1
10
10
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/a6cea8d3090f31beac26fe4a12ae54f0.jpg?Expires=1712793600&Signature=jTRWhun2d66I1XSk%7El8A2apqSTJpYP8ZWri4dAl89TyKJId7nJias6XoBAcdiGyk-jrxMI6LAyLDKDGaz9uurjOXx79G5H1Km145Zt3Hjaj0HQoD2Q516BTeZAnTndVF00YpJYoEX1BJKxvUWE6FICkUP5xXOB99647HZtwQ8%7ESYpA88fLnnrlCB%7E8XLUPDp-n7EX-wXxPVfoTcdiHJVEu0iaxG0G-SS65VTiGl1rvqZr2ywyqck32lYI-nr%7EYjIG8Pa%7Ebu3rJQNxzSHgqMNINbg7srDV1C22Q%7EKLJQGaSlzvBrYEEyy0OLqbI2BDmGGg5-xshJlE-9oAxiBj7opDQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
19ecb3b891bb592b12cf0c6b49fd0edb
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/90d165e8c91eec9414b2de63b639def2.jpg?Expires=1712793600&Signature=a2QD5KVuK7ZFjP4WdxZzE73rehd07IqmDHT2bwRTlS1eXH%7EyYNAedeFHOcUaLGBs9Q2fjenU4M872IgRj90klD21AWZIAPHoyG6DhaZuckKs4kyS38jMFDnBtzeL9HyqtEnuP0L-ghzuQ1sppGkXOPbhi0fx-HjL66Lo%7EWG6Gxr6%7Eq6Mh%7EeY7J5PGv5ALegM7vGH3A3K5UWfUiy24a3eqkIJiRoIuRSMFTtvqwbGZGKWYGgmEMh4DUGVeg6De6sMYxd3jvtJ0Uc-9f4jds-8x7EJRPLlgV%7E1BVOX-OaBUVW5hjJl3sNhz1ej56ycRcE1BNUvCaMxlzNJ3XGLOd0m-g__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
08864b1578a1441337ccfc2266f2e933
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/91657a1b113ebbb75d8333602c9217c8.jpg?Expires=1712793600&Signature=GMloiUioJUrtFwZixKvK5o15iH19ULbQgZMzBVA6IvbKXLgX5mM27gMCSXtKO9mgE8qCteeNhsX2KcaTtAOEYEPY8HNk-R4Uj-wjZK55vfBNVgeaVA4lIYSWKf9vc1niVr2QqFvEGZL8Oj9dyebpo-JSmAn8QWx9nVXk8wy-%7Eo2QY4-LUbxBQa-9y9g-tJE-l43HodPbm89Mja8M4MsxSZDA5ydPtISfY7X9YZ1x32Ceay6jT4bGnViDAnaWUtkWjzwWYV2McDksdTWYdsr7pn2crWrleQebA%7ERj4-KWidCLs-bFf6Wik32vKUmG5mNBfdw%7Eni%7EqY4r3cFwwtlN8YA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
c80b29c0f813fb673ef3020fba254bb4
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/02d73b690bd4130d3d1b92528b964c21.jpg?Expires=1712793600&Signature=J%7EDgCMobGEzQVEMi-uSCDWH75QiCDeynvvyVIzsTwU2gQJ-kLovdhP%7EPPcpzigUiaAQhKZ1L9artuHTvwaPHX4naFkn7O1clytB3mp59vo-auoCaRFFu9-fj-gNwMG-au2L8tBHXhgkdYxQdFMeLxocbltHkpu9kbFaFmEe5FWYg0by81Y3MrHDfbQK0XsPZNAhgDkAkB10PVv%7EYcCkKUbOmnL9guHYWhTmp7JCLdm9gX131NTtzN5S7zJrTrXC7zkURLtGLa0yw3EA%7EWtHC8oJmwFj%7Esl-gs50-e1Doz7cakaYKe8DsCveD0JM54n9IY44JSo0ATsb-n%7Eto3zYigQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
f29e03566db65d25628f03db8f4fb739
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans
Subject
The topic of the resource
Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans was an oral history project launched by the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library in 2009. The project captured and preserved the stories of Czechs and Slovaks who left their homeland during the Cold War and settled in New York City, Washington, D.C., Cleveland, Chicago and the San Francisco Bay Area. During the second phase of the project, the NCSML recorded the stories of immigrants who came to the United States after the fall of communism in 1989 as well. By the conclusion of the project in August 2013, the NCSML had collected more than 300 oral histories. <br /><br />Both phases of the project were made possible by grants from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. <br /><br />On the project’s website, you can read biographies of Czechs and Slovaks who began a new life in the United States, watch video clips from their interviews, and view photos and other archival materials they shared with us. <br /><br />Full length interviews are available for further research at the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library. For more information, contact Dave Muhlena, Library Director, at dmuhlena@ncsml.org.
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
<h4>Father</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/wThk50Uw7Cs?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“My father came from a little village in the mountains, about ten miles away from our village, there was an opal mine there, his father worked in the opal mine and almost everybody out of this village emigrated to the United States. My father, [his] two brothers beside him, almost three quarters of the village ended up here. He worked in an Iowan mine and after… Like at that time there was a system that people from a poor country come and make some money, so he could save and come home and buy a farm and a house and marry some Slovak girl and start a family. That’s what happened in my father’s case. So he married my mother, and I have three brothers and one sister, and we lived in a little village as farmers. My father was a very progressive farmer because he gained a lot of experience in America about life. In a little village, in the mountains, you don’t know nothing about it. For example, we had one of the best orchards in town – fruit orchards – and we had about 120 bee houses, which he made good money out of selling honey.”</p><h4>Growing Up</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/hlc6G8nDwAY?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“There was another American down there living. His name was Mr. Mišík. And he was sitting on the front of his house, on a bench, and wore American jeans pants and an American jeans jacket, like a typical American. And all those kids around him, around there, asked him how things are in America [compared to] how things are in Slovakia. And Mr. Mišík says ‘Ha! In America, they put the bull at one end of the factory and at the other end come the sausages. And they taste the sausage and if its good, fine, if it’s no good then they throw it back and the bull comes back out.’ And we kids [said] ‘Oh yeah?’ And he said ‘Oh yeah!’ So we got up in the morning and ran to see Mr. Mišík for a story.”</p><h4>Slovak Community</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/bejiZMEDyj8?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I was amazingly surprised by the activities of the Slovaks in Cleveland. My father about three days later took me here to the Slovak Benedictine Abbey, because also he was a good Catholic. And I met Father Andrew Pier, who was in the same job as I have right now. And my uncle took me to the lodge, the Jednota lodge, and you know, about three or four months later I became a secretary because they were looking for some young blood looking to work. And then there was… In school, okay, at night school, I saw a lot of Slovak people – almost three quarters of the class were Slovak kids, boys and girls, so I figured well, I must do something. So I founded the Slovak Catholic Federation in America. We had about 80 members – it even still exists now, it changed its name to the Slovak Dramatic Club. We did Slovak plays, I can show you some pictures, Slovak dances, and sponsored the Slovak celebration on March 14 and the Tiso celebration, the Slovak day. And the Štefánik monument, we went down there to sing. So, our generation, us – the Slovak Republic generation – prolonged the life of the Slovaks in America for another 50 years. Because sure there were old Slovaks, but that was old, and that was dying, that was tired, you know. So we prolonged its life for 50 years.”</p><h4>Cleveland</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Sqj_6crNksM?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Saturday morning, my aunt took me out shopping, okay. She put $350 on the table and she said ‘We’re going to go shopping, and when you get a job, you’re going to pay the money back.’ So we went shopping and I came back with a brand new suit. But she burned up everything I brought from Slovakia, she burned it up! Because you are going to bring some flies or something. Anyhow, so she bought me the suit, we came back from shopping and I thought, ‘Hmm, I’m in America two days and I owe $1,500 already!’ – at that time! So I got a job in White Sewing. He happened to give me a good job. After about six months, he gave me [the job of] timekeeper, and every time he needed help, he asked me, ‘Andy, you know any Slovak boys?’ And I got him maybe… one time there was working maybe about 40 Slovak boys at the White Sewing Machine Corporation down there. You know I got, I ended up being a timekeeper.”</p><h4>Slovak Garden</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qjOyog0vL6Q?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Before I became the president, there were about 120 people coming to the Slovak Day in Florida. When I was president, for 14.5 years, the highest amount I had one time was 1,200, and never less than 600, okay – people coming to the Slovak Day. So it was very successful, and the next thing you know, they are coming to [celebrate] the liberation of Slovakia. So, the people from Slovakia, they don’t really want to come to Cleveland, you know, Florida was a nice attractive thing, by the sun, by the beaches; they started coming to Florida, the ministers, the mayors and so forth. And so then I organized some groups coming to Florida and here to Cleveland. It was very successful. Then I finally one day, everything was hunky-dory, straight, I decided in 1997 to quit.”</p><h4>Slovak Institute</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qvkbePeYV04?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I keep things up the same way as it was originally founded – to preserve, protect, all the materials concerning Slovaks in America. When I come here with Joe – I appointed Joe as my assistant here, Joe Hornack, maybe one tenth of what you see was here. Everything else was in boxes, like this pile, and unsorted. So we created a lot of systems, a good filing system, we created a personality file; we have a list of maybe 600 personalities, everything, whatever was said about them, we’ve got it in a special file. Same thing on the organizations – if they’re not found in that file, I’ve got them in a big box, that’s what I’m doing right now. So now my question is here how long this can survive here as is. The abbot is here is no longer a Slovak. We have a couple of Slovaks in here, but they are not that interested in things up here. I personally believe that all this precious material belongs to Slovakia, because that’s the history of the Slovak nation is here in America, or the Slovak people. Now I’m in the process of negotiating with the Matica Slovenska, which is a cultural organization, to move some of the stuff to Slovakia, and also with the Catholic University of Ružomberok, to move some stuff. So we are in the process of that thing. They have invited me sometime in the summer time for a final meeting, so I think we are talking between now and five years that we’d start moving some of the stuff. We’ve got an okay from the abbey to move it, the only thing is finances.”</p><h4>Thanks to America</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/vAvo8_vf0hI?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I know that I could not have accomplished one tenth in Slovakia what I have accomplished in America. Because when I compare myself to my friends, with the same education – don’t forget, it’s a smaller country, smaller opportunity. This is a big country, if you have the guts and know how, you can move as far as you want. It’s a beautiful country. I love America.”</p>
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Andrew Hudak
Description
An account of the resource
<p> </p><p>Andrew Hudak was born in Kecerovské Pekl’any, in the Šariš region of Slovakia, in 1928. His father (also called Andrew) owned a farm, which he had purchased after returning to Slovakia from the United States, where he had raised money working in an Iowa mine. Andrew says that growing up, he and his family ‘produced everything they ate’ and that the farm his family lived on employed ‘progressive’ agricultural methods, which his father had learned in the United States. Andrew attended elementary school in his village before being sent to Nitra to study at the Mission of the Society of the Divine Word. He returned to Kecerovské Pekl’any at the end of 1944 when the seminary was closed because of WWII. He says it was at this time that he decided not to become a priest. Following liberation, Andrew moved to the Czech border town of Aš, where he says many hundreds of Slovaks settled following the expulsion of Sudeten Germans under the Beneš Decrees. There, he helped establish The Slovak Catholic Youth Association and had a radio broadcast, called <em>Hlas Slovenska</em> [<em>Voice of Slovakia</em>]. He moved back to Podbrezová, Slovakia, after a short time having lost his job, for what Andrew says were political reasons. Again unemployed in the fall of 1947, Andrew decided to move to the United States and join his father, who had been working in Cleveland for a year already.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Andrew arrived in Cleveland on January 8, 1948. He quickly found a job at the White Sewing Machine Corporation. He says he was pleasantly surprised by the amount of Slovak activity he found in the city and subsequently established the Slovak Catholic Youth Club (later the Slovak Dramatic Club) with some of the new immigrants he met at English-language night classes. After two and a half years in his first job, Andrew bought a restaurant called the Lorain Square Lunch Room, where he worked as a chef. He became involved in property development and construction and eventually established his own travel agency, Adventure International Travel Service, which he opened a branch of in Bratislava in 1992. Andrew remained extremely active in the American Slovak community, as president of the Lakewood Slovak Civic Club for ten years and founder of two branches of the Slovak League of America, in Parma and Strongsville, Ohio. In 1982, he became president of the Slovak Garden retirement community in Florida – a position he held for fourteen and a half years. In 2002, he became head of the Cleveland Slovak Institute, an organization which aims to preserve and protect the history of Slovaks in America. Andrew is married to Sophia Beno Hudak and the couple have three children, Andrew, Paul and Steven. In 1993, Andrew became a dual citizen of Slovakia and the United States.</p><p> </p><p><a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20170609120152/http://www.slovakinstitute.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Link to the Slovak Institute’s web pages</a></p><p><a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20170609120152/http://ncsml.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/e-Hudak_-_FINAL.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Full transcript of Andrew Hudak’s interview</a></p>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
NCSML Archive
Americanization
Catholics
Community leadership
Community Life
Education
Journalism
Kecerovske Peklany
Podebrazova
Religion
Ruzomberok
Saris
Stefanik
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/2b5ff228ba5db8a25b3f81c5a2ae16c6.png?Expires=1712793600&Signature=LG19KsPNBeeaBxoAW0nRxzJK0sT9hE6CxrdqHB5WdN7zxOGF65TwKlm%7E9iD6RB7SQEHwVgtxYwJRHwYZc8nHFq9SceqOSiB3IGj6Gfu0h0m6DeOYVbGQYrKfKrAZUIjFTkEvMcHAXhobsbYLaNGh8DmuXYB3h-Z4j9Dg42OYql99%7EKvkFj1MOMEDZnBrz1Y9vZC0uUgsX%7EqqaYPppoYWzpXvYczWAerM1j9UkyAQaFLuuxn8OnRkHioTwa3ClyYLvPlhW%7EExBa9NpXj32hgsDsmDcNmrj4E6pS3LZ-2ZXNTe1gWljCDPu4S%7Ei%7EuubMY4ojYRVuIbnudDMd2x00A1OQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
b675dac4a9fe11b1ca22beff55b00eda
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans
Subject
The topic of the resource
Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans was an oral history project launched by the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library in 2009. The project captured and preserved the stories of Czechs and Slovaks who left their homeland during the Cold War and settled in New York City, Washington, D.C., Cleveland, Chicago and the San Francisco Bay Area. During the second phase of the project, the NCSML recorded the stories of immigrants who came to the United States after the fall of communism in 1989 as well. By the conclusion of the project in August 2013, the NCSML had collected more than 300 oral histories. <br /><br />Both phases of the project were made possible by grants from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. <br /><br />On the project’s website, you can read biographies of Czechs and Slovaks who began a new life in the United States, watch video clips from their interviews, and view photos and other archival materials they shared with us. <br /><br />Full length interviews are available for further research at the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library. For more information, contact Dave Muhlena, Library Director, at dmuhlena@ncsml.org.
