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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>First Thoughts</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/48xKDHZld0k?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“My neighbor was lent a dream book, and then his daughter gave me this dream book – I have it at home. In it was written that Pisces, which is my sign, not being close to the sea, will go to the other side of the world in search of the sea later on in life. And already then I thought: America! I don’t know why I didn’t think of Germany or… But the other side of the world meant a different continent…”</p><h4>Daughters</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/yLzrvqrwDnU?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Not from Czechoslovakia – they told me at the Embassy when I went in November that they would be here at the soonest in half a year, my daughters. But at the immigration office they lost their papers three times. And we went there, with my friend, and they said ‘We don’t have them. Next!’ As if we weren’t there… So then, I was so unhappy and going to English classes and a Polish woman came. She came to join her husband who had been her for seven years already. And so I told her about the problems I was having and she advised me ‘You know what? Go to Batavia, and there’s a congressman. You don’t need to speak to him, but he has a secretary, Zuzana – Sue, and she will help you.’… When I told her – and even now I don’t know English well, and then I was even worse – this one was little, I remember it was May when I began visiting her every week. I complained in May ‘What’s going on?’ They had gone to [the American] Embassy and were told there that they knew nothing about it.</p><p>“So she told me, ask once again for all of their documents, like birth certificates etc. So, once again, the family had to go and get all this, and I brought them to Sue. And she, from her own telephone, at three in the morning, called the Embassy in [Czechoslovakia]. She had to put in her own code and all of these numbers, told them I’m married here, that I have a Green Card, that my husband is an American citizen. And on the basis of this they got visas to come here. She did that for us, Sue.</p><p>“When the girls came here, we all put together a vase like the one over there on the stove and I don’t know what else – a fruit bowl – three things altogether. And we went to see her and thank her. It wasn’t a bribe, because she had already taken care of it. So we went to see Sue. But it was only her. I don’t know what would have happened if it weren’t for her. But you see – even in the worst cases, you can find a solution.”</p><h4>Citizenship Interview</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/v8_9Q87Jc6g?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I came to the lady and first they ask ‘Why did you come here?’ And I started from Adam and Eve about how I finished school, how I was thrown out of teaching and I went on for 40 minutes. She brought me a coffee and tissues, we cried together when I told her about how I was thrown out of teaching and how I went to the Virgin Mary to ask her for help, and how I had a husband who had shot my eye out. In the end when I left, we gave each other a hug!”</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
Anna Vesela
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Anna Vesela was born in Lipnica Mała – in what is today Poland – in 1945. She spent most of her childhood in the Orava region of Slovakia. Her father had trained as a joiner in Zakopane but spent much of his career working as an X-ray technician in a military hospital. Anna’s mother worked as a server in a canteen. Anna had two brothers and a sister. She attended teacher training college and graduated in 1974, but was thrown out of her job as a teacher the following year – she says on grounds of her religious beliefs. From then on, Anna worked as a cleaner. As a hobby, Anna played bass for the Slovak folk ensemble SĽUK, with which she traveled to Yugoslavia and the United States.</p><p> </p><p>Anna says her family on her father’s side had spent time in Pennsylvania and that she thought of traveling to America from an early age. Her brother emigrated to the United States and, in 1981, she came to visit him. She returned to Czechoslovakia after one year and a half. In Slovakia, Anna had two daughters, <a href="/web/20170612093341/http://www.ncsml.org/exhibits/bronislava-grelova-gres/">Brona</a> and <a href="/web/20170612093341/http://www.ncsml.org/exhibits/zuzana-lanc/">Zuzana</a>, both of whom she raised as a single mother. In 1987, Anna returned to the United States and applied to have her two daughters join her. She says this process was complicated when U.S. Immigration Services lost her daughters’ documents. Brona and Zuzana joined their mother in the Chicagoland area in 1988. In the United States, Anna met her husband, Zdeněk Vesely, and the couple had a daughter, <a href="/web/20170612093341/http://www.ncsml.org/exhibits/margret-vesely/">Margret</a>. Anna worked in a number of restaurants and as a housekeeper for a family in Saint Charles. She became an American citizen in the mid-1990s. Anna returns to Slovakia at least once every two years and still refers to Slovakia as ‘home.’ Today, she lives in Darien, 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
American citizenship
Arts
Cultural Traditions
Grelova
Lipnica Mala
Teachers
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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>TELSA</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/BiBfJKMJu0A?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“There were parts of the factory where I couldn’t go, that were marked secret. I don’t even know what they were doing. I started to work in the industry in TESLA and I found out, as we were saying in Czechoslovakia, that we were 100 years behind the apes in electronics. Because what they were doing, they were actually doing reverse engineering. They took a transistor, American-made or some other made, or integrated circuit, and they took it apart to find out how it was made and then they tried to make the same thing. But we were running a huge operation. I was a supervisor for a while on the epitaxy, on silicon wafers which were for power transistors. After I was offered membership in the Communist Party and I very politely refused, I was no longer supervisor. I worked as a technologist in integrated circuits and then I left the area to work in the office for inventions and patents – it was still in the same factory, but a different place – and improvement suggestions. I was there for a couple years, and after that, just took off.”</p><h4>Tramping</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/GxtTcUxH8Mw?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Tramp here means somebody who lives on the street; this was completely different, they just used the word – they were like Sokol, but unorganized. There were no leaders. On weekends, they went out and got on trains. Usually they had on soldiers’ dress, like old-time uniforms from the first World War, even backpacks and stuff. And they would sleep outside without a tent, because a tent was considered to be, I don’t know the word for it, but like spoiled. For people who really don’t belong in nature – they sleep in tents, they could as well stay home, or get in a car, drive somewhere and then put up a tent – it was like, no. You have to get on a train and walk. And it was really nice.</p><p>“It was just singing songs. I was even collecting tramp songs for a long time. I really liked it, because those are truly, truly romantic songs about America, which people in America have no idea. It’s just funny how people romanticized this country.”</p><h4>Banjo</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/LVNMRyUHt8A?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“The five-string banjo, actually, I just fell in love with it – I was already playing the guitar. There was a movie, one of the movies they let through, because the movie didn’t contain any scene about a private [swimming] pool. There was a commission approving the films for distribution and one of the things, which I found out, if there was a private pool, the movie was out. It couldn’t be shown. This was not the case; the movie was Bonnie and Clyde – there were no pools in Bonnie and Clyde, just some shooting. And there was this track when the cars were going, it was a chase and there was this track. It was Earl Scruggs playing “Foggy Mountain Breakdown.” That was exhilarating. We went to see that movie maybe four times, just to hear that. And I couldn’t believe it. I was playing at the time the four-string banjo which is a completely different instrument, and I thought, how is his picking so fast? I was trying to copy it and there was no way.”</p><h4>Precautions</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/y74w22Uwsco?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“So we have hidden all the documents in our luggage. There was a piece of luggage, it was this bag, and it had an inforced bottom. It was like thick paper. So I took it apart, sliced the paper apart. I dug out space on both sides, and our marriage certificate and documents which we needed to have with us, I put there, glued everything together, put it overnight under a piece of furniture. I also made it black on both sides, inside and outside, in case they would use some light or something, I thought maybe that would help, the black color would block it, and put it back together. I wouldn’t believe that it was there. And the money that I bought on the black market, where do you hide the money? Well, our son who was nine years old, Bobby, same name as me – our older son’s name is Mark, Marek – so Bobby had a little [stuffed] doggy. And I thought that the doggy, he had a inforcement in the neck, to keep the neck up. So Vilma carefully cut an opening in the bottom of the dog, we took out the inforcement and rolled the money into a roll, put it back on the inforcement, and she nicely sewed it back. So our son had the money all the time, in his doggy.”</p><h4>Refugee Camp</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/td2AJwEorao?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“There was so-called isolation. They put everybody who was new in so-called isolation. You couldn’t talk to anybody else, you were going to meals at different times from everybody else, and we were not allowed to open a window and talk to anybody. The reason for that was that they needed to first separate any people who were escaping from the law, who killed somebody, and in those couple days they hoped they would be able to find out. But also, most important, there was an interview after those three days, and they didn’t want people to get smart, to know what to say, because based on that interview, the Austrian authorities decided if they give you political asylum or not. So if you got political asylum you could stay in Austria, if not, you had to go somewhere else.”</p><h4>Peet Seeger</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/fS0yEDouJPA?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“We came to Baltimore, and I was here for just a couple years, and I heard that my huge idol, Pete Seeger, who I admired so much playing his five-string banjo and how he played guitar – just a tremendous influence on me, and he was in Baltimore, so I had to go see him, even when we didn’t have much money, but this is something I would regret for the rest of my life if I missed it. So I took my two sons and we went to the concert and I was so happy that he was there. But then, President Reagan was president at the time, and Pete Seeger started to sing a song – “This Old Man” – [which] was making fun of President Reagan. I couldn’t believe it, and I noticed all the policemen standing there and I thought, what are they going to do. They’re going to climb on the stage and take him down or turn off the speakers or something. And then I watched – they were standing with their backs to the stage, only watching the audience so nobody would cause any trouble. They were protecting the singer; they were protecting him if somebody didn’t like him so nothing would happen to him. That was just unbelievable. I saw democracy at work. And I was really impressed by that, even when I didn’t like the song.”</p><h4>Fujara</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/HxXpzEAPmrA?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I started to play at festivals, and right now I have about 80 performances behind me. I started to make workshops. The first American fujara workshop was right here, at this house. After that, I did a workshop in Rožnov where I used to work in the TESLA factory. It was just three years back. It was also a two-day workshop and I was playing at a concert. Of course, the most important thing was last year, about one year ago in the Library of Congress. It was really a highlight of my life so far because it was for the American Musical Instrument Society, and they were of course recording it and it’s ‘forever’ in the archives, I mean, the archives of Congress. And I knew it, unfortunately, ahead of time. So you can just imagine the pressure that I had performing in a room full of experts on instruments and music and they wanted me to talk to them about the fujara and about everything concerning the fujara and the overtone flutes. And then it was recorded and everybody will be able to see it on the internet, all my friends. It was really a lot of pressure, but I somehow got through it.”</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
