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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans
Subject
The topic of the resource
Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans was an oral history project launched by the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library in 2009. The project captured and preserved the stories of Czechs and Slovaks who left their homeland during the Cold War and settled in New York City, Washington, D.C., Cleveland, Chicago and the San Francisco Bay Area. During the second phase of the project, the NCSML recorded the stories of immigrants who came to the United States after the fall of communism in 1989 as well. By the conclusion of the project in August 2013, the NCSML had collected more than 300 oral histories. <br /><br />Both phases of the project were made possible by grants from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. <br /><br />On the project’s website, you can read biographies of Czechs and Slovaks who began a new life in the United States, watch video clips from their interviews, and view photos and other archival materials they shared with us. <br /><br />Full length interviews are available for further research at the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library. For more information, contact Dave Muhlena, Library Director, at dmuhlena@ncsml.org.
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
<h4>Musical Inspiration</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_XNj0E-jsrU?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“When we were children growing up – I was maybe three, four or five – he [Consuela’s grandfather] always, before we went to sleep, played the cello, and so beautifully. I’ll never forget that. I never slept right away; I was listening because I loved music right from the beginning. My mother remembered me always singing all over the house. I was singing all songs and, because my parents were actually masters of ballroom dancing, they were teachers. Very known in the whole area where we lived. In all the villages and the towns around my parents were teaching hundreds of young people ballroom dancing. And that was my inspiration, because I listened to the music my parents listened to on the gramophone.”</p><h4>Amateur Theatre</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/6WXBI9-E124?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“My artistic development was wonderful and successful because I was in an amateur group of people who were interested in acting and singing and dancing, and there I was on the top because I could play, and that somehow took a little brush off the stress which I was living with normally. These people supported me. There were families who sort of adopted me for that time being and helped me psychologically through and even led me, because I was in the factory so I couldn’t develop in reading certain literature. The factory school was focused just on physical work, not so much on psychologically or intellectually developing. So these families helped me so much. There were two families which were like a miracle coming into my life; they were part of the group of the amateur theatre. We were really on the top. We won many rewards for amateur theatre, and that was such a beautiful time.”</p><h4>Vegetarian</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/IlOV9jFRu0k?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I was actually as young as when I studied yoga, when I was 16, and then I changed and I had to eat meat because in Czechoslovakia there were not so many vegetables and fruit, in the wintertime especially. So we had only carrots; we had cabbage and nothing else practically. It was not around, so I ate a lot of grains and sprouts and so on, but then I had to eat meat because in the theatre, and especially if you live such a rich style of living – acting and theatre and TV – then you have to eat something, so I became again a meat eater. When I came to the United States, I had free everything, so everything was available and I started [taking advantage of] the freedom of choice. So I became vegetarian, vegan.”</p><h4>NY City</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/5ZpVKs4yQxQ?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“The energy of the city is so high so it was actually pleasant, because I was mostly in Prague in my acting life, so I like big cities because there is a lot happening and the energy is very high. It’s so active; there’s no couch-potato stuff. People are not lazy here; at least, you see the energy’s really high. That was actually pleasant. But to go through the immigration was not so pleasant, because we came to New York City in an unusual way because of our sponsor, the cousin. So we got to the city and they checked us all the time. I thought that everyone will open their arms and hug us, just welcome us, but they checked us, by chance, if we are not maybe spies or some negative energy or whatever. So that was not so pleasant and, also, waiting for the papers and going to the immigration [office] was not a pleasant time. But otherwise we were really lucky.”</p><h4>U.S. Job</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/e7xKq2ikKVg?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“There was suddenly so many people on First Avenue, close to Sloan Kettering hospital, and we didn’t know what was going on so we asked people and they said ‘The Pope is in the city,’ so we were watching. We had never seen the Pope before, so we were watching: ‘Whoa, the Pope,’ and we spoke Czech. And suddenly somebody said ‘Oh, you speak Czech!’ She spoke Czech too, and it was this lady, Alice Brown, and she said ‘I work at the hospital here, Sloan Kettering.’ I said ‘We are looking for some jobs,’ and she helped us to get there. My husband, as a doctor, got a job in the computer center where they collect all the information about the patients, procedures and results and everything. So he learned very quickly on the computer how to do that, so he worked in that center. And me, I didn’t have qualifications for anything except the theatre, but I am handy so I took anything. And she helped us to get the first jobs there. So I worked in the restaurant in the hospital.”</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
Consuela Moravkova
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Consuela Moravkova was born in Chrudim in eastern Bohemia in 1944. Her father, Ferdinand, owned a goldsmith business while her mother, Růžena, was an administrator. Consuela had two sisters and one brother, all of whom had names inspired by her grandfather’s (Emanuel Morávek) international travels as a composer and conductor. Influenced by her parents, who taught ballroom dancing, and her grandfather, Consuela showed an artistic bent from an early age and says she was often ‘singing all over the house.’ When Consuela’s father’s business was nationalized and he was arrested, she was not allowed to continue her education and was sent to train in a factory for three years. While there Consuela was active in an amateur theatre organization, which she says was a ‘beautiful time.’ After her work in the factory, Consuela acted in the České Budějovice theatre for a few years and then moved to Prague where she applied to a performing arts academy that did not accept her because she lacked a high school diploma. With her performing experience and some music training, Consuela became a professional actress and worked in movies, television, radio and theatre.</p><p> </p><p>In 1979, Consuela and her husband traveled to Britain with a state-sponsored program to learn English. Instead of returning to Czechoslovakia, they were sponsored by a cousin who lived in the United States and moved to New York City. Consuela says that she loved the ‘energy’ of the city, and she quickly found a job at a hospital cafeteria. She also began teaching yoga, a practice that she had first taken up as a teenager. Although Consuela had a role in an off-Broadway production of <em>Oedipus</em>, she decided not to pursue acting as a career, in part because of the language barrier. She did, however, do some acting and poetry readings with the local Czech community for a time. Today, Consuela is a yoga instructor with the New York Health and Racquet Club (where she has been teaching for over 30 years) and also works with private clients. She lives in Manhattan.</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
