Vit graduated from university in 1975 and went to the Moravian town of Šumperk to take an acting job in the municipal theatre. He left the theatre after one year so as to move back to Prague, where he worked as a freelance actor and developed plans to leave the country. The chance came in 1978 when Vit was translating Primo Levy’s Il Sistema Periodico; he says he managed to procure an invitation from the author to consult with him on the translation in Italy. Vit left Czechoslovakia in March 1978. He did travel to Italy, but continued on to France, where he spent one year in Paris, studying mime and waiting for either the United Kingdom or the United States to process his visa request. He arrived in New York City in February 1979, sponsored by the American Fund for Czechoslovak Refugees. Vit settled briefly in Queens, working first as a bike messenger and then a cab driver. He subsequently moved to Manhattan and became involved in the Czech-American black light theatre company Divadlo Ta Fantastika. He stayed with Ta Fantastika for a number of years, moving to Florida in the mid-1980s with the company. Towards the end of the 1980s, however, Vit embarked upon his own venture, the Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre – using (among other props) puppets unearthed in the attic of New York City’s Jan Hus Presbyterian Church.
Vit has toured the United States with the Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre on several occasions, often performing his adaptations of traditional Czech fairytales (such as Rusalka and Jenůfa) in American schools. He serves on the board of the Bohemian Benevolent and Literary Association and lives in Manhattan with his wife Bonnie. The couple have one daughter, Sarazina, who is currently in the Czech Republic on a scholarship learning Czech.
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Vit Horejs was born in Prague in 1950. His father, Jaromír, was a teacher and author (who published over 50 books), while his mother, Věra, taught gym and Czech. Vit was the youngest of three siblings. Growing up in communist Czechoslovakia, he says he ‘believed in the system’ and even became Young Pioneer of the Year when he was around ten years old. Vit says he became disillusioned following the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. That same year, he made his first trip to France. It was at this time that Vit began studying French, philosophy and theatre at Charles University in Prague. He returned to France in 1969, having faked an invitation to secure himself an exit permit. Also during his studies, Vit visited England which, he says, made him ‘fall in love with English’ and consider a life abroad. He stayed in the United Kingdom for longer than his exit permit allowed and so had his passport confiscated upon his return to Czechoslovakia.
Vit graduated from university in 1975 and went to the Moravian town of Šumperk to take an acting job in the municipal theatre. He left the theatre after one year so as to move back to Prague, where he worked as a freelance actor and developed plans to leave the country. The chance came in 1978 when Vit was translating Primo Levy’s Il Sistema Periodico; he says he managed to procure an invitation from the author to consult with him on the translation in Italy. Vit left Czechoslovakia in March 1978. He did travel to Italy, but continued on to France, where he spent one year in Paris, studying mime and waiting for either the United Kingdom or the United States to process his visa request. He arrived in New York City in February 1979, sponsored by the American Fund for Czechoslovak Refugees. Vit settled briefly in Queens, working first as a bike messenger and then a cab driver. He subsequently moved to Manhattan and became involved in the Czech-American black light theatre company Divadlo Ta Fantastika. He stayed with Ta Fantastika for a number of years, moving to Florida in the mid-1980s with the company. Towards the end of the 1980s, however, Vit embarked upon his own venture, the Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre – using (among other props) puppets unearthed in the attic of New York City’s Jan Hus Presbyterian Church.
Vit has toured the United States with the Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre on several occasions, often performing his adaptations of traditional Czech fairytales (such as Rusalka and Jenůfa) in American schools. He serves on the board of the Bohemian Benevolent and Literary Association and lives in Manhattan with his wife Bonnie. The couple have one daughter, Sarazina, who is currently in the Czech Republic on a scholarship learning Czech.
“There was one moment when there were elections and I refused to vote, which was tantamount to voting no for the Party. She [my mother] was very scared about that and she was trying to convince me to go and vote. But I didn’t.”
What was the voting age?
“Eighteen.”
You didn’t go and vote?
“I didn’t go and vote, I was actually… I was on purpose not at home on the day of the voting, on the election day. Because I knew, somehow I knew that they might come to – the election committee might come and invite me to vote. And they did in my absence.”
“Talking about the politics, it was very tightly controlled by the government, by the Communist Party. You were told what plays you could produce and what you could not stage. You also had to produce a Soviet play, and a play that was so-called ‘progressive’ – that was a political propaganda play. I was fortunate that actually I didn’t have to play, for the year that I was in this theatre, I didn’t have to play in any of those propaganda pieces. I even got to play in an American play. It was controlled, you were only allowed a certain percentage of Western plays, so I was in that ten percent of Western plays we were allowed to play. The theatre had altogether ten plays in a year. We would split the company and stage ten plays, of which I was in five.”