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
<h4>Schooling</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ISZsvP2FGSg?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“We were never told the right history, for example, the history of the First Slovak Republic. That was completely wiped out from history. I never knew that we had a Slovak flag, Slovak emblem, Slovak national anthem and all that until I came to Canada. So that was kind of blocked out from the younger generation. And I think that’s sad, because history is history and should be taught as history was and is going and so forth. Because you cannot wipe that out. Sooner or later that registers somewhere.</p><p>“But as I kid I did not [notice this], the only thing at times that I would here was if a young man or a woman wanted to go to study university and have a good position, then they had to deny their religion. If they didn’t, then they were not allowed to go to those schools. Or in one case that I know, one of my cousins, he finished his university in ten years, by [studying] in the evenings or something like that, and in some cases even grandparents would have to deny the religion, not only the parents. So, that would be the oppression, I would say. Sometimes that would come up from the kids, like when there was the feast of St Nicholas, Svätého Mikuláša, they usually had their shoes out, clean and all that but you didn’t talk with the teacher about it. Nothing about religion. If something came up, it was like ‘stop talking about it.’”</p><h4>Gardening</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/r4AbjHqoyXY?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p><span style="line-height:1.5;">“As a kid, I always was in the garden, and then when my mother, God rest her soul, was able to come here for the first time, then she even told me that the neighbors, the ladies, when they used to go to the forest to get some sticks for the stove to burn, she says that I was always in the garden weeding out. And the ladies were surprised, they said ‘How come you leave him in the garden, doesn’t he pull out the good with the bad?’ But I seemed to know what to leave and what to pull out. And the lady across the street, she used to bring her pot, soil and cuttings and she said ‘You plant that for me, because it looks like it will grow for you but not for me.’ I always liked to make bouquets and decorations for some reason, so…” </span></p><p></p><h4>Canada</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/XZTGJhAzdbI?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p><span style="line-height:1.5;">“Once we tasted life in Canada and saw everything in the stores, and the cars and you name it… Of course, for an 18-year-old, the cars were a big thing. The first thing I thought was ‘I will never learn how to drive here!’ Because there were so many cars, big roads, the number of lanes on the highways and stuff. And I said ‘oh my God!’ You know, back home, when I left as an 18 year old, I think there were maybe two cars or three cars, everybody else had bicycles. But it wasn’t that… we always had food back home, and clothes. We were not rich, but we were living.” </span></p><p></p><h4>Staying in Canada</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/99jxVEnbVZ4?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I think when we came in, in ’67, and got busy with going to English school, then came ’68 and Dubček and a little bit more freedom, and more people were coming, younger, you know. Our age or a little bit older maybe, and so forth. So you had a good number of people who came to Toronto for example. So you got involved with them trying to help them out. There were different organizations, so we used to go almost every Saturday to dances for example. In summertime after mass we went to a farm, soccer, singing and stuff. So we kind of didn’t think about anything at that point. We were just enjoying the freedom and the new way of living. That’s what I would say.”</p><h4>Becoming a Monk</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/DMVZWRBBkX0?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“The monks were singing their vespers and it just came out from me, I have no clue why – I said ‘This would be something for me!’ Crazy! So monsignor said ‘Well, we’ve got the Slovak monks in Cleveland. And I have a number of priests that I know.’ And, he said ‘We can go and visit.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, yeah, okay.’ And that was the end of that. But his friends used to come to Toronto, because he had a cottage and they used to spend some vacations there, so I used to join them the last week of their vacation. And then one of them from Cleveland for some reason said… and he brought me an application to the monastery here one year, and I looked at it and I just threw it in the garbage. So the following year he said ‘What’s the matter? You chicken?’ He said ‘You can come and visit at least?’ So I said ‘Okay.’ So that year we came and I spent about three days with the monks here. And I said ‘Gee! I think I would like it, maybe.’ And so, they told me to come again for a visit and so I came again for a visit, and that’s how I came actually to the monastery in 1980.”</p><h4>Return to Slovakia</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/OGtDUJm8cp8?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I would say as you are staying longer in a country, you grow more into the country you are living in. But, in your heart, when it is Christmas, Easter, or some other doings, obviously, you miss your parents and your brothers, especially when you are not able to go back. The first time I went back was after the collapse of communism. That was my first time going back. So by that time, both parents were gone, two of my brothers were deceased, even our parents’ house was sold because my brothers were living in other villages. And so when I came, it wasn’t home. I fell in love with my sister-in-law, whom I met for the first time and their kids. And [they were] of course very welcoming, and I felt like I was back at home again, but it’s not the family home in which you’ve grown up. So, we went there to visit the family that bought it, but they were in the process of remodeling, so they had windows where all the doors had been and it looked like after the War!”</p>
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Brother Gabriel Balazovic
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Brother Gabriel Balazovic was born Julián Balažovič in Dolná Krupá, Slovakia, in 1949. His father worked as a forest ranger and then in a facility for the mentally ill, while his mother stayed at home and raised Julián and his six siblings. Upon finishing school in Dolná Krupá, Julián attended Pol’nohospodárska záhradnícka škola (where he trained to become a gardener) in Rakovice. In 1967, he was invited alongside two of his cousins to visit his aunt Mary who lived in Toronto. He accepted her invitation and came to Canada, where he was impressed by the standard of living and decided to stay. Brother Gabriel says he was handed a ten-month prison sentence in absentia for failing to return to Czechoslovakia. In Toronto, he became a very active member of Sts. Cyril & Methodius Slovak Roman Catholic Church, to which his aunt belonged. He says that he enjoyed a busy social life as a member of the parish, attending dances and soccer matches which were organized by the predominantly Slovak congregation. He began to do a lot of singing and reading within the parish, and he met one nun in particular who spoke with him about the possibility of joining a monastic order. At this time, Brother Gabriel says he also subscribed to the Slovak-American magazine Ave Maria, which was published in Cleveland.</p><p> </p><p>It was during a trip to the United States in the late 1970s that Brother Gabriel says he first thought seriously about becoming a monk. He was traveling to a conference when he stopped at the Czech monastery in Lisle, Illinois. There, he says, he heard the monks sing vespers which had a profound effect on him. He was told by a priest traveling with him that there was a Slovak monastery in Cleveland which he may be able to join. After a number of discussions with members of the Benedictine Monastery at St. Andrew Abbey in Cleveland, Ohio, Brother Gabriel did indeed begin the process of taking his vows in 1980. He has lived there and been a member of the order ever since. He returned to Slovakia for the first time to see his family after the fall of communism in 1989. In more recent years, he has traveled to Slovakia to help with the opening of the Benedictine Transfiguration Monastery in Sampor in 2010. Brother Gabriel still travels on a Canadian passport, but became a dual citizen of Canada and Slovakia following the Velvet Revolution.</p>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
NCSML Archive
Catholicism
Catholics
Community Life
Dolna Krupa
Education
Julian Balazovic
Pol'nohospodarska zahradnicka skola
Religion
school
Svaheto Mikulasa
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/8e9593e88c4d3a8ef1c5e56da8d17850.jpg?Expires=1712793600&Signature=EEy2e4XrjWg7OEVOEZ8xRix8qrWK8S7tYizVG0luydLv7qcCxbjmsad89-42Tg7RSWMXUD4vuxU97FOfpvcc983BytNBF5zimiDqFk9HoBAxQ2YaIoLIcQOswhFO70j9ovsBpRCktNUW76OcQu5Ru8Sx3kG-zhf9u2465LHWcZqGs3hGj8gc-nmYCtB21BLSqgdjFiCMDHO3JSflCVCEGAETdpzIpVFiPza9veKE8GGf9oS3IS3mUya7FoF1LxrkOOQVUlM3ZROC1MhADRREFtlaD1CpqZX2T5BfTfjsT3Mc48yhH2NV6KAJaikrISKX1kbfgaRZcKmZ8dlN4on1nQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
60a5a2f75594d9ac8e31cf14535e51ab
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/8aae29e4a9c86af650a485c9afaee49e.jpeg?Expires=1712793600&Signature=YmqOTc0ko6ZzHITHbiLfdXUfgRrQ4dNo%7EEFFz1bg4%7EczioS8hPkTFH0E1cDKBWfWpj5p%7EBW1Eww93fXGVuwC38uvCil8zrdL2tuJCN2n2VY5QVhX-7l2V7VnqUPP%7ENRfeDM86Bi2GDRDwDutkh7sVFvdEV7F7INp0iIKsXHAKh0RQd47iozmHAfQSc-6799T023JsvCp8mJALxCzFqFOlSXQAP1J%7EspFUG9Pq0V8nWDcAb5f%7EzCztxDUpNiyFg96nAli4Ohpfw55j6M3YY7MfuVdMkkHD5fkjPVXS0yzZVJv5aOJXuDWwf3RYfHDFXQHQd39yiEHdSFlz0hBfYeh%7EQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
8c319eb72d4ebb975a195cded55f9002
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/e5af382c3d9339375d6e41de4326a8c9.jpg?Expires=1712793600&Signature=SzgTYemL6AMtYpwcrMO0t6nj6bs0Kiq4L2CelGM2oAs3ZSP0d%7EgiFxpmpqVn7nSLbSJRKtFHp0AG-wycbx0VxmmDOGZrEMw9SOaSy0rgd7xS74T4UyUDjvytS4VM0t3%7Ef1EVQDE1FivWp97TG%7E%7EycnK35lTm2bBfhfpxbKWZCRkPhR7ch2c36mQDWQHted4k76uXllYriDtjO8UNvLTO-0VsIxsmzrbHC-Gk19S-EgYNMyyIhwT7uXbn5%7E5rtD-c1TCVllFcIiH0%7E8klXuyzOkP8zbsyx2Gho8Frq3apOHDOhJppJZDMCA6uAz4YiWYq1E7Cc4Xd5ayp4yrdI1dl7A__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
b6311343cb73ed8c640f8ac166b7e9a1
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans
Subject
The topic of the resource
Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans was an oral history project launched by the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library in 2009. The project captured and preserved the stories of Czechs and Slovaks who left their homeland during the Cold War and settled in New York City, Washington, D.C., Cleveland, Chicago and the San Francisco Bay Area. During the second phase of the project, the NCSML recorded the stories of immigrants who came to the United States after the fall of communism in 1989 as well. By the conclusion of the project in August 2013, the NCSML had collected more than 300 oral histories. <br /><br />Both phases of the project were made possible by grants from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. <br /><br />On the project’s website, you can read biographies of Czechs and Slovaks who began a new life in the United States, watch video clips from their interviews, and view photos and other archival materials they shared with us. <br /><br />Full length interviews are available for further research at the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library. For more information, contact Dave Muhlena, Library Director, at dmuhlena@ncsml.org.