Bohuslav Rychlik
Description
An account of the resource
<p> </p><p>Bohuslav Rychlik was born in Krnov, Moravia, in 1950. His parents, Bohuslav and Františka, had moved to Krnov after WWII, because their home in Pustiměř had been destroyed by Americans who were bombing a nearby airport. Under the communist regime, Bob’s father lost his job as a senior office clerk and began working as a laborer, while his mother stayed home and raised Bob and his two sisters. Bob’s father, who died when he was 10, was a keen musician who played piano and violin and passed his talents on to his children. Bob was taught piano first by his sister and later in music school, and taught himself to play the guitar. Although he was fond of filmmaking, Bob says that he had ‘no chance’ to pursue this interest, and that he went to a technical high school in Rožnov pod Radhoštěm to prepare for a career in electronics. After high school, Bob says he decided not to attend university, as he did not want his mother to sacrifice anymore for his education. He got a job at the TESLA factory in Rožnov where he held several different positions before leaving the country.</p><p> </p><p>In August 1983, Bob and his wife, <a href="/web/20170710094829/http://www.ncsml.org/exhibits/vilma-rychlik/">Vilma</a>, decided to leave Czechoslovakia with their two young sons when they had the opportunity to vacation in Split, Yugoslavia. While there, Bob tried to buy tickets for a day trip to Italy, but says he was denied because his passport was valid only for Yugoslavia. They traveled to Belgrade where they learned about the UN High Commissioner for Refugees office. After an interview and a 6-week wait, Bob and his family were given papers allowing them to leave Yugoslavia and enter Austria. They spent about seven months in refugee camps in Traiskirchen and Ramsau before receiving permission to move to the United States. Bob and his family arrived in Baltimore, Maryland, on May 17, 1984. Having learned English at school, Bob says he was able to find work fairly quickly, while his wife took English classes at a community college. The Rychliks became American citizens in the spring of 1990.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Bob says that he is very proud of his sons, who were both valedictorians at Baltimore Polytechnic Institute and earned full scholarships to college. He continues to play music, and more recently has focused on the <em>fujara</em>, a large, flutelike, traditional Slovak instrument. Bob engineered the first <em>fujara</em> workshop in the United States, which he held at his home, and included participants from several different countries. He frequently performs around the Washington, D.C. area and, in 2010, Bob presented a lecture at the Library of Congress for the American Musical Instrumental Society. He has returned to the Czech Republic several times and currently lives in Mount Airy, Maryland, with his wife, Vilma.</p><p><a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20170710094829/http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Y5fonktBzQ" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Bob’s lecture on the fujara at the Library of Congress, 2010</a></p>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
NCSML Archive
American citizenship
Arts
Cultural Traditions
Education
English language
Pustimer
Refugee camp
Roznov pod Radhostem
Tramping
Western/Pop culture
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4aee06c7360d84050c2d334b823137fe
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>Propaganda</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Y_y5NVN6JUs?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“There was propaganda night and day. Night and day. Communists have the same thing. Night and day propaganda. Propaganda, that’s all they can do, propaganda, because they have nothing else to give. Radio, movies, or news. Propaganda on a streetcar. They write ‘Victory.’ Stuff like that.”</p><h4>Prague Uprising</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/8o6qtnTJG0Q?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“A lot of the people went on the streets – revolution – and they have not much of anything. I lost ten friends of mine. Ten of them were killed by Germans. That was the biggest fighting, up in Pankrác. I was there. I went up there and I was hungry. I went home. When I came back, the other guys were dead. Killed by fighting the SS with tanks. With what? With brooms?”</p><h4>Farm</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/cz-wwUVcATU?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“They sent us – people who were born in 1927 – they made us to take care of horses and stuff like that. What the heck, we were in Prague, we don’t know nothing about horses. They kicked the Germans out – the farming Germans, they sent them away, they deported them – who will do the job? They expected us. There were a lot of guys that were well-educated men up there my age. Well, it was completely disastrous, economical disaster. Everything they did was a disaster. I figured out that this is no place to live in this country like that. I have to get the hell out from there. This is impossible to live like that.”</p><h4>Leaving Czechoslovakia</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/rTB70hnTdeg?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I didn’t like it. I didn’t like the government, what they did, what they were doing. It was chaos. I had nothing to hold me. They kicked me out of work from the movies. They country started getting good between 1945 and 1948, but after 1948 when the revolution was, I figured that that’s the end of the story. I didn’t like it. I didn’t like it at all. I like to be dressed up like an American with good clothes. I don’t like to dress like the Bolsheviks. Little leather pants and shoes and work for nothing. I don’t want to live like that.”</p><h4>Australia</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/sQQsmYEVHx0?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“There were nice people, but I didn’t feel comfortable, and I thought there would be much future and better to go to overseas to Australia, and I think Australia was a good way to go. And I took a ship, Orion. It took five weeks, and I went to Australia. I had five pounds in my pocket, that’s all. Five pounds, traveled to the whole world with five pounds. We took the Orion, I had five pounds in my pocket. Well, you take [the ship] from England, you go to the Mediterranean, you go to the Suez Canal, you go to India, Ceylon, Arabia – Aden – you stop in Arabia. It was Aden, now they call it Yemen. We stopped up there, and after you go to Freemantle, from Freemantle to Adelaide, Adelaide to Sydney. It took five weeks.”</p><h4>U.S. Citizenship</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/T83-RYCYJVQ?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“They gave me citizenship right away, because they made a law. When I went to the army, the school up there, they decided to give us citizenship. I was over here for a few months, and I was an American citizen. I don’t know what is the difference between George Washington and anybody else over here – Lincoln. I don’t know the difference. I never studied American history. I studied all about Hitler or Czech, European history. I don’t know about these guys. I know now, but I didn’t know before.”</p>
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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George Havranek
Description
An account of the resource
<p>George Havranek was born in Prague in 1927. He grew up in the city’s Pankrác district where his father Josef worked as a head guard at Pankrác prison. George’s mother Sylva, meanwhile, stayed at home raising him and his sister Marta. He attended elementary and high school in Pankrác with the intention of pursuing a career in mechanical engineering. George remembers the end of WWII, in particular the Prague Uprising, which occurred several days before the liberation of the city. He says there was heavy fighting in Pankrác in which several of his friends were killed. Following the War, George graduated from high school and worked at Českomoravská zbrojovka for one year, during which he built cars and tanks and learned to be an auto mechanic. He then enrolled in<em>průmyslová škola</em> [technical college], but did not finish his studies, going instead to work at Barrandov film studios. George says he lost his job there for speaking out about the production of Soviet films in the facility.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>After the Communist coup in 1948, George was not happy with the new government and says that there was ‘nothing to hold him’ in Czechoslovakia. In September of that year, he took a train to southwest Bohemia and attempted to cross the border with an acquaintance from Prague. He says the two were chased by border guards and dogs, and were lost in the forest for a few days. Once in Germany, George spent eight months in refugee camps. He says that his plan was to go to America but ‘the door was closed’ for him. In the spring of 1949, George traveled to Birmingham, England, where a friend he had met in Prague assisted him in finding a job and a place to live. While in Britain, George applied for a visa to the United States; however, he had an opportunity to immigrate to Australia and in 1950, sailed to Sydney. He found employment selling carpets and stayed in Australia for two years before receiving a visa to the United States. His trip to America in 1952 took about two months, including a two week stop in Fiji.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>George settled in Cleveland where his second cousin lived. Shortly after arriving, George joined the U.S. Army, attended military intelligence school, and was sent to Korea and Okinawa. He was granted citizenship as a result of his military service. After his stint in the military, George returned to Cleveland and worked evening shifts as a tool and die maker while attending classes during the day. He eventually earned a degree in mechanical engineering. In 1969, his parents were able to visit him in the United States; he says that they had been punished because of his escape, as his father lost his job and they were forced to move from their apartment in Pankrác. George has been back to Prague several times since the fall of communism, but considers America home. Today he lives in Fairview Park, Ohio, with his wife Martha.</p><p> </p><p> </p>
Creator
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National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library
Source
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NCSML Archive
1948
American citizenship
Ceskomoravska zbrojovka
Communist coup
emigrant
Military service
Pankrac
refugee
World War II
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efcfa9047986b5d128d292f97208f4e0