Ceske Budejovice
Education
English language
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217334de0721a12858d2b148e62f7de5
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>Officers Stay</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/lD0vSjMT5Vg?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“When the Germans came looking for my dad, mother told them that he was on a business trip to Prague and that he was going to return shortly. So for about a week, we had two Gestapo men staying in our apartment 24 hours a day, waiting for my father’s return. We had a large apartment but we had no heat except in the kitchen there was a large belly stove, so we all basically stayed in the kitchen – the Gestapo men, my mom and I, except when we went to bed. Now they really didn’t bother me except one who I think enjoyed seeing me cry, and when I cried, he’d get angry and he threatened to make me kneel on thumb tacks. Now, it wasn’t until my mom died in ’78 that I found through my wife that one of the Gestapo men raped my mother.</p><p>“Mother actually pressed charges, and the trail went all the way to court, to the High Court in Vienna, and the man was found guilty. And I believe he was sent to the eastern front. I think it was a very brave thing of mom to do and I was very proud of her because, had she lost, the consequences would have been very dire.”</p><h4>Fond Memories</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/jwEd6gIcxS8?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I had a lot of bad memories during the War, but I also had some good memories. And my favorite memories were Christmas time in Brno. Before Christmas, there’s a tradition – we call it Mikuláš, anděl a čert, it’s Saint Nick, an angel and a devil [that] come calling on the children. And of course, Saint Nick would be dressed in a priestly robe with a high hat and a staff. The angel would be dressed in white, and the devil was all in black; his face was black and he carried a potato sack or something, and chains. And you could hear him coming because he rattled his chains and made a lot of noise and, of course, that would petrify me! And when they came in the apartment the devil would say ‘Well, I understand you were bad and you’ve got to be punished,’ and sometimes he would pull out a lump of coal or a carrot. And the angel always played interference and said ‘No, no, no, no!’ And Saint Nick would pull out some sweets, bonbons, and all was forgiven and it was good for another year.</p><p>“And then the Czechs, the Czechoslovaks – the Christmas Eve meals always consist of, usually consist of fish and potato salad. That was a favorite food on Christmas Eve. And my mother would, a few days before Christmas Eve, she would go and get a, buy a fish, which was a carp. And she had to go early because if you wait too late then there would be nothing left. And she would bring it alive, wrapped in a wet newspaper. Then she would place it in a tub full of water, because there was no refrigeration or anything, and there the fish would stay for several days until Christmas Eve. And that was, I think, my favorite. I watched that fish for I think hours and hours – because it was a big fish, you know, imagine it floating in the tub and I was right next to it. I just loved it!”</p><h4>U.S. in 1948</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/PQj-aSg18A8?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“When we arrived in Washington, I remember, I think it was the very first day in Washington, D.C. My father went to work and then it was just my mother, the domestic lady and I in the house and then, all of a sudden, we heard sirens. So we all went down to the basement waiting for the all clear. We were puzzled that Americans still had air raids when the War is long over. Well, after a while, we crept up, because we didn’t get the all clear, but we went up and later we found out that they were the fire engines. I never… in Europe they don’t use [such] sirens.”</p><h4>U.S. Army</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/VDmJBqGeYPA?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“When I arrived, the town was still split in half; there was the Saarland which was controlled by the French and then of course the other side which was controlled by the Americans. The town was like in a little valley and one side there was the Americans and the other side were the Germans, the third side there were the French and the fourth side were the Canadians. And I remember the Canadians… there was an Air Force base. And the Canadians of course had an ice rink there and played hockey, and we would go and watch the hockey games. And the Canadians tend to be quite rough and they would play mostly German teams and the Germans didn’t like that very well! They always would cry ‘Fuj! Fuj!’ when the Canadians played rough.</p><p>“When I arrived, my sergeant said ‘Well, you’re the teletype operator’ and I had never seen a teletype in my life. I was taught by I think the WAGs, the women [who] were about in another town called Pirmasens. The other teletypists taught me how to work the teletype. I became quite good at it and I became the operator for the base. That was fun duty, I must say. It was some of the best times of my life. We had quite a lot of money in those days, and after hours we didn’t have that much responsibility once we were on our own and I did a lot of traveling. I made sure… We had a, a friend of mine and I, we owned a ’49 Volkswagen, and we traveled whenever we got a chance. We went through the Alps, we… all the way to Denmark, we had to two big jerry cans in the back full of gasoline (which now that I think about it was rather stupid!) We made it all the way to Denmark never buying gas.”</p><h4>Learning About the Past</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/rxYHgYHUOXM?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I remember dad was telling me one time that he was in the Olympics. I think it was in Amsterdam, before the War, I’m not sure when exactly. I remember he was in five events. I think it was like a military thing, it was horseback riding, pistol shooting, swimming, I imagine running and something else, I don’t know what the events were. But I never sort of paid much attention to it – so I mentioned it to my son-in-law one day and sure enough, he looked it up and gave me the website. I sent… I’m not sure where the headquarters is, but they sent me a lot of information about my dad! Where he placed, how many points he got, they even said that he fell off his horse! So it was just wonderful! I still have it, it was great!”</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
Dusan Schejbal
Description
An account of the resource
