Eva Jurinova
<p>Eva Jurinova was born in Žilina in northwestern Slovakia in 1979. Her mother L’udmila is a pediatric neurologist and her father Vladimír is a nuclear physicist who, prior to the Velvet Revolution, worked in the Ministry of Health. He now heads the radiation protection section of the public health authority of Slovakia. Eva started school in Trnava and later moved with her family to Bratislava. She says that her childhood was ‘beautiful’ and ‘pure’ and that she spent a lot of time visiting her grandparents, who lived in more rural parts of the country. She was an active child and participated in sports, dance, and theatre. Eva was ten at the time of Velvet Revolution in November 1989 and says that although her parents’ careers improved, she did not notice any immediate changes. In 1997, Eva spent one year of high school studying abroad in Richmond, Virginia. Upon her return to Slovakia, she made plans to move back to the United States.</p><p> </p><p>Eva graduated high school and enrolled in an international program through Comenius University which allowed her to study at affiliate colleges in the United States while traveling back to Slovakia to take exams. While in Richmond, Eva had been given a modeling contract and when she returned to the U.S. she settled in New York to pursue modeling. She also became a project manager and marketing director for a brand of luxury watches. Eva received an MBA from Columbia University. She now owns a branding and licensing firm and does PR consulting for luxury watches and jewelry.</p><p> </p><p>Upon her return to the United States, Eva made friends with a number of fellow Slovak-Americans and émigrés and began organizing small cultural events and get-togethers. One of these events was attended by the newly-appointed Slovak consul general who expressed an interest in collaborating with Eva to formalize these events. She helped to form the non-profit +421 Foundation and is co-president of the organization, whose biggest event is Slovak Fashion Night. Eva says that while Slovakia will always be her home, she is glad to have had opportunities in the United States that have helped shaped who she is. Today, she lives in Los Angeles, California.</p>
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Filip Pogády
<p> </p><p>Filip Pogády was born in Bratislava in 1987. His father, Peter, is a physician and his mother, Silvia, stayed home to raise Filip and his older sister, Petra. When Filip was four years old, his family moved to Linz, Austria; however he says that he remained connected to Slovakia as he often spent summers and vacations with his grandparents and other relatives. Filip began playing the violin at age seven and gained success at national competitions. He focused his studies on music, leaving high school at age 16. In 2009, Filip earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna. He moved to New York City after being offered the opportunity to study with Pinchas Zukerman at the Manhattan School of Music, and received his master’s degree in violin performance in 2011. For a short time, Filip was signed to Ford Models.</p><p> </p><p>Today Filip is a professional violinist playing concerts in New York City and throughout the country. Although classically trained, he has more recently taken up the electric violin. Since 2005, Filip has performed regularly with the Slovak Philharmonic. He is also a teacher for the Harmony Program, a non-profit organization that provides music lessons for economically-disadvantaged students in New York City. Filip often returns to Europe for performances and to visit family and friends, but says that his current plans are to stay in Manhattan.</p>
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Gene Deitch
<p>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.</p>
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<p>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.</p>
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<p>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.</p>
<p><a id="ucRelatedViewer_dlRelated_ctl00_lnkView" class="lnkRelatedItem" href="http://web.archive.org/web/20170609114816/http://genedeitch.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Gene’s web site</a></p>
<p><a id="ucRelatedViewer_dlRelated_ctl01_lnkView" class="lnkRelatedItem" href="http://web.archive.org/web/20170609114816/http://genedeitchcredits.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Gene’s newest project, an online book about people who have influenced him</a></p>
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George Grosman
