Gene embarked on a career as a cartoonist and animator. He drew covers and cartoons for the jazz magazine The Record Changer and joined the animation studio UPA (United Productions of America). He later became the creative director of CBS Terrytoons. In 1959, Gene had started his own studio, Gene Deitch Associates, Inc, which was primarily producing commercials. He was asked to travel to Prague by a client who wanted him to direct a film there. As Gene was reluctant, this client promised to fund a project particularly close to Gene’s heart (the pet project was a film called Munro – which later won an Oscar). In October 1959, Gene arrived in Prague, and he recalls his first impression of the city as ‘creepy.’ However, he soon met Zdenka Najmanová, the studio’s production manager, and fell in love with both her and the city. Gene says that as soon as he returned to the States, he was ‘looking for ways to get back’ to Prague. He returned shortly thereafter and married Zdenka in 1964. Gene’s career flourished in Prague; he produced many films, including several installments of the popular series Tom and Jerry.
Gene says that he was received with some suspicion in communist Czechoslovakia; his reasons for being there – love and work – were too simple for people to believe. Following the Warsaw Pact invasion in August 1968, Gene and Zdenka traveled to Vienna to contact his family back in the United States. When they attempted to return, Gene says they were not allowed back in, as the country had closed its borders. The two went to Norway to work on a project while the studio convinced the government that Gene’s work was beneficial to the country and that he should be allowed to return. He says that in the mid-1980s, the two considered moving to the United States, and even went so far as to buy a house in San Francisco; however, the event of the Velvet Revolution led them to stay in Prague. Gene remains an American citizen and over the years he has frequently traveled back to the United States. Today, he lives in Prague with Zdenka.
Gene’s newest project, an online book about people who have influenced him
]]>Gene Deitch was born in Chicago in 1924 to Ruth Delson Deitch and Joseph Deitch, a salesman. The Deitch family moved to California after the stock market crash in 1929 and Gene started school in Hollywood. Gene enjoyed creating classroom and neighborhood newspapers, and the different printing techniques he used over the years speak to his lifelong love of technology. He was also fascinated by the movie industry and especially enjoyed watching cartoon shorts. After graduating from Los Angeles High School in 1942, Gene joined the war effort and drew aircraft blueprints for North American Aviation. It was there he met his first wife, Marie. They married in 1943 and had three sons together. That same year, Gene was drafted and, although he trained to become a pilot, he fell ill with pneumonia and was honorably discharged in May 1944.
Gene embarked on a career as a cartoonist and animator. He drew covers and cartoons for the jazz magazine The Record Changer and joined the animation studio UPA (United Productions of America). He later became the creative director of CBS Terrytoons. In 1959, Gene had started his own studio, Gene Deitch Associates, Inc, which was primarily producing commercials. He was asked to travel to Prague by a client who wanted him to direct a film there. As Gene was reluctant, this client promised to fund a project particularly close to Gene’s heart (the pet project was a film called Munro – which later won an Oscar). In October 1959, Gene arrived in Prague, and he recalls his first impression of the city as ‘creepy.’ However, he soon met Zdenka Najmanová, the studio’s production manager, and fell in love with both her and the city. Gene says that as soon as he returned to the States, he was ‘looking for ways to get back’ to Prague. He returned shortly thereafter and married Zdenka in 1964. Gene’s career flourished in Prague; he produced many films, including several installments of the popular series Tom and Jerry.
Gene says that he was received with some suspicion in communist Czechoslovakia; his reasons for being there – love and work – were too simple for people to believe. Following the Warsaw Pact invasion in August 1968, Gene and Zdenka traveled to Vienna to contact his family back in the United States. When they attempted to return, Gene says they were not allowed back in, as the country had closed its borders. The two went to Norway to work on a project while the studio convinced the government that Gene’s work was beneficial to the country and that he should be allowed to return. He says that in the mid-1980s, the two considered moving to the United States, and even went so far as to buy a house in San Francisco; however, the event of the Velvet Revolution led them to stay in Prague. Gene remains an American citizen and over the years he has frequently traveled back to the United States. Today, he lives in Prague with Zdenka.
Gene’s newest project, an online book about people who have influenced him
“I was infected with all these kinds of things, of ways of creatively communicating; and seeing the cartoons every day, I got to be really big on Mickey Mouse and all the cartoons of the day. When I did get up into the high school level and was putting out this magazine, and the magazine, incidentally, was called The Hollywood Star News, and we made ourselves fake press cards. By this time we were teenagers and we were even able to borrow my partner’s car – he was the son of a doctor so they had money – and we would actually go to the cartoon studios, show our press cards – and it was a great joke, a great laugh – and they always let us in. And I met the real, great stars of the Disney studios in those days as a kid. Later I even found one guy, Ward Kimball, who remembered me. He was one of Disney’s Nine Old Men (the Disney studios had key animators they called the Nine Old Men). But when I first met them, I was a kid and they took me in to their work, they showed me their test animation on the movie auto machine, and I immediately became infected with that, and because I had this toy [movie] projector, all these things somehow came together and focused me on what I really wanted to do.”
“When this plane landed, of course the airport in Prague was extremely primitive then, and we landed at what looked like a shack, a wooden building that actually a neon hammer and sickle over the top, and it was really a foggy day in October. It was creepy; I was scared as hell coming in there. Out of the fog comes loping this woman right onto the tarmac – in spite of the fact that there was communism and everything, you could do things then you couldn’t possibly do today, just walk out on to the tarmac where the airplanes are landing, and there wasn’t any fancy way of getting off the plane; they just moved a ladder up to the plane, a metal ladder, and you walked down – and she comes to me with her had stuck out and said ‘Mr. Deitch, if you thought you were going to be taken directly from the airport to the jail, it’s not true. Welcome to Prague.’ Those were the first words I heard getting off the plane, because she knew that any American coming here was going to be frightened at the idea of coming to a communist country. And, of course, they took my passport away right away, and I began to wonder whether this whole thing was a trap, I was being set up, who knows what. I was absolutely in the dark, and I couldn’t understand a word anybody was saying, so that was my introduction.”
“Naturally, in my situation of being here officially with a contract and everything, making films for export to America, I was invited to different affairs and I did meet communist dignitaries. Nikita Khrushchev was supposed to have said, or he did say in the U.N., ‘We will defeat you, we will overcome you, we will prevail…’ Nobody ever said that to me here; that was the funny thing. I would meet ministers in the government who’d say ‘Oh Mr. Deitch, we’ve heard you were here, we hope that everything is ok. We know we don’t have everything that you’re used to, but we’re making great progress,’ and always apologizing. They never said ‘We will defeat you.’ They never said ‘Communism is going to prevail in the world.’ They were quite aware of how I was seeing it. That it was primitive and it was rundown and that you couldn’t buy anything in the store. There weren’t enough fruit and vegetables in the store. There wasn’t enough of anything; you couldn’t even buy toilet paper. So there was no point in them trying to tell me how great everything was. They just said ‘Of course we’re having certain difficulties because we’re isolated and there are trade embargoes against us and we are struggling. We know we don’t have the things we’re used to, but we hope that you’re comfortable. We try to make everything as good as we can.’ But they were really defensive. That was the amazing thing. Nobody tried to give me propaganda. Nobody. It was really amazing. First of all, even those people, even those high [ranking] people didn’t believe in any of it. It was just the way that it was and the way that it had to be.”
“Just the fact that I was here was the message. I realized that I didn’t have to say how great capitalism was, and I mean, I had plenty of problems with capitalism. They saw that I had an American passport. That I could get in my car and drive in the morning and do shopping in West Germany and come back with all the things I needed in one day. They thought that was amazing. They said ‘Any of us who would be able to cross that barbed wire fence and get out of this country, we’d never come back!’ But that I got in my car in the morning and drove there and back the same night with all the stuff in my car – that was the message. What did I have to say? I didn’t have to say anything. It’s just the fact that I realized that all I needed to do was be here, stay out of trouble and I was the message without having to say one word in favor of capitalism.”
“He came to Prague in 1964 and gave a series of concerts which I recorded. The local Communists, on the one hand, were happy to have him come, but on the other hand, were suspicious because they knew he was an American Communist, and that was not the kind of communist they were. They didn’t bother to record him. By that time, I had really good, professional equipment, and I did record his concerts, and they realized too late the importance of his visiting here. Supraphon, the recording company here, they never did record him, they had to buy my recordings, and they did put it out on an LP, and later it’s been put on CD of those original recordings of mine.”
“Things were gradually… in the mid-’60s you started to see a few things in the newspapers that seemed to be really weird, little by little. There was even, in the late 1960’s, a picture suddenly of Masaryk was published in one of the literary newspapers. That was just a miracle, tiny little picture of Masaryk. His name was never mentioned; he didn’t even exist as far as the news here or in Rudé právo, a Communist newspaper, his name was never mentioned. So when things like that started to happen, you knew something was happening. And then plays by Václav Havel began to be performed at the Theatre on the Balustrade [Divadlo na zábradlí]. There was a certain softening up; we began to have a little hope. Better quality goods began appearing in the shops in the mid-’60s. But you couldn’t take it too seriously, but there was a certain kind of liberalization. There was obviously an internal pressure within the Communist Party and we didn’t know from whom. But January 1, 1968 suddenly we heard this guy – never heard of him – Alexander Dubček was named First Secretary of the Communist Party, and week by week, month by month, really strange things started happening.