<p> </p><p>Dusan Schejbal was born in Prague in 1934. He spent most of his childhood, however, in Moravia – in Brno and then the village of Vranov during WWII. His father, Josef, was an officer in the Czechoslovak Air Force who fled to Britain to become an RAF pilot following the Nazi invasion. Dusan’s mother, Dobruška, meanwhile, was sent to a Nazi internment camp in Svatobořice between 1941 and 1943. Dusan and his mother spent the final years of the War together in Vranov, hiding in the woods, says Dusan, during the last few days of the conflict. They were reunited with Dusan’s father upon liberation in Prague in May 1945.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Dusan’s father had risen to prominence in the RAF during the War, achieving the rank of group captain and receiving an honorary award for his service from King George VI. Upon his return to Czechoslovakia in 1945, he became the commander of České Budějovice airfield. In 1947, he was appointed Czechoslovak military attaché to the United States and moved to Washington, D.C. to serve alongside Ambassador <a href="/web/20170612014146/http://www.ncsml.org/exhibits/juraj-slavik/">Juraj Slávik</a>. Dusan and his mother followed in 1948.</p><p> </p><p>Following the Communist takeover in 1948, Josef resigned from his post and the family moved to the suburbs of Maryland. Dusan says his father took a job as a gas station attendant, while his mother went to work as a sales lady at Garfinckel’s department store. Dusan attended Northwestern High School in Hyattsville and then the University of Maryland, where he majored in history and studied Russian as a minor. In 1957, Dusan was drafted into the U.S. Army and spent two years in Zweibruecken, Germany. Upon his return, he worked for the IRS and the Navy as a civilian employee. He married in 1962 and has three children. Today, Dusan lives in University Park, Maryland, with his wife, Krista. The pair travel extensively and Dusan says he still audits Russian classes at the University of Maryland.</p>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
NCSML Archive
1948 emigrant/refugee
Ceske Budejovice
Child emigre
Cultural Traditions
Diplomatic service
Juraj Slavik
Mikulas
Military service
Nazis
Sports
Svatoborice
World War II
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f585b21c00e6f9f2cf0df3b95540e065
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>Early WWII</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/rpSaCWCJ2tQ?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“I remember that, yes, for sure. We remember the Nazi occupation for sure. Even as kids, we know how the situation is, we understand it. Even if we were young kids, it didn’t bother us much, but we knew it was a really serious thing, especially after the Heydrich assassination and so on. ‘Keep your mouth shut and be careful.’”</p><h4>End of WWII</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/T2rS4nlwgqQ?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“The end of the War came, so we, who were working for the firefighters, we got this stuff [weapons], and we started taking the Germans together, something like that, so I had a machine gun.”</p><p><em>So, were you rounding up Germans at the end of the War?</em></p><p>“Well, they wanted some of those prisoners, they have to move them to other cities for example. So we have to accompany them, watch them, or watch them at the barracks in Mladá Boleslav, so that’s why we had to have guns. And I had it at home, and my brother almost killed me.”</p><p><em>Did you use this gun? Were you shooting people?</em></p><p>“Well, I started to. Once, one of the prisoners tried to escape and I saw him. Now, you are a young man, you never had something, and he’s an old soldier, he knows what to do. I didn’t shoot him, exactly, I shot over his head. It was nothing funny, I tell you. Now I make a little fun out of it, but at that time it was nothing funny.”</p><h4>Radio Free Europe</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/7OrkirlLJh4?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Some of those people [from RFE] went through those camps, Czech camps, looking for editor-writers and so on. I had luck – it was luck – they thought I was my father, because [we have the] same name, and the guy was from Mladá Boleslav, he knew my father. He knew me personally, so he said ‘Hey, this is it.’ He said ‘You have to go to Munich and have an interview.’ So I went over there, I interviewed in English, he spoke a little bit of Czech, this English guy. ‘Ok, dobrý.’</p><p>“I was an editor-writer for announcements in between [pieces], continuity. You have to find out what the guy wrote about, say it in two sentences, and they put it between programming. So the people in Czech Republic will know ‘Hey, tomorrow will be this,’ because they don’t want to listen to it eight hours a day; it’s dangerous. But if you are interested in this program – that was my job, to tell them what the program practically is.”</p><h4>Tramping</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/XS9thgFlNfo?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Tramps are practically wild Scouts. The Scouting organization is organized. Tramps, not. Everybody knows about everybody or what’s going on, but you have no organization. That’s why the Nazis and Communists could ruin up Scouts or other organizations, but they couldn’t ruin up tramping. So most people going with the tramps enjoyed themselves or covered what they were doing, because nobody could catch them, even the Communists. And when they sometimes went over there and beat the people, they wondered ‘How come there are so many people here? How come you know there’s something here?’ Nobody had to send anything because everybody knew from Czechoslovakia, from the First Republic, every Sunday, every second Sunday in April, we’re going there. But otherwise, it’s like Scouting. But it’s wild because there’s no organization. You can change it, you can switch it, you can close it up, you can start a new one. There can be one man, there can be two, there can be thirty. Nothing’s written either. But you love nature. The real tramps, they really love nature and enjoy it. And clean up after themselves.”</p><h4>Montage</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qxU5l9-ufiw?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p><em>(Video courtesy of Studio Na Koleni, Chicago) </em></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
Eda Vedral
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Eda Vedral was born in České Budějovice in 1927. His mother, Ludmila, was a teacher and his father, also named Eduard, was a journalist. When Eda was six, the Vedrals moved to Mladá Boleslav where his father worked as writer and editor for the local newspaper. Eda says that the year before he graduated from <em>gymnázium</em>, his class was sent to dig trenches for the German war effort. Since Eda had knee problems, he was sent back to Mladá Boleslav and became a firefighter to provide assistance in case of a bombing. At the end of WWII and in light of his training as a fireman, Eda took part in watching over and transporting Nazi prisoners. In the summer of 1945, Eda’s father again changed jobs and became a political writer for a newspaper in Liberec. Eda graduated from <em>gymnázium</em> there in 1946 and began studying journalism at Charles University in Prague. After the Communist coup in 1948, Eda switched his course of studies to law; he says he was eventually kicked out of university in 1949 because of his father’s political background. Back in Liberec, his uncle helped him to find a job as an accountant in a factory. He was fired three months later, but soon became an accountant for Liberec’s municipal services [<em>komunální služby města Liberec</em>].</p><p> </p><p>In April 1949, Eda’s future wife <a href="/web/20170612093232/http://www.ncsml.org/exhibits/alice-vedral/">Alice</a> (whom he had met in Prague while she was at business school) escaped from Czechoslovakia. He spent the next several months attempting to join her. On October 14, Eda crossed the border into Germany with 12 other people. He was sent to Ludwigsburg refugee camp where he was reunited with Alice. They soon married and had their first child, Alice. In early 1951, Eda joined the ranks of Radio Free Europe as a writer on the Czechoslovak desk and moved to Munich. In June 1952, the Vedrals received visas for the United States and arrived in Chicago. Eda says that they were helped by the Czech community there and he quickly found a job in a steel factory, which only lasted a short time. He then started working on the assembly line at Hotpoint, making washing machines and dryers. The Vedrals moved to Cicero, Illinois, and Eda and Alice had seven more children. Eda says that he made a point to speak to his children only in Czech; today, most of them still speak the language fluently. Eda also became very active in <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20170612093232/http://recordingvoices.blogspot.com/search/label/Tramping" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">expatriate tramping circles</a>. He has been the ‘sheriff’ of a group called Dálava for many years and has traveled to places like Canada, the Czech Republic, and the American West for tramping get-togethers.</p><p> </p><p>Eda became an American citizen in 1965; he says that he waited so long because he believed he would be returning to Czechoslovakia to live. In 1972, he made his first trip back to visit his mother in Písek. His father, whom Eda had not seen since he left the country, died shortly before his visit. Eda says he feels at home in both countries and, if not for his children living in the United States, would consider returning to the Czech Republic to live. Now retired, he lives in Cicero with his wife Alice.</p>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