“She once, during Charter 77, she – there was a meeting at her school and the Communist Party chief was talking against Charter 77 and she asked her, my mother asked her, “Well, have you read it?” And the communist said “No,” and my mother pulled out Charter 77, a copy, and handed it to her. That was definitely the wrong thing to do. Fortunately they kind of hush-hushed it, she just had to move, she couldn’t teach in that particular part of Prague anymore and eventually she stopped teaching altogether and became a dorm supervisor for high school kids, which she liked better anyway. I remember that moment when… She actually had a nervous breakdown when this happened to her, and I remember us children telling her “How could you do that? This is just something that’s not done!” And then I realized the absurdity of it, that she was doing something that was right, but of course, under that current regime, it was suicidal to do anything like that.”
“I was scared of the United States before coming here. I knew… I guess there were still some remnants of the communist propaganda in me about America. There was what I knew from novels about crime in the United States and I was expecting that I would immediately be meetings gangsters at the airport. But that did not happen. I was met by a friend, because already in Prague we – there were three of us at [Charles University’s] Department of Philosophy that decided we would leave, and we planned together and all managed to leave at around the same time, and they already were in the United States, so I stayed with them in Queens for a little while. But my first impression: I didn’t quite meet the gangsters, but my first impression was that New York was tremendously dirty.”
“In 1984, while I was with the black light theatre [Ta Fantastika], I did a storytelling performance at Jan Hus Church with my three marionettes. And they told me, “We used to have a puppet theatre here.” So I kept asking what happened to the puppets until they let me go to the attic and there, in an old chest, were 24 marionettes – 24 large marionettes – between 18 and 26 inches.”
… The dimensions of the ones…
“No, these are 48 inches. These are much bigger. Maybe we can pan later on across some of those puppets here. So, I did two shows at Jan Hus Church and the second one, the next week after the discovery, I brought out a king and a vodník (a water spirit) and did a story with vodník and a story with the king. And then kind of kept thinking about them. And when I quit the black light theatre I put together with another friend, Jan Unger, who studied puppetry at the puppetry school in Prague – the Academy of Musical Arts [DAMU] had a puppetry department – so with him I put together a puppet company.
“My own training in puppetry really goes to childhood when I played with my mother’s toy puppet theatre from the 1920s and, together with my brother and sister, we put on shows. Fairy tales, mostly.”
“I was really determined not to be closed in a Czech community. So I met some Czechs, but I was trying to totally live in an American circle, in American circles, and I purposely avoided Czechs. And despite that I met some Czechs who are good friends, but it took quite a while before I joined some Czech organizations, and that was after I started our theatre company. And surprisingly enough – that is contradicting everything I was saying, but I was trying not to meet Czechs, but I was telling Czech stories and started a Czech puppet theatre company.”
“At one point I tried, I was reading to my daughter in Czech when she was really small, and at some point she started refusing it, at a point where she recognized that she didn’t understand, she suddenly started refusing reading in Czech. And I gave up too easily, I guess, because years later she complained that I never taught her Czech.”
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.
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.
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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.
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.
“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.”
“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.
“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.”
“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.”
“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.
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.
“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.”
At school, Miro was an avid volleyball player and was named to the roster of the Slovak national youth team. Upon graduation from technical high school in Zvolen, Miro was invited to attend university to study physical education, but decided to take a job as a draftsman at a railroad depot. He served in the Czechoslovak Army for two years, and then began studying political economy at the College of Economics in Bratislava in 1965. Miro also received a graduate degree in business management and postgraduate degree in systems engineering. While he was at university, Miro witnessed the liberalization that would eventually mark the Prague Spring in 1968 and says that, because of this, it was a great time for him to be studying his disciplines as they had access to information and teaching styles from the West. Miro also spent some time abroad in 1968, hitch-hiking through western Europe. He was in Yugoslavia during the Warsaw Pact invasion in August of that year, and although he considered staying out of the country, he decided to return to Czechoslovakia to finish his studies. He subsequently spent the next ten years attempting to get visas to travel abroad.
Miro graduated from university at the top of his class, but says he had trouble finding a job. He worked as a bricklayer for five months before one of his professors secured him a position in the IT department of Slovnaft, an oil refinery in Bratislava. Eventually, he joined a newly formed Institute for Systems Engineering. In 1978, Miro was able to obtain travel visas for himself, his wife, and their two children for a vacation in Yugoslavia; while there, he applied for travel visas to Greece. The Medeks stayed in a refugee camp in Greece for close to one year as, even though Miro’s father (who had left Czechoslovakia in 1968 and settled in the U.S.) was sponsoring them, they had left the country with no documentation. The Medeks arrived in Washington, D.C. in April 1979. One week later, Miro’s wife gave birth to their third child. Due to his professional experience, Miro was working as a systems engineer within two weeks of arriving. He first returned to Czechoslovakia in 1990, right after the fall of communism, an event which he says he ‘didn’t believe… would happen in my lifetime.’ Today, Miro is retired and lives in Woodbridge, Virginia.
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Miro Medek was born in Prague in 1944, but moved with his family to Vrútky in northern Slovakia when he was two years old. His father, also named Miroslav, was a mechanical engineer while his mother, Marie, a former factory worker, stayed home with Miro and his sister Irena. Miro says the political situation in Czechoslovakia led to tensions between his parents, as his father leaned towards more capitalist ideas and his mother supported the Communist Party; however, he says that his mother eventually became disillusioned with the Communist regime. When Miro was a teenager, his father was arrested for ‘reintroducing capitalist enterprise’ and sent to work in the Jáchymov uranium mines for one year.