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/SgjWql945wk?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“I have very fresh memories of walking by a grocery store or pharmacy and seeing empty shelves, or seeing a line of people waiting outside. The practice was that, if you saw a line in front of a pharmacy, you immediately went and stood in the line because something arrived that was never available, and it was the bizarre stuff you’d expect. Sometimes you would get to the end of the line and they had toilet paper. Sometimes you would get to the end of the line and there was butter and you could buy one stick of butter. But having that experience helped you appreciate the small things in life because all of the sudden you realize that they are not automatically available, which is kind of the difference between living here and growing up in communism. Because, when I go to the store here, I see the overwhelming amount of color and everything. I still remember there was a time when I would go to the store and it was empty, gray; I’m sure you’ve heard of the expression ‘Russian Safeway,’ which we have some of in Washington which are Safeway stores that are basically always empty because they cannot keep up with stocking the shelves. So that’s sort of my memory of Czech grocery stores, and seeing the difference.”</p><h4>School Days</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qUkfFpd1NT0?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“During my years in school, we had to participate in defensive exercises because we were preparing for the West attacking us. The duck-and-cover exercise was basically the same thing, somebody running into the classroom saying ‘It’s happening,’ meaning ‘We’re being attacked! Duck and cover!’ as if that really helps. And we also did a chemical attack exercise when we got plastic raincoats and plastic bags and a gas mask – everybody had a gas mask according to the size of their mouth – and we would put the mask on, plastic bags on our hands, the raincoats, plastic bags on our legs and somebody running in saying ‘We’re being attacked,’ and then the whole classroom of kids would have to go for a walk, a two- or three-mile walk, around town in this plastic cover to prepare us for when the attack happens. I’m not sure, thinking about it in retrospect, how helpful the plastic bags would be, and how far could we really get in this plastic dress-up?”</p><h4>Elementary School</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qUujijMyZC4?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I was standing at the bus stop one day and I remember seeing a lot of people smoking and throwing cigarette butts on the floor, and I thought it was not very good, so I went and took a plastic bag, picked up all those cigarette butts, came to school, and made a school [bulletin] board that said ‘Smoking is Not Healthy’ with a hundred of these cigarette butts on the board. It was very artistic; it was very creative for the time and for my age, but the teachers did not appreciate it. They were communist teachers and there was no room for creativity. There was no room for deviation. Everyone was growing up to be a little communist, thinking of Russia as our savior, and I did this unpredictable act of saying that smoking is bad when, during communism, smoking was encouraged as a way of relieving stress. There were actually magazines printing guides for pregnant women [saying] that if they smoke a little bit it can help with stress. It was a different time; it was normal. Nevertheless, the school took the board down and told me that that’s not acceptable, called my parents in, and my mom, who was not a communist – she was actually anti-communist – did not like that at all and got into a conflict with the school.</p><p>“They did give me another chance and said ‘Well, we took this down. Do another board for next week. Do something about an influential person,’ and I think the hint was ‘Do something about our president.’ I came home, and my mom had been participating in some anti-communist activities, which I didn’t know back then, so she was doing a lot of typing at night. Later on in my life I learned that she was re-typing a newsletter called samizdat or different reports that my aunt would bring from a little magazine, three pages, and my mom would re-type it ten times, then she would leave and distribute it, and I was thinking ‘What a strange activity.’ Anyway she had a magazine there from Germany with a picture of a president on a horse, and I thought the pictures were so beautiful and I looked through it and it said ‘Reagan, American president.’ So I took the magazine and I cut out all the pictures from the magazine and brought it to school and did a board about President Reagan. Of course, at the time, I didn’t know exactly what it meant, but it was not a good thing. Reagan was not to be celebrated in a communist school in the Czech Republic in Ostrava, and this was my second board that did not go very well. So after my Reagan board was posted, I was expelled from Pioneers.”</p><h4>Languages</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/aT6AgAzO29A?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I went to study at the first private high school in the Czech Republic, which was a school of business and management, in Jihlava where it was a totally different curriculum. The communist guidelines were thrown out; it was basically people that wanted to teach a Western way of studying, and I was the second year of school. When I started, I was fluent in German and, during that time, people were obviously looking for managers, foreign companies were coming to do business, but also people had to learn foreign languages. Nobody spoke anything but Czech. There were a few people moving back from overseas that spoke English, French, and German, but a lot of companies started to get foreign investors, and lot of them came from Germany. So as it turns out, during my second year in high school, I was offered a job at a language school teaching executives from Czech-, now German-, owned companies German so that they could communicate with their staff. So I was teaching Bosch in Jihlava; I was teaching at Tchibo, really interesting environments, but mainly I was introduced to high-level executives at a very young age and I had to work basically full days. I would study during the day and I would work late at night because, first of all, I was able to make money and support my school and, second, there was a high demand.</p><p>“I think it helped me to grow up really fast because being 15 or 16, and teaching 45 to 60 year olds how to speak a foreign language sort of makes you a little more mature. There’s a certain level of authority and self-confidence that you have to present which normal 15 and 16 year olds don’t have, so you go through the struggles of building it up really quickly so that you can make it through the teaching process, and I think it happened. So when I finished my high school in the Czech Republic, I had a really interesting view on life because it very much resonated with my idea of freedom, travel, doing different things from what everybody else does.”</p><h4>American Citizenship</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ch7IfnEu1FA?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I spent a long time living in the country and getting to know the country and learning all about the history, and actually I learned to understand how diverse it is and how there really is no description for what it is and how very well I fit in – because everybody does. So it just felt as if that’s home. I feel very much welcome and very much a part. I feel very much different when I travel. When you travel around the world and you talk to people and you have the American experience, you understand what diversity is and you understand what we do, a lot of people don’t understand. A lot of people don’t understand why you have due process in cases that are easy and clearly decided. There’s this sensitivity that comes with being part of evolved society, which a lot of people don’t understand, that you develop. Once you do, you realize how valuable it is and how priceless it is.</p><p>“And traveling, going back to where I come from – I love where I come from and I love the culture, but I come from a communist country and I come from a country that’s filled with people that lived during communism, half of which wanted communism, and I have to say I have a lot less in common with people that are left there and are living there than with people that live here. So I think being American also means that one can evolve and decide that, even though they come from place A, that might not have been where they should be, and having my experience of fighting the system in fifth grade when I couldn’t finish my board and having all these things happen, I think it was clear all along; I just didn’t understand it up until I was given another opportunity.”</p><h4>Bistro Bohem</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/d7oHV43W5to?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“She was super smart and sophisticated because of her life experiences. She had ten kids, lived in the village, and had to work in her little fields to produce her own potatoes, cabbage, anything there is to eat – you didn’t buy anything back then. She had a few pigs, a few chickens, so there was always food and there was always something being cooked in the kitchen. I remember every morning, getting up, there was always a pot of boiling something on the stove. Now I understand she was making stock from bones and carrots and she was simmering it for hours, and I remember coming into the kitchen in the morning and it smelled amazing. I remember, it was usually around 10:00, there was a little bit of bones with meat on it provided to everybody in the kitchen. All the kids would hang out and then start picking chicken meat off of chicken bones, and at noon there was usually a big soup lunch. She was also a big baker and, because she had ten kids that all had grandkids and there were sometimes 20-25 of us in the house, she learned how to bake very quickly, how to make a lot of good breads and a lot of good cakes. I remember her sitting by the stove with a bag of flour and the flour floating everywhere and her getting <em>kolaches</em> out and pastries and little dinner rolls and making sheet pans and sheet pans of dinner rolls, and we were all sitting there waiting for them to come out of the oven so we could take them, and she was making them almost on demand. So that was my first experience of cooking and I liked it a lot. I was really intrigued.”</p><h4>History</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/RKZnHBnh9rA?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Getting familiar with history, I learned a few things about Czech cuisine that I didn’t know until I got into the culinary world. I didn’t know that back in the day, during the art nouveau era, Czech cuisine was maybe even more interesting and pristine than French cuisine. I didn’t know that Czech pastries and Czech bakers were way farther advanced than French ones, and maybe the French kind of took a little credit for Czech history. But knowing that and realizing how much there is that we used to do before communism and how good things were, thinking of Prague in 1910, 1905, 1920 during the First Republic, I thought that it would be a good opportunity to take some of that history, some of that knowledge, and showcase a Czech cuisine here to people that have never heard of it, most people don’t think it’s any good because the Czech Republic is known for its beer, not its cuisine and sort of take a different spin on Czech cuisine and see if people will react.</p><p>“I didn’t want to limit myself to Czech only because I am Czech; I wanted to cover a bigger a region, but it turned out that a lot of our focus is on Czech cuisine and it turns out that its way more popular than I expected and it very much resonates with people. I think it did what it was supposed to do, which is attract people that have the heritage and have the history and want to experience the flavors that they have known from their grandparents, which happens a lot. We have a lot of people that come in, have an amazing experience and have an amazing meal, and say ‘My grandmother used to make this and this is just as good as hers,’ or even better. And it also exposes the food and the culture to people that might not have ever thought that there is food in Czech Republic worth eating, so it raises a little bit of awareness to the culture and the food.”</p>
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Title
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Jarek Mika
Description
An account of the resource