“We knew something was really happening, it was absolutely beyond understanding that this was going on. And suddenly newspapers started to print interesting stuff, magazine articles and even the news reels were all propaganda before. So then the highlight came in May. The May Day parade in 1968 was something unforgettable. This was the first time we all wanted to go there, even me, and I never wanted to go to Communist things like this, but we said we were all going to go to the parade this time. We all wanted to go past that stand and wave to Dubček, because he suddenly was a fantastic hero.”
Yvette Kaiser Smith was born in Prague in 1958. Her father Karel worked in theatre, and her mother Vlasta was a secretary. Yvette’s sister, Miroslava, was older by 18 months. Yvette recalls having ‘total freedom’ as a child in Prague, walking the city streets alone and taking the tram to extracurricular activities and doctor’s appointments. She participated in what she calls ‘typical’ after-school activities such as swimming and theatre. In January 1968, Yvette’s father traveled to the United States for work; although his visa was valid until 1969, he returned for a brief period following the Warsaw Pact invasion in August 1968 and made the decision for his family to join him in the United States. He then returned to the United States and Yvette’s mother went about securing passports for the family. In late December 1968, Yvette, her mother and sister left Czechoslovakia for England, where they stayed with a relative. After one month in England, Yvette’s father sent the family money for plane tickets, and they flew to Dallas, Texas.
The Kaisers lived in an apartment in the Highland Park area of Dallas. Yvette’s father worked in construction and her mother found employment as a maid. She began school in March 1969 without knowing how to speak English. Yvette says she learned quickly, thanks to help from her classmates and teachers. She says that although the family spoke Czech at home and her parents kept a Czech household, once she became fluent in English she ‘became American overnight.’ In 1990, she earned a degree in fine arts from Southern Methodist University and married her husband Tim. They moved to Chicago in 1991 and she enrolled in a masters program at the University of Chicago. After receiving her MFA, Yvette began her career as an artist. Although she started out as a sculptor, Yvette says that her first trip back to Prague in 1998 changed her direction as an artist and she now crochets fiberglass. In 1999, Yvette’s parents moved back to Prague to live and she often went to visit them. She says that she has retained a few Czech traditions at home, mainly celebrating Christmas on December 24 and making traditional foods on other holidays. Today, Yvette lives in Chicago with her husband and father.
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Yvette Kaiser Smith was born in Prague in 1958. Her father Karel worked in theatre, and her mother Vlasta was a secretary. Yvette’s sister, Miroslava, was older by 18 months. Yvette recalls having ‘total freedom’ as a child in Prague, walking the city streets alone and taking the tram to extracurricular activities and doctor’s appointments. She participated in what she calls ‘typical’ after-school activities such as swimming and theatre. In January 1968, Yvette’s father traveled to the United States for work; although his visa was valid until 1969, he returned for a brief period following the Warsaw Pact invasion in August 1968 and made the decision for his family to join him in the United States. He then returned to the United States and Yvette’s mother went about securing passports for the family. In late December 1968, Yvette, her mother and sister left Czechoslovakia for England, where they stayed with a relative. After one month in England, Yvette’s father sent the family money for plane tickets, and they flew to Dallas, Texas.
The Kaisers lived in an apartment in the Highland Park area of Dallas. Yvette’s father worked in construction and her mother found employment as a maid. She began school in March 1969 without knowing how to speak English. Yvette says she learned quickly, thanks to help from her classmates and teachers. She says that although the family spoke Czech at home and her parents kept a Czech household, once she became fluent in English she ‘became American overnight.’ In 1990, she earned a degree in fine arts from Southern Methodist University and married her husband Tim. They moved to Chicago in 1991 and she enrolled in a masters program at the University of Chicago. After receiving her MFA, Yvette began her career as an artist. Although she started out as a sculptor, Yvette says that her first trip back to Prague in 1998 changed her direction as an artist and she now crochets fiberglass. In 1999, Yvette’s parents moved back to Prague to live and she often went to visit them. She says that she has retained a few Czech traditions at home, mainly celebrating Christmas on December 24 and making traditional foods on other holidays. Today, Yvette lives in Chicago with her husband and father.
“I love my mom and I have no complaints about my upbringing, but I think we were just, like, running wild. I remember running around the city when I was really young. Getting on the tram unattended. Going downtown, running around. It’s not like here where you’re worried about what’s going to happen to your children. We’d walk to the doctor on your own. That’s what I remember. It’s a strange thing to say, but I remember total freedom as a kid.”
“We landed at Love Field in Dallas, Texas. I remember that very clearly. Karel made some friends, they picked us up, we drove down Lemmon Avenue, went through my first drive-thru, I had my first hamburger and a Dr. Pepper. I still love Dr. Pepper; the smell has a very specific smell. Because Dallas has the plant where they make Dr. Pepper and, to me, it’s just a feel-good thing. Good drive-thru hamburger – Princess burgers – and a Dr. Pepper. That was my first American joy.”
“I had no English; I started school. Every hour, the teacher took the smartest kid in the class, and that student and I went to the back of the room or in the hallway, used flashcards and first-grade readers and I can tell you this – this is what I remember, I could be exaggerating – but I remember at the end of that school year, what is that? Maybe two months? Two and a half months? I understood and was able to speak probably 90-95% of what I know now. My English was perfect, very heavy accent.”
“If they would have stayed in America, they would have had to work their crap jobs until they died. They were sort of bound to the mortgage; bound to paying for life. Really, their American success story is us, is me. That I have choices. That I can get away with being an artist and not having a ‘real job.’ That I was able to realize who I am. That’s their American dream. I think they didn’t benefit from it they way I clearly did.”
“You know, it’s a funny thing. When I go back there [to Prague], I’m a foreigner. Living here, I’ve been here most of my life, but I’m realizing I don’t actually fit. I’m more of a Czech-American than American. When I go back to Prague, I’m a total foreigner. They don’t recognize me as a Czech person, so it’s funny.”
“When my mom and I went back for three weeks, it was like this emotional roller coaster. When you walk through big streets and little streets and all these places, the park where you grew up. I was like a really dried up sponge and all the sudden I was soaked in water and I just, it was like a wafer that expanded. I was so emotional back then, I couldn’t even tell you. It was crazy. It’s like I was asleep and I woke up. And I can’t even define it. It was like in a big stroke way, not in little details. Literally, that’s the image I get. I was like a little wafer and I just puffed up. That’s the big thing. If you have to sort of identify the Czech-ness and the American-ness, that’s when the Czech-ness sort of woke up. And I thought ‘Oh! Hello.’ Part of it was, it’s that time, there’s like there’s this big, dead, blind gap between then and what was then now. There was no memory. But all of the sudden, going back to those streets, to the smells, to the same stores. Like Bílá labut’, it was just a department store – and it actually finally closed a few years ago – but we went there when I was a shorty. It was still there. Obviously Prague didn’t change a whole lot, but a lot of the places were still there and all of the sudden it woke up all these memories; and it was like dead silence for, what, 30 years, filled up with pictures and smells. It was crazy. So that was sort of the identity awakening.”
Vit graduated from university in 1975 and went to the Moravian town of Šumperk to take an acting job in the municipal theatre. He left the theatre after one year so as to move back to Prague, where he worked as a freelance actor and developed plans to leave the country. The chance came in 1978 when Vit was translating Primo Levy’s Il Sistema Periodico; he says he managed to procure an invitation from the author to consult with him on the translation in Italy. Vit left Czechoslovakia in March 1978. He did travel to Italy, but continued on to France, where he spent one year in Paris, studying mime and waiting for either the United Kingdom or the United States to process his visa request. He arrived in New York City in February 1979, sponsored by the American Fund for Czechoslovak Refugees. Vit settled briefly in Queens, working first as a bike messenger and then a cab driver. He subsequently moved to Manhattan and became involved in the Czech-American black light theatre company Divadlo Ta Fantastika. He stayed with Ta Fantastika for a number of years, moving to Florida in the mid-1980s with the company. Towards the end of the 1980s, however, Vit embarked upon his own venture, the Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre – using (among other props) puppets unearthed in the attic of New York City’s Jan Hus Presbyterian Church.
Vit has toured the United States with the Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre on several occasions, often performing his adaptations of traditional Czech fairytales (such as Rusalka and Jenůfa) in American schools. He serves on the board of the Bohemian Benevolent and Literary Association and lives in Manhattan with his wife Bonnie. The couple have one daughter, Sarazina, who is currently in the Czech Republic on a scholarship learning Czech.
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Vit Horejs was born in Prague in 1950. His father, Jaromír, was a teacher and author (who published over 50 books), while his mother, Věra, taught gym and Czech. Vit was the youngest of three siblings. Growing up in communist Czechoslovakia, he says he ‘believed in the system’ and even became Young Pioneer of the Year when he was around ten years old. Vit says he became disillusioned following the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. That same year, he made his first trip to France. It was at this time that Vit began studying French, philosophy and theatre at Charles University in Prague. He returned to France in 1969, having faked an invitation to secure himself an exit permit. Also during his studies, Vit visited England which, he says, made him ‘fall in love with English’ and consider a life abroad. He stayed in the United Kingdom for longer than his exit permit allowed and so had his passport confiscated upon his return to Czechoslovakia.
Vit graduated from university in 1975 and went to the Moravian town of Šumperk to take an acting job in the municipal theatre. He left the theatre after one year so as to move back to Prague, where he worked as a freelance actor and developed plans to leave the country. The chance came in 1978 when Vit was translating Primo Levy’s Il Sistema Periodico; he says he managed to procure an invitation from the author to consult with him on the translation in Italy. Vit left Czechoslovakia in March 1978. He did travel to Italy, but continued on to France, where he spent one year in Paris, studying mime and waiting for either the United Kingdom or the United States to process his visa request. He arrived in New York City in February 1979, sponsored by the American Fund for Czechoslovak Refugees. Vit settled briefly in Queens, working first as a bike messenger and then a cab driver. He subsequently moved to Manhattan and became involved in the Czech-American black light theatre company Divadlo Ta Fantastika. He stayed with Ta Fantastika for a number of years, moving to Florida in the mid-1980s with the company. Towards the end of the 1980s, however, Vit embarked upon his own venture, the Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre – using (among other props) puppets unearthed in the attic of New York City’s Jan Hus Presbyterian Church.