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
<h4>Great Grandfather</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/KZzxhBaNzqQ?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“I was there all the time playing hide and seek among the stacks of cloth. And with my friends, playing cowboys and Indians and everything else, yeah. But it started out as a very small store, by my great-grandfather, around 1910 or so, and he actually ran a general store, and then clothing store, and he was the first man in the country to import Singer sewing machines. And he hired three ladies in the area to start sewing for him, and eventually grew it into the largest company of its type, for that type of clothing, in Central Europe.”</p><h4>WWII</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/zdwKr5taFao?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“My mother finally told me one day that my father was fighting against the Germans. That’s all I knew, in fact, that became my mantra because all the slights that took place during the War – I wasn’t allowed to go to school, eventually I had to be hidden, my mother hid me on a farm when she was taken away to a slave labor camp for Christian wives of Jewish men, and so she hid me, she hid me away – and I always wanted to know why, why were we being picked out, you know, having to suffer, and me not being about to go to school, not being able to play with my friends for all those years, having to hide out? And the answer always was ‘Because your father is fighting against the Germans.’ And I thought, to me, I was so proud of that that it didn’t bother me that all these things were happening to me. I was never told the real truth, I never found out the real truth until really not too many years ago, when I was an adult. I didn’t know that all these things were really happening because I was actually three quarters Jewish.”</p><h4>Going into Hiding</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/wUzcO0d-70Y?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“In 1944, the Germans started taking away women who were, and who had been, married to Jewish men. And they had a camp, a slave labor camp, in Prague. And in that camp they manufactured windshields for German fighter airplanes. So my mother was taken to that camp. And before she left she hid me with some friends, actually farmers, that we had been living with after the Germans expelled us from our home. And they in the meantime had lost their farm, because the Germans had taken their farm away from them, and they became farmhands on a big farm in the same village. So I lived with them and they actually hid me in a closet. And I’d come out occasionally at night and as the War came to an end I started coming out more and more because it was obvious that the Germans were going to lose the War and a lot of people were losing their fear of the Germans.”</p><h4>BBC</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Hv2kVVr-TM4?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Every radio that you saw during the War in Czechoslovakia – or in the Protectorate, there was no Czechoslovakia – had a paper tag on the front, attached to one of the buttons, which meant that it had been inspected and checked and gutted, gutted such that it could not get any international broadcasts. And every Czech was smart enough, almost every Czech was smart enough, to be able to fix it. They had this little bug, it had a name – I can’t remember what it was called, this little thing that they made – it was like a two-dollar item that you would buy at Radio Shack today, that they stuck in the radio so that they could all listen. And everybody listened to the BBC, in Czech. And every night at a particular time, I can’t remember, it was like 8:00 or 9:00, there was a broadcast, and it would start out with Beethoven’s symphony. It went ‘boom boom boom, boom!’ – it would start out like that, and it would say, the first two words would be ‘vola Londyn,’ – ‘London is calling.’ And I would, at first I would sneak behind the door and I would listen to these broadcasts, because it was the only truth we got about what was going on in the War. Because otherwise it was all propaganda and the Germans were always winning, whether it was on the Russian front or, you know, anywhere else. But this was the true story about the War – so that’s how I knew. Eventually, after about a year or so, they knew that I had been listening, so they just let me sit in the room with them each evening. So that’s how I knew what was going on in the War, and you know, even though I was a kid I could comprehend it, pretty well.”</p><h4>Leaving On Foot</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/QNAOxnyHeR8?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“A farmer came riding up on a horse-drawn wagon, and told us to pile in with our three suitcases and a bundle of blankets that I was carrying. [He] took us out to his farm, and told us to sit tight until midnight. They fed us dinner and we sat there just watching the clock and midnight came, the farmer says ‘Okay, it’s time to go,’ and the next thing I heard was my father screaming at the farmer. The farmer had stolen one of our suitcases, and that was about one third of all of the belongings we had in the world at that point. The guy stole one of the suitcases. So, my father gave up, because the guy just wouldn’t admit that he had stolen it, even though we came into his house with three suitcases but now we went out with two. So my mother carried a suitcase, my father carried a suitcase and I carried a bundle of blankets which turned out had jewelry inside, which I wasn’t aware of. I was carrying the biggest asset we owned. And the farmer took us to the edge of the woods at the back of his farm and he said, because it was a beautiful night, it was a clear, clear night, but it was dark – there was no moon, but stars – this was in [March] of 1948, and the farmer says to us ‘That’s the direction to the US zone of Germany, just keep walking in that direction and, in about three hours, if they don’t shoot you first, that’s where you’ll end up.’”</p><h4>Parents</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/CMRArTe7kU0?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Very deliberately no. They wanted to put as much space between themselves and the immigrant community as possible, because – they had friends who were immigrants, I don’t mean to say that they completely forgot all their friends, they had friends in New York, we’d go and visit them over the weekend and so forth – but, they also saw in these immigrants what they didn’t want to be: people who are always complaining about how difficult things are in America, and how wonderful things would have been if we had stayed, and you know, all the things that they, that they didn’t do. They wanted to have nothing to do with the immigrant community – I mean outside of going to a Czech restaurant in New York, because the one thing that all three of us missed more than anything else was Czech food!”</p><h4>Parents</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/KLGCBr-OlhE?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“One thing that was drummed into me by my parents, from the moment we arrived here, was ‘Forget everything that happened to you on the other side of the ocean. Remember nothing. We’re starting a new life.’ And they really believed that I did, you know, and I guess, I think that I believed that I did, somehow, subconsciously. I never talked to my friends; you know, when people would ask ‘Where are you from?’ I would say ‘Oh, I’m from Czechoslovakia,’ but that was it, I would never give them any details, I would never say ‘Well, you know, during the War, I was one of the hidden children.’ None of that stuff, I never discussed it with anybody, or people would say – because I’d played soccer before soccer was very popular here and I was much better than anybody else they’d say ‘Where did you learn to play soccer like that?’ ‘Oh, in Czechoslovakia.’ But that was the extent of any conversation I would have, because I was bound and determined, by God, I was an American – as far as I was concerned, that never even happened. So, I didn’t pay any attention until 1968. When Prague Spring came, it was like a different world, I suddenly, suddenly I felt like I was a Czech. I started listening on… I had this transatlantic Zenith radio, shortwave, and I started listening to Radio Prague. And I heard all these beautiful things, and I heard Dubček speak, you know. All of a sudden, I felt like I was both an American and a Czech. Not for very long. And then after the invasion I put the curtain down again.”</p>
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Charles Heller
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Charles Heller was born in Prague in 1936. His father, Rudolph, was the owner of a clothing manufacturing firm in Kojetice near Prague, which had been started by Charles’ great-grandfather on his mother’s side, Gustav Neumann. Charles’ mother, Ilona, had been born in Vienna and raised in Kojetice – a devout Catholic in what was otherwise a Jewish family. Charles also attended Catholic church in his youth.</p><p> </p><p>With the outbreak of WWII, the clothing factory was seized by the Nazis and handed to an ethnic German called Hollmann. Charles’ great-grandfather Gustav was sent to Terezín and later, it is thought, to Treblinka camp in Poland, from which he did not return. Charles’ father Rudolph, who was also Jewish, fled Czechoslovakia in 1940 and made it to Palestine, where he joined the British Army, and eventually fought as part of the British Army’s Czechoslovak Division. In 1944, Charles’ mother was taken away to a forced labor camp for wives of Jewish men and Charles himself went into hiding. He spent the rest of the War hiding in a closet in a farm belonging to the Tůma family not far from Kojetice. Charles says he was told that this was because his father was fighting the Nazis; it was only as an adult that he was told it was because he was three-quarters Jewish. Charles was reunited with his mother and father in the summer of 1945; he says, however, 15 other members of his family did not return.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>The Heller family moved to Prague shortly after the War so that Charles could attend school in the capital. In 1948, the clothing factory the family owned in Kojetice was nationalized and one floor of their apartment building they owned in Prague was turned into the local Communist Party headquarters. The family decided to leave and planned their escape to coincide with the funeral of Jan Masaryk, held in the capital in March 1948. They crossed the border by foot at night into the American zone of Germany near Rossbach (a town in West Bohemia today known as Hranice). Charles and his family spent one year and a half in refugee camps in Germany (including Schwabach and Ludwigsburg) before coming to America in May 1949. They settled in Morristown, New Jersey, and Charles’ father again got involved in the clothing business, starting as a pattern cutter and rising to a top management position at McGregor Sportswear. Charles attended Morristown High School and then Oklahoma State University on a basketball scholarship. An engineer by profession, Charles moved to Maryland to work for Bell Labs in the 1960s and has remained in the ‘Old Line State’ ever since. In recent years he has become involved in venture capitalism and conducts seminars for new managers, both in the Czech Republic and the United States. Charles published a book of his memoirs recently, and he lives in Arnold, Maryland, with his wife Sue.</p><p>Related Items:</p>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
NCSML Archive
1948
Catholics
Child emigre
Community Life
emigrant
Forced labor
Holocaust
Jews
Nazis
refugee
Refugee camp
Sense of identity
Sports
Terezin
World War II
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/3e96d3282fcf1c7bd017121d3a8d3205.jpg?Expires=1712793600&Signature=lY0oSeAn5%7EwP5ltxgVnezhSVQVfarf3YHRJHUvmPIbt6JVjFYVUsWcMFzo0EMVVAC%7E6oxCWqOlTvPA3DZmODXPKbdTW5liWsLf54HT0TdkIFvNTPyCmnIAT95tNSlynVOa-WLTbvDRyEST89GRkqLwYi9E1Tlfu1h5p2foFjGmGdhDXDqkZzlNABERqGgj3nMZrR2IGzTVFx4cpKBzON0qrDredCPhn6O8JAdmMnHVfC7%7E6QrJUFAmLg8wtgujK-qKOQ87lyNL2QptXUzSSillfALlt9bm1rWz-ZPl6FVdy2BX0NsyCnjuuxqUj10uFHL-xCt0msHppawqN3QuAfFg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
83a0f60346338d3517fb4ba853389feb
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/112c0b4b1eead0f9245291b4094222f0.jpg?Expires=1712793600&Signature=YccG9rXibLPJ9XeZyNjaQWvpJukzIKK3%7EsgTGRc1vJUMMD4inguff2WrmPfe2lNSKXI4Bb5g9HD3RxWRxS1qJcV%7ES%7EpWOgpMo7QSgWnI3ow2VxPoRu8UCKuEfmMnMDExbvNq%7E-1%7EtIfwt32JCxkwsgi7sDcZFQ4Xf7o1nbZGIKEeaNaUKbtI0t2BIB4h-loZi0BvvjnLiO3ZgsS3uoVp6ma4mOKEj202WTM7xbjyJTQLWJDJj0UfoaiEXNaUbecJ0Y7TrIN28EI7eONvZTkvYFuv-d5x9NhOxdgY2mcwk4vih2MByM20PlA2HLb7UDFlJ7zyq%7EZw8UblC5RcwpmVPQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
40855b71542208743c938a2df3ce64ac
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans
Subject
The topic of the resource
Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans was an oral history project launched by the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library in 2009. The project captured and preserved the stories of Czechs and Slovaks who left their homeland during the Cold War and settled in New York City, Washington, D.C., Cleveland, Chicago and the San Francisco Bay Area. During the second phase of the project, the NCSML recorded the stories of immigrants who came to the United States after the fall of communism in 1989 as well. By the conclusion of the project in August 2013, the NCSML had collected more than 300 oral histories. <br /><br />Both phases of the project were made possible by grants from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. <br /><br />On the project’s website, you can read biographies of Czechs and Slovaks who began a new life in the United States, watch video clips from their interviews, and view photos and other archival materials they shared with us. <br /><br />Full length interviews are available for further research at the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library. For more information, contact Dave Muhlena, Library Director, at dmuhlena@ncsml.org.
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
<h4>Childhood</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/cXqTUP7BIiU?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“My grandparents lived in Kysuce and Orava, these two beautiful mountainous regions, so I spent most of my childhood there and the memories are just beautiful because it was the nature, the animals, the kindness and love of my grandparents. And of course my parents, but they were studying and getting their doctorates, so I was spending a lot of time with my grandparents and cousins. Both sets of grandparents had huge yards, animals – chickens, cows, geese, and ducks – so it was very farm-like and I loved it. I learned a lot about plants and animals and people and love.”</p><p><em>Were you allowed to run wild there?</em></p><p>“Oh yeah, of course! And we would go to the forest, mushroom picking, blackberry, blueberry picking. It was wonderful, really.</p><p>“Childhood in former Czechoslovakia was so pure. I was not touched by anything I learned later or read in newspapers about oppression during communism. I definitely felt very secure and safe and all those clichés about communism, that everybody is equal and there is no crime. I really felt that. It was a great level of security, and I really enjoyed that and I don’t see that anymore nowadays, I’m sorry to say.”</p><h4>Parents</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/zmd_pxBZTes?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Since my parents were scientists, they tried to be neutral. They were raised Catholic and both of my grandparents were active participants in the church, but since they were living in remote parts of Slovakia, it never really had an effect on my parents’ careers, and my parents were always going to church when we went to visit my grandparents; they went to mass and, yet, they had good positions. It never really impacted them. My dad had a leading position at the Ministry of Health; my mom was a very accomplished doctor. Back then, scientists didn’t really make much money and didn’t have recognition in our society, and I remember my parents complaining about that and my mom sometimes feeling like she was a rag that everybody was wiping their feet on. She would make more comments like that, especially dealing with patients who were workers, plumbers, and who were treating her not very nicely. I recall some memories like that.”</p><p><em>So did life for your family change for better after the Revolution?</em></p><p>“Yes, absolutely. My mom opened a private practice and my dad became a board member of all the multinational organizations, from the UN to the World Health Organization. They’d been traveling always because my dad had to travel for work, even before [the Revolution]. The government would send him on certain missions, and my mom would go along with him sometimes; she would get her visa permit. But, of course, after communism collapsed, my parents were taking full advantage of exploring the world and aligning it with their careers.”</p><p><em>Were your parents in the Communist Party?</em></p><p>“Yes they were. Not active participants, but they understood that if they wanted to advance, or even be functional somehow, they had to do that. It somehow worked out. We would still go to church when we went to visit my grandparents, and then they would be part of the Communist Party and somehow they didn’t think much about it. They just did what they had to do to survive and provide a healthy and happy environment for us.”</p><h4>Return to America</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/JNRkz5X9pbI?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“It’s all about the people you meet and the activities you put yourself in, and I felt like that was my new home. Yes, I was very lucky. I met some people who are stimulating and a job that was very inspirational. So it was a flow. I didn’t make the cognitive decision ‘I am going to stay here.’ I just stayed because it was a no-brainer. Everything just fell into place, and with Grimoldi, it was a career that just…It was an international firm, so everything happened so fast. We were working with celebrities of the top format so it was just so exciting that one day you wake up and ‘Oh! It’s five years later.’ So it just felt very organic and natural to stay and be here.”</p><h4>Non-Profit</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/lr2aU0JiaZk?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I had some celebrity friends from Slovakia, so they would come and visit and they were always asking about possibilities of making it here or presenting their works here. So I had a lot of contacts in the music and entertainment industry, so I would try to help them and then through friends – I became friends with a lot of Slovak-Americans and Slovaks living or working in New York, especially – we started organizing little events for my friends coming from Slovakia. And it was very unofficial; it was always just a gathering for the community – the New York friends and the European friends. But then, I think the epiphany came when the first Consul General came to New York – Ivan Surkoš of Slovakia – and the Consulate General was opened, and the Consul General and his wife came to one of these concerts I organized. It was actually for my friend Misha who was a famous singer in Slovakia. And they were like ‘Wow, look at this. It’s so many people and an international crowd. How did you pull this together?’ And that was actually in cooperation with Slovak Info and a friend of mine, Otto Raček, who is also a very active Slovak-American. And the question was how can we institutionalize and enhance these activities? So the question was answered with two possibilities: one is to establish a non-profit organization that would help us obtain funding and would help to really attain volunteers and the whole community of artists and performers and other diplomats who are wanting to be active. And the second was for my ability to become part of a consulate team. So I’ve established, together with the Consul General’s wife, L’ubica, this non-profit organization called the +421 Foundation.”</p><h4>+421 Foundation</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/rmlzVNdWzP4?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“We organized many small exhibitions, concerts, book presentations, film festivals that the following year started to grow and they were not so small anymore. So one hundred people that were attending the first year became three to five hundred to fifteen hundred this year. And I do have to depict the biggest – and my favorite program – which is called Slovak Fashion Night.”</p><p><em>That’s the signature event, correct?<strong><br /></strong></em><br />