<p> </p><p>Jarek Mika was born in Ostrava in eastern Moravia in 1978. His father, Josef, was from a small village nearby, and Jarek has fond memories of visiting the farmhouse with his many relatives and experiencing his grandmother’s cooking. Jarek grew up with his mother, Radana, and his older sister. In fifth grade, he was expelled from the Pioneer organization after decorating a bulletin board with pictures of President Reagan. Jarek recalls the Velvet Revolution in November 1989 and says that the ‘mentality of people changed’ after the fall of communism; he also noticed a marked difference in his teachers. Jarek attended a private high school in Jihlava which focused on business and management. He says that his expulsion from Pioneers had prevented him from taking Russian language classes and, instead, he studied German with a private tutor. As a result, Jarek spoke fluent German upon beginning high school and found a job at a language school teaching German to business executives. According to Jarek, this experience widened his horizons and he decided to move to the United States to learn English and study.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>In 1996, Jarek began studying English at a community college in North Carolina and transferred to the University of North Carolina, Charlotte. He graduated with a degree in international business. While in school, Jarek worked for a bank and, by the time he graduated, was working as a loan processor team leader. He then moved to Washington, D.C. to continue his banking career where he worked for an international banking group for two years. After several years in mortgage banking, Jarek left the profession and decided to open a restaurant. Drawing on his love of cooking – Jarek says that he often cooked to unwind from his stressful career as a banker – he took culinary courses at the Art Institute of Washington and opened Bistro Bohem, which features Czech cuisine, in March 2012.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Jarek received his American citizenship in 2011, a step he took because he ‘feels American.’ His mother moved to the United States to be closer to Jarek, and he visits the Czech Republic often to visit his sister and her family. Jarek also has several real estate properties in the Czech Republic. Today he lives in Washington, D.C.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p><a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20170808005933/http://www.bistrobohem.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Bistro Bohem’s website</a></p>
Creator
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National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
NCSML Archive
American citizenship
Cultural Traditions
Education
Family life
German language
Post-1989 emigrant
Restaurant/hotel industry
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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>Before WWII</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/5FXMN0z8x04?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“At home we spoke Czech, of course, if we went to Vimperk to the dentist we spoke German. But the family doctor was Czech, but you know, it depended what store you went to. And I think it was always who had the biggest selection or whatever which decided how one shopped. I spent one month, four times, during the summer, in a German family learning German, and these German kids – during that time, one of their kids was with my family. We met in Pilsen at the second class or first class restaurant and there was me and my father, this judge with his son or his daughter – we switched the children and that was it! And we did it again one month later, that’s how people trusted each other!”</p><h4>Liberated</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/hMWUzit4FLk?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“We would hear bombing from whatever was the nearest German town, and all of a sudden one Sunday ‘Americans! They’re coming!’ you know, and so we went to the road, it was a state road which went between Vimperk and Strakonice, and we waved and there were kids, you know, that’s what you see in Afghanistan, that’s what the kids did. And then they actually occupied the village where we lived, and the house which we rented was one of the nicest houses, and so the Americans took it over. For example, they occupied our bedroom. So, in the morning we would ask for a dress and they would bring something from the closet or say ‘Come on in’ or something. And this went on for about ten days, and of course, they gave us coffee, and whatever, some crackers.”</p><h4>Sokol</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/SbfZQ_ilg_A?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“As a child in Boubská, I went twice a week to a Sokol in Vimperk. And so this stayed with me a little bit, and so then when I was in New York City, I joined Sokol Fugner and then nothing, and then about ten years ago, I joined a Sokol group in one of the suburbs [Sokol Spirit, formerly Sokol Brookfield] but simply this later years’ business means sending the membership fee and when they have basement sales helping with that, but no gymnastics!”</p><h4>Communism</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/0V9MoTL_Rvc?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I had such luck that I left the way I did in 1949, I am sure that I would have been involved in somebody trying to get across the border and I would have been in jail – number one. Then this business of pretending I am something I’m not? See, all these people were not in the heart communists, they pretended, they pretended! And then, with my background, to teach philosophy? I would have had to have taught Marxism – it just was not for me.</p><p>“I have to say though, that coming from that poor region, these poor people were pulled up, and so that you have there now what you have here. The middle class is much, much bigger. And so in the village you see a car. My father died because the doctor didn’t want to drive to that village, right? And when the doctor would come, kids would run after that car – it was something new! What was more common when somebody was sick was that the priest came and prayed, and of course that was the end – that person died, you know. People were dying like that.”</p>
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Title
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Jarmila Hruban
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Jarmila Hruban was born in Radešov, on the Czechoslovak border with Bavaria, in 1926. Her father was the mayor of nearby Boubská, the principal of the local school, and a regional administrator of a national cooperative bank called Kampelička. After attending elementary school in Boubská, Jarmila traveled to nearby Strakonice every day to attend <em>gymnázium</em>. When the Sudetenland was annexed by the Nazis in 1938, she found herself passing through Nazi Germany on her daily train ride to school. Jarmila’s schooling was disrupted by the war; in 1944, she was sent to work in a box-making factory in Bohumilice for a year, and so finished <em>gymnázium</em> one year late, in 1946.</p><p> </p><p>She then started a degree in philosophy and English at Charles University in Prague, but was expelled following the Communist takeover in 1948 when she failed her <em>prověrka</em> – a test asking each student about his/her political views. She decided to leave the country and, in March 1949, a relative who worked as a border guard helped her cross into Germany near Kvilda, not far from where Jarmila grew up. Jarmila spent a year and a half in Murnau refugee camp in Bavaria before being granted a visa to Canada. She lived there for one year until some of her relatives who were already in the United States successfully petitioned for her to come to New York City. In New York, Jarmila attended Hunter College, before receiving a scholarship to study at the University of Chicago. It was there she met her husband, <a href="/web/20170609123103/http://www.ncsml.org/exhibits/zdenek-hruban/">Zdenek Hruban</a>. She became an American citizen in 1957. Now widowed, Jarmila lives in Chicago’s Hyde Park district and is particularly active in the local Unitarian Church.</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
American citizenship
Communist coup
Czech-German relations
Education
emigrant
German
German language
gymnazium
Kampelicka
marriage
Marxism
Munich Crisis
Nazis
Occupation
refugee
Refugee camp
school
Sense of identity
Stankova
Sudeten Germans
Unitarians
World War II
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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>Danger of Arrest</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/R1kgOneeMPs?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“He was politically involved. He was very involved with the Agrární strana which is the farmers’ union political party, and they were very, very anti-communist. My mother told me the story that a good friend of his that he went to school with was on the police force in Pardubice – he turned into a communist – and the Communist Party, I believe it was on Good Friday of ’48, and they had a meeting and they were going to take over the country that Easter weekend. He came to the house late that evening and he told my dad ‘Jaroslav, your name was on the top of the list that the communists are going to come and get tomorrow. You’re going to be the first one to be arrested, and I’m telling you, they’re going to send you to Siberia and nobody’s going to hear from you again.’ So he was put under that kind of immediate pressure, that a good friend of his who was a Communist Party member came and told him – because of school friendships – he says ‘You better leave right now because they’re going to be here first thing in the morning.’”</p><h4>American</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/aOhGjObTA3k?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I was young enough where I was Americanized very early, and I didn’t even give it a thought that I wasn’t an American citizen because it was so ingrained in me from day one when we arrived here and I grew up with that. When somebody asks me if you’re American, of course I’m American. But I’ve got to stop and think, ‘Well wait a minute, I’m a naturalized citizen and I wasn’t born here.’ And that realization of what I went through didn’t really hit me until I was much older, surprisingly enough.”</p><p><em>Do you know how it did, or what triggered that realization?</em></p><p>“Well the first thing that did, but I didn’t appreciate it at the time is when I was 18, I graduated high school, I was applying to go to college, and I was denied admittance. And the letter came back and says ‘You’re not a U.S. citizen.’ So I called around and found out what was going on. We were legal aliens for all these years and I should have become a citizen by this time, and my parents had and I didn’t become one with them, so I scrambled overnight to become an American citizen – which was no problem at all – and then I did get accepted into school. That was the first realization that I felt I was being discriminated against, and I couldn’t appreciate it because I always thought I was American, it didn’t dawn upon me that I wasn’t an American citizen at the time.”</p><h4>Alliance President</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/9kGwzmdx3UY?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“It was anti-communist. They published a newsletter for at least 15 years called Zpravodaj, and Zpravodaj would get mailed out – and I remember my sister and I doing the folding and the postage for years, we helped them out on that – and it would get mailed out internationally and it was just an anti-communist newspaper, that’s all it was. They spoke about nationalism in the Czech Republic, they spoke about anti-communism. That organization still exists on a much smaller scale no, but it was an organization put together by the immigrants of that era, of the ’48 immigration era, that got together, had a common cause to try and gain the independence back of Czechoslovakia, and the only way you go after that, get that independence back is being very anti-communist.”</p><h4>Travel Agency</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/3yPzgoG7DkY?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I wasn’t as enthused about it initially, ‘Oh jeez, I’ve got to get to know these guys again,’ but after a while I really, really enjoyed reacquainting myself with some friends I knew from many years ago that I hadn’t communicated, a lot of the immigrants that I hadn’t talked to in 20 years I was able to communicate with them on a regular basis again and have them as clients and give them service, and the majority of them that I can remember came back and were very happy with the service I could give them, which I was happy to hear. So I was thrilled to be able to get back, not initially, but over time I realized that I felt proud of myself a little because what I was doing, I was carrying on what my dad wanted to do and I was able to accomplish what he initially set out.”</p><h4>Changing Community</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/8Wd55vzpXFQ?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I think it’s lost a little bit of its cohesiveness. Geographically at one time it was a centered community – that’s lost. That’s gone. There is no central town that can claim as a Czech community anymore. Czech stores are spread out all over the place. I’ve seen Czech restaurants go from in the 20s down to five or six, I’ve seen Czech travel agencies go from six down to one, I’ve seen bakeries go from eight or nine down to one, maybe two.”</p>