Vit has toured the United States with the Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre on several occasions, often performing his adaptations of traditional Czech fairytales (such as Rusalka and Jenůfa) in American schools. He serves on the board of the Bohemian Benevolent and Literary Association and lives in Manhattan with his wife Bonnie. The couple have one daughter, Sarazina, who is currently in the Czech Republic on a scholarship learning Czech.
“There was one moment when there were elections and I refused to vote, which was tantamount to voting no for the Party. She [my mother] was very scared about that and she was trying to convince me to go and vote. But I didn’t.”
What was the voting age?
“Eighteen.”
You didn’t go and vote?
“I didn’t go and vote, I was actually… I was on purpose not at home on the day of the voting, on the election day. Because I knew, somehow I knew that they might come to – the election committee might come and invite me to vote. And they did in my absence.”
“Talking about the politics, it was very tightly controlled by the government, by the Communist Party. You were told what plays you could produce and what you could not stage. You also had to produce a Soviet play, and a play that was so-called ‘progressive’ – that was a political propaganda play. I was fortunate that actually I didn’t have to play, for the year that I was in this theatre, I didn’t have to play in any of those propaganda pieces. I even got to play in an American play. It was controlled, you were only allowed a certain percentage of Western plays, so I was in that ten percent of Western plays we were allowed to play. The theatre had altogether ten plays in a year. We would split the company and stage ten plays, of which I was in five.”
“She once, during Charter 77, she – there was a meeting at her school and the Communist Party chief was talking against Charter 77 and she asked her, my mother asked her, “Well, have you read it?” And the communist said “No,” and my mother pulled out Charter 77, a copy, and handed it to her. That was definitely the wrong thing to do. Fortunately they kind of hush-hushed it, she just had to move, she couldn’t teach in that particular part of Prague anymore and eventually she stopped teaching altogether and became a dorm supervisor for high school kids, which she liked better anyway. I remember that moment when… She actually had a nervous breakdown when this happened to her, and I remember us children telling her “How could you do that? This is just something that’s not done!” And then I realized the absurdity of it, that she was doing something that was right, but of course, under that current regime, it was suicidal to do anything like that.”
“I was scared of the United States before coming here. I knew… I guess there were still some remnants of the communist propaganda in me about America. There was what I knew from novels about crime in the United States and I was expecting that I would immediately be meetings gangsters at the airport. But that did not happen. I was met by a friend, because already in Prague we – there were three of us at [Charles University’s] Department of Philosophy that decided we would leave, and we planned together and all managed to leave at around the same time, and they already were in the United States, so I stayed with them in Queens for a little while. But my first impression: I didn’t quite meet the gangsters, but my first impression was that New York was tremendously dirty.”
“In 1984, while I was with the black light theatre [Ta Fantastika], I did a storytelling performance at Jan Hus Church with my three marionettes. And they told me, “We used to have a puppet theatre here.” So I kept asking what happened to the puppets until they let me go to the attic and there, in an old chest, were 24 marionettes – 24 large marionettes – between 18 and 26 inches.”
… The dimensions of the ones…
“No, these are 48 inches. These are much bigger. Maybe we can pan later on across some of those puppets here. So, I did two shows at Jan Hus Church and the second one, the next week after the discovery, I brought out a king and a vodník (a water spirit) and did a story with vodník and a story with the king. And then kind of kept thinking about them. And when I quit the black light theatre I put together with another friend, Jan Unger, who studied puppetry at the puppetry school in Prague – the Academy of Musical Arts [DAMU] had a puppetry department – so with him I put together a puppet company.
“My own training in puppetry really goes to childhood when I played with my mother’s toy puppet theatre from the 1920s and, together with my brother and sister, we put on shows. Fairy tales, mostly.”
“I was really determined not to be closed in a Czech community. So I met some Czechs, but I was trying to totally live in an American circle, in American circles, and I purposely avoided Czechs. And despite that I met some Czechs who are good friends, but it took quite a while before I joined some Czech organizations, and that was after I started our theatre company. And surprisingly enough – that is contradicting everything I was saying, but I was trying not to meet Czechs, but I was telling Czech stories and started a Czech puppet theatre company.”
“At one point I tried, I was reading to my daughter in Czech when she was really small, and at some point she started refusing it, at a point where she recognized that she didn’t understand, she suddenly started refusing reading in Czech. And I gave up too easily, I guess, because years later she complained that I never taught her Czech.”
In 1994, at the suggestion of an American friend who was renting one of her rooms, Veronika and a friend traveled to the United States. She arrived in Chicago and quickly became involved in the Czech community there. Her first job was working at a carpet store, but she soon began waitressing and found a job at Klas, a Czech restaurant in the Chicago suburb of Cicero. Veronika married and decided to stay in the United States. She took English classes to improve her language skills and also received a certificate in computer graphics from the International Academy of Merchandising and Design. She was offered a job building web sites at Apartments.com. After the company changed hands several times, Veronika took a job at Bank of America editing the firm’s internal web site. She has been with the company for over 12 years and has had various job titles and responsibilities.
Veronika says that she tries to visit the Czech Republic once a year and loves that her teenage daughter is aware of her heritage and history. She hopes to send her daughter to school abroad and to spend more time in the Czech Republic as a result. Veronika is active in the Czech community in Chicago and volunteers her time and talents to the Chicago-Prague Sisters Cities organization.
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Veronika Heblikova-Balingit was born in Havlíčkův Brod in southeastern Bohemia in 1973. She lived with her mother, Milena, a secretary; her stepfather who worked in construction; and her younger sister. She regularly visited her father who lived in Prague and worked as a sound engineer for public broadcaster Czechoslovak Television. Veronika spent many weekends and vacations at her family’s cottage in Slavníč. She was interested in art and participated in after school art programs. At the age of 14, Veronika moved to Prague to attend an art school where she studied furniture design. She was 16 in November 1989 at the onset of the Velvet Revolution and, although she was not in Prague during the major student demonstration on November 17, Veronika says that she had participated in earlier protests and continued to gather in the city with other students in the following weeks. In the summer of 1990, Veronika took advantage of the newly-opened borders and traveled throughout Europe. Upon graduating, she took a job as a sales assistant in a clothing store and also did freelance work creating posters and flyers. Later, she worked for a new architecture firm designing office layouts. Her father helped her to secure an apartment in the Černý Most area of the city, and she was able to rent out several rooms. Veronika also took private English lessons.
In 1994, at the suggestion of an American friend who was renting one of her rooms, Veronika and a friend traveled to the United States. She arrived in Chicago and quickly became involved in the Czech community there. Her first job was working at a carpet store, but she soon began waitressing and found a job at Klas, a Czech restaurant in the Chicago suburb of Cicero. Veronika married and decided to stay in the United States. She took English classes to improve her language skills and also received a certificate in computer graphics from the International Academy of Merchandising and Design. She was offered a job building web sites at Apartments.com. After the company changed hands several times, Veronika took a job at Bank of America editing the firm’s internal web site. She has been with the company for over 12 years and has had various job titles and responsibilities.
Veronika says that she tries to visit the Czech Republic once a year and loves that her teenage daughter is aware of her heritage and history. She hopes to send her daughter to school abroad and to spend more time in the Czech Republic as a result. Veronika is active in the Czech community in Chicago and volunteers her time and talents to the Chicago-Prague Sisters Cities organization.
“We spent basically every free time there. Every weekend, all the summers, except for little vacations when we’d go somewhere else, that’s where we would be. Always doing something. There wasn’t any weekend where there wouldn’t be any project going on or a little gardening.”
What sort of projects did you do?
“Where do I start? There’s been several. From the big ones – building a garage – to a little smaller one – building a sauna behind a garage, complete with a pool that you would jump in. Yeah, that was a big project. To smaller ones, just a smaller place where you’d store food for the winter. Going to get the wood. Gardening. Just everything around. Plus, in a chalupa, you usually don’t have running water, so you spend a lot of time going for water. Drinking water, not-drinking water, washing the dishes, warming up the water and all that stuff. We did have a toilet inside, I have to say.”
“Of course I knew America existed. I’d seen some movies. I was lucky enough from the environment where I was and within the art community to be able to get music, and more than probably normal people would, so I was exposed to that. I had this idea of a dreamy place where everything is just so nice and everything works and everybody has everything they need. I think everybody had that [idea], and then you come here and it’s a different story. That didn’t necessarily pad desire to live here at that time, but I was fascinated by that. It was at that time where it was cool to be into it, especially music. I think that was a big influence.
“Some of these schools you get [into] through knowing people or famous people’s kids go there; that’s how it used to work. There were some of those around who had access to more Western things than any of us normal people, and so you’re exposed through them. That would be one way. In Havlíčkův Brod, I got to be friends with some of the bands that used to play at the time which was underground, and some of these people were involved. In Havlíčkův Brod all the underground was very active at the time, so I’d been getting samizdat, some of the books that were not available, through these people. I’d be seeing them, so we’d be talking about music or art or whatever was going on in the Western world, not being normally accessible.”