<p>George Grosman was born in Prague in 1953. During WWII, his father, Ladislav, was drafted into the Slovak army and then sent to a forced labor camp because he was Jewish. His mother, Edith, who was also Jewish, spent most of the War in Auschwitz. After the War, George’s parents moved to Prague where Edith worked as a biology researcher and Ladislav found work in the publishing industry as an editor and writer. George’s father became well-known after writing the screenplay for the Oscar-winning film <em>The Shop on Main Street</em> [<em>Obchod na korze</em>]. George has early memories of walking the streets of Prague with his nanny and spending his summers in the country. He attended three different schools in Prague where he enjoyed history, grammar, and the humanities. However, George’s main interests lay in music. At the age of nine, he began learning classical guitar, and one of his teachers introduced him to more popular music. George spent many weekends and summers at Dobříš Castle, which was owned by the Czechoslovak Writers Union of which his father was a member. In 1967, it was there that George joined his first band.</p><p> </p><p><img class="alignright wp-image-3418" src="http://web.archive.org/web/20170609083637im_/http://ncsml.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Handler-14.jpg" alt="George performing" width="500" height="583" /></p><p>After the Warsaw Pact invasion in August 1968, George’s family made plans to leave the country. George himself forged a letter from his grandfather living in Israel requesting that the family come to visit him. They were able to secure exit visas, and left Czechoslovakia on September 3, 1968. After about a month in Vienna, George and his family arrived in Tel Aviv in October 1968. Although at first George had a difficult time adjusting to life in Israel, he says he eventually learned both Hebrew and English, made some good friends, and got involved with local musicians. George studied English literature and linguistics at Bar Ilan University in Tel Aviv and spent a short stint in the Israeli army.</p><p> </p><p>In 1977, George moved to London to continue his education. He was there for three years and remembers it as “the best time of his life.” In 1980, George secured a position as a teaching assistant for Slavic languages at the University of Toronto. He got married and had two daughters, and eventually became involved in the Czech community there, specifically joining Nové Divadlo [New Theatre]. In 1989, he moved to Reykjavík, Iceland, for a few years, and recalls hearing about the Velvet Revolution there, listening to a short-wave radio. George first returned to Czechoslovakia in 1991, and says that he was able to enter the country at the same border crossing he had used to leave 23 years earlier. Today, George is a professional musician. He frequently performs for Czech audiences throughout North America. He splits his time between Toronto, Canada, and Orlando, Florida.</p>
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Helena Fabry
<p>Helena Fabry was born in Hradec Králové, Bohemia, in 1925. Her father was a cabinet maker who, among other commissions, restored the interior of the town’s cathedral, while her mother stayed at home and raised Helena and her younger sister Věra. Helena says that around the time of the Depression, business dried up for her father and so he went to work in the carpentry department of the local Škoda factory. Helena graduated from business school in Hradec Králové during WWII and was assigned a job at the local <em>zásobovací úřad </em>[supplies bureau]. She remembers WWII as being ‘uneasy’ and ‘disquieting’ and says that it was her involvement in amateur theatre in Hradec Králové which helped her during this time. Following the end of the War in 1945, Helena moved to Prague to learn English, which she did for one year before taking a job at<em>Svobodné slovo</em>, a newspaper allied with the Beneš Party. She says she loved working as a reporter in the capital. In 1947, Helena was posted to Louny to gain more experience as a local reporter for the newspaper. There, she reported on the trials of local farmers before <em>lidové soudy</em> [people’s courts], which she refers to as ‘a terrible experience.’ She says her reports sparked the ire of the local Communist administration, and when the coup took place in Prague on February 25, 1948, she was told to leave Louny immediately, and expelled from the association of journalists.</p><p> </p><p>Helena stayed on at <em>Svobodné slovo,</em> though was no longer able to write. She became involved in underground efforts to destabilize the new Communist government, encrypting and deciphering messages. In the summer of 1948, she was told that one accomplice had been arrested and that she should leave the country immediately. A guide told her to pack one suitcase with clothes meant for a week on a farm and meet him at a designated place in Prague at a certain time. Helena traveled with a small group and this guide to Sušice by train; from Sušice, they walked until they crossed the border, which in this instance took several days. The group got ‘hopelessly lost’ on their journey but, says Helena, they were able to find their way west eventually by using the stars to navigate.