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Title
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Jerry Rabas
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Jerry Rabas was born in Pardubice, eastern Bohemia in 1945. In April 1948, Jerry’s father, Jaroslav (who was politically involved with the Agrarian Party), was warned by a friend that he was in danger of being arrested. The family, comprised of Jerry, his father, mother, Růžena, and sister <a href="/web/20170609162221/http://www.ncsml.org/exhibits/joan-zizek/">Joan Zizek</a>, left Czechoslovakia and spent 16 months in refugee camps in Germany. In August 1949, they sailed to New York City, and Jerry says that his first recollections are of this trip. The Rabas family then made their way to Chicago where Jerry’s father found a job managing a Sokol hall in the South Lawndale neighborhood. While growing up, Jerry says that his parents wanted him to participate in activities such as Czech school and community dances, but that he was more interested in sports. In high school, Jerry played basketball, football and baseball. He graduated from Roosevelt University with a degree in marketing in 1966, joined the Illinois National Guard that year and got married the following year. After finding a job at an electrical distribution company, Jerry worked his way up over the years to become manager.</p><p> </p><p>When Jerry’s father stopped working at the Sokol hall, he decided to buy a travel agency with the idea of assisting his peers in returning to visit Czechoslovakia; Jerry bought the business (Weber Travel) from his father in 1983. He says that this gave him the opportunity to rediscover his Czech heritage and sparked his interest in Czech history. Although he expanded the scope of the travel agency, Jerry maintained a focus on Czech and Slovak travel, and in recent years did a lot of work with people who are interested in genealogy. Jerry, building on the efforts of his father, also traced his family heritage back to the mid-1400s. Proud to have continued what his father set out to accomplish, he was always supportive of Czech organizations. Jerry lived in Willowbrook, Illinois, with his Czech-born wife until his death in 2013.</p>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
NCSML Archive
1948 emigrant/refugee
American citizenship
Americanization
Child emigre
Community Life
Local politics
Military service
Sports
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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>Assassination Attempt</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/JjuhoGyGDHI?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“Being minister of the interior, he was in charge of police issues. And the commissioner of police for Prague was, I don’t remember his title, but it was Doležal. And Doležal came to my father and said that they had a report that there was going to be an attempt to assassinate the president, Masaryk, but that they had no real solid information about it, it was just hearsay. But what should they do? Masaryk was supposed to speak at the Obecní dům in Prague…</p><p>“The bottom line was that they decided to flood the place with secret police, or tajní, as they used to call them – mufti – in civilian clothes. And the way they identified where they were was to put potted palms in this meeting hall so, beside every potted palm was a policeman out of uniform. And the guy who came to assassinate Masaryk must have sensed this police presence and decided he wasn’t going to try it, it was too much of a chance… So the president was saved and so this guy, whose name was Gorguloff, a Russian terrorist – today, you would call him a terrorist – decided who was to blame and he said ‘Slávik’s to blame, because he is the head of the police system!’ So he came after my father in Schnirchova – that was the name of the street in Prague.</p><p>“And he came to our apartment in Schnirchova on the pretext of presenting a book to my father. And so my father – in those days you didn’t think about these things or security – so he agreed that he would meet. It was easier to meet at the apartment than at the office. So, this man Gorguloff came to the apartment. It was fairly recently after my birth. My mother didn’t know that he had a guest. In the deposition that came out later, he said that he had this book for my father to initial or sign, and under the book he had the pistol. And he was going to wait until my father looked down into the book to sign, and he was going to shoot him. And at that point my mother happened to, not knowing that there was a guest, open the sliding doors, somehow she had me in her arms. The guy took one look at her and ran out. Later he said that he had seen the Madonna – so that became a family joke, because they said ‘Who do you think you are?’ And I said ‘I don’t know!’ The bottom line was that later he settled in France and shot the French president, Paul Doumer.”</p><h4>Refusal</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/K6gixZZVKwY?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“The instructions came from the minister of foreign affairs, Chvalkovský, to the embassy – to the mission, because it was not an embassy, it was the mission, the legation, or whatever its titles were – to turn over the legation to the Germans, since they were now the new Protectorate and they had the right… With the exception, probably, of one individual, the embassy staff said no. It was decided that it would not be turned over. The Poles by this time were beginning to be a little worried. They said, you know, it’s an extra-territorial problem, we really can’t get involved in the middle of this. My father at one point had a phone call, which he says was a muffled voice, which he thought he recognized as being Ambassador von Moltke, who was the German ambassador, who was a good friend.</p><p>“The warning was that the German Gestapo had gained keys to the Czechoslovak legation and were coming to take over. Do something about the locks… so they put sand and paper and junk into the locks and so the German keys did not work and the Poles had insisted that the takeover be without violence. So the German Gestapo departed the scene, you know, and left without the embassy. And it was used as a focal point for all the Czechoslovaks who were escaping across the border from Czechoslovakia and Slovakia into Poland and where perhaps the nucleus of this potential legion, which took a while to get approved, and so by the time they were approved, it was too late.”</p><h4>Precious Documents</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qF3IOdJy8vk?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Tony Mach packed up some papers of my father’s and took them back to his father’s farm in Volhynia, including a suitcase full of my father’s dressier things like the smoking, the dinner jacket, the white tie, tails, you know – the formal dresses, his decorations, his sashes – you know, ambassadors used to wear these formal decorations. And he took them all to his father and mother’s farm in Volhynia, where he spent the war working in a German factory, going back to his parents on weekends, taking out the clothes, brushing them to get rid of the moths, cleaning them up, and keeping them safe, including the papers. Had the Germans found the papers on that farm, it would have been the death of all of them, I mean, it was just that kind of situation.</p><p>“Many years later, my father has just learned that he is going to be ambassador to the United States, and about a day or so later, there was this movement of the Volhynian Czechs – they had been brought back into the German Sudeten areas. And the people in Volhynia were told ‘You can opt, you can stay here and become a citizen of the Soviet Union,’ which was expanding into Poland, ‘or you can go back to Czechoslovakia which is no longer subject to counter-reformation practices.’ So, they opted to go back to Czechoslovakia after 300-odd years of emigration.</p><p>“And so Tony… they put everything onto horse carts and ox carts and whatever, and the doorkeeper at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Černín Palace, comes up to my father’s office and says ‘Mr. Minister, umm, there’s a man here with a horse cart, and he says he knows you, he’s got some things of yours.’ And so my father says ‘Oh my God!’ So he goes downstairs and there’s Tony Mach, our butler, with all these things of my father’s! And he had brought them on his way from Poland to wherever they were going in the Sudeten area. And so, of course, the irony of it was that my father’s shape had changed over time. Most of the things didn’t fit anymore. But the papers… so half the papers were saved this way – that’s why my father was able to write his memoirs!”</p><h4>Great Britain</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/MnteynbuDkw?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Rosslyn House had a phenomenal view of London. So of course we watched the Battle of Britain from our windows, when we were not in the air-raid shelter. Although I tended to sneak out and try and watch, because I could see the fires and the German bombers, you know, illuminated in the searchlights. That was real heady stuff, you know! Later, or actually not later – earlier – there was one day that I remember I was in the garden, and there was this roar, and I looked up and a German Heinkel was coming and I could see the pilot with his goggles and his head, looking out, and he was obviously trying to get his bearings, because I thought he was going to hit the hill, I mean, it was just round… And about 30, no it couldn’t have been 30, about 10 or 15 seconds later, two Spitfires were barreling exactly on the same path! That was all the noise! And of course they started, I could hear them shooting, and eventually there was a plume of smoke, so you know they got him. So this would go on, you know, and it was watching the dog fights during the day, because you were wondering, was it one of ours or one of theirs? You know, they’d come plummeting down with smoke trailing and stuff like that. And that was, as I say, very heady stuff.</p><p>“And then going to school was fascinating, because there was a lot of shrapnel on the road, and it was suggested that it would be helpful to collect the shrapnel, so we had bags or buckets or whatever, putting the pieces of shells in to collect so that they could melt it and shoot it back. And the prize collection was always the fuse – the shell fuse, which was the settings for the explosion at a certain altitude – so that was, those were real collector’s items, those you could trade, and so it was great fun collecting. Of course it also meant, because the air-raids would come in the morning, we always hoped it would be in time to slow us down on going to school! Because then we could do the collecting of the shells, the ammunition, the spent shells, the shrapnel and be late at school, so that was a benefit – and do a good deed by turning it in, and then in the evening, we’d spend the night in the shelters, because they would do some bombing at night.”</p><h4>Debriefing</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/a7NFhJb7u6o?