NCSML Archive
1948 emigrant/refugee
Ceske Budejovice
Czech language
Dalava
Education
gymnazium
Journalism
komunalni sluzby mesta Liberec
marriage
Mlada Boleslav
Tramping
World War II
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans
Subject
The topic of the resource
Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans was an oral history project launched by the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library in 2009. The project captured and preserved the stories of Czechs and Slovaks who left their homeland during the Cold War and settled in New York City, Washington, D.C., Cleveland, Chicago and the San Francisco Bay Area. During the second phase of the project, the NCSML recorded the stories of immigrants who came to the United States after the fall of communism in 1989 as well. By the conclusion of the project in August 2013, the NCSML had collected more than 300 oral histories. <br /><br />Both phases of the project were made possible by grants from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. <br /><br />On the project’s website, you can read biographies of Czechs and Slovaks who began a new life in the United States, watch video clips from their interviews, and view photos and other archival materials they shared with us. <br /><br />Full length interviews are available for further research at the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library. For more information, contact Dave Muhlena, Library Director, at dmuhlena@ncsml.org.
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
<h4>Wanting to Leave</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/leCvrq2RLyA?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“He [my father] always tried convincing me, ‘I know you don’t like the situation in this country, but you’re born here, you should stay here, you should change things here.’ I said, ‘Well, I don’t think I can do that,’ and I was telling him ‘Look, if I really get involved, then I’ll be in jail.’ At that time, it was very easy – the communist police were very smart. They would not nail you down on some anti-communist activities. If you worked somewhere they would set up a scheme, let’s say you misappropriated some money and they will nail on that, and there will be no way of getting out of that. So I knew all that and I said, ‘Well, I think I need to really work hard to get out of here as soon as possible.”</p><h4>Austria</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/CyjYeJJJdVY?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“In Vienna, some guy I met said, ‘Well, do you want to make some money?’ I said ‘Sure.’ Right on the 22nd of August, I started selling newspapers – <em>Wiener Express Extra Ausgabe</em>. Everybody was hungry to get papers. I didn’t know Vienna that well, but I thought I need to go somewhere where there’s a lot of traffic, so I put myself right on the corner of Kertnerstrasse and Am Graben – it’s very busy, it’s the center of Vienna. I stood there, I had a little outfit and I put a Czech flag here, and the Viennese were so generous. They’d say ‘You are from Prague and you are already working here. That’s wonderful.’ The newspaper was one shilling and they would give me 100 shillings – ‘Here’s 100 shillings, you will need it.’ And so I made tons of money right there.”</p><h4>Learning English</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/7TQiA--UOAg?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I remember all the time, I had BBC World Service on the radio all the time, and it worked pretty well. So, very nice British English, and they used to have these sessions for teaching English, and it was wonderful. And I taped it and repeatedly listened to it. I started reading when I was a night watchman. My first book I read was <em>The Graduate</em>. Even though I didn’t understand it really, I understood maybe half of it. I just read it, and reread it again. That’s how I studied. Then I also somehow managed to get some other people interested and we started this English speaking club, and I was a total beginner. Twice a week, sometimes three times a week, we met in the evening, just like a book club or something. Similar set up, dictation, spelling, some discussion on a topical issue, and then at the end, everyone had to say a little story. It was very challenging for me, because I was way down. So I remember, guests in the hotel, they left sometimes <em>Reader’s Digest</em> or some books so my mother brought it home. So from <em>Reader’s Digest</em> at the bottom in the footnote, they had little stories, three or four lines. So I memorized that and used that – ‘This is my story for today’ you know.”</p><h4>Black Market</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/CBh0hddcqh4?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“A couple of times we did a big job, that was in the early ’70s – ‘73,’74,’75 – scientific calculators became a big thing, and there were not really so many in Czechoslovakia. So we had a friend in Berlin. His father was at the embassy there, and somehow they had some permission – they could go to West Berlin. He had a son there that studied and he was a good friend of ours. So what we did is we would get an order list from engineers and people that wanted these calculators. We had a catalog and we got the list. People gave us money up front; we got money on the black market, made a good exchange there, and went to East Germany – that was a very cheap flight, Prague to Berlin – gave our friend the list, in the afternoon he brought us the calculators. Maybe we stayed one day or two days, bought some other things, like good shoes or something they didn’t have, a little different. And then went back to Prague, because people knew us at the airport and we had some friends there. They had very good sausages in Germany, or some pate. So we brought that to some of the airport people and they just let us go through, we had a bag full of calculators.”</p><h4>Tourist Visa</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4n1ncwTjt_s?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“In order to go as a tourist, I needed to get what is called<em> výjezdní doložka</em>, and it’s sort of an obstacle course that you had to take. You had to have a stamp from your supervisor at work, you submit this to the bank, the bank gives you stamps – you get eight dollars a day for ten days, so you get 80 dollars – and then you go to the police and the police will issue an exit visa, and then you go the embassy of that country and they will give you a tourist visa. That sounds very simple, but it was very, very difficult.”</p><h4>New York</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/K731MoD5XYg?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I got into this hotel, and my god, you know. Coming from extreme luxury, beautiful flowers in the windows and everything, to this hotel which was for welfare recipients on the last leg and drug addicts. So I end up in this room, I want to take a shower because I’m all sweaty, open the shower, and cockroaches all over the place, I thought ‘Oh my god, what is this?’”</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
