations. Two years later, Vaclav died.</p><p> </p><p>In 1960, Vera married Sava Roknic, another Czech émigré who had settled in Chicago. He adopted Jana, and in 1962, Vera and Sava had a son, David. Vera took a job in the banking sector, which she still works in to this day. Vera, now widowed, is active in many Czech and Slovak organizations, such as the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences (SVU) and Sokol. She works closely with the Czech Mission in Brookfield, Illinois.</p>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
NCSML Archive
1948 emigrant/refugee
Akademie obchodni Dr. Edvarda Benese
American citizenship
Asylum
Brouckova
Communist coup
Czech citizenship
Family life
German
Lysov
marriage
Novy Zizkov
Occupation
Women workers
World War II