At school, Miro was an avid volleyball player and was named to the roster of the Slovak national youth team. Upon graduation from technical high school in Zvolen, Miro was invited to attend university to study physical education, but decided to take a job as a draftsman at a railroad depot. He served in the Czechoslovak Army for two years, and then began studying political economy at the College of Economics in Bratislava in 1965. Miro also received a graduate degree in business management and postgraduate degree in systems engineering. While he was at university, Miro witnessed the liberalization that would eventually mark the Prague Spring in 1968 and says that, because of this, it was a great time for him to be studying his disciplines as they had access to information and teaching styles from the West. Miro also spent some time abroad in 1968, hitch-hiking through western Europe. He was in Yugoslavia during the Warsaw Pact invasion in August of that year, and although he considered staying out of the country, he decided to return to Czechoslovakia to finish his studies. He subsequently spent the next ten years attempting to get visas to travel abroad.
Miro graduated from university at the top of his class, but says he had trouble finding a job. He worked as a bricklayer for five months before one of his professors secured him a position in the IT department of Slovnaft, an oil refinery in Bratislava. Eventually, he joined a newly formed Institute for Systems Engineering. In 1978, Miro was able to obtain travel visas for himself, his wife, and their two children for a vacation in Yugoslavia; while there, he applied for travel visas to Greece. The Medeks stayed in a refugee camp in Greece for close to one year as, even though Miro’s father (who had left Czechoslovakia in 1968 and settled in the U.S.) was sponsoring them, they had left the country with no documentation. The Medeks arrived in Washington, D.C. in April 1979. One week later, Miro’s wife gave birth to their third child. Due to his professional experience, Miro was working as a systems engineer within two weeks of arriving. He first returned to Czechoslovakia in 1990, right after the fall of communism, an event which he says he ‘didn’t believe… would happen in my lifetime.’ Today, Miro is retired and lives in Woodbridge, Virginia.
“I played guitar. When I was about 14, I went to work for a summer in a cinderblock factory. It was hard work, but I made some money and bought my guitar. That’s also a time when I met a lot of people. You look, it’s a cinderblock factory, but everybody was an ex-professor, ex-teacher, ex-accountant, because they lost their job and the only thing they could do was doing manual labor. So that was another thought, ‘Now hold on just a minute, this is not right.”
“My father was always kind of enterprising, and what happened is he was a mechanical engineer taking care of construction machinery. At that point in time, there was a problem. They had a high rate of breakage, and he came up with an invention how to grease and maintain those things. And he was talking to everybody ‘Please start doing this,’ even going to the Ministry somewhere in Prague, but nobody wanted to do it. So he decided ‘Ok, I’m going to do it on my own.’ And he did. Except eventually, he was jailed and sentenced for reintroducing capitalist enterprise. So he spent I think about a year in jail in Jáchymov, in those uranium mines. And he was so good of an engineer that even when he was in jail he tried to make things better, ‘How can you do this better?’ So, as a matter of fact, they even let him out early for good behavior.”
“I went through college and then graduate school in a very good time. I started in ’65. In a couple of years, the Prague Spring started, and you could see it in schools. Suddenly it was open. They taught pretty much a more Western style. I got my undergraduate degree in political economy, graduate degree in business management, and postgraduate in systems engineering, and those were all things they pretty much taught Western style management, and I knew more about the stock market than people in the U.S., and systems engineering as a discipline – it was more related to what I did when I finished university – it was not so well-known even in the U.S. It started to be taught some ten years later, kind of building big systems and things like that. So that’s why I’m saying that it was a good time; because at the same time, the Prague Spring started at that time. There were a lot of new ideas.”
“We were very much in touch with what was going on, and I knew some people who signed it and things like that. But what was happening – I guess it was happening at every company – everybody had an interview and was asked ‘Sign this document that you do not agree with it Charter 77.’ I had a problem, so again I opened my mouth, and I eventually signed it, but I put ‘Signed under duress’ or something like that. That was an additional reason they were kind of saying ‘Well, you’re not going anywhere in your career.’ We had copies distributed. We had a copy of it; it was an underground copy, but yeah, we had it.”
“We were trying to go [to America] on – I don’t know what kind of visa it is – but reunion of family, because my father was already in the U.S. and he was a naturalized citizen at the time. But we needed my birth certificate and all the kids’ certificates to be able to prove that I’m his son and these are really my kids and we didn’t know that, we didn’t have anything. My family sent us photocopies; that was not good enough, it had to be originals. Finally, my family sent it through somebody who went to Greece. Well, the scumbag asked for a lot of money for doing that, but never delivered. My father started threatening that he’s going to put Interpol on it. Eventually, we got the documentation that we needed, but it took close to a year. Other people sometimes left after four months and were on the way to the U.S. or Australia. We’d been there for a year.”