“That is. Not only because I used to be in fashion, but because it’s New York. Fashion is the breathing organism of the city, or one of the major industries in the city; and of course it’s very glamorous, models are always very attractive, and we have a very wide scope of guests, so we decided to organize a fashion show. I had to convince the Consul General and the whole team who, at the beginning, was very hesitant to do that, but eventually gave in, and the next thing you know, Slovak Fashion Night becomes a huge event where we get approached by our Austrian colleagues or other European consulates or non-European consulates or other colleagues in the cultural field to co-produce events with them, and it’s very pleasing. Also, since it’s such a popular program, it provides a platform where we can really introduce not just our upcoming and talented fashion designers from Slovakia, but also other performing artists like dancers, singers, photographers, visual artists, moderators. We’ve been able to compile a whole program of different art sections and put it all together and create one huge show that’s definitely, very surprisingly, great.</p><p>“It attracts Slovaks living here or other emigrants who have forgotten how Slovakia is and how it’s been growing and evolving, and this is an opportunity for them to come and see, and they’re like ‘Wow, we have all this? This is amazing!’ And I’m very happy to be able to provide this reality check, or this educational aspect in raising awareness about what’s going on in Slovakia and how Slovakia is growing. Also, culture, in my opinion – and this is my little phrase I use every time I promote Slovakia or what we do – culture is the best marketing tool to promote Slovakia as an economic or investment destination, and to help us form mutually beneficial relations, not only in the cultural sphere, but in the economic and beyond as well. So yes, we do invite all of the investors or potential business partners for Slovakia to these beautiful events, and strengthen their relationships. Show them how wonderful we are and what we can do.”</p><h4>Culture</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/lxPYnVCOMyY?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“It’s a constant aspiration of ours, and we do bring in the traditional aspect of Slovakia and all those features that you mentioned – the folklore, the beautiful traditional embroidery, the beautiful music and dances and traditional attires of Slovakia – but that’s not what we want to showcase only because that’s something that’s always been there and we’ve always been showing it in the past. But we bring the old and the new and bridge the modern, evolving, ascending culture and the arts that Slovakia is, as a modern, world-leading country. That we definitely are not stuck in the past or all we have are the wooden dolls and corn dolls and those beautiful, but yet older, traditions. So we bring the old and the new, and our fashion shows have folklore dances or the demonstration and presentation of the embroidery or the traditional costume, and I think it’s just a fun and very innovative way to connect both worlds. I think our guests can relate to that and have been relating to that very well. It’s refreshing, in my opinion.”</p><h4>Slovakia</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/nMx0vsTQ43A?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“It’s very simple and pure in a sense, because, when I come home to Slovakia, I just feel a sense of belonging. This really deep, gut feeling that that’s my home and that’s where I’m from, and the nature, the feel, the essence, the flair – that’s something that will always be me, my true essence. And when I am in the U.S., especially New York or Los Angeles – I’ve been spending a lot of time in Los Angeles because of my company that’s based there – I feel like this is great, this is where I have my house and my friends, but it’s sort of like a pied-a-terre. It’s not the true house, the true home. So, Slovakia will always be my home, and I hope I will be able to marry someone or find someone who will be either European or Slovakian or somehow will always be able to have that home with me there, too. I don’t have a vision how yet, but I know it’s possible to maybe have an international home, but always be able to spend a certain amount of time there.”</p><h4>U.S.</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/7pcPVHIGrMY?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I think it doesn’t matter whether it’s communism or it’s now or democracy or this era or the other era. It’s about individuality and who we resonate with or what we resonate with, and I as an individual definitely resonated with and found my perfect match in the USA and found my way to create another realization and self-actualization, and that’s what I think is wonderful about the world being open and the world being your oyster. But, my roots will always be in Slovakia and I will always come there and it’s always my home. But America really allowed to become who I am becoming. Who I feel that I can identify with. Who I can understand. And I’m very grateful for that.”</p>
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Eva Jurinova
Description
An account of the resource
<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>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
NCSML Archive
Arts
Catholics
Communist Party members
Community leadership
Cultural Traditions
Fashion
Healthcare professionals
Ivan
Post-1989 emigrant
Rural life
Sense of identity
Slovak citizenship
Surkos
Velvet Revolution
Women workers
Zilina
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/3bb1a97482bef6fc920d2a71f7c21e28.jpg?Expires=1712793600&Signature=Avmvi7NAymCmOC1Nq4bhNbX5xnmA%7Ee3r4ZRSQnL7InZjgdg261mnjqSCOSBH3lmPWRR6vH0%7EzKZPoRBNjLoTDx1TB1WBnGDCbo2sNnHZEHrh%7EGX3d0jpNAqWSCDI7kP-CaNTXQh40Moulvcd50j35dO123EYZ6hcW4e0Zr-elm3vil-Zi-ra8asaoaE2x6w4g6Ln4hnwC50FrmBuwD8dPwPkiHs5lsLHXeahcnL8c8cVk1JpFM2VqJn6EnsDeFEPNtYL4iyWG%7EPBFXIm5FQi9H0lqe64L7h-kBA8NPbN3ylNp2YYQVefD5ifvi%7EXRAA7nmcX9iQuF9vutLa9nFG30A__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
f49468b40530b3d35891a2a29acfb052
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/398c883c9628e83bd322528a6ab32f1a.jpg?Expires=1712793600&Signature=i01tH7%7EnUpQzp2EviCoavGAkmH-OJKjwY68C1WtjJUQy5MuUxVj0bGvyxSdwYMd6DsKpMWBUmJVfthYifsx1gdB6aJcqM%7EGMRq0nnqkwvNjLQm%7EXocx9F1p9prSmkY4iQUW%7EWVCeq1w11-nmSJ8WTyp3NJ7zKEpIjZ9%7E7f46DUlJuH3NlxdIM-TBNR51iUEWoqXzSSto%7ELAHWpS-HqiTAXPedPrCP5b6z7zQn%7E70qXdArJZBAIVJeurppSjaTLmF3jocY9mOjskS6YYmXqfHLLwOI5-ng0jGz9aP6RtTwL0zbVjNuOyQyhV2-ZTnBrKJIK9a38P-bFlWl1lBpKo4dQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
561aec3a687567cffd53377cc90bfdd8
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/c58b3a16148c60a139cf7be0016ea088.jpg?Expires=1712793600&Signature=i8YXHLaojMFT-NPvtMnQox-kC1T2eTVVL9-SpXnVodqr9Hv7ephr2sqJMElnyavfQ%7ErVdWc7pfftg9pbm7KiY7JBoZlNmH1UbyFtipcndI4Ls5vzT1do0Xmmx98O%7EYwFjizLLHfYu%7ESYvr%7EtHgU0CynLGC9AgMbsm0mQO2GA0rekONaPDICnSufIQxiSKh54ks3YJjgFKYbz%7EgmzU0YtWE9KhIgC0kHWxMu4zxCdJGE92LM0laCGsdXbM%7EHLJa5ERbQulBAbrqwcMZZYRuERt1MxSCWYxvr4o18Ydm73HnUS2ZbNFQ7TrJ1AWTnC7Bk9-e8fuwOXKObJLVqP9EX6eg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
8dd3b5b4941ad30374d3c0c0e443e936
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans
Subject
The topic of the resource
Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans was an oral history project launched by the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library in 2009. The project captured and preserved the stories of Czechs and Slovaks who left their homeland during the Cold War and settled in New York City, Washington, D.C., Cleveland, Chicago and the San Francisco Bay Area. During the second phase of the project, the NCSML recorded the stories of immigrants who came to the United States after the fall of communism in 1989 as well. By the conclusion of the project in August 2013, the NCSML had collected more than 300 oral histories. <br /><br />Both phases of the project were made possible by grants from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. <br /><br />On the project’s website, you can read biographies of Czechs and Slovaks who began a new life in the United States, watch video clips from their interviews, and view photos and other archival materials they shared with us. <br /><br />Full length interviews are available for further research at the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library. For more information, contact Dave Muhlena, Library Director, at dmuhlena@ncsml.org.
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
<h4>WWII</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/eY0PWrIGZDA?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“Everybody was almost poor, because people didn’t have too many things after the War – everything was destroyed. I remember I didn’t have shoes; I couldn’t go out and play because we didn’t have shoes for a few months, because it was not available to buy anything. At the end of 1946, the supplies started to come to the people, because the factory and everything was destroyed, and people didn’t have, you know, too much money to buy things and it was very hard. Just after I started to go to school, I remember, it was much better everything.”</p><h4>Leaving Czechoslovakia</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/yJ2sRFGbMlA?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“We were very careful not to say one word to anybody in the group, because we knew that in the group they have some informer. Exactly what happened was, we were in Warnemuende in Germany, which is in the North Sea region, you know, which is like a recreation area, and the German secret police came – the Stasi – and they took one girl away from us. The told her, ‘Take your suitcase and come with us immediately.’ They showed this ID to our leader who was with the group and said ‘We are police from DDR Germany and this girl must go back with us to Czechoslovakia immediately.’ And the girl was crying, unbelievable, you know, she was so sorry. Just two guys come and they say, right away ‘You must go with us.’</p><p>“Her idea probably was if she goes to Denmark she will stay over there, that is my thinking, you know. Just they took her away, we didn’t say anything, we always said ‘Oh, we are coming back, I must finish my house’ (because I was remodeling,) ‘We must do this when we come back.’ You know, we had a good time and we were friendly with everybody in the group, just we never ever said something bad about the government or ‘we will not come back’ or something. We always looked to the future back in Czechoslovakia, that ‘we will do this and come back and do that…’”</p><h4>Danish Police</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/zan_pyOCHdM?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“You see, you went to the police in Denmark, and we said ‘We don’t want to go back.’ And they said ‘Ok, give us your passport.’ We must give them our passport, a young police officer in civilian clothes said ‘Come with me.’ We went to his car, we went to the hotel where we stayed and he said to the doorman ‘These guys go with me.’ He said ‘Let them go into the room, pick up their things and they go with me.’ And the doorman said ‘Well, it’s a police officer,’ you know, he didn’t say anything. We picked up our things, we went to his car, and he takes us to the penzion. It was not like a camp or something, it was a pension, a nice pension, in Copenhagen, and it was full of refugees – Czechs, Slovaks and Polaks.”</p><h4>America</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/jWpo0OF1XV4?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I sent my mum, I tried to send her some money in the letters, and all the time, I sent the letters registered, you know, [to be picked up] in the post office. And what really bothered me was that the director of the post office told my mother ‘Open the letter here.’ And mother opened the letter, there was money in it, and he said ‘I give you one week to go into the bank and exchange this money the legal way.’ Because at this time there were <em>bony</em> and my mum could sell these dollars to somebody and some people liked to buy <em>bony</em> [with this foreign currency], because they liked to buy cars or go to Tuzex – at this time there was Tuzex [a shop where luxury goods could be bought for foreign currency] and all kinds of things. Just no, they told my mother something that was not right, because you have the law, you have secrecy, no? You’re supposed to have, in your letters, secrecy. And they said ‘Forget it, open it, right now!’”</p><h4>Warned About America</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/jkAAh0PRLtg?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I was leaving the shipyard in Copenhagen and they sent me to this superintendent, because he must sign the paper for me to release me, and he asked me, he said ‘I heard that you are going to America.’ I said ‘Well, I would like to go.’ And he said to me ‘I lived in America for 15 years,’ he said, ‘I was working over there.’ He said ‘America is hard, just if you make it, you will be happy.’ He said ‘If you don’t make it, come here and see me and I will take you back.’ He told me that. And I always remembered that, him saying ‘America is hard, just if you make it, you will be happy.’ Thanks god, I was working hard, you know, working in construction in this country – it is not easy. I was working, I remember, I was working for this company for six years – it was George Hyman, it is now called something different – they changed it, now it is Clark Company. We were building this new Senate office building, it was like a big hole, three floors down, and the Washington temperature was 102 degrees. Back in the hole it was maybe 120 degrees! It was not easy, it was hard – and thanks god I made it. I was working most of the time inside construction, finishing everything, this kind of thing, you know, not outside. Just that time we were building that Senate office building I was working outside, because I didn’t want to leave the company, I wanted to stay with the company. And, it was not easy.”</p>
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Joe Gazdik
Description
An account of the resource
<p> </p><p>Joe Gazdik was born in the spa town of Trenčianske Teplice, in western Slovakia, in March 1940. His family had a small farm, which he and his brother helped look after. To make ends meet after WWII, Joe’s father worked on both the family farm and the land belonging to the spa itself. Joe went to school in Nové Mesto nad Váhom and, as a keen sportsman, gained a place at Charles University’s Faculty of Physical Education in Prague upon graduation. He studied there for one month until his father died and, Joe says, money ran out. In 1961, Joe entered the Czechoslovak Army and was sent to the officers’ academy in Nitra. He left the army in 1963 and began to study technology and machine maintenance at the Stredná priemyselná škola in Dubnica nad Váhom; during this time he also worked in a local factory. Joe says it was when he was denied promotion at this plant (called Strojárske a metalurgické závody Dubnica) that he decided to leave Czechoslovakia.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>He did so with two of his friends in August 1969 in the course of an organized coach tour to East Germany and Denmark. In Copenhagen, the trio went to the Danish police with their passports and said they did not want to return home. Joe subsequently spent 21 months in Denmark, working at the port in Copenhagen, before moving to Munich, Germany, and then the United States. He was sponsored to come to the United States by the International Rescue Committee in 1971. Joe first lived in Annandale, Virginia, before settling in Alexandria and then Arlington, where he lives to this day. He started working in construction in the Washington, D.C. area before securing a job with ABC News, where he worked as a building and maintenance technician for 21 years. He retired at the end of 2001. He is married to Maria Amparo Gazdik and has two daughters, Leyla Margareta and Lucy Ann.</p><p> </p><p> </p>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
NCSML Archive
1968
Catholicism
Catholics
Cuban Missile Crisis
emigrant
Engineers
Military service
Nove Mesto nad Vahom
refugee
Sports
Tours
Trencianske Teplice
World War II
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/abfa8a0587c4acac0c21d4eb21bf82bf.png?Expires=1712793600&Signature=cIherP1Y0f0OJ7AzU8cCEjD6aIF3PUYdVjYu0qryroXm37YmTLm61QsIap3JdIYFK53RDCwlLQvoiJ1-LuctKMkz6fF8-OowEozrZHafQIa%7EiuyQCiY-Xx70qHgZd13Re2-XJwjN1y1VzYtWegmVgxzZgeZWm9Cv5U1Lu3PMRc8bGSJDaG-gZ6AWqBgBOKjnh47puxGvA2gKn%7EWo2O96bXezam5EA4lP3z6myQuJBR85wr38VSu0BP%7EBRiSqRDrm5oyssS61QjWdbOj5LrqNGDQ30fNZK%7EIYb%7EtZnbcs061uqG1U5ezUvgyXgvBEAdDS7i2YlMbbyMbpqozksCKqVg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
75980547d583b0ae46218a9e134346e5
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/82718de6ae20bd5f23a467b75fc24921.jpg?Expires=1712793600&Signature=gRuJ9RiPv6noxCM73VT3AeUKbGp2jy5WMGNXBimTlFSyg88jJoSLXsev1gMZX%7EGo5F1U0PvOHb9vV3B67Vj4jUWyTUOQBbsm6r-B5nepqX5zPPwuUBJsoEUpxYPK6KNIOYg8LmnkVM%7E9sMvlJzy7v16TSAvm%7Em7yXmgoGnk2CTEvRUrELcnrhaiz9QDfLqZX0gvYYeTz8KRpPV2M-Spb8D0qvD-r7Z5DWxyjKZhvAVMC5kzTU7h%7EY66vjbT1EdiXwXvubHpKwNdhQzKngSNZC4ELxKOUpcv0w9YdEx2p6blAlOldalXw5VHZ7fRHNfVenPToPf0hMnQThnp0Flixgw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
e8602082a89655634b242530493c5622
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/e8efe19e04ed09981354a4df66e35d24.jpg?Expires=1712793600&Signature=wJZivjL8hilIrAiCgj26xuCg0Ri%7E4SfD6M%7ENAKE3ecGSiQOTYQsIviUYUIabILR46pa7WATljGjIBqClk5DhtdJuGk5zbgQqtYbYLgdEEopnAvWN4G1-z9tlm4zGv-27osw2Tag%7EbH%7E2m5vqNK3hXs75QP8wPzxTKMP8A6qV8X7J5f5eVwaY6Z%7EjGdN6EpKXzVR%7EGbHdYuPcFu1styqx4%7E2Qu3b8sQHaA97TGSEZSe%7Ez3rP8Fhvx6wgjIynPhIH0hwMFoMbgSi0BoHJ%7E%7EKaUODfzUKp-L5UiaeQ5qNvPoR%7E5eGN7iE9%7Ep4xGFrgnU5tE3pZSpoM1mIJcCUCn-v5%7EWQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
0c0a3ac67a5310f249e10e5e9ce7f2aa
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans
Subject
The topic of the resource
Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans was an oral history project launched by the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library in 2009. The project captured and preserved the stories of Czechs and Slovaks who left their homeland during the Cold War and settled in New York City, Washington, D.C., Cleveland, Chicago and the San Francisco Bay Area. During the second phase of the project, the NCSML recorded the stories of immigrants who came to the United States after the fall of communism in 1989 as well. By the conclusion of the project in August 2013, the NCSML had collected more than 300 oral histories. <br /><br />Both phases of the project were made possible by grants from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. <br /><br />On the project’s website, you can read biographies of Czechs and Slovaks who began a new life in the United States, watch video clips from their interviews, and view photos and other archival materials they shared with us. <br /><br />Full length interviews are available for further research at the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library. For more information, contact Dave Muhlena, Library Director, at dmuhlena@ncsml.org.