“I was involved before. There were demonstrations before the big one started. There were places I’d been where I shouldn’t have been. It was actually not very safe to be going to these places because you could be expelled from school and there were usually posted names on a board who got caught or who got expelled because they were caught. I’d been to some of these and was always able to run fast enough to hide. And we lived in the center of Prague, so everything was really happening right there. Plus, living in the center of Prague was also a cool thing because you know all the little streets and all the houses where you can run in and hide, so that’s what we used to do.
“Then, after I returned, when the big revolution actually started, everybody got into the streets and the students were demonstrating and schools were starting to close and kids were participating. Being in a school as cool as mine, it meant being involved on a daily basis at that time. I believe they stopped regular classes. We basically stayed in school 24/7; I believe we stayed for a week and brought our sleeping bags. We’d form little committees or we were printing pictures or posters and we had people coming in and bringing us food. It was very interesting. We had even concerts; Marta Kubišová came and played in the school on the stairs, in a hallway. It was a very interesting experience, of course, in between going out and actually participating in the demonstrations. It was very cool to live through that.”
“It was pretty clear that’s what it was. That’s what it was about. Yes, it was like ‘We’re done with this. It’s time to change it.’ We had enough of being censored, not being able to talk, not being able to gather. And all these things were just the big things, not to mention not being able to do what you wanted to do. Traveling was a huge thing for me especially because I would have loved to travel, but didn’t have the opportunity to go anywhere but the Eastern Bloc. So that was one big thing for – the borders being opened. But again, it came with the whole thing that you just don’t know what’s going to happen because you have the police involved, you have the army involved and you never know which way it’s going to be. But at that time it felt right to do that and you don’t think about the consequences. You just go at because everybody’s doing it. It’s cool. There is a reason why we are doing this. You want this.”
“For me, walking either to Wenceslas Square or Old City Square was the same distance. You would be able to cover both within a 15-minute walk. So either one, wherever there was more people and, at that time, you probably knew what was going on. It was already covered by media. There was what at the time was Hlas Ameriky [Voice of America]. There were some radios where you could get information, or other people did, and you just talked about it. The gatherings just started happening and, honestly, it was everywhere at that time. There was not necessarily one place where you would go. People just started going at it and the whole center would be covered with people. Most of it happened at Wencelsas Square, but then posters started being posted everywhere with this demonstration or that one, that time, and then it started with politicians and then the different parties started posting. I do remember the whole statue of Jan Hus at Old City Square was covered with posters. It almost was like ‘This really shouldn’t be happening. That’s a shame, because it’s kind of a cool thing. But then, it’s also really cool to have that.’ There were posters – really, literally, I couldn’t believe it – on the streets. Everybody was carrying something. Everybody had little stickers on or something indicating ‘Yeah, we’re with you kids.’ It was the students, mostly, who did that, so it was cool being part of that. But, again, I was in high school at the time and more of that decision-making happened at the college level with the students there. So being involved totally in the center, but being around at that time.”
“There were all these new stores popping up. Everybody opening up their little own businesses. It would just be one or two people running a new business. There were a lot of construction companies that would start or architectural or – what I’d known – little furniture stores. There was a huge demand for these things, so yes; there was a huge boom in that, definitely. Not necessarily in other areas; I think that took longer. I’m thinking clothing or other supplies that didn’t necessarily take off right away. I’m sure people tried to open these stores too. There were tons of them opening and closing. Kind of what’s going on here these days!”
“I think I was used to being very cultural. To doing things all the time and not necessarily even thinking what I was doing. It was the exposure to all these different things, living in the center – not necessarily even living in the center anymore when I started working. It probably comes with age as well. When you’re more around people who are not necessarily settled and doing things. It was just so much fun and there was a lot going on, and after I came here, all that just stopped. And not only because you don’t know anybody here; you’re still able to look around and find some people, or go to the Czech neighborhood and hang out with people there, but there was not that much culture going. It seemed that you need money to be doing things here. Which was something foreign to me. I didn’t have any money in Czech Republic and I was still doing all these things and now, suddenly, I’m supposed to be spending money on all these things to do cool things? So it was big. Not having my friends around, not having my family, not necessarily even being able to find a decent job, but not having all these cultural things or things to do after work.”
Tomas was 15 when the Velvet Revolution occurred. He was taking dance classes at the time and, against his parents’ wishes, joined the demonstrations in downtown Pardubice rather than attending his lessons. He has vivid memories of this time, although he admits that he was very young and didn’t fully understand what was going on. The fall of communism, however, was a ‘huge change in the life of every teenager, says Tomas, and was especially significant because of the resulting freedom to travel.
After graduating from high school, Tomas performed civil service in lieu of a one-year stint in the military. He found a job at the famed Barrandov Studios as a production assistant on documentary films for a foundation that supported the arts. Tomas moved to Prague and, while working at Barrandov, took classes at FAMU (the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague). Upon finishing his work at Barrandov, Tomas started his own web design business. In 2004, Tomas applied for the green card lottery and was awarded one in 2006. He moved to the United States in the fall of 2007 and settled in Chicago where he had several acquaintances. He has held several jobs and today is a freelance web designer and developer. Tomas lives in Chicago.
]]>Tomas Opatril was born in Pardubice, eastern Bohemia, in 1974. His parents worked as technical assistants at the Institute of Chemical Technology in the city, which was largely industrial. Tomas’s father, Petr, was an assistant researcher, while his mother, Helena, worked in the explosives department. Tomas enjoyed the outdoors and was a member of the Pioneers, which allowed him to attend summer camp and go on weekend outings. When he was older, he joined the Brontosaurus group, which was a volunteer organization that focused on the environment and nature and planned trips to work on conservation efforts. Tomas attended a mechanical high school.
Tomas was 15 when the Velvet Revolution occurred. He was taking dance classes at the time and, against his parents’ wishes, joined the demonstrations in downtown Pardubice rather than attending his lessons. He has vivid memories of this time, although he admits that he was very young and didn’t fully understand what was going on. The fall of communism, however, was a ‘huge change in the life of every teenager, says Tomas, and was especially significant because of the resulting freedom to travel.
After graduating from high school, Tomas performed civil service in lieu of a one-year stint in the military. He found a job at the famed Barrandov Studios as a production assistant on documentary films for a foundation that supported the arts. Tomas moved to Prague and, while working at Barrandov, took classes at FAMU (the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague). Upon finishing his work at Barrandov, Tomas started his own web design business. In 2004, Tomas applied for the green card lottery and was awarded one in 2006. He moved to the United States in the fall of 2007 and settled in Chicago where he had several acquaintances. He has held several jobs and today is a freelance web designer and developer. Tomas lives in Chicago.
“In the usual families, the father usually went on the business trips, but in our family, as I remember, our mother went on the business trips which were connected with some trials or explosion research in the fields for the army or for something like that. So she sometimes went for two weeks in Ostrava and she helped the researchers make explosions, and they did recordings of the explosions and they’d write down numbers and things like that. So I’m a typical child of Pardubice because all of my friends, I remember, at least one parent worked in some kind of chemistry.”
“Every young man and every young woman in the Czech Republic had to join dance lessons. It’s a Czech tradition, and every young man or young lady who’s the age of 15 must join and must visit the lesson of classical dance, which means polka, valčík [waltz] and other dancing in formal wear. And of course every young man and young woman commonly hate it, because it’s too formal and everybody loves a different kind of dancing that that. So it happened to me during the fall of 1989 and I also must join that taneční, dancing classes, and it brings me to the demonstrations against the communist government. Two days per week I rode the bus from the apartment building where I lived to the cultural center on the other side of the town. It was bus number six, and that bus crossed downtown Pardubice and the square where the demonstration against the government was happening.
“So I rode the bus across downtown Pardubice and I realized it would be better to join the anti-government demonstration than to go to the dance lesson, just quietly. So I just wore the formal wear and I said to my mom ‘Ok, so I’m going to dance classes and I’ll see you tonight,’ because the demonstrations were always late afternoon/evenings after people come from work. Everybody was wearing jeans, like normal, and I was in the formal wear. I met my friends and they asked me ‘Did you sign the petition?’ and I said ‘No, not yet,’ and then later I signed it, but I did it because they told me to. But I was not sure because I had absolutely no idea if the people from the opposition are true, because I didn’t study the political situation and economic situation and society before, so I was not sure if the truth was that way or on the other side or if it’s maybe in between. My friends were older and I trusted them; they understood much more than me, but I was really young. I was 15 and I didn’t understand what’s going on.”
“November ’89 was a huge change in the life of every teenager at that time because we thought that everything’s changing and now everything will be better and all those bad guys in government are going away, so it really means that we will have happier lives. And I think it happened; from 1989 to 2000 it was a really good ten years. As not just teenagers but young adults and other adults, we enjoyed especially the open borders. Because every young person wanted to travel, and it was impossible to travel to many countries during the communist era, and so that was a big, huge change for us and we really enjoyed that freedom – freedom of travel.”
“Most of my classmates and most of my friends of that generation tried to find a way to not join the army. Except for one or two guys of my generation, they were for one year in the army. In 1989 there was two years of military service and everybody must go, and after the Velvet Revolution it started coming down. So maybe in 1990 they made it for one and half years and after another two or three years it was just one year. But we still didn’t like it at all because it was not a modern army – no computers, no techniques, and just yelling at you to do this and do that, and it didn’t make sense that we will be more manly than before because we didn’t remember any one; they were just more stupid after one year. And we also didn’t like war, so it didn’t make sense to be a member of the army.