Martin Herman
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Martin Herman was born in České Budějovice in 1948. He was only a few months old when he moved to Prague, where his father, Karel, had a job at a glass export company. While Martin and his siblings Jana and Peter were growing up, his mother, Jana, stayed at home, and Martin remembers her hosting many parties. Later, Jana had several good jobs, first working in a hotel and then in the Ministry of Finance. As a boy, Martin participated in recreational and competitive sports; he was on a basketball team, and also enjoyed soccer, tennis, and hockey. After elementary school, Martin attended Secondary Agricultural School in Čáslav. He graduated in 1968 and spent one year working, traveling, and studying for the entrance exams for university. Martin was in Vienna during the Warsaw Pact invasion in August 1968, and he says that he considered staying in Vienna, but his mother convinced him to return home. In the fall of 1969, he started studying at VŠE (University of Economics, Prague). While in school he worked as a night watchman and wrote summaries of foreign economics articles for the National Academy of Sciences. He also learned English and played tennis regularly.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Well before his graduation from university in 1974, Martin had been thinking seriously about leaving the country. A very close family friend, Litti Manzer, lived in Miesbach, Bavaria, and Martin decided to get a tourist visa to visit her. He did not have any luck obtaining the exit permit until an acquaintance with connections assisted him. In April 1975, Martin arrived in Miesbach and quickly found a job playing, coaching, and teaching lessons at a tennis club. Martin says that his time in Germany ‘exceeded expectations’ and that he lived in ‘extreme luxury;’ however, it was always his desire to go to the United States. He received sponsorship from the International Rescue Committee and arrived in New York in October 1976. Martin was accepted to a doctoral program in economics at Cornell University which he started in January 1977. A summer job at the World Bank in Washington, D.C. led to a full-time job there in 1978, first as a research assistant and later as an economist. Having left Cornell to pursue his career, Martin finished his master’s degree at George Washington University. In 1980, Martin married his wife Eva, a process which he says was made very complicated because she was told she needed permission from the Czechoslovak government to marry a foreigner. They were able to convince a German judge to waive this requirement, and they married at City Hall in Miesbach. Martin traveled a lot for work, but he says he was repeatedly denied requests for a visa to visit Czechoslovakia. After numerous attempts, in 1984, he was able to visit Prague.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Martin’s work at the World Bank put him in touch with leading Czech economists, politicians, and businessmen; upon retiring in 1998, he looked for business opportunities in the Czech Republic. Martin conceived of and is managing the American Fund for Czech and Slovak Leadership Studies’ Young Leaders and Young Talents programs; these programs provide opportunities for young people in the Czech and Slovak Republics to pursue a course of study and/or work in the United States. Today, Martin is an international consultant, and he lives in Arlington, Virginia, with his wife, Eva.</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
Black market
Caslav
Ceske Budejovice
Education
English language
marriage
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans
Subject
The topic of the resource
Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans was an oral history project launched by the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library in 2009. The project captured and preserved the stories of Czechs and Slovaks who left their homeland during the Cold War and settled in New York City, Washington, D.C., Cleveland, Chicago and the San Francisco Bay Area. During the second phase of the project, the NCSML recorded the stories of immigrants who came to the United States after the fall of communism in 1989 as well. By the conclusion of the project in August 2013, the NCSML had collected more than 300 oral histories. <br /><br />Both phases of the project were made possible by grants from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. <br /><br />On the project’s website, you can read biographies of Czechs and Slovaks who began a new life in the United States, watch video clips from their interviews, and view photos and other archival materials they shared with us. <br /><br />Full length interviews are available for further research at the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library. For more information, contact Dave Muhlena, Library Director, at dmuhlena@ncsml.org.
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
<h4>Piano Lessons</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/toUgT54m56M?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“I had to take piano lessons, you know, the parents insisted. And the teacher, the piano teacher, was an old boy scout. That was, of course, that was outlawed. But he had these models of cabins and the little scout things, and so we would spend half the time playing piano, and half the time playing with the scout things. So, my piano is not that good.”</p><h4>Sokol Gymnastics</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/iBVDviEWprk?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“We had a sort of… Sokol was outlawed, but he [my father] was teaching a little gymnastics class that I and about a dozen boys, we would go into the old Sokol Hall and he made arrangements, he would teach us the stuff, you know, gymnastics: parallel bars, high bar, rings, floor exercises, the sort of typical stuff that the Sokols do – for several years. And I think he always believed in exercise and the whole notion of ‘in a healthy body is a healthy spirit.’ So he was doing it a little bit for himself, because he always liked to exercise and stuff, but at the same time, he put up with a dozen other kids too.”</p><h4>Snap Decision</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/atWhbYHm4zk?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“We had this meeting on the steps of our house, I was coming down in the morning and he was coming up, he proposed that we go and try to go to the United States, and it’s going to be challenging, but we should go. And of course, I was a 13 year old, for me it was just a big adventure. So I said yes, let’s go. And so that day he went to the hospital to do his rounds and work, and I packed whatever I deemed important, some clothing and a sleeping bag. It was kind of interesting because I still have the sleeping bag; I still have it in the car in case we get stranded in the snow. But it is amazing how that one item was sort of like the security blanket, like a little boy’s nene blanket, because we didn’t know where we were going to be. We could be sleeping on the floor of a gym some place or some kind of a camp. So we were dragging this sleeping blanket all around across the continent.”</p><h4>Adventure</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Hia1HkxzULY?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“You need to understand that especially as a young boy like that, anything Western, anything forbidden, was idolized. Anything Western was idolized. If somebody gave us chewing gum, because it was from America it was like the hottest thing. So, when we said ‘let’s go to America,’ it was like this great adventure. To me as a young teenager, it was like, why not? Let’s do it – I didn’t have to worry about all those legalities and technicalities and potential… I knew there was danger, I knew that there was danger, that if things don’t work out it could be sort of nasty at least for him [my dad.] I was a child but… So it was sort of a quick decision, sometimes you just have to make those snap decisions.”