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
<h4>German Soldiers</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ofuU4_besLg?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“Ever since I can remember – I was born in 1937 – but ever since I can remember, we were occupied by the Germans, especially the SS troops and also regular soldiers. The regular soldiers were mainly very friendly Germans, because I think they were Ukrainian Germans. And the SS were very, very respectful. They would go for a walk up and down the main street with two girls on their arms. Everything was fine. But then one day we saw Vinné all in flames. Well, Vinné was under a mountain, and Vinné harbored guerrillas and so the families were feeding them of course, and so that whole town was [punished].”</p><h4>Home City Bombed</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/fuIZWjvbTOY?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“One morning I walked out, as a little kid – I should have been in second grade, but the second grade was suspended because of the War – and I looked down the Laborec, which is our river, down towards the east, and I saw a formation of nine something. At first I thought they were geese, but no, as they came nearer and nearer the earth started shaking, and then somebody across the river in the Count’s grove, shot a couple cannons, so that was the beginning of a long day of being bombed. Nine planes would drop bombs on us and nine planes would come back, until around 4:00.</p><p>I saw my mom holding my sister – I think she was a couple months old – and she was standing against the barn. So I attached myself to her and after the planes left, we decided to go not to our bunker, but about five houses down the street eastward, where there was a school built out of stones with a cellar. So that’s where we wanted to go. But halfway there, a new set of airplanes were just about over our heads and I didn’t know what to do; whether to just fall down and cover up or keep on running, as we were told to cover ourselves. I just kept on running and my mother followed me and we got to our destination, but at the door to the cellar, there was a neighbor of ours, a young fellow, he was a barber, lying down with a big hole in his thigh and the blood just coming out, flooding out. What happened was that one of the bombs fell in the schoolyard and he caught the shrapnel.”</p><h4>Big Adventure</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/KDBqbJTfrXA?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I was so excited, so anxious, oh boy! Everything was a revelation to me, everything was new. So you get on the train, hey let’s go to Prague, and spend four days in Prague. You live in a hotel, jump from one trolley car to another. My biggest frustration in Prague was, I was hoping to buy a gun. Because going to America, you needed a pistol. I mean, you’ve seen those movies right? Or at least you heard about them. So I came prepared with a lot of money. I made my own money in Slovakia. And the frustration was, I could not get a gun and I had all this money and I could not spend it. How many ice creams can I eat? How many horse salami sandwiches can I consume? I was frustrated, because I knew that once I put a step on that train going to France, my money was no good.”</p><h4>Yonkers</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/LRgUziNgFxM?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“We were all Slavs, either Ukrainians or Slovaks in that area. A little bit further, there was the Polish group, Polish church. In my area, we had three churches – the Holy Trinity Catholic church, the Holy Trinity Lutheran church, and the Holy Trinity Orthodox church. And also on each corner of the five blocks, there was a krčma, a saloon, gin mill. On Sundays the gin mills were closed, but next to us there was a grocery store, Mr. Ferenc ran it, and people would just go in the back room and he would be pouring stuff for them. And I would go there and shine their shoes. Ten cents a pair.”</p><h4>Publishing Memoirs</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/BWvXvDkTBZE?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I am very, very proud of this book because he’s very, very gentle and forgiving, but when he is talking and describing the situations, you see that communism simply is a failure, an absolute failure economically. But you see something more. You see the dehumanizing force of that particular ism. How it could turn your friends against you. And that’s one of my missions. To make sure that we try to avoid isms and that we try to avoid any kind of orthodoxies. They’re the greatest enemies of peace.”</p><h4>Books and Culture</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4DiIsjo4GbA?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Without books in English, the world will not know us [Slovaks]. The world will not be aware of us. The world will not be able to benefit from the contributions that we can give the world. One of the contributions is the fact that we have a culture that is a synchronistic culture. The best of the two worlds – the West and the East. Yes, we also have our philosophers who wrote in Latin as well as in Slovak. So we need books to let the world know who we are, and we need to use books because they are a wonderful media for presenting the world with our gifts.”</p>
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Ladislaus Bolchazy
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Ladislaus (Lou) Bolchazy was born in Michalovce in eastern Slovakia in 1937. His father Eugene was born in the United States and returned to Slovakia with his parents when he was ten years old. Eugene was a carpenter, and he also farmed the Bölcsházy family’s plot of land. Lou’s mother Maria stayed at home raising him and his four brothers and sisters. In the fall of 1944, Lou and his family were evacuated to Liptovský Hrádok in north central Slovakia because of bombing raids on Michalovce. He says that the fighting seemed to follow them, as they were forced to evacuate from Liptovský Hrádok back to Michalovce the following spring. Lou remembers that his neighbors and relatives helped his family get back on their feet after returning home. In 1948, after the Communist coup, Lou’s father decided to move back to the United States. One year later, he had saved enough to send for his family; because he was an American citizen, the family had no trouble obtaining passports. Lou remembers being very excited about the journey to America, which took the family through Prague and Paris before embarking on a ship in Cherbourg, France. They arrived at Ellis Island in May 1949, where they were met by Lou’s father.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>The Bolchazys settled in Yonkers, NY where their neighborhood was largely Slavic. Eugene took care of a church, meeting hall, and bowling alley while Maria found a job at a dress shop doing piecework. Lou went to Holy Trinity School until eighth grade, and he then attended Divine Word Seminary in Girard, Pennsylvania, with the intention of becoming a priest. He earned degrees in classics and philosophy before leaving the seminary in 1963. Lou found a job teaching high school at Sacred Heart in Yonkers and, in 1965, met his wife Marie; they were married in June the following year. He earned his master’s degree in classics in 1967 and completed his doctorate in the same subject in 1973. After a series of teaching jobs, Lou was offered a one year appointment at Loyola University in Chicago, and he and Marie moved to Oak Park, Illinois. Shortly after, he began Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers, which specialized in textbooks and scholarly literature in classical studies.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Lou and Marie founded the Slovak American International Cultural Foundation, a non-profit that promotes and publishes Slovak literature in translation. A dual citizen of the United States and Slovakia until his death in July 2012, Lou referred to Slovakia as his ‘mother’ and America as his ‘wife.’ He is survived by his wife, Marie.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
NCSML Archive
1948
Bolcshazy
Catholics
Community Life
emigrant
Liptovsky Hradok
refugee
Teachers
Vinne
World War II
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/44558582a96f2ec21994a963f1f27486.jpg?Expires=1712793600&Signature=igR5XTA6zSxBwYJLku7iZCEsNjjo6nAbgPA-nO-K61Jvm6kV9YIZv4iJlbVjLeaHhzIjzoyZeIB9qNCgzd9kGWPRPCwiLh9fLscY0tR420%7ETut4fje%7E-Ye1k1a72KFRXeDwRSq48pKtvCqHNNVs5gAmmDejMPmuGvANj91eXOFODHP5i3agjjgG8LPion0RIGhs9VLJ6MngZtuvPD8VeRP5LQxGDi6CqoorAYAl1OPlevVaDRXUqjcXbmMn9FlgLHk7wc-WBsD-yjZPevkbx32gMiGpRU8yJhxmdNbvuFMeR0n6-EOR3dwL05gpRPwwyLRYouet6VGE9yLsWV26sbQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
11030a7125069375e5b4c5b0ba8e5580
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/6962d47a6ef991ed43202b8ae8e1d15a.jpg?Expires=1712793600&Signature=ezj3qATaUUrHeAk-k31Bg37vtx2YfZB4pLvCD6CKJ-HiHGKRZRhoOhdkt%7El-hoFtzrqFOPT89LTIQyDyQBFajt7om-aKDH6p3Cdlc-GmpR0fXibtQ8GTJDMnR02wCvD2G4LHRHJqxZTQzsUcCK6DrR1A-v6AMey7G-QtXn2LFHHqRMja%7EU5mFumBIkDb0bpuC6XMrN94D73x2DpZSaHssmIkIjmL%7EV2d-yxEZvMJ7Q6rRg5L-GzlgiGoX1qWuxUr0zOx-6mtIzFlrv-MCjbIsOutOfBMJR%7EVHgQ1fXw1GuwdkUnZWXVN-feRMPg80f1taeQJuzVleimgk5idztipLA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
3474658588585142c2318a2961eee288
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/c3bb987b48733b56c9a7bc4e8a18dd72.jpg?Expires=1712793600&Signature=FX63%7EHmXb%7ETtoxXJIO2ZSpqSKeDW2BOdhRzlVhHW1uumI9j%7EMoSOZP58cjgRb-1jZ9503ekGjBQQhIE28iPMbhfCEhdhGUL0D-q1XvdjbtD5E3bKkv8ZvSPunhvk6M5CqN7LbVzFhaYuANd6s%7E2fwK2ppxaHxFoqIwowXrexj6kcD8zu6j8QuiTnmg644jOOM9KMLIsW758630cusft0WEhrmtnp39JGTg-36Hzl6%7E6xo8ca7UvERzIcLzg8FWS-2kAoabSl4WLby58b%7ExRrKn1a-SdiyystQqLQfBdmLc-WtjTFTYcvvg-yLxiQaIU8eXGaA7zzmDyt1cdQkB%7EBKg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
a5ca1fe5b3caf9828531cb7d4ff61b7d
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/d7b2c20e4fee00188ad9c6461076448a.jpg?Expires=1712793600&Signature=atO02d6K3bDyerIHxIKxwCPrsv-ENajeqMEeoEXir81JMOvR26QSPveaBhcCXRGxejMmaNphFfFljjmESGCY4om8ic66kBCsm5CQa3hgT8%7EKq6Nc98vx66IkX-5Zs6eASWBHKYRZwgdfg0YScCf8GrY5rLV17Yz15k0UbEI1iqJsQHUJRNhx2Yht4C1m0xQ9Bq7KhsfStj21PKJWdEh%7EJMEEpprEY7UIsqK9WhpZWcznBSxM5ZIIKOQzXswBctJESnHQlO690%7EXWtyU44xw8grnZXGbEgmfvDdV3L8nWahBhaHHZN0RQ2j6YMN-wCh1tWhXFj%7Eg%7EjHika%7ENpwG2fZQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
06325280fb313c13ba3750942c7f31ec
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans
Subject
The topic of the resource
Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans was an oral history project launched by the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library in 2009. The project captured and preserved the stories of Czechs and Slovaks who left their homeland during the Cold War and settled in New York City, Washington, D.C., Cleveland, Chicago and the San Francisco Bay Area. During the second phase of the project, the NCSML recorded the stories of immigrants who came to the United States after the fall of communism in 1989 as well. By the conclusion of the project in August 2013, the NCSML had collected more than 300 oral histories. <br /><br />Both phases of the project were made possible by grants from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. <br /><br />On the project’s website, you can read biographies of Czechs and Slovaks who began a new life in the United States, watch video clips from their interviews, and view photos and other archival materials they shared with us. <br /><br />Full length interviews are available for further research at the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library. For more information, contact Dave Muhlena, Library Director, at dmuhlena@ncsml.org.