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“There were some cases that were pretty horrendous. I don’t think it’s a classified one – one border guard shot the other border guard who was patrolling with him, they were covering the border security, you know the mined area and stuff like that, the barbed-wire fences and the machine gun sectors and stuff like that. And this guy was on the border, was on a patrol with his buddy, and he shot him in the back, killed him, and then escaped. He said the reason he shot him was it was the only way he could feel secure to effect his own escape; the Czech authorities said he was a murderer and had escaped in order to escape punishment for his crime. Two different stories – one the government’s, one this ordinary border, pohraniční stráž guy’s – we were hard put, because obviously, if it was murder and escape from the penalties of murder, he should be returned. If he had in effect gotten out because he had killed a guy in order to effectuate a successful escape, that was another question. The question of course immediately comes to mind ‘Why didn’t he just knock him in the head and pass him out, and then make his way out?’ The question there was ‘How long would it have taken him to get out?’ He had no way of knowing how long it would take to effect his escape, whether the guy would recover and call the alarm before he could… you know, so there was a real judgment… I had to take him to Frankfurt for a lie-detector test that we did, and the lie-detector operator said ‘I believe his story checks out, his escape rationale, however, I would not like to be his mother and tell him no about having a cookie!’ So, we sort of knew how amoral this individual was.”</p><h4>Jail Time</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/lDotS9JCC2Y?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“At one point he says he was visited by a couple of secrets, tajní, you know, and they said ‘Would you write a letter to your father to tell him it’s okay to come back to this country?’ You know, ‘Everything will be forgiven’, and Dušan said ‘What do you mean, forgiven?’ And they sort of negotiated this. And he said ‘Look, I can’t see my wife, I can’t see my child, I don’t have anything to read, I can’t write, everything is forbidden. Forget it!’ And they said, ‘Well, if we were to give you some of these benefits, would you consider writing a letter?’ And he said ‘Consider? Of course! Sure!’ And so of course then he did write a letter, and he obviously put in little references which they didn’t like. So they never sent the letter, but they did give him the freedom, and they asked him what did he want to read? And he said ‘I want to read Karl Marx, Das Kapital.’ They said, ‘Why do you want to read that?’ And he says ‘To learn how you think so I know how to fight you!’ So, he said ‘I figured I was in for a beating’, but he said they only tried to do it once. He was big, much bigger than I am, heftier, and he said the interrogator came at him, and he said he took the chair he was sitting on and pinned the guy against the wall and he said ‘You try and do that again and I’ll kill you, I have nothing to lose!’ And they never beat him after that.”</p>
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Juraj Slavik
Description
An account of the resource
<p> </p><p>Juraj Slavik was born in Prague in October 1929, son of the then-minister of the interior, Juraj Slávik. In 1936, Juraj’s father was sent to head the Czechoslovak diplomatic mission in Poland, with whom relations were strained because of both countries’ claims to parts of Upper Silesia. Juraj attended the Lycée Français de Varsovie [the French School in Warsaw] but, in light of heightening tensions, was sent to school in Switzerland just before the outbreak of WWII. After a brief spell in Belgium, Juraj spent the War in Britain, first with his parents in London (where his father was a member of the Czechoslovak government-in-exile) and then as a boarder at Magdalen College School in Oxford and the Czechoslovak State School of Great Britain in Llanwrtyd Wells, Wales.</p><p> </p><p>Juraj returned with his parents to Czechoslovakia in 1945. One year later, however, Juraj’s father was appointed Czechoslovak ambassador to the United States and so the family left for America. Following the Communist coup in Czechoslovakia in 1948, Juraj’s father resigned from his post and the family decided to stay in the United States. Juraj’s siblings Dušan and Taňa remained in Czechoslovakia, where Dušan was subsequently arrested and spent 11 years in jail.</p><p> </p><p>Juraj studied philosophy at Dartmouth College and then volunteered for the draft, serving in the U.S. Army between 1953 and 1956 as a translator debriefing Czech and Slovak refugees after they crossed the border into West Germany. In 1960, Juraj married his wife, Julie Bres Slavik. The couple have two children. After a successful career working for the U.S. government’s cultural exchange Program, Juraj, now retired, devotes much of his time to Slovak and Czech organizations, including Friends of Slovakia and the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences (SVU). In 1990, Juraj returned his father’s ashes to his native Slovakia. He has worked with Slovak and Czech historians to have his father’s letters published. In 2006, a book about Juraj’s father, titled <em>Juraj Slávik Neresnický: od politiky cez diplomaciu po exil 1890-1969</em>, was published in Bratislava by Slovak historian Slavomír Michálek.<br /></p>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library
Source
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NCSML Archive
1948 emigrant/refugee
American citizenship
Battle of Britain
Child emigre
Communist coup
Czechoslovak resistance during WW II
Diplomatic service
Education
Family life
German
Michalek
national
Nazis
Occupation
Political prisoner
Politics
Prison
school
Translator/interpreter
World War II
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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>Awareness</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/M0J1AGnvSBE?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“Actually any time things were discussed up to a decent hour I could sit by, be quiet and listen, because [my] parents insisted that I know, as the oldest one in the family, about the situation, the danger and so on. So when they asked us then to go outside and watch, when my father wanted to listen to Radio Free Europe or, you know, to Moscow or London, whatever, if somebody would be, you know, just kind of snooping around, so I was supposed to knock on the window, because the villa was so large and anybody could from any side… So this was one thing that we had to do and then eventually, towards the end of the War, he would say ‘Take this and drop it off there and there.’ And it was obviously for partisans, guerrillas, so you know, he said ‘It’s extremely dangerous and you can do it, as a little boy.’ I had, you know, on one side a milk jar and just said I was going to pick up some milk, which I was going to do, and coincidentally I dropped this at the designated place.”</p><h4>Coup Change</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/m17RjfPSeTM?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“We had too much floor space for that, and so I had to be always registered – even when I lived in Prague I was registered. And then grandparents had to move in. So that we had both grandfathers, both grandmothers, and you know, times were not the greatest and there was not enough coal, not enough money to heat any other rooms, and so we all congregated in a small kitchen. So everything had to happen in this kitchen. And, it was usually so that my father, when he was not in the pub, that means 14 days into the month when he was penniless, because the first week he would pay for everybody and so on, so he would be sitting, feet in the oven, v troubě, to keep warm, and reading one of his books. The ladies would have to jump around him to cook and to do this. Grandparents would be around and we would be doing homework on one table. It was just like you hear about Russian families or gypsies, how they lived, and so on. And so that is how we lived. And then you would go and sleep in a rather cold room, and I just wanted to test myself and so I decided to sleep in a hallway, and so my wish was that one day, you know, I would put a glass of water, and then one day it would freeze. It didn’t happen completely that it would freeze, but it had a faint kind of a cover of ice. So I was very happy that I achieved that.”</p><h4>Army Music</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/OxBeKT7AUp0?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I got moved to more musical things, but I still had to go on rozcvička [training maneuvers] and I had to do the basic things and so on, and horrendous things happened. There was a kid who took his life and then another kid who lost fingers because as you had to very quickly, you know, board the tank and so on, somebody just dropped the lid and I was just really terrified. And the worst time was when they would wake you up at night and take you somewhere and drop you off in the woods, and I was supposed to, you know, I had flags and I was supposed to regulate tanks. And once I was so horribly tired and lonesome in the woods, it was raining and I just decided I will take a nap. And I woke up, this horrendous noise, and the tank – I don’t know how far it was from me – not too far, really, but I just couldn’t believe it. You know, there was a guardian angel there.”</p><h4>Fond Memories</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/k6LXByAa2sA?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Several of us were graduates of Prague Conservatory, so we had a chamber group, and we decided that we would simply look for opportunities out of the barracks and whatever they wanted us to do, and go and play for these workers and talk to them about music. And they just loved it, so we were like, you know, exactly what the Communist Party wanted us to be, and so on. And so, when then later on I was leaving the service, they said ‘Well, what could we do for you?’ And I said, ‘Well, could you write me a recommendation, please? And preferably on stationery of the party.’ And so with this, this was the only thing that saved me and I was able to go out to Iceland, because, I still remember at Pragokoncert, there was a wonderful young woman who said ‘Ale pane Paukerte, vy se vrátíte’ – you will come back. I said, well – I couldn’t look into her eyes – I said ‘Of course.’”</p><h4>Arrested</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/nybIxyIHYUg?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“It was fortunately only one night in that little jail. And I had the most excruciating toothache of my life. I’ve never had toothache like that. And in the morning I slept, maybe, just a little bit, just drowsy – and all of a sudden I hear the Trout Quintet of Schubert. And there was a little window like that. And I knocked on the door, and the chief of the station came and said ‘I heard that you are a musician, I thought you will enjoy this.’ And he said ‘Would you like to have breakfast, do you have money?’ I said yes. ‘Well, go to town, and I expect you in one hour here. You will go to Copenhagen.’ So, I said ‘Oh my god, this is really fancy, because they trust me.’ And, there were two plain-clothed policemen with me, but they were basically guarding a guy who looked like a… I don’t know, I mean, he might have murdered somebody, what do I know? I just have no idea. So, they watched him all the time, on the boat or on the train. And to me they said ‘Do you have money? So go and buy yourself a beer. You have very good beer in Denmark.’ So I could get a beer, and towards the end of the day we came to, I’ve forgotten the name of the street but it was a commissioner for foreign affairs, something like through the police, and I think his name was Dahlhoff or something like that – kind of a very sharp guy, kind of looked at you and pierced you. He said ‘Well, so here is your ticket to Prague. And you want to go to Belgium.’ So, we will help you to get a Belgian visa. He gave me the address, ‘You will go to the Belgian Embassy, you will call them up.’ I said ‘What happens if I don’t get it?’ ‘Well, you have the ticket to Prague. In the meantime get yourself a place to stay, not on the street, you have money. And we will just hope for the best for you.’”</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