</p><p> </p><p>Helena spent just under two years in Germany, primarily in refugee camps in Dieburg and Ludwigsburg. There, she met and married her husband, Milan Fabry (a Slovak economist who had been the political secretary of Transport Minister Ivan Pietor prior to the coup). The couple sailed to America on the <em>General Blatchford</em> in May 1950. Their first job was helping an elderly couple cook and maintain their summer home in Heath, Massachusetts. Later that year, the Fabrys moved to Washington, D.C., where they stayed for a short time before Milan found civilian employment with the U.S. Army, leading the couple to move back to Germany. In 1958, Helena’s husband took a job at Sears Roebuck and so the couple lived briefly in Chicago, before moving to Vienna, Austria, where he established a buying office for the firm. There, the couple’s son was born. The Fabrys returned to Chicago in 1968 and lived there for a further 15 years until Milan was transferred to Washington, D.C. There, Helena found a job at the Center for Hellenic Studies and played an active role in Czech and Slovak organizations such as the SVU (Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences). Today, Helena lives in Bethesda, Maryland.</p>
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Helena Stossel
<p>Helena Stossel was born in Prague in 1946. Helena’s parents both worked at a small silk-screening operation – her father as the manager and her mother as a silk-screener. Helena and her younger brother, Tomas, were watched by her grandmother and spent a lot of time at the <em>chata</em> her grandfather built outside the city. Helena says that she learned to ‘appreciate nature’ from camping, canoeing, and white-water kayaking. She also enjoyed reading and poetry. Helena went to <em>gymnázium</em> where she focused on the sciences and then studied chemistry at the Institute of Chemical Technology in Prague. She married her first husband, Lev, in 1967. The Warsaw Pact invasion in August 1968 left an impression on Helena, as she congregated on Wenceslas Square with other young people and talked with the Warsaw Pact troops. Her parents and brother immigrated to the United States in July 1969 and, although Helena was reluctant to leave as she wanted to ‘fight for freedom,’ she joined her husband when he decided to leave in the autumn of 1969. The pair lived in Vienna for one month and then flew to New York City in December 1969.</p><p> </p><p>After spending two weeks with family friends in Ossining, New York, Helena moved to the Boston area where her parents had settled and opened a Czech restaurant. Helena spent a few months becoming comfortable with the English language and then began working in a hospital kitchen. Her next job was in the lab of Glover Memorial Hospital and, at the request of a pathologist, she transferred to what is now Brigham and Women’s Hospital, where she worked for 40 years, retiring only a short time ago. Helena gave birth to her daughter Johana in 1974 and bought a house in Holliston (a suburb of Boston) in 1976. She married her second husband, Frank Stossel, in 1981 and first returned to Czechoslovakia in 1987. She has visited her home country many times since. Helena says that it is only recently that she became ‘at peace’ with her emigration, citing her reluctance to leave Czechoslovakia in the first place as preventing her from feeling at home in the United States. In her retirement, she hopes to travel more and go on a canoe trip in the Czech Republic. Today, Helena lives in Holliston with her husband Frank.</p>
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Jana Kopelentova-Rehak
<p>Jana Kopelentova-Rehak was born in Sušice in southern Bohemia in 1968. Her mother Jana was a teacher while her father Jaroslav was a photographer for the city. Jana’s paternal grandparents had owned a photography studio in Sušice which was nationalized after the Communist coup in 1948; her father has since reclaimed the property and works with some original family equipment. Jana says that her parents both held anti-communist views and that she was aware of history that wasn’t taught in schools; for example, the liberation of Plzeň and Sušice by the American Army. Exposed to photography from an early age, Jana was accepted to the art school Střední průmyslová škola grafická in Prague. While living in a dormitory, Jana became interested in religion and attended retreats with fellow classmates. When a Bible was found in her room, Jana says that she was expelled from school housing and had to find her own accommodations in the city. She finished high school living with Miloslava Holubová, a writer and signatory of Charter 77 whom Jana says was a big influence. After graduating from high school, Jana worked for three years as a photographer for an art restoration company. In 1990, she began studying fine art photography at FAMU (the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague). While at FAMU, Jana studied abroad in Norway and Glasgow and says that she learned English thanks to the international makeup of the FAMU students.