</p><h4>Road Signs</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/YPPV9nbtkKk?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Ironically, travel was complicated because the locals changed the signs. And so if you followed the road signs, you would end up in the wrong place. You really had to go by knowledge of the local area or by map. But if you came to an intersection and it said ‘Prague, this way,’ it would probably point you to the wrong place.”</p><h4>Cleveland</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/IEeQR7jewA8?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Well actually, he [Alex] was more active in the Ukrainian or the Rusyn community, so my first years until college, I was really not involved with the Czech community at all or very little. If anything, there was a Carpatho-Rusyn ski club and he was an officer and we did a lot of traveling, a lot of skiing in the wintertime. And so I was more involved in that culture. It was not until I already was married and had children, and I was taking my daughter to a gymnastics class, and there was a fellow reading a paper, a Czech paper, Nový svět. And so I said, ‘Well, he’s got to be Czech or Slovak or something,’ and he was my age, and so when the opportunity came I said hello to him, ‘Dobrý večer’ [Good evening] or something like that. And he turned out to be a local dentist, Stan Pechan, who is Slovak, Czech – he covers both areas, much like me, and we started talking and he introduced me to, he took me to a meeting of what was then the Krajanský výbor, which now is really defunct, but at the time it was the Czech and Slovak committee for the liberation of Czechoslovakia.”</p><h4>Cultural Garden</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/EGVIE_cjwGs?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“One of my colleagues at work, at Cleveland City Hall, approached me one time and said ‘Hey, you are Czech, you know there’s a Czech Cultural Garden and it’s orphaned and you know, somebody should take care of it.’ And I said. ‘What garden?’ I had no clue about the gardens. And he said ‘Come on, I’ll take you there at lunch time.’ So, we did, we took a ride to East Boulevard and MLK and drove through the gardens and saw the Czech garden and I was impressed and said ‘Yeah, well somebody kind of needs to attend to that.’ And before I knew, it kind of became my commitment to the Czech community, taking care of that. And I think we’ve been pretty successful. We’ve got some grants from the Czech Republic, we’ve got some donations from specifically the Ptak family, got some grants from the Holden Parks Trust, which is a trust which takes care of some of the parks, or specifically that park. So, we did a lot of things, restored the statues, planted new shrubs, tuck-pointed the masonry and over the years I think it’s one of the better… [We have] had virtually all of the ambassadors that were stationed in the United States come and visit and walk through the gardens.”</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 Burik
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Paul Burik was born in the southern Bohemian town of České Budějovice in 1954. His father, Nicholas, was a doctor, while his mother, Vlasta, worked as a pharmacist. When Paul was still a toddler, the family moved to Prešov, in eastern Slovakia, which was where Paul’s father (who was ethnically Carpatho-Rusyn) had grown up. After nearly six years, however, the family moved back to Bohemia, first to Prčice and then Sedlčany, where Paul’s father worked as the chief surgeon in the local hospital. When Paul was still a teenager, his mother died of a terminal disease. His father worked long hours so Paul says he grew up fairly independently. In 1967 his father traveled to the United States to visit his brother (Paul’s uncle Alex) who had immigrated to Cleveland shortly after the Communist coup in Czechoslovakia. Paul says his father spoke with a number of American doctors during his visit to the States, but decided to return to Czechoslovakia because, at the time, ‘things were good there.’ Following the Soviet-led invasion in 1968, however, Paul’s father suggested to him that the pair resettle in America. Paul says he looked forward to the ‘adventure’ of emigrating and agreed with his father’s suggestion.</p><p> </p><p>The pair left Czechoslovakia on August 23, 1968 and spent almost three months in Vienna, Austria, where Paul attended English classes at the Berlitz language school. They lived in an apartment belonging to an Austrian physician who wanted to help Czech and Slovak doctors displaced by the invasion. Paul arrived in Cleveland on November 8, 1968 and says he was shocked at the size of the city, worrying in particular that it would prove ‘impossible to find his school’ in a town so large. He and his father spent their first couple of months living with Paul’s uncle Alex in Lakewood, Ohio, where Paul attended Harding Middle School. When Paul’s father secured a medical internship, the pair moved into an apartment provided by the hospital, where Paul says he spent a couple of ‘good, but challenging years’ as his father was so busy retraining as a doctor.</p><p> </p><p>In 1972, Paul enrolled at Kent State University where he studied architecture. He spent a term in Florence, Italy, and graduated in 1977. His first job was at Robert P. Madison International, an architecture firm in Cleveland. In 1985, he became an architect for the City of Cleveland. He retired in 2010. Paul says he is particularly proud to have worked on Cleveland’s Westside Market and Hopkins Airport, as well as City Hall and the municipality’s numerous recreation centers. Paul says that when he moved to Cleveland, his uncle Alex introduced him to local Rusyn and Ukrainian groups. Over time, however, he says he has become more involved in the local Czech community, joining the Czech American Committee of Greater Cleveland (Krajanský výbor) and the local chapter of the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences (SVU). He is currently president of Cleveland’s Czech Cultural Garden. Today, Paul lives in Avon, Ohio, with his wife Fran.</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
Ceske Budejovice
Community Life
Education
emigrant
Health care professionals
Krajansky vybor
Presov
refugee
Sense of identity
Sports
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans
Subject
The topic of the resource
Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans was an oral history project launched by the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library in 2009. The project captured and preserved the stories of Czechs and Slovaks who left their homeland during the Cold War and settled in New York City, Washington, D.C., Cleveland, Chicago and the San Francisco Bay Area. During the second phase of the project, the NCSML recorded the stories of immigrants who came to the United States after the fall of communism in 1989 as well. By the conclusion of the project in August 2013, the NCSML had collected more than 300 oral histories. <br /><br />Both phases of the project were made possible by grants from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. <br /><br />On the project’s website, you can read biographies of Czechs and Slovaks who began a new life in the United States, watch video clips from their interviews, and view photos and other archival materials they shared with us. <br /><br />Full length interviews are available for further research at the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library. For more information, contact Dave Muhlena, Library Director, at dmuhlena@ncsml.org.