“Those were not easy times, because when we moved in, we didn’t have anything. You wanted to cook dinner, we don’t have a pan, we don’t have any plates and things. So everything you had to buy. We came really with a pair of t-shirts and jeans for each of us. So you had to buy from scratch and start from scratch. Friends of my father gave us some tables. We bought a mattress to sleep on and stuff like that, but it took time until you set yourself up. We didn’t have anything.”
“We went to a few meetings with people, and I didn’t like one aspect of it. You had generations of immigrants – some people came during WWII, some people came after ’48 when it changed, then some people came in between, and then ’68 was another move, and then we came in ’78. Now what I didn’t like much was that people living in the U.S. were trying to tell me how it is, when I just came from there and knew. Their view was totally skewed because they – well, we didn’t like what was happening either – but they knew, ‘We know everything and this is what it should be like,’ and it was more like they were angry at the system, and I didn’t want to deal with that much. Especially, I didn’t want to talk so bad about the country back home, because then I would be talking bad about my family who is still there, about my friends who are still there, so I kind of avoided that for that reason.”
In 1950, Martin’s mother was arrested on charges that she helped a relative illegally cross the border. After 18 months in prison, she was put on trial and released of all charges. While she was in prison, Martin was sent to a boarding school in Poděbrady, where he was a classmate of Václav Havel. Martin returned to Prague, graduated from high school and studied architecture at ČVUT (Czech Technical University in Prague). He went on to earn a postgraduate degree in architecture from the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague and worked for a state-owned building contractor.
Martin says that since graduating from university he had been hoping to travel to the West, applying for work abroad. Although he was frequently offered opportunities (particularly in Great Britain), he was repeatedly denied a visa. In 1967, Martin had applied for and been offered a job with the Greater London Council. To his surprise, he was given a visa and he left Czechoslovakia in August 1967. Although Martin planned to return to Prague after one year, he was still in London when Warsaw Pact troops invaded the country and decided to stay in the West. In January 1970, Martin took a job with an architecture firm in New York City and moved to the United States. He settled in Manhattan and opened his own private firm in 1971.
Martin first returned to Czechoslovakia in 1983 and then again following the fall of communism. With a friend living in Prague, he opened a branch of his company there and continued to visit his hometown yearly. Initially reluctant to seek out his fellow émigrés, in recent years Martin has become active in the Czechoslovak community in New York, including assisting in the renovation of the Bohemian National Hall. Today, Martin continues his architecture practice and lives in Manhattan.
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Martin Holub was born in Prague in 1938. His father, Ján, was a lawyer who, after the Communist coup in 1948, was not allowed to continue practicing and sent to work at a cement factory. He later worked in a photography lab and then as a librarian at the Architectural Institute in Prague. His mother, Miloslava, has also studied law and went on to become a rather well-known art historian. During WWII, Martin spent a lot of time in Moravia where his mother’s parents lived. He says that rather than feeling afraid during the War, he recalls events such as air raids as ‘fun’ due to the excitement.
In 1950, Martin’s mother was arrested on charges that she helped a relative illegally cross the border. After 18 months in prison, she was put on trial and released of all charges. While she was in prison, Martin was sent to a boarding school in Poděbrady, where he was a classmate of Václav Havel. Martin returned to Prague, graduated from high school and studied architecture at ČVUT (Czech Technical University in Prague). He went on to earn a postgraduate degree in architecture from the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague and worked for a state-owned building contractor.
Martin says that since graduating from university he had been hoping to travel to the West, applying for work abroad. Although he was frequently offered opportunities (particularly in Great Britain), he was repeatedly denied a visa. In 1967, Martin had applied for and been offered a job with the Greater London Council. To his surprise, he was given a visa and he left Czechoslovakia in August 1967. Although Martin planned to return to Prague after one year, he was still in London when Warsaw Pact troops invaded the country and decided to stay in the West. In January 1970, Martin took a job with an architecture firm in New York City and moved to the United States. He settled in Manhattan and opened his own private firm in 1971.
Martin first returned to Czechoslovakia in 1983 and then again following the fall of communism. With a friend living in Prague, he opened a branch of his company there and continued to visit his hometown yearly. Initially reluctant to seek out his fellow émigrés, in recent years Martin has become active in the Czechoslovak community in New York, including assisting in the renovation of the Bohemian National Hall. Today, Martin continues his architecture practice and lives in Manhattan.
“Born on the wrong side of the tracks. Capitalists. Enemy of the people. That’s enough. The ostensible charge was that she helped one of her cousins to emigrate. But nothing was proved and 18 months later, after the trial, she was released. She considered herself very lucky. So all this was actually pre-trial custody. She was held in pre-trial custody for 18 months, from 1950 until late of 1951.”
Well, at least she had a trial.
“There was a trial, yes, and there was some semblance of legality because the charge was not proven and she was released.”