“So if we didn’t find some health issues, which was [a reason] to not be in the army, we found that a way to escape from the army was through civil service, like to help in the hospitals or something like that. I worked that way and I tried to find some one and a half year job in the civil sector, which included foundations. I was able to find this foundation that was interested in the arts. The foundation supported the theatres and something like that; the foundation I found supported documentary movies, so I did my military service at the ateliéry Barrandov [Barrandov Studios] in the film industry, and I spent my military service as an assistant of production and an assistant of camera in some small documentary productions. It was the first time I found something I really liked and it brought me out of machine technology and big industry to the people, and also to Prague. So I left my hometown where I was born and grew up and I moved to the biggest city which I really liked.”
Tom says he does not have many memories of Czechoslovakia, as he left the country when he was only seven years old. His mother was able to secure exit visas in 1949 when the department she worked for at the Dutch embassy came under scrutiny after her supervisor was named as a spy. Tom and his mother moved to Australia, where, he says, he did not make an effort to retain his Czech heritage. In 1958, Tom and his mother were sponsored by an acquaintance to come to America.
They arrived in Santa Barbara, California, but shortly thereafter moved to Connecticut. Tom began college at age 16, due to the differences in the American and Australian education systems. He studied political science at Hobart College (in New York) and received his master’s degree in journalism from University of Michigan. Tom interned atThe Daily Star, the English-language newspaper in Beirut, in 1968, where he remembers hearing about the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia. He also met and married his wife, Bonnie (a New Yorker) while in Beirut. Upon returning to the United States, Tom accepted a job offer from the Baltimore Evening Sun. He became an American citizen in 1975, but says he recently also got his Czech citizenship back.
While growing up, Tom knew little about his father. However, more recently he says he has made an effort to discover as much as possible. In 2007, Tom was the co-producer and subject of a documentary titled The Immortal Balladeer of Prague [Písničkář, který nezemřel] which chronicles his search for his father’s work and legacy. He says he is fascinated by the ‘political side’ of his father’s music, which, he adds, led ultimately to his father’s death. He also discovered his mother’s memoirs and diaries which has given him insight into his father’s personal character. Tom has visited Prague several times and says that he no longer feels like a tourist there. He currently lives in Baltimore, Maryland.
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Thomas Hasler was born in Prague in 1941. His mother, Charlotte Jurdová, was a linguist with a doctorate in philology from Charles University, and his father, Karel Hašler, was a very popular Czech songwriter, actor, director, and playwright who, before his son’s birth, was arrested by the Gestapo because of the patriotic nature of his songs. Karel Hašler was killed at Mauthausen concentration camp one month after Tom was born.
Tom says he does not have many memories of Czechoslovakia, as he left the country when he was only seven years old. His mother was able to secure exit visas in 1949 when the department she worked for at the Dutch embassy came under scrutiny after her supervisor was named as a spy. Tom and his mother moved to Australia, where, he says, he did not make an effort to retain his Czech heritage. In 1958, Tom and his mother were sponsored by an acquaintance to come to America.
They arrived in Santa Barbara, California, but shortly thereafter moved to Connecticut. Tom began college at age 16, due to the differences in the American and Australian education systems. He studied political science at Hobart College (in New York) and received his master’s degree in journalism from University of Michigan. Tom interned atThe Daily Star, the English-language newspaper in Beirut, in 1968, where he remembers hearing about the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia. He also met and married his wife, Bonnie (a New Yorker) while in Beirut. Upon returning to the United States, Tom accepted a job offer from the Baltimore Evening Sun. He became an American citizen in 1975, but says he recently also got his Czech citizenship back.
While growing up, Tom knew little about his father. However, more recently he says he has made an effort to discover as much as possible. In 2007, Tom was the co-producer and subject of a documentary titled The Immortal Balladeer of Prague [Písničkář, který nezemřel] which chronicles his search for his father’s work and legacy. He says he is fascinated by the ‘political side’ of his father’s music, which, he adds, led ultimately to his father’s death. He also discovered his mother’s memoirs and diaries which has given him insight into his father’s personal character. Tom has visited Prague several times and says that he no longer feels like a tourist there. He currently lives in Baltimore, Maryland.
“At the time, she [his mother] was working as a press attaché at the Dutch embassy. This is under the communist regime. And the communists had a spy in the Dutch embassy, and they identified my mother’s boss as a spy. So she was under pressure. And she told me, already, under the communists, she had all kinds of pressure – things were being stolen. They didn’t particularly appreciate middle-class, bourgeois people. So there was pressure, but this embassy situation increased the pressure, and so she negotiated with the secret police to be able to leave. The standard of leaving was you get one suitcase; she was able to take a couple of crates. And the Dutch government helped, because she was working for the Dutch government. They arranged for a ship, and at that time there was very little shipping, so [we took] a freighter from Holland to Australia, six weeks. And I have some vague memories of that. I’ve got sort of a King Neptune certificate for crossing the equator.”
“Initially, when I came to Australia – I think partially under my mother’s influence; she literally was disgusted with Europe, with the Nazis and the communists, and I, reflecting that, my attitude was ‘I want to learn English, I want to assimilate and to hell with the background.’ Yes, my father was a famous guy, so what? And so in Australia, I had virtually no connection with anything Czech.”
“Baltimore, at that time, was really the pits. This was post-‘68 riots, but, I was going to the paper of H.L. Mencken, and that swayed me. And I felt I needed some metropolitan newspaper experience, because I was working for a small newspaper in Beirut, and that’s how I ended up here. After moving here, we said, ‘Oh we’ll stay here a couple years.’ But then, part of my assignment was to write about, back in the early ‘70s, [William] Donald Schaefer was mayor, and they made efforts to revive the city, and I was writing about that and I got into it. I got interested in urban affairs. Also, I liked city living. That’s one thing rubbing off on me from Prague was liking living in the city. And my wife was from Westchester County, New York, so she’s rebelling against suburbia. So basically, living in the city suited us, walking to work. And then in ’75, we moved here.”
“Radan Dolejš organized another concert at Lucerna where leading contemporary Czech musicians played my father’s music. And to me that was a revelation. Compared to in ’72 when I found the records which made the whole sound very schmaltzy, who cares – now we had contemporary musicians giving it a real contemporary interpretation. I said, ‘Wow. This is something.’ Suddenly energized me into the music. Plus, I learnt that he composed jazz music, and dance music. I mean, he was no fuddy-duddy. And, the leading Czech rock group, called Olympic, play one of his songs. So one of his songs was adapted to rock music.
“And this reconnecting process is multifaceted. From seeing my father, a stony figure in the movie which I had no connection [to] – and my wife said she saw an eerie resemblance, they way she put it. I didn’t see it at all – to hearing Česká Písnička [one of his father’s best-known songs] for the first time and not understanding one word and being hit by it emotionally, to starting to find documents, to mama’s memoirs, to reconnecting to the music through these concerts in Prague, to the documentary, and going through the process of that.”
“And Arnošt [Lustig, the author who featured in The Immortal Balladeer with Tom], the interesting thing is, he saw my father as a symbol of the non-Jewish victims. Which, to me, elevated that. And he appears in the documentary, and he adds a sort of philosophical level, a humanistic level to it. Which is above and beyond my father, and that’s the part that so fascinates me. So one of the things I’m really interested in now is to use my father’s story, not for itself, but in conjunction with other people – not only Czechs – other people who are musicians, artists, writers, who defy oppression. And oppression doesn’t have to be Nazis or Communists; it can be anywhere.”
In 1999, Stanislav traveled to the United States at the invitation of a girl he had met at a concert in Prague. He spent six months in New Orleans, which he says he ‘didn’t like much,’ before moving to Austin, Texas, where he met his wife Tracy Miller. The pair then settled in Chicago, where Stanislav took a job as curator at the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art (UIMA). Stanislav says he enjoyed meeting Czechs and Slovaks once a week in the pub in Austin, but has not sought out members of the Slovak and Czech communities in Chicago, as he does not want to be part of a ‘closed’ society, the likes of which he sees in parts of the Ukrainian Village district in which he works. Stanislav remains a Slovak citizen and does not exclude the idea of returning to live in Europe later on in his life. He says he travels there with his wife at least once every two years and that each time they go, they stay for at least one month. Stanislav says that it has been good for his art to live in a larger city, as there is more ‘competition,’ which he finds stimulating.
Stanislav paints and creates mixed media pieces influenced by his surroundings. He says that he draws upon his memories from Slovakia, incorporating political and anti-political symbols in his work, as well as aspects of his country’s history, which is ‘very difficult to take out of your head.’ He recently exhibited a number of his newest prints and sculptures in Calgary at a solo show entitled Icons & Altars.
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Stanislav Grezdo was born in Piešt’any, western Slovakia in 1972. His father (also called Stanislav) worked at the local nuclear power station, while his mother Viera taught Russian and Slovak. Of his youth, Stanislav remembers disliking school and spending most of his time there drawing cartoons. He has fond memories of being a Pioneer and taking part in the annual First of May workers’ parades. In 1986, Stanislav moved to Bratislava to attend Polygrafická škola (Graphic Arts School). He was there when the Velvet Revolution happened, which he refers to as a ‘great time in his life.’ Stanislav graduated in 1991 and returned to Piešt’any, where he worked as a printer for eight years.
In 1999, Stanislav traveled to the United States at the invitation of a girl he had met at a concert in Prague. He spent six months in New Orleans, which he says he ‘didn’t like much,’ before moving to Austin, Texas, where he met his wife Tracy Miller. The pair then settled in Chicago, where Stanislav took a job as curator at the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art (UIMA). Stanislav says he enjoyed meeting Czechs and Slovaks once a week in the pub in Austin, but has not sought out members of the Slovak and Czech communities in Chicago, as he does not want to be part of a ‘closed’ society, the likes of which he sees in parts of the Ukrainian Village district in which he works. Stanislav remains a Slovak citizen and does not exclude the idea of returning to live in Europe later on in his life. He says he travels there with his wife at least once every two years and that each time they go, they stay for at least one month. Stanislav says that it has been good for his art to live in a larger city, as there is more ‘competition,’ which he finds stimulating.