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
<h4>Popular Parents</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Tm_j5oYEMzg?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“My parents were actors, so they were both in the theatre at that time – as the ‘stars,’ so-called, of the little community of the theatre-goers, which was not a big community – never is, really. But it was nice to be the kid of those actors because everybody knew me. So, even when I was running around alone in Karlovy Vary, it was like home. Everybody was saying ‘Čau, Pavel. How are your parents?’ It was really like a big family and everybody knew my family.”</p><h4>Childhood</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/T6K2A-sRgvU?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Sometimes I didn’t make it to school, because on the way I saw these big machines doing some construction work in the ground. I loved it! The bulldozer, the cranes. Once I saw something like that, there’s no way I would ever get to school. But that was known. My parents always knew – if I didn’t come into school, they called them and say I’m not at school – they knew I am probably somewhere on the way to school because they always found me there. So that was like, every week, something like that was happening. That was fun. I somehow always liked it when you take material away from some platform or block or something. I think that led eventually to me being a sculptor.</p><p>“Actually, in Karlovy Vary, when you go around the buildings, you go behind the buildings. You climb the little passages on the side of the hills around Karlovy Vary, then you see that every building before you built it, they had to make huge cuts into the rocks, and then they started to build. So you have, actually, incredible geometric cuts in the rock which nobody sees ever. It wasn’t done for being looked at, but I knew about it, and I always climbed behind. It was quite an adventure, actually. And I think that somehow affected my mind to the degree that I make only negative shapes. Until this day, I’ll only drill holes, cut holes. I never do positive shapes, I always do negative shapes.”</p><h4>Communist Artist</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Ty6wF251Hco?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Without having an exam from the school, I could never go to high school or university for art, and I could not sell my work – which I was designing and selling to the people, but it was half illegal always. I could never sell it the legal way through the galleries because at that time you could only go through the system, through the state-controlled system galleries, and they could only take you if you were part of the Communist Party, or you had proper education, neither of which I had. Nobody was interested in the work itself. They were always interested in these conditional things, not in the real work. And I had enough of that.”</p><h4>Jewelry</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/CsEu7NhxKis?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“When I wanted to make an income, I had to be able to do some [jewelry] from gold. So people gave me some old pieces from family, or some coins, teeth and I melted it and I plated it, and from the plate I cut it out, and basically did the whole process from getting the scrap gold and ending up with the final product of my own design. Quite a process. I did several pieces like that and I was quite successful by selling them, so I could allow myself not to be employed by the state, because everything was by the state. By that, not to be employed by the state meant that I am exploiting other citizens of Czechoslovak society, and it was really punishable. Not going through official work was basically a criminal offense.</p><p>“So I had to have something to prove that I am not on the other side of the law. So I had a friend who was working in one of these stores with antiquities and some old jewelry, and he was giving me little bills that said I was fixing the jewelry for the store. Which was really not that much true. He gave me much more money than I earned. But it was for the police, because you could be stopped any moment on the street and they were checking you. You had to have a personal ID with you, a little book, and there was written if you were working. This way they were really controlling people constantly, all the time. So I didn’t have any job of course, but I had these little bills – I had a stack of bills kind of stuck in. And I went through many controls in the street safely because of those bills, because the police didn’t know what to do with it. They were not prepared for such a slick way of getting around this. So that saved me for three years. Three years, I was not working officially, but I had these bills.”</p><h4>Charter 77</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/B9keVCF7AoM?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“From working at the metro, I knew the guy who was part of the Plastic People [of the Universe] and he was also working there. So I met with other people and I was really was happy, because I finally met people like me – being pissed off, having enough of the system – and spoke about it! They were not afraid to speak about it. I was happy to be finally with people like that. So I signed the charter immediately. I didn’t even think twice.”</p><h4>New York</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/VlIzeHj3gN0?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I want to be somewhere where I have equal chances. So I went to America, because that’s the place where you have equal chances – at least I thought so. But it was right. Actually, it was right. I went to New York and in two months I had my first exhibition with my jewelry. In two months. It was quite amazing. The gallery owner was fascinated by my work and there I was, exhibiting my work. My dream came true. Something that I almost lost. Lost the dream, lost hope in Czechoslovakia. All the sudden, I was in the middle of New York, in the middle of all this incredible happenings. I had my own exhibition. It was something.”</p><h4>Consultant</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ltyC6Gkhe5c?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“The first two or three years, I served to several people as an advisor. What to think, how to do it, who to visit, what contacts they needed. Because we were maybe two or three people who came back so early from Western countries and we were actively exhibiting there. So I was only one who had experience with the real market. So I was helping a number of people with all these experiences, telling them how it would be done in Europe.</p><p>“Then I helped several galleries at that time to organize a more proper way, a more business-like way, and also, a more fair way to the artists. Because of course, many collectors still to this day, they’d rather go to the artist directly and get it cheaper there, which is killing the gallery business. On the other hand, the galleries were not doing anything. The first galleries had no clue what to do for the artists. You cannot sit there and wait for a customer, you have to go and find the customer for the artist, and then you can ask 50 percent. But if you don’t do it, then you have no right to 50 percent. Well, until this day, some galleries don’t understand it. They’re sitting and waiting there: ‘Maybe somebody will come, maybe not.’ No, you have to generate interest in the public. You have to help to generate, and that means advertisement, that mean organizing shows in museums, get involved in lectures. Be visible, be out there to attract the collectors or, basically, growing the collectors and bringing them to the gallery and sell them the art of the artist you’re representing. This is a long process. Basically, I knew that and I was definitely acting to get the information to my fellow artists, to my colleagues because they were all asking me how to do this, how to do that, and also to the few galleries which, at that time, existed.”</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
Pavel Opočenský