“Even though nothing was proven to her, to have been in prison was kind of a black stain on her reputation and she had difficulty finding a job. So we really struggled, but it’s one interesting proof of how resilient a child is, because I have no memories of hardship. I mean, she made it seem like fun. I remember, a week before the end of the month, she would just empty her wallet on the table and say ‘This is what we have to live on until the end of the month.’ And for me it was fun. I budgeted money per day, and I have no memory of any struggle or hardship because a child has no reference. Everything is normal.”
“It was pretty rigorous training. I had an opportunity to compare myself with others when I came to England, and we grew up as a complex. We grew up thinking we are in a cage, we are separated from civilization by this Iron Curtain and we don’t really know what it’s all about; we are just sort of cut off in the boondocks down here. And that made us… I spent hours in the technical library because, interestingly, even though there was censorship of course and the Western newspapers, Western magazines were not allowed to come in, the technical literature was. We couldn’t take it home, but the library of the technical museum had all the architectural magazines in the world – French, English, Italian, American magazines. So that’s where I was spending my time, familiarizing myself with the architecture in the West. So that, when I arrived in London, to the astonishment of my English colleagues, I knew more about contemporary English architecture than they knew. They started explaining to me about James Sterling, and I said ‘Oh yeah, I know about James Sterling. He did the Lester school and he did that and he did that,’ and they were totally flabbergasted. ‘How do you know this?’ ‘Magazines. Magazines.’”
“It was the beginning of Dubček’s Prague Spring, but not even Dubček knew it was the beginning of Dubček’s Prague Spring. But what we knew was that suddenly things started to be a little looser and the main witness was that I was allowed for the first time to leave – I couldn’t go even to East Germany; I never could go beyond the Iron Curtain – suddenly not just for a trip but for a year! It was unheard of. Unheard of. I thought it was a mistake, so I did not question. With my friend, I jumped into a car and drove to London. I thought I would be back in a year. At the time, I had no intention of emigrating for the rest of my life. If I let my fantasy run wild I thought ‘Well, if the first year would go well I might try to extend it for another year,’ and, at the time, to spend two years in London, it was the ultimate to think. Well, as it happened, at the end of the first year almost to the day Russians moved in. I didn’t take much imagination not to return when I saw tanks in Wenceslas Square.”
“I arrived from London in January of 1970, again thinking this would be a temporary stay in America. Having lived in London for three years, the Brits kind of condition you into thinking that America is this cultural wasteland where everybody’s chasing money and no gentle soul could survive, and I bought it. American tourists on Oxford Street are doing a very good job to support this philosophy. So I truly thought that this would be another three or four years to get the taste of America, test myself professionally here, and then I would come back to civilization – civilization being London. I felt very comfortable in London. I had a good job, apartment. There was really no reason for me to leave, except this curiosity. I considered myself a citizen of the world and you cannot be a citizen of the world unless you’ve experienced America. Professionally it attracted me. When I opened architecture magazines in 1969 I liked what I saw better than what I saw in London. So I had this professional curiosity plus sort of the world curiosity. And very quickly, New York and I clicked and I had no second thoughts about ever returning to London.”
“I no longer fit in. It’s a very strange feeling, which cannot be unique among emigrants, that when I walk in Prague I feel like a tourist. It’s the town I was born in, I spent the first 28 years of my life, and still I don’t know really how it works now, having been out of there for 45 years. Life develops and the language changes and there are expressions I don’t know what they mean – Czech expressions. And the same thing, I don’t know which way the busses go and which way the streetcars go and I don’t know the names of the streets, so I am a tourist.”
“I feel Czech-American. This is, I think, the only country you can feel that. Having lived three years in London before I came to America, I think even if I lived 50 years in England I would not be an English Czech, or Czech-English. I mean, that category does not exist. I’d be a Czech living in England, yes, but I don’t think I’d ever feel English. I’d be phony; whereas, legitimately here I feel American, but I am also a Czech. Again, it’s nothing unique about it. This country is composed of German-Americans, Chinese-Americans, Japanese-Americans, French-Americans and so forth. That’s what I think makes America different from other countries.”
After high school, Jitka moved to Prague and studied at Vyšší odborná škola grafická [School of Graphic Arts]. After completing her arts program, Jitka found a job at an animation studio. She was then encouraged to apply for a job at the Bratři v triku animation studio at the Barrandov complex. During her time in Prague and through her husband, Leoš Exler, Jitka came to know many dissidents and people in the underground scene, and the pair signed Charter 77. Jitka says that the two were followed by secret police for a while, and they eventually decided to leave Czechoslovakia. Although they had trouble getting visas and exit permits, Jitka and Leoš left the country in 1980. They escaped through Hungary, Yugoslavia, and Italy, and crossed the border into Austria. Because of their background as Charter 77 signatories, they were able to live in an apartment instead of a refugee camp while waiting for their paperwork to clear. In January 1981, Jitka arrived in New York City.