Stanislav paints and creates mixed media pieces influenced by his surroundings. He says that he draws upon his memories from Slovakia, incorporating political and anti-political symbols in his work, as well as aspects of his country’s history, which is ‘very difficult to take out of your head.’ He recently exhibited a number of his newest prints and sculptures in Calgary at a solo show entitled Icons & Altars.
“During the time I was going to school, I was drawing comics during classes, because I was kind of bored. This means I drew many comic books during school times. And after that, I started working in the print shop and I had many leftovers from the print machines – screws and springs and things – and I started making collages from that. And later, after I moved to America, I was starting to do paintings, and now I do like mixed media painting, anything.”
“That was the great time in my life. I was in Bratislava, I was like 17 or something and the revolution started in… or some kind of signs of the revolution were in 1988 – the year before the real revolution, there was the candle demonstration. I remember I was in school, and they told us ‘don’t go there,’ and that kind of made us wonder, and we went there. And there was like the police and these firemen with hoses. That was so much fun that after, the year later, November 17 came, and we really wanted to go there. We were there and it was like, for young people – it was so much fun for us to be there. I saw Karel Kryl come to Bratislava and a performance there. It was kind of like a big event.”
“I’m not a person who is changing that often, but I met this girl from America – I was at a concert in the Czech Republic and I met this girl – and she really wanted me to see America. I really didn’t have that much interest about that, because it was kind of far, you know? Well, and after I [thought I’d] just go and see, so I was in New Orleans. I don’t like it that much, but in that time I want to make money, because in that time you don’t make that much money in Slovakia, but in the half a year that I was in New Orleans I was thinking I can just work there for a year and come back and I will have some money that I can do something with.
“And after I went to Austin to make some money, but I met there my current wife, and I just kind of got stuck in America. And after we decided to move to Chicago. And I am here. It was like totally unplanned. I still have all my stuff in Slovakia, you know, my room. Because I was not planning to stay here and I just kind of stayed. I am like 12 years here.”
“I was not really looking for the Czechoslovak community, because what my experience was that if I want to meet somebody from Czechoslovakia, it was just kind of for the memory of the past, not too much about the future, what I want to do. And I can see it perfectly with the example of the Ukrainians – some Ukrainians just live in their little Ukrainian communities; they never go outside of the community, they don’t speak English and they have their jobs where they speak only Ukrainian, they go to stores where there is only Ukrainians. And they are just kind of so closed that they are like living in some kind of little village in Ukraine. Which is good about the Slovaks and Czechs, because they don’t have that, they need to progress beyond that community. That is good for them because they need to learn English and don’t… you know – they need to do something else.”
“Yes I do, the language is more similar than… at least they are saying it – I think it is kind of between, between Russian and Slovak. I understand them, ninety percent of what they are saying. They understand me and what I am saying in Slovak. And I think the culture is kind of similar, also because we were in the same bloc. You know, we talk about these Pioneers outfits and stuff like that – everybody remembers. You know, we have similar things. Of course, there in the Soviet Union it was a little bit different but at some points we can get the same memories.”
“At that time I was not aware that this is a totalitarian state, because as a child I was very happy, because I don’t know any better. If I look back, especially at the time when I was older, I was not understanding why I have a problem with music, for example, why I cannot listen to that music. Or like, why somebody cares if I listen to Western music. I totally don’t understand that, like what was the reason for it? And I still do not understand what was the reason why we could not listen to Western bands, especially KISS, which is a very mild band – just because they have on make-up. What is the difference, you know? I still remember, KISS was enemy number one. And people don’t even know what they played. It’s a very mild rock and roll band. They’re not like Satanists or anything, you know, or capitalists, or anti-communists. They had nothing to do with that. I just don’t understand why we had so many problems with Kiss.”
“Yeah, I think my father liked that, you know, the time. Because imagine that you were born under communism, you live your whole life under communism and after things change and everything that you were preparing for or that you built all your life is like gone. I think he kind of lost his job in the end, or some money at least was stolen from his company because of the privatization, and he was kind of very angry about that. And I think he would be very happy to go back to communism, at least at some points, you know. “Yeah, my mother was also mentioning something; the children were much better at school. In communism there was more… it was better. Now they are just crazy – this is why she is not teaching any more. Well yeah, I know some people who would totally go back. At least like just the idea. There is no way how to go back, but they just kind of have good memories. Maybe because they were young or something, just kind of nostalgia. I’m not sure if that is real – all the memories, you know. I don’t think they really want to go back, sometimes you just have good memories.”
Richard says that one advantage of living in Bratislava was being able to watch Austrian television and gaining some knowledge of happenings in the West. In 1989, Richard graduated from high school and began studying computer science at Slovak Technical University. He also acted in the Slovak National Theatre as part of the background cast of Carmen. On the night of November 18, Richard arrived at the theatre to be told not to dress for the show. To support the student protests in Prague that had happened the previous day, his company went on strike – a moment that Richard says was the beginning of the Velvet Revolution in Bratislava. A few days later, Richard heard that the borders had opened and drove to Austria for the day; he returned home and then took his parents across the border.
Richard went to Finland for three months in 1990 to work on a translation project for computer systems, and he received his bachelor’s degree in 1991. He then enrolled at the University of Economics in Bratislava where he received his master’s degree in international business. In 1995 Richard went to the University of California, Santa Barbara, on a student work program where he developed the first web pages for the university. Although he was offered a full-time job there, he returned to Slovakia to finish his degree. For several years, Richard managed an internet service provider company. He married his wife, Monika (whom he had met during his time in the United States), in 1997. The pair decided to move to Canada in 1999. They arrived in Toronto where Monika quickly found a job with CitiBank. Richard worked as a project manager for five years before branching off to work as a project management consultant – a job he still holds today.
With his friend Pavol Dzacko, Richard began a non-profit organization called Canada SK Entertainment, which brings contemporary Slovak music and cultural acts to Toronto. Richard has one son who visits his grandparents in Slovakia each summer and has learned to speak Slovak. Richard himself returns to Slovakia several times a year and says that he feels both Toronto and Bratislava are his homes. He lives with his wife and son in Toronto.
]]>Richard Stilicha was born in Bratislava in 1971. His mother, Danica, a researcher, and his father, Peter, an editor, were both studying at university at the time he was born. Richard’s maternal grandparents helped to raise him in the family home in Bratislava’s Old Town. His maternal grandfather, Eugen Suchoň, was a very well-known composer who wrote the first Slovak national opera, and Richard himself began playing the piano at the age of four.
Richard says that one advantage of living in Bratislava was being able to watch Austrian television and gaining some knowledge of happenings in the West. In 1989, Richard graduated from high school and began studying computer science at Slovak Technical University. He also acted in the Slovak National Theatre as part of the background cast of Carmen. On the night of November 18, Richard arrived at the theatre to be told not to dress for the show. To support the student protests in Prague that had happened the previous day, his company went on strike – a moment that Richard says was the beginning of the Velvet Revolution in Bratislava. A few days later, Richard heard that the borders had opened and drove to Austria for the day; he returned home and then took his parents across the border.
Richard went to Finland for three months in 1990 to work on a translation project for computer systems, and he received his bachelor’s degree in 1991. He then enrolled at the University of Economics in Bratislava where he received his master’s degree in international business. In 1995 Richard went to the University of California, Santa Barbara, on a student work program where he developed the first web pages for the university. Although he was offered a full-time job there, he returned to Slovakia to finish his degree. For several years, Richard managed an internet service provider company. He married his wife, Monika (whom he had met during his time in the United States), in 1997. The pair decided to move to Canada in 1999. They arrived in Toronto where Monika quickly found a job with CitiBank. Richard worked as a project manager for five years before branching off to work as a project management consultant – a job he still holds today.
With his friend Pavol Dzacko, Richard began a non-profit organization called Canada SK Entertainment, which brings contemporary Slovak music and cultural acts to Toronto. Richard has one son who visits his grandparents in Slovakia each summer and has learned to speak Slovak. Richard himself returns to Slovakia several times a year and says that he feels both Toronto and Bratislava are his homes. He lives with his wife and son in Toronto.
“He was the best person in the world. I never saw him arguing about anything. He had a really, really great soft-spoken personality. He never raised his voice, he was never yelling, and he was a really family-oriented person. I remember we had a cottage in Modra, which is about a half an hour from Bratislava, and always for the weekend the whole family gathered there. Weekends were dedicated to the family. He was working during the week, but weekends it was family. And he was the one who was keeping all the family together, which was really nice of him.”
“We had no choice. We were forced to become Pioneers, which was sort of the starting ground for communism. It was mandatory; you couldn’t say no. And then as we went to high school we had to be in a different communist organization; it was called Zväzáci [The Czechoslovak Union of Youth] and we had to be in that organization as well. Always from the very beginning, we had political propaganda in our classes where they were telling us in really plan children’s language ‘You are living in a really great side of the world, and on the other side of the fence there are bad people, capitalists, imperialists. People are suffering there. There are people who work long hours that are not paid for that and their life is so miserable. You should be so happy you’re here because we all together will build a better future for us and together with the Soviet Union it’s going to be wonderful. Eventually we’ll reach the time where money will no longer be needed; everybody will take only what they need, and this is how people will co-exist.’ So at first I was like ‘Ok, this sounds good. I’m happy,’ and then I started to grow up and I started to realize that not everything is the way they are telling us, especially because Bratislava had a great advantage; we were able to watch Austrian TV. So we were also able to get Western news. We were able to get a look from the other side of the fence. I think that was a big plus and, my grandparents, they were always watching the Austrian news at 7:30. The ORF, the Österreichischer Rundfunk, always had the news from America. So, for example, I saw when there was an attempt to kill the American president [Reagan] and how it was.