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>In 1994, eager to continue her studies in the West and with plans to marry Frank Rehak, an American who was in Prague on a Fulbright scholarship, Jana moved to the United States. She settled in Baltimore, Maryland, and married Frank a few months later. To adjust to the move, Jana says that she spent some time taking photographs of Baltimore neighborhoods. She completed her MFA in photography from the University of Delaware in 1997 and was accepted to a doctoral program in anthropology at American University. Jana’s research focused on 1950s political prisoners in Prague. For several summers, Jana and Frank returned to the Czech Republic and taught a summer photography school for international students. Jana is an assistant professor of anthropology at Loyola University in Baltimore and Towson University in Towson, Maryland. She also teaches Czech language classes for the local Sokol group. A dual citizen, Jana received her American citizenship two years ago, which she says was an ‘emotional decision.’ She lives with her husband and two daughters in Baltimore.</p>
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Jana Krenova
<p> </p><p>Jana Krenova was born in Prague in 1959. Her father, Mirko Křen, originally from Plzeň, was a photographer and her mother, Vlasta, often assisted her father with his projects. At the end of WWII, Mirko was on hand to shoot the liberation of Plzeň by American troops; his photographs, as well as the fact that he was a small-business owner, led to his arrest and six-month imprisonment by communist authorities in 1948. Jana spent her early years in the neighborhoods of Žižkov and Vinohrady, where she started school. During the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968, Jana’s family was on vacation in Italy. Although her father hoped to stay abroad, his failing health led them to return, and he died at the end of the year.</p><p> </p><p>Jana’s mother continued her photography business and, several years later, she remarried a Czech-born Argentinean citizen. Jana says that her life became quite ‘bourgeois,’ as they moved to a villa with two BMWs and were able to travel extensively (Jana regularly spent her winter vacations skiing in Switzerland). For high school, Jana attended Střední průmyslová škola grafická [School of Graphic Arts] where she focused on photography. Upon graduating, she worked for one year as a staff photographer for ČTK news agency. Jana says that the combination of family pressure and the oppressive Communist government led her to leave the country permanently. In July 1979, she flew to London and then on to New York.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>During Jana’s first days in New York, she was helped by <a href="/web/20170609122043/http://www.ncsml.org/exhibits/viera-noy/">Viera Noy</a> whom she had met on a ski trip in Slovakia and for years worked several jobs to support herself. She received a green card and, in 1984, moved to Switzerland. Jana had a daughter and found a job as the art director and photographer for a magazine in Zurich. She returned to New York in the summer of 1989, shortly before the fall of communism in Czechoslovakia, and worked a series of jobs as a magazine art director. In 1997, Jana began freelancing and frequently traveling to Prague for photo shoots. Today, she splits her time between New York City, Prague and Barbados.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p>
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Jerry Barta
<p><img class="alignleft wp-image-1706 size-full" src="http://web.archive.org/web/20170906235201im_/http://ncsml.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/jerry-barta-bw.png" alt="jerry-barta-bw" width="226" height="272" /></p><p>Jerry Barta was born in Prague in 1950. He grew up in the Dejvice district of the city with his parents and two brothers. His mother Dagmar worked as an accountant while his father Josef held a number of jobs, including as a cartographer and a teacher. Jerry says his family’s food supply was augmented by produce and meat sent by his grandparents, who lived in the country. After Jerry finished high school, he hoped to study architecture but he says that he did not have the background or connections to be admitted to any programs. He instead trained to become a typographer. Although a serious motorcycle accident interrupted