Jitka’s sponsoring organization helped her find a job as a seamstress. She also got involved making puppets for a black light theatre company started by a fellow Czechoslovak émigré. In the early-1980s, Jitka called Jim Henson’s company and asked for an interview. She was accepted to Muppet University where she was tasked with designing and making a Muppet. After working as a freelance puppet maker, Jitka joined the staff at Sesame Street. Of her time with Jim Henson and his company, Jitka says that she felt like she was contributing to something bigger. After eight years with Sesame Street, Jitka began working for a toy company, designing toys and overseeing production. When her younger son was born (with her second husband), Jitka became a freelance toy designer, a job she continues to this day.
Jitka first returned to the Czech Republic only a few months after the Velvet Revolution, and she attempts to visit her home country every year. Her sons speak Czech and enjoy her Czech cooking. In addition to designing toys, Jitka is an avid painted. Today, she lives in Larchmont, New York.
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Jitka Exler was born in Karlovy Vary, in western Bohemia, in 1959. She grew up with her parents, Václav and Věra, and her older sister, Blanka, in the nearby town of Ostrov nad Ohří, which Jitka describes as a ‘showcase communist town.’ Although Jitka’s father was a foreman at the Skoda factory in Ostrov, Jitka says that he was called ‘the man with the golden hands’ because he could make or fix anything, and he was often busy working on cars. Jitka’s mother was an expert knitter who sold her work to a shop in Karlovy Vary. Jitka herself grew up playing sports and also made her own equipment. She was very interested in art, and even enrolled herself in art and drama classes at the age of six.
After high school, Jitka moved to Prague and studied at Vyšší odborná škola grafická [School of Graphic Arts]. After completing her arts program, Jitka found a job at an animation studio. She was then encouraged to apply for a job at the Bratři v triku animation studio at the Barrandov complex. During her time in Prague and through her husband, Leoš Exler, Jitka came to know many dissidents and people in the underground scene, and the pair signed Charter 77. Jitka says that the two were followed by secret police for a while, and they eventually decided to leave Czechoslovakia. Although they had trouble getting visas and exit permits, Jitka and Leoš left the country in 1980. They escaped through Hungary, Yugoslavia, and Italy, and crossed the border into Austria. Because of their background as Charter 77 signatories, they were able to live in an apartment instead of a refugee camp while waiting for their paperwork to clear. In January 1981, Jitka arrived in New York City.
Jitka’s sponsoring organization helped her find a job as a seamstress. She also got involved making puppets for a black light theatre company started by a fellow Czechoslovak émigré. In the early-1980s, Jitka called Jim Henson’s company and asked for an interview. She was accepted to Muppet University where she was tasked with designing and making a Muppet. After working as a freelance puppet maker, Jitka joined the staff at Sesame Street. Of her time with Jim Henson and his company, Jitka says that she felt like she was contributing to something bigger. After eight years with Sesame Street, Jitka began working for a toy company, designing toys and overseeing production. When her younger son was born (with her second husband), Jitka became a freelance toy designer, a job she continues to this day.
Jitka first returned to the Czech Republic only a few months after the Velvet Revolution, and she attempts to visit her home country every year. Her sons speak Czech and enjoy her Czech cooking. In addition to designing toys, Jitka is an avid painted. Today, she lives in Larchmont, New York.
“They actually called my father ‘man with the golden hands,’ which was very funny because he had like nine professions. My father didn’t have a college education but he had nine professions. He was very good with his hands so, no matter what he touched, blossomed. At home, nothing was a problem; when my mother wanted something he made it for. So everything was on a daily basis: ‘Oh, you need this? Oh, I’ll do it.’
“I remember my mother saw somewhere in Prague this copper art, and she was amazed how beautiful it was and I volunteered. I said ‘Maybe I can do that for you,’ because I was ambitious to do stuff with my hands as a kid; maybe I was nine at that time, and I had no clue how you work with metal, but I kind of thought by seeing in a gallery – I went to a gallery to see similar kind of art. And then I told my dad what kind of tools I needed and he made them for me. He made the tools and then I did this big piece of art and my parents put it over the fireplace.”
“Her mom painted and her grandma painted. And because we were best friends at that age, I was going to her house and I admired all those beautiful, beautiful pictures. They were large pictures of nature, but very abstract. She painted big flowers, or a wildflower. She loved wildflowers; nothing too perfect, always a little bit messy. When we were going to school, to first grade, her mom wanted to enroll her in lidová škola umění for the art classes, so I wanted to do that too, and my parents had no clue about any art classes, so I followed Hanka and I enrolled myself for drama classes and for art classes, which was ceramics and all the hands-on kind of art. And it was every Wednesday for two hours the drama class and for two hours was the art class, but then it came to the point that drama and art were at the same time, and I had to choose which one I will go to. I had to choose, and because I was a little bit shy to exposure, speaking and singing and all of that, I have chosen to hide behind art.”
“I got another contact for somebody in the bank because that’s where you were getting the doložka, the special permit. So I called the person and I was instructed ‘Talk to this person and you will tell him where you work, because he likes art. So you tell him you work in the studio at Barrandov and that you have pictures for him.’ I’m like ‘What kind of pictures? What am I supposed to do?’ So I called him and he goes ‘Oh, that sounds interesting that you’re working over there.’ I go ‘Yeah, I have pictures for you.’ He goes ‘Okay. Why don’t you stop by and we’ll see.’ So I called him again, I gave him all the information and everything, I went there to give him those papers, and I was working on the pictures. And what my friend told me to do was the classic cartoon from Czechoslovakia we were working on. So I took the cells which were already not in use and I made a background for it and I put it in a frame. And I had a folder of maybe 15 of those.