Karel Paukert
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Karel Paukert was born in Skuteč, in what is today the center of the Czech Republic, in 1935. His father worked in the local bank, Kampelička, up until the Communist takeover. Following the coup, he was sent to work in the town’s granite mines and then the Semtex factory in Semtín. Karel’s mother, Vlasta, stayed at home to raise Karel and his siblings, but also later got a job as an office clerk at the local shoe factory, Botana. Karel was sent to <em>gymnázium</em> for two years in the nearby town of Chrudím, but was then sent back to the <em>jednotná škola</em> [vocational school] in Skuteč when this <em>gymnázium</em> closed, due to reform of the school system. He started playing oboe when he was 16 years old. In 1951, Karel was accepted at the Prague Conservatory, where he studied organ with Jan Krajs for the next five years. During this time in Prague he also played in the orchestra at the Jiří Wolker Theater (today’s Divadlo Komedie.) After one year at HAMU (the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague) composing music for students of the school’s puppetry section, Karel was conscripted to the Czechoslovak Army in 1957. Because of his oboe playing, he was sent to Písek to become part of the army’s musical division.</p><p> </p><p>Karel says it is through his good references from the army that he was allowed to travel to Iceland in 1961, to become head oboist with the National Symphony Orchestra there. It was during a visit to Norway the following year that Karel says he decided not to return. He set out for Belgium, where he wanted to train with the organist Gabriel Verschraegen, but he was detained in Denmark for traveling without a visa and had to spend months in Copenhagen waiting for an affidavit from the organist. Karel spent two years in Ghent before arriving in America in 1964. He studied for a doctorate in St Louis, Missouri, before accepting a post as professor of organ music at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. In 1972, Karel became an American citizen. He moved to Cleveland in 1974, where he began to work for the city’s Museum of Art. He retired in 2004, but continues to work as choirmaster and organist at St Paul’s Church in Cleveland Heights. He has three children.</p>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
NCSML Archive
American citizenship
Arts
Communist coup
Czechoslovak resistance during WWII
Education
German
gymnazium
Kampelicka
Military service
Occupation
Pisek
Religion
Resistance
school
Skutec
World War II
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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>Grandmother</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/HxtZRnvWFLs?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“I was very close to my maternal grandparents. They died a few months after I left Slovakia, and I really loved them. At one point, we lived across from my maternal grandparents, so I was very close to them; I always sat in their house. And my grandmother was very religious, she would go every night with a candle to pray in the church. Of course, the church was closed, but she would stay, you know, outside the church, by the door with the candle praying every evening. And sometimes I would go to church with her too and she had all kinds of holy books and she had all kinds of mission magazines that were like illegal in Slovakia. And I would just read them, you know, I just loved to read and I was there all the time and reading, and I loved to be there with my grandmother, so…”</p><h4>Kolackov</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/w9M7t4j5i0M?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p><span style="line-height:1.5;">“They didn’t say too much, they just said it was bad, you know, and they were saying about the Jewish people… and there was a cemetery, a Jewish cemetery, behind the little river in our village. And I never met a Jewish person until I came to America. I never knew there were any Jewish people alive in Slovakia. I never knew, but there was so… Apparently there were some Jewish people, but I never met anybody, until I came here.” </span></p><p></p><h4>Work Brigades</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/OTOsuLyN6sM?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p><span style="line-height:1.5;">“When I was going to school in Stará Ľubovňa, and when we were, when I was, learning my trade, they would take us, and we had to go to Hniezdne, that was like a city next to Stará Ľubovňa, and mostly in the fall we would go and pick up potatoes – yeah. Which was a lot of fun because we were happy to be outside, instead of being, sitting, in the classroom or stuff like that, and they gave us food so we ate, and you know it was like… it was fun.”</span></p><p></p><h4>Unsure</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/v95Z2ojNRfQ?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“It just, you know, I saw that life was a lot easier over here, that you could get money faster than there. You have to, you have to work, you know, but it’s like it seems to be easier than in Slovakia. And, I really missed my family – the first two years I would cry every weekend. I missed my, you know, everybody, and then later on I met some young people that came from Slovakia and we made a… we started singing and performing and dancing and stuff like that, which was a lot easier and I felt like I was at home, you know, not in America, but like I was in Slovakia. And we also made a play, you know, we had a play also in Slovak over here so… And I was, actually, I played the same part in the play that I played in Slovakia as I did in America, in the same, same play.”</p><h4>Little English</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/AIOeDftflow?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“The first two years I worked in Joseph & Feiss, which was a factory making men’s suits. Now it’s called Hugo Boss. And mostly European people worked there. Mostly they were from Eastern Europe, like Slovaks and Czechs and Ukrainians and Polish. And how it happened? One lady from our village, she worked there, she was like a supervisor there, and that’s why she got me a job there. And so what happened was that I got a Ukrainian boss. So, the first two years, I didn’t speak any English, because I spoke Slovak and he spoke Ukrainian and we understood each other, with everybody else I could speak, so I didn’t learn any English, I understood everything. My cousin was telling me ‘Speak English, speak English,’ and I said ‘No, you’re going to laugh at me if I say something in English because I’m not going to say it right.’ So, he was always telling me, and his wife was Polish</p><p>– my cousin’s wife was Polish – so, I spoke with my dialect with her. So I didn’t have to learn any English.</p><p>“But after being here two years, when I moved to Lakewood, I started working somewhere else, and there were mostly who didn’t speak, you know, European, they used to speak English. And there were two Puerto-Rican sisters, and they had been here for like 20 years. And when I heard them, how they speak English, I’m thinking ‘Why should I be ashamed? I mean, they have been here for 20 years, I have been here for a few years, if they have an accent, why should I be afraid?’ And so I just started speaking and that’s how I speak!”</p><h4>Return to Slovakia</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/C7KriyHHrOw?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Well, when the changes first started in 1989, my favorite store was K-Mart. And then they opened a K-Mart in Slovakia. So I said ‘I don’t want to go to Slovakia, because they don’t have a K-Mart over there.’ And so there, when they opened a K-Mart, so they said ‘Okay, so now they have K-Mart over there, so you can, you know, live there!’ And for some reason, I still feel like, I don’t know, it’s still not, you know, I’m so used to being like… I lived one-third of my life there, and I have lived two-thirds of my life here, so, I’m so used to it, I feel like my home is over here. I mean I still love my country, I still love my heritage, that’s what I try pushing onto my kids, which they appreciate, they really love it. Like [my daughter] Anita went to an American wedding, and she… you know, at a Slovak wedding, you would come home at 1:00 in the morning, or until they let you, how long they let you stay in the hall.</p><p>She came home at 10:00. It was her friend from grade school who was getting married. And she comes home and she says ‘Mum, I am so happy to be a Slovak.’ We’ve got so much more, a lot more fun than those people over there. She said ‘I didn’t like the music, I didn’t like anything over there. I liked the food, but I didn’t like the music, that’s why I came home. Because we have a lot more fun, we like… you know, that’s why I’m happy to be Slovak.’ So you know probably a lot of different nationalities feel the same way, you know, but that’s what she said, that’s what she told me, so…”</p><h4>Easter Traditions</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/s87qZVPVHJo?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“In Slovakia, they bless the baskets on Sunday morning, over here in America, they bless on Saturday afternoon. And, when we first got married, I would not let my husband eat the food on Saturday until the Sunday. So he would wait until midnight, and after midnight, he would start eating. But later on I gave up and I just let him, so ever since then, after we bless the food on Saturdays, since Lent is gone, he still fasts in the morning on Saturday and then after I bless the food, he comes home in the afternoon, and we make this huge platter of klobásy [sausage] and eggs and cheese and this stuffing I make, and ham and all the traditional stuff. And the beets, the beets with horseradish. And I make everything homemade; I make the homemade bread, the pascha bread, with raisins and all the other stuff so… And the cheese, I make the cheese and the stuffing with eggs and bread and ham and bacon in it, and I bake it in the oven.”</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
Ludmila Anderko
Description
An account of the resource
<p><img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-2287" src="http://web.archive.org/web/20170609091403im_/http://ncsml.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Ludmila-Anderko-235x300.png" alt="Ludmila Anderko Oral History" width="235" height="300" /></p><p>Ludmila Anderko was born in the small mountain town of Kolačkov, northeastern Slovakia, in 1949. Her mother stayed at home and raised Ludmila and her three sisters, while her father worked in a textile factory in nearby Kežmarok during the week, coming home to visit the family on weekends. According to Ludmila, who had to help out with farm work from an early age, the hilly ground around Kolačkov was hard to farm, so no attempts to collectivize agriculture were ever made in the village.</p><p> </p><p>Ludmila’s aunt Alžbeta had left Kolačkov in the 1920s and settled in Cleveland, Ohio. In 1966, she made a visit back to Slovakia and met Ludmila and her sisters for the first time. Following this visit, Ludmila maintained contact with her aunt, and was invited to come and stay with her in Cleveland in 1969. By this time, Ludmila had already finished her training to be a shop clerk and was working in the local store in Kolačkov. She decided to visit Cleveland and make a decision about whether to stay or not once she had spent some time in the city.</p><p> </p><p>Ludmila did decide to stay, living first with her aunt Alžbeta in Maple Heights, an eastern suburb. After two years, she moved by herself to Lakewood, renting a property just opposite what was then a Slovak Church – Sts. Cyril & Methodius (now known as Transfiguration Parish). It was here that Ludmila says she became much more involved in the Slovak community, frequenting Slovak dances, starring in Slovak Dramatic Club plays and attending the local Slovak Civic Club in Lakewood. It was at a dance at Česká síň Sokol on Clark Street that Ludmila met her husband Frank. The pair were married in 1973 and have four children. Ludmila encouraged all of her children to participate in the local Slovak dance troupe Lucina and, as a consequence, several of them traveled to Slovakia to perform with the group at a folk festival in Detva in 2008. In recent years, Ludmila has been making a number of public appearances as one third of the trio Slovenské mamičky [The Slovak Mothers], performing traditional Slovak folk songs as well as original works written by accordion player <a href="/web/20170609091403/http://www.ncsml.org/exhibits/monika-smid/">Monika Smid</a>. Ludmila lives not far from her sister Marie, who came to the United States in 1980.</p><p><a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20170609091403/http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXVYQSrjEHo" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">An NCSML recording of Ludmila performing with the Slovenské mamičky in Cleveland in May 2010</a></p>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