Description
An account of the resource
<p> </p><p>Pavel Opočenský was born in Karlovy Vary in 1954. His parents, Gustáv Opočenský and Františka Horáková, were both well-known actors. Pavel says that he was artistically inclined from a young age and that he enjoyed hobbies such as building ship models. He was fascinated with construction sites to the point that he was often absent after coming across one on his way to school. At the age of 15, Pavel began an apprenticeship in a relative’s metal workshop in České Budějovice, restoring items from churches and museums in need of repair. It was here that he became interested in jewelry making and design. After the three-year apprenticeship, Pavel traveled to Prague, went to a trade school for custom jewelry design, and joined a co-op; however, he did not finish either of those programs and decided to concentrate on producing his own pieces. He recalls having difficulty establishing himself as a professional artist in Czechoslovakia. Because he was not a member of the Communist Party and did not have the requisite education, Pavel was not able to sell his pieces through official means, and he instead went into business for himself. In order to escape arrest or police harassment on account of his entrepreneurship, Pavel’s friend (who owned an antique shop) falsified documents that stated he was performing repair work. Through this, and his work as a janitor in the Prague metro (which he claims required minimal effort), Pavel supported himself for a number of years.</p><p> </p><p>In 1979, Pavel signed Charter 77 and says he was immediately visited by the police who threatened him with arrest if he did not give them information about his acquaintances. Later that year, Pavel crossed the border into West Germany with an altered passport. After two and a half years in Germany, Pavel moved to the United States. He arrived in New York City in 1982 and shortly thereafter held his first exhibition. Pavel spent much of his time in New York working with ivory. In 1990, he returned to Czechoslovakia for good – a decision that was spurred by a visit one year earlier. Just one week after his return, Pavel was put in police custody and jailed for two months following an incident in which he killed a skinhead in self-defense. Although the process took over four years, Pavel was cleared of all charges. In addition to producing his own work, which now included sculpture, Pavel became a consultant to others in the art community because of his business experience in New York City. In 2003, Pavel was arrested and served three years in jail for sex with minors. Since his release in 2006, Pavel has continued to produce jewelry and art. He lives in Prague with his wife and son.</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
Ceske Budejovice
Charter 77
Opocensky
Privatization
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans
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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
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<h4>Military Service</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/LOek4DrS_RU?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“We were schooled for one year where we learned everything about everything, mainly about tanks because I was a tank driver. And the second year we went to Prachatice. And at the end of that, in August 1968, the Russians came and occupied Czechoslovakia, so we thought that maybe we will stay longer in the Army or something but our activities ended, so… Russian soldiers were behind our barracks and we went to work on farms my last year in the Army. [We were] helping the farmers and they treated us nice. They cooked for us, good food.”</p><h4>Leaving Czechoslovakia</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/TCaJ4ZlCVrY?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“We went on a trip to Austria and my mother said ‘If you have a chance, you should stay there somehow.’ So I got the chance and I stayed. We went [on a work trip] to Austria and we were visiting the Stephansdom [St. Steven’s Cathedral] there. And there were lots of people in the front saying ‘Hey, do you want to go to America?’ They were asking us people, the Czechs and Slovaks, and we went in and checked the Stephansdom inside, and we went to the Praterstrasse and on the [Ferris] wheel. We spent the schillings that we had, a few schillings, and then went to the hotel to sleep. And two fellows from Okres Topol’čany, friends, saw the bus there, they saw the plates on the bus and they came over to my room and said ‘Hey, do you want to go somewhere, to America or somewhere?’ And I went with them and they showed me the Catholic charity and they showed me (at night) where I can register.”</p><h4>Socializing in Cleveland</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/m_YdPZpJ7cI?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“We went to the German Central [Deutsche Zentrale] for dances, it was here on York Road close, or Ceska Sin Sokol on Park Avenue, they had dances or even we played some divadlo – we put on plays. And we had a soccer team, a Slovak soccer team, so we played between the different nationalities; Germans, Hungarians, Serbians and stuff.”</p>
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Vladimir Cvicela
Description
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<p>Vladimir Cvicela was born in Kl’ačany, Slovakia in 1946. He came from a farming family and says that, after school, he would chase rabbits with dogs and play hockey with the other village children. Growing up, Vladimir wanted to become an electrician, but began working as a repairman on the local collective farm instead. When he was 19 years old, Vladimir was conscripted into the Czechoslovak Army and sent to České Budějovice, where he trained as a tank driver. He says his tank unit was disbanded two years later, however, following the Soviet-led invasion in August 1968.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Vladimir spent his last year of military service helping farmers in the Šumava region of the Czech Republic. Following his time in the military, Vladimir returned to work at the collective farm in Kl’ačany. He left Czechoslovakia in 1969 when he visited Vienna on a bus trip organized by his employer from which he did not return. He says that he was approached by two Slovak emigrants in the Austrian capital who gave him information about how he too could claim asylum. Vladimir spent five months in Austria, where he found a job as a glazier’s assistant and started learning English. He came to Cleveland in March 1970, where he was met at the airport by two of his distant relatives who had also recently arrived in the city.</p><p> </p><p>Vladimir says he almost immediately found a job in Cleveland, at the city’s Sherwin-Williams Paint plant. He worked at the company for 12 years until he was laid off and found employment at Joseph & Feiss tailors. Outside of work, Vladimir was a member of the Cleveland Slovak soccer team, where he played goalkeeper. He met his wife Maria in 1980 when she came to Cleveland from Kolačkov, Slovakia to visit her sister, Ludmila Anderko. The two were married at Sts. Cyril & Methodius Catholic Church in Lakewood, Ohio, later that same year. Vladimir and Maria have two children who were raised understanding Slovak and as members of the Lucina Slovak Folklore Ensemble. Vladimir says it was ‘important’ for him that his children maintained Slovak traditions and the language, and that he is happy his children’s involvement in dance troupe Lucina has taken the family back to Slovakia on several occasions. Today, Vladimir lives with his wife Maria in Parma, Ohio, and is a grandfather. In his retirement, he maintains several rental properties around the city of Cleveland.</p>
Creator
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National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library
Source
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NCSML Archive
1968
Asylum
Ceske Budejovice
Community Life
Cultural Traditions
emigrant
Family life
Klacany
Military service
refugee
Rural life