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
<h4>Devoted</h4>
<iframe height="300" title="YouTube video player" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/mgYHJpfQnwc?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe>
<p>“In 1948, when the communists finally took over in Czechoslovakia, people were not accepting it very well, they didn’t want it. Because first of all, people were losing their own property, they didn’t own anything. And my father thought everything belongs to everybody – you couldn’t be having more than I do, or I shouldn’t be having more than you do – we all should have the same. And his own sisters, who lived in a different village, Dubovany, by Piešťany, his own sisters didn’t want to accept that people have to leave their property or something and let Communists run it. And he went over there to talk to his sisters to sign, they had some farmland. My aunt had a small amount of farmland, and my other aunt, and he didn’t feel that they should own that – they should all own it and all together work. So he was very, very strict about it, he would talk and say ‘No, you have to agree, it’s going to be a better life for you, I guarantee you’.</p>
<p>“He had really good ideas, and those ideas which I heard, which he told me, I liked them, because I felt yeah, everybody should… there shouldn’t be hungry people, there shouldn’t be poor people, everybody should have a little piece of something, everybody should have free school, free health program. And that’s what communists promised. So that’s how he believed it.</p>
<p>“Until, I believe, after we left, in the late seventies – he died in 1976. After 1968, it was that Prague Spring and everything, and things were changing. And he went outside, in the city, in Bratislava, and he sees these big shots, these communist leaders talking and being rich, suddenly they were rich, loaded with money and he would say – later on I found out, he never said anything to me, because we were over here – ‘Now something is wrong! Because this is not how I wanted. I wanted to have everything equal, this is not equal.’”</p>
<h4>Communist</h4>
<iframe height="300" title="YouTube video player" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/du2HjQwkEBM?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe>
<p>“It was a small village, farmland, there were about 300 population, that’s it. And that teacher who was working with me – her name was Rosie, Ružena, Rosie – she got me involved with the people. We had a drama club, we had the kids involved in pionieri, that was kids… I was a Pioneer when I was in sixth or fifth grade or something! And sväzáci, that was a teenagers’ club, they wore blue shirts, so we were involved with them. With the drama club we put on some play, that was a teacher’s job in the farmland or villages, the teacher has to do that. And because of that, somebody came up with the idea of ‘Why don’t you become a Communist?’ So that woman, that Rosie said ‘Uh-uh! I don’t want to be!’ She was single, 36 years old, she didn’t want to be. I wanted to be because, I think it was something I wanted to prove to my father, or I wanted him to be proud of me or whatever. I thought that he would be proud.</p>
<p>“And when I told him I was asked to be a Communist Party member, first you are on a waiting list for about a year, and then you are promoted, a full-blown… He looked at me and he says to me ‘Wait a minute! Do you want to go because you believe it, or do you just want to go because you think it’s not time to do it?’ I said ‘No, I want to believe it.’ He said ‘Alright then, you have to live by that!’</p>
<p>“So, I lived by that except one thing: I never claimed that I don’t believe in God. That was my private thing. When somebody asked me the question ‘How are you doing with your view on God and religion?’ I said ‘I’m still working on it.’ That was my answer. That was the only thing that I kept with me, I always believed in God. Because I thought, that has nothing to do with it, communism and God. God is taking care of even communist people.”</p>
<h4>Radio Free</h4>
<iframe height="300" title="YouTube video player" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/YFIR2HKVygM?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe>
<p>“I know my husband one time brought some radio, it was about midnight, we were listening to something, but we called it propaganda. I didn’t believe that. I said ‘Yeah, they tell you anything they want to.’ We say in Slovak ‘keď vtáčka lapajú, pekne mu spievajú’ – did you ever hear that? ‘If you want to catch the bird then sing to him.’ So I thought, this is a nice, nice, speech, but that’s not my idea… When my husband brought up the idea of leaving Czechoslovakia, I said to him ‘You know what, why don’t you go, because I know some people, older people, men went to the United States and made money and then supported their wives, sent for their wives. Why don’t you go?’ And he says ‘Well, I think I have some place a marriage license, and on the marriage license you’re in my name. So, that makes no sense, me going without you. We all go, or nobody goes.’”</p>
<h4>Army</h4>
<iframe height="300" title="YouTube video player" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/GdEKmOFjV7E?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe>
<p>“My father, because he had contact with everything, he knew what was going on. He said to my husband, ‘You know what, probably you are going to be called to service, because Cuba is happening, and a lot of soldiers are being called and sent to protect the country. Probably you are going to be called too.’ And my husband says ‘Dad, why me? I already did my… I am not like a regular soldier!’ And my father says ‘Well, it can happen.’ We got home and about 10:00 in the evening somebody knocked on the door, a man, in a uniform, and he says to my husband ‘You have to report at the airport tomorrow at 6:00 in the morning.’ And that’s when reality hit me. I had a two year-old daughter, and he left in the morning, he went to the airport, and then, at the end of the day I didn’t hear from him, and it wasn’t like here where everybody has phones. We didn’t have a phone, I was living with my mother in law, she didn’t have a phone, I didn’t have a phone. So, the following day, I went to a phone booth, and I called the army reserve or somebody, and I asked about my husband, and they said to me ‘Oh, you know what, súdružka, you don’t have to worry about it, but we can’t tell you where he is, it’s a secret.’ And I didn’t know anything. So, a week went by, I didn’t know anything, and then about maybe ten days later, he called me and he said that he is in Trenčín – I don’t know how many miles it is from Bratislava – he’s in Trenčín, he’s with the army, he is safe, and he is working as a driver. He was driving some big surgeon or big shot in the army, driving him from one place to another. That’s about it. And I said ‘Are you coming to visit or something?’ And he said ‘No, I can’t even talk to you for long, I have ten minutes only.’”</p>
<h4>1968 Invasion</h4>
<iframe height="300" title="YouTube video player" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/wQnNnucn6so?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe>
<p>“It was a beautiful day and I took my kids to play outside. We had an apartment building with a little kind of playground; there was a sandbox, trees and a line for hanging your laundry. And I used to, in those days, I used to wash diapers by hand, we didn’t have disposable ones, it wasn’t that good a time like now. So I took those diapers and I hung them on a line and my youngest one was in a stroller sleeping, his afternoon nap. And a helicopter was flying. I was in the building already, and then I heard people, I went on the balcony and I saw people on the other balcony screaming ‘Take the children in! Take the children in!’ So, the helicopter was shooting, I don’t know at whom. So I ran downstairs, a couple of people helped me get the kids inside, and then we find in a couple of diapers holes. I wish I saved those diapers those days!</p>
<p>“I’m sure they were not shooting at the children, probably because it was the center of the city, probably some commotion was going on on one of those streets and one little bullet got lost or something. So I had another reason, I’m not going stay here, I’m moving out of here, I’m going to live with grandma. Because I thought in a village, it’s nice and quiet, what is the city offering you? Nothing!</p>
<p>“Then, later on that afternoon, my husband – I sent him to get the bread, he came home without bread – he says ‘The stores are empty, no bread!’ I said ‘I need milk for my youngest one.’ Over there for babies, you need a prescription for baby milk, you can’t buy it just like that. And it’s also only in drugstores or pharmacies, they were equipped with the milk for babies. So I said, ‘I’m going to get milk for Lubo,’ so I went down the street, I lined up in front of the pharmacy, I’m standing in line, and they say to me ‘We need a birth certificate, we are not giving you this milk, because anybody can come with a prescription. And we have a shortage, look at the shelves, they are empty.’ So I went back home, walked about ten minutes, meantime helicopters were flying and shooting, we were hiding in one house, in a building, we ran. The whole street, everybody ran into the building. They were shooting, nobody got hurt. I got home, I got the birth certificate, I went back to the pharmacy. No more milk.”</p>
<h4>Departure</h4>
<iframe height="300" title="YouTube video player" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2Jf5kje7-6M?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe>
<p>“In 1969, when we left Slovakia, it was secret, nobody knew about it, not even my father, because my father would call the police and lock us up. He wouldn’t allow it – he said it later on. He said if he knew we wanted to leave, he would have taken precautions so that we won’t leave, even if we went to jail. Yes, he was very upset. Because he was a devoted communist, and he thought he had raised me the same way, and how can I leave my country?</p>
<p>“And he wrote us letters, kind of mean letters, and in those letters he said ‘I don’t think you have an idea what is waiting for you, life out of your country is very hard. I remember my life, it wasn’t easy, and it’s not going to be easy for you, especially because you have four children.’ And ‘Why did you do that? Did I raise you the wrong way, or did I make a mistake raising you? You left this country, you left your family! You shouldn’t do that.’ And he was very upset, and my husband wrote him a letter and apologized to him for me, saying he shouldn’t be mad at me, because it was not me who was doing that, it was my husband who wanted to leave, and I just followed him because I was his wife. So I don’t think my father ever made peace with me leaving.”</p>
<h4>English</h4>
<iframe height="300" title="YouTube video player" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/SijYCOYoD1U?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe>
<p>“The language was really tough, my husband went to Berlitz, so he picked up quick, he was talking all day. The kids, they didn’t have problems at all. My daughter, she was a fourth grader when we left Czechoslovakia, when we got over here they put her in second grade, because they said that’s where she should pick up English. About three months later, she went to the principal, that was a nun, and she said to her ‘I think I speak good enough English, I want to go to fourth grade.’ And they transferred her to fourth grade. So she picked up really good, she didn’t have problems, my boys didn’t have problems. My problem was I didn’t want to talk to anybody, when we were living in that town house, I would go outside, my kids were playing and the next door neighbor would talk to me, I turned I went inside because I didn’t understand her. So, I watched TV, there were soaps, and I would watch them and I said ‘Every day it’s the same people!’ I didn’t understand what was said, I didn’t understand when is the story and when is the advertising, the commercials! I didn’t know, I couldn’t.</p>
<p>“Then my kids were watching a lot of kids’ shows and I would watch with them. And you know what show? Sesame Street! Sesame Street helped me… I watched Big Bird ‘one, two…’ and that’s how I learned English from the TV.”</p>
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Melania Rakytiak
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Melania Rakytiak was born in Paris in March 1936. Her father was a Slovak laborer at a furniture factory while her mother, also Slovak, was a maid in the home of a wealthy French family. Melania’s mother died when she was only 10 months old. Her aunt came to Paris and married Melania’s father. In 1941, the family moved back to Šúrovce, Slovakia, where Melania’s brother was born. In 1945, the family moved to Bratislava, and Melania’s father, Valent, took a job at the city harbor, on the Danube River. All his life, Melania’s father was a fervent communist and, come the takeover in 1948, he became active in politics, says Melania. He worked for Bratislava Region with secret documents and conducting political screenings on county employees. Meanwhile, Melania enrolled in Bratislava’s Stredná pedagogická škola and trained to be a teacher. Upon graduation, she went to work in an orphanage before being placed in a two-teacher rural school in Čierna Voda, not far from Bratislava. It was here in 1956 that Melania herself became a member of the Communist Party.</p>
<p>Melania married her husband, Fedor Rakytiak, in 1957. She says they had three weddings – a civil ceremony, a Catholic service and a wedding in a Lutheran church. The couple had four children. In 1969, Melania’s husband and brother, Ivan, devised a plan together to immigrate to Canada. Melania says she was strongly opposed but suspected her husband would relent at the last moment. He did not, and on April 30, 1969, Melania, Fedor and their four children went to Austria, on the premise of visiting an aunt. They spent the whole of May at Traiskirchen refugee camp before moving to Bad Kreuzen, where they lived for a further two months. Melania says Canada was not accepting refugees at this time, and so the family decided to apply to the United States. They arrived in Cleveland in August 1969. At first, Melania says the family was greatly supported by Joe Kocab and Karlin Hall. Melania worked as a cleaner before she and her husband purchased a dry cleaning business, which they ran until 1981. In 1989, Fedor was diagnosed with lung cancer and died the following year. Melania lives close to her children and grandchildren in Parma, Ohio, and, as an avid cook, she is working to collate a family cookbook of Slovak recipes.</p>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
NCSML Archive
1968
1968 emigrant/refugee
Catholicism
Catholics
Cierna Voda
Communist coup
Communist Party members
Divorce
Education
Family life
local
Lutherans
marriage
Marxism
Politics
Prague Spring
Refugee camp
school
Strecanska
Stredna pedagogicka skola
Surovce
Teachers
Warsaw Pact invasion
Women workers
World War II
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/33e6085f8ca06d44a4ec4eae1abbc958.jpg?Expires=1712793600&Signature=s5IejhgBoXz71TKBLeCUzl8GXPgYJ2jRuaikMRVVfq3yBGTHlyxoeWmqCRz6uEyFpYadWLIfIuCiDJmOUjSMfrnddB48TWsv5-ukafccRVNlPWHpCcVt2e2w1jMbVb7L%7Eujj1rFqwwei7DRbDT5Jav556Yf74Wrn5rEQSaum5ux82c%7EOEKqgj90MToqAKdB5YrwNYmu4qqBWXmC0siZ%7ExjmJHbCNzGvJXmGxBv9D4S3LCouKxoHRK9NyNYYS11Cow3lm8GhLEHR3TsFe-35isD1qjMvwkf33LLqBEPCsIw7%7EliD2LrqDjPOQ9nHE3-K1vE%7E1wRqeP1rA%7EiY4h6Ufdg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
c034c7f4830852f94347835c28f14266
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/cebe942c400e8ec0e63f87f35b9890f8.jpg?Expires=1712793600&Signature=pbmVSWSFg7fa3t5zqTea58lp-ggIMwBUCoDmcMd-BTqGg3fgR74cL8SEMUdFUhhsO5mxiHC2SkqAuiYPXtrFg6ZCdWcFfvfkK%7EP6AveO4sKRQROIBt%7EWH8x-V4VUCccKmUr%7E5T9z-M60z39MlQFuaA-gamqb8Cn11DyGZPg2norEqrTh70E3sQvR84R-mfYUdc7khvpmhoPmcjEo0otrBEi3FgBxvhVilNH2zOO8AquRor6Xj%7ERsdbMtck0JukJwd--rYNvM61%7EZrZWXSVfoyp-ZhhkgYdO%7ExVLvsSC8VjI2lGR5JF0b62vsOLYurYtKC9JkMDtRqw4ri4INqnrgzQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
7b3d916168e3fcd8f644c66d5edafdab
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans
Subject
The topic of the resource
Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans was an oral history project launched by the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library in 2009. The project captured and preserved the stories of Czechs and Slovaks who left their homeland during the Cold War and settled in New York City, Washington, D.C., Cleveland, Chicago and the San Francisco Bay Area. During the second phase of the project, the NCSML recorded the stories of immigrants who came to the United States after the fall of communism in 1989 as well. By the conclusion of the project in August 2013, the NCSML had collected more than 300 oral histories. <br /><br />Both phases of the project were made possible by grants from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. <br /><br />On the project’s website, you can read biographies of Czechs and Slovaks who began a new life in the United States, watch video clips from their interviews, and view photos and other archival materials they shared with us. <br /><br />Full length interviews are available for further research at the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library. For more information, contact Dave Muhlena, Library Director, at dmuhlena@ncsml.org.