NCSML Archive
American citizenship
Ceska sin Sokol
Community Life
Cultural Traditions
Education
Jews
Kezmarok
Kolackov
Religion
Slovak Language
Slovenske mamicky
Stara Lubovna
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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>Challenges</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WYBRyYrpZfM?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“I was young. I was probably ten or even less, and times sometimes were really tough. And I remember there were days, for example, there was a real shortage of milk and then when milk arrived, the kids would run in front of the block and they would yell ‘Mom, milk arrived!’ and everybody kind of looked and then everybody just grabbed the reusable shopping bag and all went down and stood in line for milk. It was the same thing for oil, like cooking oil, or butter, I remember, or there was the winter season before Christmas and it was any tropical fruit like bananas and oranges or, my goodness, if there was a pineapple, it was like ‘Wow!’ So as a child, I pretty much used to stand in line for food, which I really dislike. If there’s anything going on, like a picnic, and there’s food involved, I really refuse to stand in line for food.”</p><h4>City Farming</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/IPEhpJvEhT0?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Yes, we did have a chata, or summer home, or záhrada [garden] and we pretty much spend almost the entire summer there. There was always something to do. My dad was very much an avid gardener and we grew everything. I didn’t know such a thing as to go to a store and purchase potatoes or carrots or even things like jam or ketchup or anything. My mom pretty much made everything from scratch at home and in our apartment building, downstairs, there was a place where everybody had a teeny storage space. We called it a pivničný priestor or pivnica, and everybody just had this little nook with a door and you open it and it looked like a pantry. It was a pantry of everything like a large bag of potatoes, sauerkraut that was made in this huge barrel, jams, and syrups, and preserved fruit. I mean, it was just like living goodness down there. I very much clearly remember Sundays mom would make traditionally rezne, or schnitzels, with potatoes and then would say ‘Oh we are out of pickled cucumbers,’ or she said ‘What do you want? Do you want cucumbers or peaches in syrup?’ And when we were out of it at home, we had to take the elevator all the way downstairs. Sometimes we were really lazy and we’d just say ‘I’ll just stick with pickles,’ because I was just too lazy to go down and get it.”</p><h4>Western Music</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4_JiFtThrvw?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“My dad was the person who had a lot of friends. He was very outgoing and he knew a lot of people. I remember one day he came home with this huge suitcase and it was quite late in the evening and he said ‘Ok, are you up for it?’ and I said ‘Dad, what are you talking about?’ and he opened this suitcase and it was filled with these LPs of all these Western artists. So I remember holding the Madonna LP in my hand, Material Girl. I would read it and I had no idea what it meant, but I was just so excited. I said ‘Dad, where did you get this?’ He said ‘Don’t ask any questions. We have until morning to go through all these LPs and to record them on cassettes. So whatever you want, just go for it, girl.’ I was up with my dad listening to all these LPs and I remember Falco; I remember Nana, Bananarama, Rick Astley, Aha – all these bands from the ‘80s. Later on I learned that dad had to schmooze up this local DJ to be able to bring these LPs home, and it was literally just for several hours we had them and then he had to return it.”</p><h4>Bulgaria</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/MLGMT99UFuk?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I remember my very first trip when I was ten. My sister and my grandmother, we traveled to Bulgaria. We were very excited because we were finally going to see the Black Sea. So traveling, it was quite a journey. It took us pretty much two and a half days on the bus, and I remember clearly crossing the borders. It was terrifying. It was standing in a long line, being afraid that they might send you back for whatever reason. There were policemen or soldiers with guns. There were dogs. There was nowhere to go; there were no restrooms at all, so you had to really hold or just go out there wherever. It was usually just a field, like open fields. Yeah, it was kind of terrifying for us as kids. We didn’t know what’s going to happen, and we could just see all the adults, the way they reacted to it, and that was terrifying because, as a child, you depend on the adult being able to help you.</p><p>“The Romanian border was probably the worst. There were a lot of small Gypsy children that would come and be knocking on the bus and they would be asking for anything, money or candy. There were so many of them and they would be looking so poor. Sometimes they were not even dressed; dirty little kids. So that was kind of hard to see. But then when we arrived in Bulgaria, we were like ‘Wow!’ It was just like a different world, being able to see the Black Sea and eating different foods and people speaking different languages. That was really nice.”</p><h4>The Fall</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/eX3vbrbZZFU?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I was looking forward to seeing something different and pretty much when they were saying that we are opening borders, all I could think of was ‘Wow, we can actually just go somewhere else than Bulgaria?’ So that was my first thought in my head: travel. Travel and see the world. I don’t know if the seed of coming to America was planted back then, but it might have. I really just wanted to know where the beautiful napkin with Strawberry Shortcake came from. It was something that I think a lot of people my age wanted to do. They wanted to go out West – not necessarily to the United States – but just experience and learn.”</p><h4>Velvet Revolution</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WtfpMls-Iag?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“There were definitely a lot of things happening in Košice. For example, the Východoslovenské železiarne [Eastern Slovakia Iron Works], where my mom worked for many years, all of the sudden they have a new owner. U.S. Steel, from Pennsylvania is coming and taking over. So that was huge. This is a company that has years of history in the metallurgical industry. The import/export business has always been there – and heavy. We’re talking, this company employed thousands and thousands of people, so that was the very, very strong talk.</p><p>“My mom stayed in her current job but then changed positions, and with the U.S. Steel coming as part of the new wave, there were a lot of changes that even for my mom were hard to digest. Because people lived this life day by day for so many years and not everybody is very good with change, and this was very strong. This was very strong. I remember my mom, so many times she would come home really exhausted and she was like ‘You know what these Americans have come up with again?!’ I can’t remember quite exactly what, but she was in charge of – U.S. Steel had internal dry cleaning/laundry because there were a lot of workers who had uniforms and those were the people that the service was for, but then my mom also had clients like local hotels or motels and accommodations for the workers, and so there were a lot of changes in the technology of how the business was run. [It was] much more strict. Not too many coffee breaks; not too much smoking cigarettes and a lot of people didn’t like that. So the capitalism was definitely, slowly but surely, getting in, and a lot of people lost jobs because they were not flexible enough, I would say.”</p><h4>Social Slovaks</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/3HuDfg4SoKE?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“This social group was created purely out of my own curiosity and maybe a little homesickness. I kind of wanted to create a sense of community of Slovaks in this area, to learn who is out there, who may be interested to get together and talk about our upbringing and culture, eat the food and just have a simply good time. And slowly but surely, since 2006 when I started this group, the meet-up has over 230 members. Not everybody is active, which is fine with me, but we do a lot of different things and I have met so many wonderful, wonderful friends through this meet-up. Great friendships; we help each other if we can. So it is almost like my own little family that I have here in D.C.”</p>
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Title
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Ludmila Sujanova
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Ludmila Sujanova was born in Košice in eastern Slovakia in 1972. Her mother, Zlata, worked for a steel company and her father, Vilém, was a manager of manufacturing equipment at a food production company. She has one younger sister. Some of Ludmila’s earliest and strongest memories center around food – she recalls living above a market and standing in line for certain goods like milk and fruit. She also has fond memories of gardening at her family’s <em>chata</em> [summer cottage] outside of Košice where they grew much of their own food. Ludmila says that she was interested in dressmaking from a young age and, after eighth grade, enrolled in a high school in Svidník that focused on fashion design where she lived in a dorm. After graduating in 1991, Ludmila worked at a ski resort for a few months before landing a job as a salesperson in a shop that sold sewing goods and accessories. She worked there for over two years and says that the private business did well in those years following the fall of communism. She also took English lessons at this time and was hoping to travel to the West – something that she had been looking forward to since the Velvet Revolution.</p><p> </p><p>In 1994, one of Ludmila’s friends helped her to get a job as an au pair outside London. After one year in Britain, Ludmila applied to an agency that staffed foreign students at camps in the United States. She was placed at a camp in Connecticut and, in May 1995, flew to New York City. Following her stint at camp, Ludmila moved to Brooklyn where she first worked in a restaurant. After a few jobs as an au pair in Connecticut and New Jersey, she returned to New York and worked as a seamstress in a fashion studio in the garment district of Manhattan. Ludmila then moved to Florida where she took classes at a local community college and worked for a country club. She returned to Slovakia for a visit in 2000. In 2003, Ludmila moved to the Washington, D.C. area where she continued to take classes in interior design and began working at the Container Store. Today, she works in sales and visual merchandising for the company. Ludmila received her American citizenship in 2006, an event which she says was ‘a very big deal.’ That same year, she began a social meet-up group to connect with her fellow Slovaks; she says that through this group she has created her ‘own little family…in D.C.’ Ludmila lives in Germantown, Maryland.</p>
Creator
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National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library
Source
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NCSML Archive
American citizenship
Community Life
Education
Fashion
Kosice
Post-1989 emigrant
Privatization
Rural life
Svidnik
Velvet Revolution
Vychodoslovenske zeleziarne
Western/Pop culture