“So when he told me that the paperwork was ready, I took my folder with all these pictures. I was scared. Oh my God, I was so scared. And he goes ‘Give me the pictures.’ And I’m holding the folder and I go ‘Well, can I have the permit first?’ He calls his secretary, his secretary brought an envelope, and we literally exchanged these two things like this. And I ran from that place, and we left that night. We left that night.”
“I was here for one week. I didn’t speak a word of English. They asked me [and I said] ‘German , Russian. No English.’ I was going to the fashion district to interview for this job. Basically Leo encouraged me because the woman at the Charita asked ‘What else can you do besides what you were doing before in Czechoslovakia? Can you sew?’ Leo kicked me under the table like, ‘Yes, you can sew.’ I’m like, ‘Okay, I can sew.’ So I went to this fashion studio, and Petr Kratochvil told me ‘Don’t worry that you don’t speak any English. Whatever they ask, you say yes.’ Very positive. I was 22 years old. There was a Russian manager, and this woman was originally from Germany but she spoke English. She showed me a lot of beautiful clothes and she was asking me if I can make it, and I thought she’s asking me if I like it. So I nod yes. Then she gave me one original and then she gave me one cut-out and she goes ‘Go and do it.’ Again, this came in very handy. Once I can examine how it’s done, then I’m fine. And then she hired me.”
“I was part of Muppet University where, after reviewing portfolios, they invited people. So before [I went] I had to submit my portfolio which I did quickly. I got a few pictures, a few photographs from the black light theatre, and they invited me for this. They were teaching us how to make a puppet; we had to design a puppet and make it. And everyone was oohing and aahing how similar style I had, that it was almost Jim Henson-like. All that I needed was to look at that Muppet inside out and I could figure out how to do it. That’s all I needed.
“I remember I drew a character with a zigzag mouth and the guy who was in charge of the Muppet University came to me and said ‘No, no. You can’t do that. Muppets have straight mouths.’ And I was like ‘Uh oh,’ and my English wasn’t good enough to explain ‘Please let me do it.’ I kept saying ‘Please let me do it. I know how to do it.’ He goes ‘No. No. No.’ And then we went to the art director, who was Caroly Wilcox working for Sesame Street and she looked at it, she looked at me, and she goes ‘Where are you from?’ I said ‘Czechoslovakia,’ and she started to laugh. She said ‘You know what? I was in 1968 in Prague in Jiří Trnka’s studio. Let her do it. And that was it. I was happy. I did it.”
Upon graduating, Jana says that she had trouble finding employment and worked a series of temporary jobs. She worked for a construction firm for one year under the auspices of starting a company magazine; however, she says that she did very little actual work as she was given the job by a friend and the company did not actually have money for the project. She then found a job at a publishing house translating Czech language books into English. She quit her position when she was offered promotion with the stipulation that she join the Communist Party. With the help of her uncle, Jana began teaching at a language school. She married Jiří Fraňek, a journalist, and had two children, Jakub and Ruth. Jana says that although many of her friends signed Charter 77, she declined because of the effect she believed it would have on her husband’s job. Instead, she helped the cause by translating various documents relating to the Charter into English, including the Charter itself. Jana says that her dissident activities and refusal to join the Communist Party led to conflict with the headmistress of the language school at which she taught. She was questioned by the secret police, and eventually resigned. She then began working as a freelance translator and interpreter. She was in this position during the Velvet Revolution, when both she and her 15 year old son worked as interpreters for foreign journalists. In more recent years, Jana has accompanied Czech politicians such as Václav Havel and Václav Klaus on foreign visits to English-speaking countries, where she has been their interpreter. She lives in Prague.
]]>Jana Fraňková was born in Prague just after WWII in 1946. Her Slovak-Jewish mother had been in hiding in southern Bohemia during the War, and her cousin (who lived with Jana and her mother) had spent two years in Ravensbrück concentration camp. Jana says that she did not learn of her Jewish heritage until she went to school, as her mother did not bring up the subject. Jana’s mother, who joined the Communist Party, worked in telecommunications for the government. As a result, Jana says that her home had the first television set in the neighborhood. As a young girl, Jana was active in sports and joined a competitive gymnastics club. She attended gymnázium and became interested in philosophy and politics; she began studying philosophy and English literature at Charles University. Jana says that the time of the Prague Spring was very exciting and that she and her friends ‘all believed in it.’ While working as an au pair in Britain during the summer of 1968, Warsaw Pact troops invaded Czechoslovakia. Her mother convinced her to stay in Britain where she landed an interview at Oxford University and was admitted to Saint Hilda’s College. She received permission from the Czechoslovak government to commence studies there, and graduated with a degree in philosophy and English. Jana returned to Czechoslovakia after three years and finished her degree at Charles University.