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
<h4>Childhood Friction</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/K2ZSs_sSrvE?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“Then the Hitler-Jugend came over to Piešt’any, it was a tourist city and they took a lot of hotels over. They were a nuisance to us, they were an arrogant bunch of punks that we didn’t like, they took our places where we used to play. They thought that Slovakia was their colony. Germany was being bombed more, while the war was almost unnoticed in Slovakia, nonexistent, it was peaceful there during the War – especially Piešt’any. There was no bombing, and so they sent their German kids over there to indoctrinate them in Hitler’s propaganda and make them into new citizens, tough new citizens.</p><p>“One time I remember there was a skirmish when I pushed one of those kids into a river. We had to hide in our back yards because they were chasing us and there would have been a penalty if they had caught up with us and found out who did that. It was a little river, there was water flowing and in the middle there was only one board, and he purposely… I was on that board first and he thought that he had the right, that I should back up from it, and I did not. So that was the only skirmish that we had.”</p><h4>Stealing Explosives</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/R81LOScj3vQ?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“There were two bridges in Piešt’any, we heard that they were blown out by the Germans, so we went up there, and as I got to the bridge there was a boat with soldiers, Russian soldiers, coming across the river, and they had prisoners. And when they came to this side of the river where we were, they told the prisoners to get up out of the boat and walk on the dike. And as one man walked up the dike the Russian soldier who was on the top of the dike pulled his pistol and emptied it right into this guy. So his body rolled down. There was about twenty, thirty, people witnessing this whole thing. They were looking for prisoners, German prisoners, who were hiding. And so people were willing to tell them if they knew somebody was hiding some place.</p><p>“Then later on we walked over to around the airport. There was an airport in Piešt’any, and they had bunkers in there. So we went up there to see what it looks like and we saw some dead bodies of Germans, their boots and belts were missing. And some of the explosives were still there, so we tried to grab some of those explosives, we later on used them for fishing. We threw the explosive in the water and the fish popped out and we had it, but we didn’t do too much of it because it was forbidden.”</p><h4>Orel</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ih1WlEMUFFE?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“We could not go under the Catholic Youth name anymore and so we went under the name Divadelný krúžok Jána Hollého. What we did? We put on about five plays every year, and we were pretty good. We competed locally and county-wide and finally we even ended up in Turčianský Svätý Martin, where there was a national competition. And we placed there in a pretty good position, and actually some of us, including myself, were later offered professional acting roles, in Nitra. However, next door to our Orlovna, where we had our own place, was a facility that was owned by a baron. He escaped some place, never came back, and the commies took over that facility and installed a youth program in there. They wanted us to go with them. We resisted. And they were pushing on us in this Catholic Orlovna – what used to be – to get more socialistic. And we resisted, so they were using all kinds of tricks and oppression and threats, and some of the boys were almost ready to go to the military, and I decided to go overseas.”</p><h4>Refugee Diet</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Y20y2iUKIXY?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“We had to go see in the garbage dump and see to find ourselves some kind of a can, washed it off, and that is when we got our first food, some kind of eintopf [stew] – a big spoon of it for both. We had no spoons to eat it with, so we just ate it the best way we could. The next day, Joe had a ring, we sold that ring, and bought a spoon and cigarettes – we were smoking in those days. Breakfast every morning was just a slice of margarine, a slice of kind of a bread and a black coffee. For noon, there were mostly things that were in one pot, like what the Germans call eintopf sometimes, like soup. And the same thing was for supper, something close to it, not much food anyway – and bread with it.”</p><h4>Camp Tension</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/lV8feWFmFow?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“We had some political frictions, the Slovaks, but the biggest friction was between the Czechoslovaks and Slovaks. Fights erupted on a weekly basis, and the MPs marched in with big sticks and beat anybody who was outside regardless of what it was, who it was, whether they were fighting or not. Then finally the Germans took over the camp. Rocks were being thrown and even I had to sleep with a pipe in my bed, for my own protection. So anyway, there were a lot of fights, and sometimes the Germans marched in, the German police, and there were a few times that it was so bad that some people… the Germans opened fire and some people got shot.”</p><h4>Lumberjack</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/VsVR7pas3S8?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“When we got to that place, 25 of us, the wagon was pushed to the side, the train continued, and there was only that little station there, where you could stop the train yourself, and hop on the train and go wherever you wanted to. And at the camp, there was a barrack with bunk beds. You picked your own, wherever you wanted to stay, and then next door was a barrack with kitchen and dining room. We were very hungry and when we got in there we ate like we never ate in all our lives, for maybe an hour or so and finally we filled up! We got back to the barracks and next day was an assignment. It was an assignment to go into the bush, three men to a team. Two pushing the saw and one with a horse bringing the wood to the road. Well, I was not strong enough, nobody wanted to get me in their trio, and there was another Czech fellow who didn’t have no trio. So they assigned us to chop the wood for the kitchen. So we did that for about a week or so, supplied the kitchen with the wood, and in the meantime the others were working as a team piecework. They were making better money, we only got around 80, 79, cents an hour. The food was plenty and good. The sleep was okay, even though there were the trains passing by we never heard them anyway. We got used to it.”</p><h4>Festival Founder</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/t2AXfBdhNxI?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I suggested at the [Cleveland Slovak Dramatic Club]… I came with the idea of a Slovak Festival. And immediately they made a chairman of me of the thing, to organize it. So I started organizing and got some of the factions together, Slovak musicians and all the people to participate. And despite some of the opposition that we had, especially from the older generations, it was a huge success from day one. Nobody ever knew that it would be so successful, people were standing in lines of eight or nine for food and drinks and we had a good program. So we found out that the facility is not big enough if we continue – we started continuing – and we moved to a larger facility. The next year we had so many people that they were fighting outside to get in!”</p>
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Paul Brunovsky
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Paul Brunovsky was born in the spa town of Piešt’any, in western Slovakia, in September 1930. His father Štefan was a builder, while his mother Katarína stayed at home raising Paul and his five siblings. Paul says Piešt’any was ‘peaceful’ during the War; so much so that a large number of German children were sent there to escape the bombings of major German cities. Paul says relations were strained between the local Slovak kids and their visiting German peers. After the War, Paul finished his schooling in Piešt’any and started an apprenticeship in the glassworks of Gustáv Gelinger. There Paul trained to become a glass beveler. At this time, Paul became very involved in the Slovak Catholic youth movement Orel. When this group was outlawed by the Communists in 1948, Paul and fellow members of the local chapter renamed themselves Divadelný krúžok Jána Hollého [The Ján Hollý Dramatic Circle]. Paul says this theatre group had a good deal of success, with several members being invited to become professional actors in the nearby town of Nitra. With pressure growing on the group to conform or dissolve, and Paul’s place of work in line for nationalization, Paul decided to leave the country. He left with a friend, Jozef Strechaj, in October 1949.</p><p> </p><p>The pair crossed the border into Germany near the Bohemian town of Poběžovice. Paul spent the next 18 months in nearly a dozen different refugee camps in Western Germany before signing up to go to Canada. Paul’s first job in Canada was as a lumberjack, in Batchawana Ontario, for the Algoma Timberlakes Corporation. After one year, Paul moved to Toronto, where he became involved in the Slovak community at the city’s St. Cyril & Methodius Church. In 1959, Paul was granted an American visa and decided to settle in Cleveland, where his friend Jozef Strechaj was already living. He started to work as a printer at the local Czech paper Nový Svět, but left the publication after a short time to take a job at the Cleveland Press, where he subsequently worked for over 20 years. Paul married a third-generation Slovak-American, Kathleen, and had four children, two of whom have become priests with different orders in the Cleveland area. Paul is a member of several Slovak organizations in Cleveland, such as the First Catholic Slovak Union, the Cleveland Slovak Dramatic Club and the Zemplín Club. In 1971, he founded the city’s annual Slovak Festival which continues to this day.</p>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
NCSML Archive
1948
Catholicism
Catholics
Communist coup
Cultural Traditions
Divadelny kruzok Jana Holleho
emigrant
Holly
Jan
Nazis
Piestany
refugee
Refugee camp
Religion
Slovak-German relations
World War II
Zemplin Club
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/4875028148befedfc386be29645376aa.jpg?Expires=1712793600&Signature=TuZGBUEyDWR11Gu%7Es6Pcvp5hfKp4%7EZfIjIqMET04OzShY%7E3Da61JSu5nhW62MkgKro2buYGtGjk8mxq%7EEchQgL2K3WsSw6qjZZtk%7EL3FMNdTjO2OGhtqG-vIsgYQUXFEFlg3WbL2Rw5s0x-K7t8b79sp6ccjlYhpxb1RLoFpA5R%7E5V9rW%7EnjX9nW4fel7zVATwO1qatgaJmM8sgaw9aafGp9rc%7E2jtzBjNnvO1%7Esw-i%7EI2mBp1IyG0bFvxQX6Lb9e3TyukyPtAEWSf1tAxhTGgThJRHH5HNQ4ogr1qiyleRSSBwp3IdECQqJ8A6nBM9vvjv7HYuWepwP298nB-CCKg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
aef2087720bee079fdebfb063cf37abc
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/9bac7c4136a3b0a6a7da9c7c74671f81.jpg?Expires=1712793600&Signature=HUB7rvwdiytW69TUdcaQXbO-GgJZVUnXMNMMihZ5Hd%7EOeBjYMvflby0rn8V1d5EF2IGILkML0HHGHQ4ccgzY4oto-hVfk%7E7xge0WHH4zMibS56BVo2LDqkV7uGsZndCY-wo0IYDhfPsOrujWPRZeBBZ%7E0qLbMLj9fTlDF9EDE0HLhAjxnoaVjWzWrISW%7EtwH-FP2FaAvUxeK3tsdsCmZIYgyueKnvK8AsYTS%7EqX4HlXFwiu3n3GpRaXL%7E6X7OouSQqzM9iBOrjjnlevsawGAwDyuDklhBnsO%7ErApPJ1zGcRlV8wbbwgXR2SKwBYLbDMiMVktcjBIOXRyNjErWDve1Q__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
7c46e6abfdf6728f7f88fa82470d2a66
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans
Subject
The topic of the resource
Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans was an oral history project launched by the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library in 2009. The project captured and preserved the stories of Czechs and Slovaks who left their homeland during the Cold War and settled in New York City, Washington, D.C., Cleveland, Chicago and the San Francisco Bay Area. During the second phase of the project, the NCSML recorded the stories of immigrants who came to the United States after the fall of communism in 1989 as well. By the conclusion of the project in August 2013, the NCSML had collected more than 300 oral histories. <br /><br />Both phases of the project were made possible by grants from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. <br /><br />On the project’s website, you can read biographies of Czechs and Slovaks who began a new life in the United States, watch video clips from their interviews, and view photos and other archival materials they shared with us. <br /><br />Full length interviews are available for further research at the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library. For more information, contact Dave Muhlena, Library Director, at dmuhlena@ncsml.org.
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
<h4>Divorce</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/xW3k77OfBg0?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“I know that when my father was active and established, in London, November 17 as International Students’ Day, the Gestapo of course knew what happened. When he came to the U.S. in ’43, the Gestapo knew exactly that my father came on the invitation of American organizations and [First Lady] Eleanor Roosevelt. That’s when the Gestapo came to our apartment in Podolí and arrested my mother, and my mother was taken for two years to Svatobořice concentration camp. When my father was even more active, my mother was destined for a gas chamber; she was put in a special group. At that time in Prague, my godfather who really helped to care for me, Dr. Fedor Tykač from Ljubljana, he was a lawyer and he produced divorce papers and he presented the divorce papers to the Gestapo within a few days, and my mother was literally taken from the train and that saved her life. Of course, my father, when he came back in ’45 from London, he didn’t know about that, he said. So they had one more short wedding. My father didn’t know they were divorced and that divorce saved the life of my mother.”</p><h4>Bombing of Prague</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/7Cq9f43kjWE?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I don’t remember anything when I was five years or younger, but when I was five, there was an American plane shot down very close in a field [at Krucemburk], and we boys went to look over there. I was scared like hell. And then when I came to Prague in May, we believed it would be the end of the War, so we walked over Palackého most [Palacký Bridge] and I remember the big holes from bombings going through the bridge and you could see down to the water. My grandma took me to my house; we already carried American, French, and British flags, and the Germans were shooting from the roofs [of Palackého naměstí] at us so we had to hide in a couple of houses with my grandma until dark, and then we continued for a few blocks to our house at Podskalská 8. Then, about one week before the end of the War, the Americans bombed Železniční most, because that was the last [railroad] track for Germans moving out of Prague, waiting for Russian tanks to come and maybe kill them. But it was a cluster bombing from 10,000 feet, so the bombs never hit Železniční most; it hit right at our apartment. Our apartment was at Podskalská 8 druhé patro [second floor]. It came right to druhé patro [the second floor]; I was with my grandma down in the basement, so it took them five or six hours to dig us out. We were just in the rubble. These are my first memories. Shot [American] plane in Krucemburk, holes in the bridge, bombing, and houses on fire in Prague.”</p><h4>Prison Visit</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/mY-k8GtjGEw?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I remember from that visit, we were in a trailer [at Tabor L in Ostrov by Karlovy Vary] and there were about 20 partitions for 20 people. Each partitioning was about eight feet wide, and you could see barely through the wooden barrier; you could see your father barely through it. We had a 20-minute visit, 15-minute, and it was minute number five when I looked in another cube, and there was a mother with a one- or two-year old child and she gave him an apple to pass over the barrier to his father. Then the guard with the machine gun behind us, he jumped in and smashed the boy’s hand and the apple was flying, and he just yelled ‘Finished! Visits are finished. Everybody goes home.’ So that was a five-minute visit during his nine years.”</p><h4>Barely Graduated</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/cXz1EFXTab4?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“One week before my graduation from high school [Nerudovo gymnázium], a letter came from the Ministry of Education – to my knowledge – for four people. One was me, and the Ministry requested that I be evicted and would not graduate. In my case, I was so grateful to the principal. The principal said ‘No, Peter is going to graduate.’ I graduated, and he [Principal Dr. Radoslav Pacholík] was immediately retired. He lost his job. I was very grateful. I learned about it, that he was very firm, and I just thanked him and he said ‘Anyway, I would probably retire next year or in two years, and this is a lot of BS what happens in our country.’”</p><h4>Business Principles</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/F2DMGMCo6A4?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“With collective farming, farmers did nothing but went to Prague and went to nightclubs. So the soldiers and schoolchildren had to go and do hops [during the harvesting season]. So let’s say I went for two weeks to do the hops brigade. Very hard work; it’s very hard on your fingers, and I just couldn’t manage and it was so stupid. I must say, I showed my economic or business principles over there. I paid the girls – we were supposed to make two věrtels. Věrtel is a measure for hops – a big basket [about 6.7 gallons] – was called a věrtel. And we were supposed to do two a day so we could pay for our accommodation and food. And there were girls making six or seven and making money, so I paid her a little bit more, and she did my two věrtels and I was able to read or whatever or go for a hike. The second was potato brigades when the school went for one week to harvest potatoes. Harvesting sugarcane. High school guys did it.”</p><h4>Student Trade Union</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2Rr0WO4C8cc?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I was one of 12 members of the trade union representing 22,000 students. All the others were professors and teachers – a lot of them Communist Party members. I was in Terezín [on a two-month military training exercise] after my second year. Suddenly, a big Tatra comes for me in the middle of August to Terezín. ‘Peter, we have an extraordinary meeting.’ I said ‘Are you kidding? In the middle of August, I have to go to Prague?’ Of course they had all the papers and the military released me. I go red carpet to Prague; I go to our meeting. We go through mundane, routine stuff. I said ‘We don’t have to do this meeting in the middle of August.’ Then they said ‘Oh, we have one more last point. There are two professors who are really bad. They use American textbooks. They are too pro-American. We don’t need this happen; these guys have to be retired today, August 16. Think about it.’ We had five minutes to discuss it. I said ‘These are the best professors; we learn the best from them. Kids love them. I cannot go for it.’ And of course there was an open vote. ‘Who is for? Eleven. Who is against? Peter. Why are you against it Peter?’ I said ‘I am representing 22,000 students. We love these guys, and you just told me at the last moment. You couldn’t even tell me one or two hours before what I am coming for.’ Well, these were experts from the university. Guess what, I didn’t get my car back to Terezín; I had to take a slow train back to my military unit. That was it, and the next year I was out of it.’”</p>