“My grandpa, the communists were threatening and trying to get him to join the Party. They said ‘Look, you are a showcase of Slovak culture. You composed the first national opera. It’s appropriate for you to be in the Party.’ And he always refused. He said ‘I’m not going to do that. I’m sorry; I’m not going to do that.’ But he was trying to make peace with them. He was not fighting against communism. He said ‘You know what. You leave me alone, I’m going to be composing, and I’m not going to work actively against your regime.’ He was also very religious, so he was refusing to be in line with the communist propaganda.”
“I was acting in the Slovak National Theatre as a background person and that night we were supposed to play Carmen. Usually we came to the opera – it started at 7:00, so we came at 6:00 – we put on our clothes and we were waiting for our performance. That night, we didn’t know what was going on. I finished school at about 4:00, on the way I went through the city, and then at 6:00 I came to the dressing room and, suddenly, there are no costumes and nobody knows what is going on. I’m in the background and the director of the theatre – at that time it was Juraj Hrubant who was actually a great baritone and acted in all my grandparents’ operas – says ‘Don’t dress up. Just go to the stage and stay there.’ And the stage was not ready as well. So at 7:00, the whole opera ensemble stays there, the singers in the front and us in the back together with the players, the whole orchestra. Everybody on the stage. 7:00 comes, the curtain goes up and suddenly there is huge applause. As I said, I was 18. I had no idea what was going on. At that time, Hrubant says ‘We’re going to strike because of what happened in Prague yesterday.’ That was the start of the Velvet Revolution in Slovakia. I was right there. By coincidence, but I was right there.”
“We were just driving down toward the New Bridge in Bratislava, and we hear on the radio that the borders are open. That was the first day that the fence actually went down and they opened the borders to Austria. Coincidentally, we had our passports with us. So I’m telling my buddy, ‘You know what? Let’s see. Let’s check.’ So we go to the [Bratislava-Berg] border crossing which was already crowded and we said ‘We want to go to Austria.’ The guy said ‘No problem. Here is a piece of paper. Just write your name, give it to us…’ and suddenly we got to Hainburg. The feeling was unbelievable. Something which our parents couldn’t achieve for 40 years, suddenly, without any papers, just my passport, I was able to go to Austria. I saw a guy at the borders; he went back and forth 20 times. He couldn’t believe it. He was crying. He filled out 20 papers, because for every crossing you had to fill out one, so he was going back and forth; he was crying, kissing the ground. He said ‘I never believed that something like this would ever happen during my life. And then I go to Hainburg and we park in the main square, and there is a guy with a coffee shop and he says ‘You’re from Slovakia right? You can finally travel. Come; let me treat you guys for coffee.’ So he gave us cake. They were really welcoming. They said ‘You guys are finally free. We live so close to each, but at the same time we were so far away. Suddenly you’re here.’ The feeling was unbelievable.
“I come home and my parents know nothing. So I tell my dad – he was sitting in the kitchen – I said ‘You know what? I just came from Hainburg.’ He says ‘What do you mean you just came from Hainburg?’ I said ‘I went to Hainburg. The border is open.’ He says ‘You are crazy. I can’t believe that.’ I told him ‘Come.’ So I load them in the car, said ‘Bring your passports,’ I drive through the borders. They didn’t watch TV; it was very fresh news, and they started to cry. As I said, I was 18. I went a couple of times for a family vacation to the former Yugoslavia and back, but for them – for all of us – it was a life-changing experience. Really life-changing experience.”
“We had this philosophical discussion with my dad last time and he said ‘Really, tell me. Where do you feel at home?’ And of course he was expecting that I’m going to tell him here in Bratislava. I said ‘I’m at home here. I’m at home in Toronto as well. Really, when I’m returning from Slovakia, going back to my work, and my plane is landing at the Toronto airport, I feel at home here.’”
Petra Sith was born in Bratislava in September 1979, in Kramáre Hospital where her mother, Anna, worked as a nurse. Her mother married her stepfather, Peter Sith (a mechanical engineer for carmaker Škoda), when Petra was four years old. In 1983, Petra’s brother, Karol Sith, was born.Petra started grade school in Bratislava, of which she says she still has ‘fond memories.’ She did not stay there too long, however, before her family left the country. The Siths went on holiday to Yugoslavia in 1986 and it was there that Petra’s parents told her and her brother they had no intention of returning home.
The family spent about one year in refugee camps in Yugoslavia before moving to Traiskirchen camp in Austria. The Sith family spent another nine months in Traiskirchen before being sponsored by a distant relative in Illinois to come to the United States. They settled first in Chicago before moving to Fox Lake, Illinois, where Petra lived up until three years ago.
Petra says her parents were not able to find jobs at first in the U.S. which reflected their qualifications; her father started sweeping floors at a factory, while her mother worked in a laundromat. Eventually, Petra’s mother became a nursing assistant, while her father became a factory technician. Petra says her parents impressed the value of education upon her; she graduated from Chicago’s Roosevelt University in 2007. She currently works as a billing processor at Robert Half International and is studying for her master’s degree. Petra plays bass in a band called Losing Scarlet, which she describes as making ‘user-friendly, heavier rock music.’ She has a U.S. green card, but still travels on a Slovak passport. She has returned to Slovakia to see her family twice since coming to America; in 1994 and 2007. Today, Petra lives in Ingleside, Illinois, with her husband, Brad.
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Petra Sith was born in Bratislava in September 1979, in Kramáre Hospital where her mother, Anna, worked as a nurse. Her mother married her stepfather, Peter Sith (a mechanical engineer for carmaker Škoda), when Petra was four years old. In 1983, Petra’s brother, Karol Sith, was born.Petra started grade school in Bratislava, of which she says she still has ‘fond memories.’ She did not stay there too long, however, before her family left the country. The Siths went on holiday to Yugoslavia in 1986 and it was there that Petra’s parents told her and her brother they had no intention of returning home.
The family spent about one year in refugee camps in Yugoslavia before moving to Traiskirchen camp in Austria. The Sith family spent another nine months in Traiskirchen before being sponsored by a distant relative in Illinois to come to the United States. They settled first in Chicago before moving to Fox Lake, Illinois, where Petra lived up until three years ago.
Petra says her parents were not able to find jobs at first in the U.S. which reflected their qualifications; her father started sweeping floors at a factory, while her mother worked in a laundromat. Eventually, Petra’s mother became a nursing assistant, while her father became a factory technician. Petra says her parents impressed the value of education upon her; she graduated from Chicago’s Roosevelt University in 2007. She currently works as a billing processor at Robert Half International and is studying for her master’s degree. Petra plays bass in a band called Losing Scarlet, which she describes as making ‘user-friendly, heavier rock music.’ She has a U.S. green card, but still travels on a Slovak passport. She has returned to Slovakia to see her family twice since coming to America; in 1994 and 2007. Today, Petra lives in Ingleside, Illinois, with her husband, Brad.
“I loved school, a lot of learning, dancing. I have a lot of fond memories of growing up in Slovakia – I think because I left when I was so young. I didn’t get to experience what would be the negative aspects of communism, what the adults had to deal with. For me, I was just a kid, I was growing up so… we left when I was only seven.”
“No, unfortunately, me and my brother were both not told – we were little. I was notorious for having a big mouth and I would talk, and my dad could have got into a lot of trouble if anyone were to find out we were defecting. As a matter of fact, my dad started remodeling the apartment we were living in, it seemed like everything was normal and we were just told we were going on vacation to Yugoslavia. So we packed up the car one day and like ‘Oh, we’re going on vacation,’ and I don’t think my parents actually told us until we were in Yugoslavia that we weren’t coming back home.”
“The saddest part about it is that in Austria, the camp Traiskirchen, it was literally 40 minutes away from the border with Slovakia. So our family was right there, and we couldn’t go and see them or talk to them. We were political, you know, in political asylum and we were even told, once we were in the gates of the camp that we were safe, but if we wanted to venture outside the camp in the city, we weren’t necessarily safe – they could come and get us if they wanted to so, it was just really strange.
“When we first got there, we stayed in a building with multiple families in one room – I can’t tell you exactly the number, but it had to be more than 40 people, lots of bunk beds. So once you got there and you were processed, you were then assigned maybe an apartment to live in. So we ended up living in an apartment for quite some time, because I think we were there for about eight to nine months. And so we had our own apartment and I made a lot of friends with different children from around the world, I was with Turkish kids and Hungarian kids and Romanians and at one point, my parents said I was speaking about four or five different languages. I lost that soon after we left there, but when you are a kid, you have the capacity, I guess, to learn that many different languages, so…”
“My dad simply put it that it’s for me and my brother, not so much for my mum and my dad, but he knew… because we left right before the fall of communism. I think the fall of communism happened about a year after we left the country. So, when we got here, I don’t think my dad ever looked back at that and regretted it, because even now, today, all these years later, it’s still hard for all the people who are living there, economically. It’s a new democracy, starting from the beginning and coming here; my dad saw that as a big opportunity for our education, for our work, for our futures.”