his studies, Jerry finished a program for industrial design and packaging. While studying, he worked nights as a typesetter. After graduating, he began working as a graphic designer and became a teaching assistant at the Václav Hollar Art School. Jerry says that he had been hoping to leave the country since the Warsaw Pact invasion in August 1968. In 1974, after several years of being denied a travel visa, he decided to take a ‘calculated risk’ and forged a letter from the director of the school where he was working stating that he was being sent to Amsterdam as a reward for participating in a state art exhibition. Because of this forged letter, Jerry received a travel visa and money for ten days in Amsterdam, and he left the country in the fall of 1974.</p><p> </p><p>Jerry and his then-fiancé (who was also able to obtain a visa) stayed with friends in Amsterdam for several months before traveling to Germany where they applied for asylum and began the process of moving to the United States. The couple were sent to Zirndorf refugee camp for two months and then lived in an apartment while awaiting their paperwork. They arrived in Los Angeles in September 1975 and stayed with Jerry’s distant relatives. Jerry found a job in a print shop but, several weeks later, decided to move to the San Francisco area after a cousin invited him for a visit. He worked as a typographer for a small printing company and eventually became manager of the firm. In 1985, Jerry opened his own studio called Master Type in San Francisco and today owns the company Pacific Digital Image. He (with his wife and daughter) returned to Czechoslovakia for the first time just a few months before the Velvet Revolution in November 1989; now, Jerry says he visits as often as possible. He lives in Danville, California, with his wife.</p>
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Jitka Exler
<p>Jitka Exler was born in Karlovy Vary, in western Bohemia, in 1959. She grew up with her parents, Václav and Věra, and her older sister, Blanka, in the nearby town of Ostrov nad Ohří, which Jitka describes as a ‘showcase communist town.’ Although Jitka’s father was a foreman at the Skoda factory in Ostrov, Jitka says that he was called ‘the man with the golden hands’ because he could make or fix anything, and he was often busy working on cars. Jitka’s mother was an expert knitter who sold her work to a shop in Karlovy Vary. Jitka herself grew up playing sports and also made her own equipment. She was very interested in art, and even enrolled herself in art and drama classes at the age of six.</p><p> </p><p>After high school, Jitka moved to Prague and studied at Vyšší odborná škola grafická [School of Graphic Arts]. After completing her arts program, Jitka found a job at an animation studio. She was then encouraged to apply for a job at the Bratři v triku animation studio at the Barrandov complex. During her time in Prague and through her husband, Leoš Exler, Jitka came to know many dissidents and people in the underground scene, and the pair signed Charter 77. Jitka says that the two were followed by secret police for a while, and they eventually decided to leave Czechoslovakia. Although they had trouble getting visas and exit permits, Jitka and Leoš left the country in 1980. They escaped through Hungary, Yugoslavia, and Italy, and crossed the border into Austria. Because of their background as Charter 77 signatories, they were able to live in an apartment instead of a refugee camp while waiting for their paperwork to clear. In January 1981, Jitka arrived in New York City.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Jitka’s sponsoring organization helped her find a job as a seamstress. She also got involved making puppets for a black light theatre company started by a fellow Czechoslovak émigré. In the early-1980s, Jitka called Jim Henson’s company and asked for an interview. She was accepted to Muppet University where she was tasked with designing and making a Muppet. After working as a freelance puppet maker, Jitka joined the staff at Sesame Street. Of her time with Jim Henson and his company, Jitka says that she felt like she was contributing to something bigger. After eight years with Sesame Street, Jitka began working for a toy company, designing toys and overseeing production. When her younger son was born (with her second husband), Jitka became a freelance toy designer, a job she continues to this day.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Jitka first returned to the Czech Republic only a few months after the Velvet Revolution, and she attempts to visit her home country every year. Her sons speak Czech and enjoy her Czech cooking. In addition to designing toys, Jitka is an avid painted. Today, she lives in Larchmont, New York.</p><p> </p><p> </p>
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