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Peter Palecek
Description
An account of the resource
<p><img class="alignleft wp-image-2531" src="http://web.archive.org/web/20170906231437im_/http://ncsml.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Handler1.jpg" alt="Peter Palecek 2012" width="250" height="417" /></p><p>Peter Palecek was born in Prague in 1940. Prior to WWII, his father Václav was president of the National Union of Czechoslovak Students and served as secretary general of the Czechoslovak-Yugoslav Chamber of Commerce. With the outbreak of war, Peter’s father escaped to Britain, where he became a member of the Czechoslovak government-in-exile. <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20170906231437/http://recordingvoices.blogspot.com/2012/06/peter-palecek-on-his-father-general.html">Click for more about Peter’s father, General Václav Paleček.</a></p><p> </p><p>As a result of her husband’s activism, Peter’s mother was arrested by the Gestapo in 1943 and sent to an internment camp at Svatobořice for the remainder of the War. Peter was taken in by a family friend, lived on a farm in Krucemburk, and returned home shortly before the end of the War, where he was reunited with his parents in May 1945. After the War, Peter’s father was named chief of the Czechoslovak Military Mission in Berlin. Following the Communist coup in 1948, he was arrested and sentenced to 13 years in prison. In 1957, his sentence was reduced and, with poor health impacted by years of work in uranium mines, he returned to his family.</p><p> </p><p><img class="alignright wp-image-2530" src="http://web.archive.org/web/20170906231437im_/http://ncsml.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Handler-16.jpg" alt="Handler-1" width="350" height="584" />Peter attended Catholic school in Prague 6 until 1949, when he says the school was closed and the teachers and priests there were arrested. After elementary school, Peter attended a secretarial school for one year, and then transferred to Nerudovo gymnázium, from which he graduated in 1957. Peter worked for two years at a ČKD transformer plant and then, with the help of his father, enrolled in ČVUT (Czech Technical University in Prague) to study mechanical engineering. During his second year there, he was elected as a student trade union representative. Upon graduation, Peter began working at ZPA as an installation and start-up technician. A keen sportsman (he loved skiing and orienteering), Peter was named a master of sports in high-altitude tourism in 1964. It was also at this time that he met his future wife, Hana. He began studying for a master’s degree at VŠE (University of Economics in Prague) and, in the wake of the Prague Spring and the Warsaw Pact invasion in August 1968, decided to continue his studies abroad. He was admitted to a two-year MBA program at Stanford University and, in September 1969, traveled from Prague to the United States. Peter says he was ordered to return to Czechoslovakia in the midst of his studies. He decided to stay in the United States and complete his degree. Hana, whom he had married the previous year, spent the next nine months attempting to join him. She arrived in California in the summer of 1970. The pair became proud American citizens in 1977.</p><p> </p><p>Peter’s first job after graduation was with Philip Morris in New York City; the work required him to make multiple visits to Toronto and Montreal. In 1973, after the birth of their first son, David, the Paleceks moved with Philip Morris to Switzerland. They returned to California in 1975 and bought their current house in Atherton in 1979. Peter worked as senior management consultant at Stanford Research Institute from that time until 1986. Peter and Hana had two more sons, Misha and Tom, both born at Stanford and dual citizens of the United States and the Czech Republic. In May 1990, Peter was hired by Tomas Bat’a of Toronto to work on the re-establishment of Bat’a as a private company in Czechoslovakia. In 1995 Peter joined Arthur D. Little of Boston as managing director of their Prague office. He retired in Prague in 2002 and returned with his wife Hana to Atherton, California.</p>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
NCSML Archive
1968
American citizenship
Anti-communist
Arrest
Catholics
CKD
CVUT
Divorce
Education
German
gymnazium
Occupation
Political prisoner
Prison
Svatoborice
Terezin
Vertel
VSE
Warsaw Pact invasion
World War II
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/2ac45eb25def801d185514ad58ae2b16.jpg?Expires=1712793600&Signature=Y5Ks5zGCmyZDm589LUwuo8sa%7ETYSxR-P7bkbV%7ELN3oF8W4xOgDZMf-qB5nHj6sNHxP9zANCWk0cNvKE4sd3AMyo1%7Etz8x99OVMjJWxxSAEVcyOqZjLfTt02mgFCer8dkqgEyAUtzFbjcE4ZnqWWVu3Z%7EKAM2dT2i0uDo9%7EpTrGY7Tmq9KsJ74KJOZohivJdM06sctVdCAmgHNZA%7ESKExbwo0ZF8CqKyznlXf4xEZA%7E8Ik6T-%7EUjhmq2GY%7EQCw4Xcu7KDBDg79RulGbBQwtQJd2rTlE7N8ptrXVEJVi-wDTaDQNokJzu8m96TEDlMec-d1uDrDPYFjjQAkdS6N0jYKw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
ec9afa0b966c5898c3be7941bb44a7d2
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans
Subject
The topic of the resource
Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans was an oral history project launched by the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library in 2009. The project captured and preserved the stories of Czechs and Slovaks who left their homeland during the Cold War and settled in New York City, Washington, D.C., Cleveland, Chicago and the San Francisco Bay Area. During the second phase of the project, the NCSML recorded the stories of immigrants who came to the United States after the fall of communism in 1989 as well. By the conclusion of the project in August 2013, the NCSML had collected more than 300 oral histories. <br /><br />Both phases of the project were made possible by grants from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. <br /><br />On the project’s website, you can read biographies of Czechs and Slovaks who began a new life in the United States, watch video clips from their interviews, and view photos and other archival materials they shared with us. <br /><br />Full length interviews are available for further research at the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library. For more information, contact Dave Muhlena, Library Director, at dmuhlena@ncsml.org.
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
<h4>Munitions Factory</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/MJHDcoQSCKU?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“After the War, you know, the Germans left, there was no more need for ammunition so the plant was kind of idled. But the electrification was very damaged, we had a lot of work to get this thing under control – to get this thing back into operation. Although we had our own generating plant, but the Germans were smart, they took the exciters. So we could not use the generators. But we had extra exciters buried in the ground. So we got those out and in about five days we had one generator running, so we could provide the power for the city and some of it for the plant. So we were not that much damaged. But the electrification from outside was totally disturbed. You know, the towers were knocked out… were blown out… the poles and stuff like that. So that took time, but we had power about three weeks after the War was over.”</p><h4>Cinema</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/naxmxTsOH60?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“We had several American pictures, but we had them hidden, we couldn’t play them because under the Germans, they wouldn’t let us play them. We had some Czech, we had a couple of Slovak films, but these came from Bratislava, you know, we always got a new film every week. And I don’t know what kind of film we were preparing because we never –played it – the Russians came and they wanted to… First of all, we got new machines, new projectors, Zeiss, from Germany, very good machines. And how they found out, we don’t know. But they wanted to take those machines to Moscow. They wanted to dismantle them and take them. But we got smart. We knew about this thing, that they wanted to come in and take these machines. So we dismantled them and buried them in the ground. So they were looking for them. Well, when they came in there were no machines and we said ‘well, the Germans took them’. They couldn’t believe it that the Germans had the time to dismantle them but we put them away, the Germans didn’t take them. They were brand new machines. We used them about six, seven, months, that’s all we had them, because we’d just put them up. And we had these old Phillips machines and so, while the Russians were over there, we didn’t want to put these new machines, we put these old Phillips machines up and we used those.</p><p>“Well, they didn’t care too much for them, because they were not as good machines as the Zeiss ones were. So, anyway, that was the experience we had with the Russians. Well, you know, the bad problem was we had movies projected on a wide screen, you know, wide and large. So they came drunk and they shot the screen and everything, shot the audio speakers behind the screen – they did that! Oh, how many times they did that! We couldn’t do nothing about it. We just shut it down and that was it! So this is the way it was. So many times we went without a movie three, four, weeks!”</p><h4>Leaving</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/StlVSKs0q6E?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I went to Prague by night train, you know, the express night train. I got to Masarykovo Nádraží and I got right away to the consul, and the consul told me ‘We have no time’, he says ‘You better get out of here fast, because they are checking everyone coming in and out of these offices.’ That was the American consul. So, they put me on a train from there and he says ‘Let’s get you out of the country before they close the borders.’ So, when I come to Aš, which was the border town, the officer that came to check the various paperwork, he says ‘Well’ – he says, ‘according to my instructions, you should be held up over here. But…’ he says, ‘you want to go, you go. I didn’t see you. If anybody comes to check on me, I did not see you!’ So I got out, and I went through Germany on a train, all the way to Paris. From Paris, we were going to go to Calais. We got to Calais and we could not get onto the Queen Mary – the Queen Mary was the ship that was going to take us to the United States – because there were too many wrecks in the Channel. They did not have it all cleaned up yet. So they were not going to take a chance with that big boat going through the Channel. So they put us on a small boat and took us to Dover, England.”</p><h4>Parents</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/jbjioOHK31c?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Father was always a <em>narodovec</em> – he wanted to go back home, he wanted to go back home. Well, at that time, Masaryk came over here and he was kind of soliciting for citizens. He wanted to have them go back home, he said ‘You know, you don’t have to be in America, we can make America at home, you’ve got the opportunity to make America in Czechoslovakia.’ At that time Czechoslovakia was kind of building up, sprouting up. And so he went over there, he went back. Mother was very much against it, she didn’t want to go. But they finally went in 19… I think it was just before the Depression, I don’t know exactly what year it was. So, through the Depression, they were already there. And father brought a lot of money over there and he lost it all. He lost over a million dollars in investments, because he got into politics. And he got on the wrong side of politics. So there were, you know, we were Catholics, and we got into a village where there were a lot of Lutherans. They were wealthy Lutherans, there were a lot of farmers. So, when he got this mill, he was expecting that he was going to get a lot of business from them. Well, they made a point of not giving him the job because they were so against the Catholics at that time. There were only seven Catholics over there in that village. The rest of them were all Lutherans. So he lost everything over there. That’s the time, like I said, that he moved to Považská Bystrica.”</p><h4>Vist to Czechoslovakia</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/40rcZvS5PR0?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“When I came to Považská Bystrica, I heard the PAs, you know, we had a PA system everywhere. And the first thing they said was ‘So-and-so and so-and-so have these working hours. They did not show up and we want to know why.’ This was on the public address system! I said ‘What will they do? What will they do? Put them in jail or what?’ ‘Ah!’ they said, ‘they’re supposed to be in work and they didn’t show up.’ They said ‘They’re looking for them’. How do you like that? This was in 1984 when I came over there. A lot of things surprised me, which were never there before. You know, the Germans were very tough on us as far as working. If you didn’t show up for work they believed that you are sabotaging their process. So you had to have the right excuse why you weren’t there. But this? I thought that things had changed. They actually got worse – because they looked for you. Because they planned on you, that you were going to be working there. How much they worked, I don’t know.”</p><h4>Old House</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/VxGo5_zoKFY?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“You know, when the communists took over, that mill never got repaired. It was just a shambles, let’s put it that way. There was still machinery that my father built for that mill. It was still there, it was never removed, but it was all cobwebbed and everything and a lot of rats were in the basement and the lower floor. And as a matter of fact there was a generator that we installed for ourselves, for our own electricity for the mill. That was still there but it was all, you know, never used. So for the whole era of the Communists taking over, this was never used. So somebody was living in the upper quarter but the mill was totally destroyed.”</p><h4>Public Radio</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/nssuA8euB_c?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“In 1984, Public Radio came to life, and they were looking for something to fill the time. Because public radio didn’t have all that many opportunities. They didn’t have any money to pay for the program, and secondly they didn’t have any volunteers either. So finally they came up and said ‘Would you want to originate any ethnic programs on this station?’ So we organized a group and we got 13 nationalities. And we started up.</p><p>“The only problem is now that everything is digital. And we have to do everything ourselves. We have to prepare the program right down to the second. If we don’t, the computer cuts us off. So we’ve got to figure out very well how to do it now. My son, he’s an expert on the computers, I’m not. Anyway, so we cut the program on a Thursday. We’re not getting paid, but we’re producing a lot of money for the station. We had the highest, I believe, this is what they told us, we had the highest turnout of donations for that one hour. Even their programs didn’t turn out that much money!”</p>
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Vladimir Mlynek
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Vladimir Mlynek was born in the small village of Hamry, in northwestern Slovakia, in 1926. His parents, although both Slovak, had met in Cleveland, where they were married and had already raised two children, Vladimir’s brother and sister, Steve and Irene. Just before the Great Depression, the whole family returned to Slovakia. They bought a mill, from which Vladimir’s father, Štefan, operated a cabinet-making business. When they were old enough, just before WWII began, Vladimir’s brother and sister returned to the United States. When the family cabinet business failed towards the end of WWII, Vladimir moved with his parents to the more industrial town of Považská Bystrica. There he trained to become an electrician and started working for the local arms factory, later known as Československá zbrojovka.</p><p> </p><p>After the War, Vladimir’s parents returned to the United States and, in 1947, Vladimir himself followed. He settled in Cleveland, working first as an assistant to his father, who was making cabinets for televisions at the city’s DuMont plant. In 1952, after a number of deferments, Vladimir was drafted into the U.S. Army. He was supposed to be sent to Korea, but in fact spent most of the Korean War stationed at Fort Meade, Maryland. He became a U.S. citizen in 1953. In 1955, Vladimir married his wife, Clara, an American of Polish extraction. The couple have two children, Gerald and Jeanette. A life-long radio enthusiast, Vladimir has been involved in Slovak-language broadcasting in Cleveland for over half a century. He has hosted the Slovak Radio Hour on Cleveland’s WCPN with his son Gerald every Sunday since 1985.</p><p><a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20170808010411/http://www.wcpn.org/WCPN/about/personality_bios" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">A biography of Vladimir on WCPN’s website</a></p>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
NCSML Archive
American citizenship
Catholics
Engineers
Family life
Journalism
local
Lutherans
Politics
Povazska Bystrica
Public address system
Slovak Language
Slovak-German relations
World War II