“I see where they’re coming from, my nostalgia comes from being a kid, growing up there, drinking Kofola, watching Matko a Kubko, being kids – we were kids at a time when you saw cartoons one hour a week, on the three stations that were available in Bratislava at the time! You come here and kids have so many more opportunities and things to rot their brain and their teeth and everything. So, in a way, I can see it. And I would be lying if I said that it didn’t fascinate me, you know – anything communist related, or movies of anything, because deep down inside, I know that was a part of history that I was a part of, even though it was towards the real last part of it. I can’t say that it doesn’t intrigue me. I don’t know what I’d tell those people. I know a lot of them thought it was better during communist times, and who am I to tell them whether or not it was or not, because now it is harder – it is hard for people out there who are struggling.”
Because Czech universities were closed during WWII, Peter says that he took private language lessons and read to keep up with his studies. In 1944, he was sent to a labor camp in Silesia. Shortly thereafter, he was arrested and transported back to Prague where he was interrogated by the Gestapo because of his association with a resistance group. He was then sent to a camp near the German border where he stayed until the end of the War. Upon his return to Prague, Peter began studying philosophy and comparative religion at Charles University, but switched to English and German literature. He spent one semester in Zurich in 1946 and one semester in London the following year. He received his doctorate in 1948 and began lecturing at Charles University. Peter recalls joining the student march to Prague Castle to protest the Communist government in February 1948.
In 1949, Peter and his then-girlfriend Hana (whom he later married) left Czechoslovakia and crossed the border into Germany. While at a refugee camp in Munich, Peter and Hana were recruited to work at a school in Bad Aibling, a children’s refugee camp. They stayed there for one year and Peter says it was an enjoyable time, as they made frequent weekend trips to Munich and Salzburg. After being offered jobs at Radio Free Europe, the couple moved back to Munich. Peter worked as the editor of cultural features and also contributed to the exile journal Skutečnost.
Peter and Hana received visas for the United States and, in 1952, arrived in New York City. Peter says that his main reason for leaving Germany and moving to the United States was to continue his studies and start a career in academia. He took courses at Columbia University and received his doctorate in comparative literature from Yale. He joined the faculty at Yale immediately after graduating and holds the post of Sterling Professor Emeritus for Germanic language and literature. Peter has also edited and authored many publications on subjects ranging from German literature to the history of Prague. He lives in Highland Park, New Jersey, with his second wife.
]]>Peter Demetz was born in Prague in 1922. His mother, who was Jewish, was a seamstress and his father (of German ethnicity) worked in a theatre. When Peter was about five years old, he moved to Brno with his parents and lived there for ten years. While in Brno, Peter’s parents divorced and his mother remarried. Peter’s father, meanwhile, returned to Prague. With the signing of the Munich Agreement and the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1939, Peter’s stepfather escaped to London and Peter and his mother moved back to Prague. In 1941, Peter’s mother was deported to Terezín where she died.
Because Czech universities were closed during WWII, Peter says that he took private language lessons and read to keep up with his studies. In 1944, he was sent to a labor camp in Silesia. Shortly thereafter, he was arrested and transported back to Prague where he was interrogated by the Gestapo because of his association with a resistance group. He was then sent to a camp near the German border where he stayed until the end of the War. Upon his return to Prague, Peter began studying philosophy and comparative religion at Charles University, but switched to English and German literature. He spent one semester in Zurich in 1946 and one semester in London the following year. He received his doctorate in 1948 and began lecturing at Charles University. Peter recalls joining the student march to Prague Castle to protest the Communist government in February 1948.
In 1949, Peter and his then-girlfriend Hana (whom he later married) left Czechoslovakia and crossed the border into Germany. While at a refugee camp in Munich, Peter and Hana were recruited to work at a school in Bad Aibling, a children’s refugee camp. They stayed there for one year and Peter says it was an enjoyable time, as they made frequent weekend trips to Munich and Salzburg. After being offered jobs at Radio Free Europe, the couple moved back to Munich. Peter worked as the editor of cultural features and also contributed to the exile journal Skutečnost.
Peter and Hana received visas for the United States and, in 1952, arrived in New York City. Peter says that his main reason for leaving Germany and moving to the United States was to continue his studies and start a career in academia. He took courses at Columbia University and received his doctorate in comparative literature from Yale. He joined the faculty at Yale immediately after graduating and holds the post of Sterling Professor Emeritus for Germanic language and literature. Peter has also edited and authored many publications on subjects ranging from German literature to the history of Prague. He lives in Highland Park, New Jersey, with his second wife.
“Everything flourished; there were important people writing for the newspaper; there was an interest in literature; there was Masaryk – whom I later edited. His picture was in every classroom. And people still lived together, whether they were Jewish or German or Czech or Hungarian or whatever. They still had a model which later got lost, unfortunately.”
“I had the full gymnázium and I couldn’t study because the Czech universities were closed. Also, half-Jews were excluded from all studies so I couldn’t even try; there was nothing I could do. I took some private lessons in French, I think, and Russian. Otherwise I read a lot, sitting in Charles Square [Karlovo náměstí] on a bench which I revisit very often when I am back in Prague.”
“I said to myself ‘I am lucky’ but, on the other hand, I didn’t feel guilty about it and I tried to help my mother. We went to the park very often – not to Karlovo [náměstí]; it was too close and everybody knew her, but some park on Vinohrady – and she put her bag on the side where she had the star and I walked with her with nothing, so we were ‘normal’ people, as it were.”
“I had one friend, as it were, who was educated in Heidelberg by a Jewish friend himself and came to Prague with ideas about Brecht and The Threepenny Opera and the left theatre, and didn’t know with whom to speak. I was the lonely guy who could speak to him about [it]. We were singing the Dreigroschenoper [The Threepenny Opera]. But that was the exception and I must tell you that we sat in a place having our beer and talking about these things and he mostly did not wear his uniform because he had his civilian clothes in our place, hidden. When he came – he was on the Letiště Ruzyně [Ruzyně Airport] and he listened of course to all the broadcasts including the BBC – he brought the new news, then changed to civilian clothes and we went to the next hospoda [pub] where we of course talked in German; he couldn’t speak Czech.
“Three weeks after the victory, I went to a bookshop and the owner said ‘You were talking German. I’m calling the police.’ I said ‘Yes, I was talking German to an anti-fascist German soldier.’ ‘No, no. You were talking German. I have to tell the police.’ Fortunately, I had my identity card at that time which said ‘Prisoner in so-and-so [labor camp]’ and so I showed it and he said ‘Well, I must have made a mistake.’ He did make a mistake. But you could see that it was not easy, even if you tried later, to survive, because people remembered.”
“I emigrated in the year ’49 because I wanted to run away in ’48 and it didn’t work. And what prompted the decision were two things. First of all, I had little future in the Czech academia because I had written a dissertation on Franz Kafka in England. That was not particularly a class-conscious topic to write about for the future. B, my then girlfriend, later wife and [children’s] mother, worked for the British Czechoslovak Society in Prague – she was the secretary – and she was constantly haunted by the Czech secret police who wanted her to give all the news: who is going where, who telephoned, who didn’t telephone. So we decided it’s untenable and we are going. Our first attempt failed.
“The second time it worked. From Klatovy, there was a taxi who was supposed to take us closer to the border. We paid a lot. My girlfriend sold her furniture and it cost us 30,000 crowns, I think. The idea was the contacts were Czech Boy Scouts who knew the region. We were sitting in this taxicab driving us from Klatovy towards the mountains and the driver suddenly said we have to get out because the secret police is behind us. There is a police car chasing us. So we had to get out, whether it was true or not. We were a whole group. We were two of us and then a group of three students. So there were five. Well, he threw us out in the middle of the night, close to the border but not there. We didn’t exactly know where it was. Also, I had to give up much of my luggage because it was too heavy to carry. All I had left was one little piece of luggage and a rucksack.
“Then the whole group decided ‘We have to go this way. This is the south; this must be the border,’ and then we heard some voices and we said ‘We have to explore this’ and we sent out a patrol to find out. They were Bavarian workers in the forest, and they took us over and delivered us to the next village where were promptly arrested by the German border police and handed over to the American CIC.”
“I was absolutely free [to report as I wished]. Everyday there were editorial meetings, with Pavel Tigrid presiding, where somebody reported what the Czech broadcasts or Czech newspapers said, what we have to answer, and what our daily portion of polemics would be, and that was the only prescriptive part – the topics. What you said about it was absolutely your affair.”
How well informed did you feel you were at Radio Free Europe about things happening in Czechoslovakia? Was there a good line of communication between Czechoslovakia and Munich?
“There was a particular service that listened to the Czech broadcast, read all the Czech newspapers, and published a summary every day or every week or so. So I think that we were very well [informed]. We didn’t know what the underground was thinking, probably, but we knew what the official line was and we answered the official line. The difficulty was that they didn’t want the people to hear us, so that had machines which made it impossible, with the exception of one line, because they themselves wanted to hear what Radio Free Europe said. So we informed our esteemed listeners in Czechoslovakia to listen on that particular line.”
“I started out by writing these Prague books for my American students, I think. Because in the ‘80s and ‘90s there was this change, American students went to Prague very often, settled there, said ‘This is the new Paris,’ and came back with the message ‘Prague is Kafka and Havel.’ And I told myself, ‘Well, Prague is more than Kafka and Havel.’ I read Kafka and I respect Havel to no end, but Prague history is much more complicated and these students should know something about that, and that’s why I started to write these things. It’s the clash between Catholicism and the Hussites; it’s Dobrovský and the Czech Enlightenment; it’s a Czech mysticism up to Otakar Březina. So a lot of things. And people should know about it.”