Upon graduating, Jana says that she had trouble finding employment and worked a series of temporary jobs. She worked for a construction firm for one year under the auspices of starting a company magazine; however, she says that she did very little actual work as she was given the job by a friend and the company did not actually have money for the project. She then found a job at a publishing house translating Czech language books into English. She quit her position when she was offered promotion with the stipulation that she join the Communist Party. With the help of her uncle, Jana began teaching at a language school. She married Jiří Fraňek, a journalist, and had two children, Jakub and Ruth. Jana says that although many of her friends signed Charter 77, she declined because of the effect she believed it would have on her husband’s job. Instead, she helped the cause by translating various documents relating to the Charter into English, including the Charter itself. Jana says that her dissident activities and refusal to join the Communist Party led to conflict with the headmistress of the language school at which she taught. She was questioned by the secret police, and eventually resigned. She then began working as a freelance translator and interpreter. She was in this position during the Velvet Revolution, when both she and her 15 year old son worked as interpreters for foreign journalists. In more recent years, Jana has accompanied Czech politicians such as Václav Havel and Václav Klaus on foreign visits to English-speaking countries, where she has been their interpreter. She lives in Prague.
“She was telling me that she lived there. They didn’t tell me we were Jews for a long time, because Jewish parents just didn’t usually tell their children because they were afraid; they just didn’t want to have anything to do with it. But she was telling me about the people and, actually, I knew them because we used to go to their place during the summer holidays, so they became like a part of our family – family that we didn’t have anymore because very, very few members of the family survived, and most of those who survived left not only this country, but Europe. They just wanted to be away from Europe, so they went to Canada, to Israel, to Australia. But I knew these people and I thought my mom had a beautiful time because she was telling me only about lovely things.
“My cousin was actually telling me about the concentration camp and only much, much later I found out that I was probably the only person she told, and I suppose she told only me because she thought I didn’t understand – I was little. I knew the word ‘camp’ for summer camps, because bigger children spoke about summer camps, so I thought she went to one of these. And when she was telling me about things that happened, I thought they were games. It was only later, when I went to school and I started hearing about Jews and about concentration camps, I realized what happened, and I realized we were Jews. Even though I didn’t know what it meant, I knew it meant something strange, but that was about all.”
“Imagine something that you really believe in is happening. You are 21. You feel that you, just by going into the street and signing various petitions, can change something. Can you imagine something more exciting? It was fabulous. And we all believed in it. Even though, I remember my mother and her friends talking and sort of worrying that it wouldn’t work which, in the end, it didn’t. But for us it was incredibly exciting. And it was very difficult then to stay in England, especially at the beginning, to stay in England, when you felt that you ought to come and help the country – we didn’t know at that time we actually couldn’t help the country.”
“In the end, I got stuck here. I knew it would be difficult, but I didn’t know what it would feel like, getting suddenly stuck. So I finished school, then I couldn’t find a job whatsoever for three years. And at that time there was a law that anyone who was not in school anymore and who was not a married woman had to work. It was an obligation, and if you didn’t work and they found you out, they would charge you with ‘leading a parasitical way of life.’ I don’t know who I would be a parasite to but… So I had to take various odd jobs on temporary contracts.
“Then, a nice good Commie, who was a friend of my mom, was a director of a big firm that built roads, gave me a job. It was the most terrible year of my life because I didn’t have anything to do there. I had to come there every day, spend eight and a half hours there, and there was no job. So I used to help people in other departments. They had to think that I was preparing something like the company magazine, which he told me ‘Look, we really don’t have money for that magazine; we’re not going to produce it, but you are here to get it going.’ So I had to pretend.”
“Charter 77 came. At the time of Charter 77, I was on maternity leave with my daughter, and lots of my friends were involved and they said ‘Come and sign it.’ I said ‘Look, if it were only my own decision, I would immediately. But my husband – and the father of my children – is a journalist. He would lose his job. I can’t do it. We are in it together.’ So in the end, we agreed that I would do the work for the Charter, but would not be a signatory. So I did lots of translations. I translated the Charter; I translated various texts that went abroad.”
“This IOJ had a lovely house which they used for these purposes. So I come there and the students asked me ‘What’s happening?’ And I said ‘Well, history is happening here. The regime is obviously getting dismantled.’ They said ‘Tell us, what’s going on?’ So I told them about hundreds of thousands of people in Prague and they said ‘What should we do?’ I said ‘I can’t tell you what to do, but if I were a journalist and I was at a place where history is in the making, for God’s sake, I wouldn’t sit in a classroom being lectured by the representatives of the regime that is going down the drain!’ They said ‘Do you think so?’ I said ‘Look, so many journalists are trying to get to Prague, trying to gather pictures, trying to gather news. You are here.’ Most of them already worked; they were active journalists – young ones. Okay, the next day I come there, because I had to come there and they said ‘You know, something’s happened. The students just didn’t come to class.’ I said ‘Oh dear. What could have happened to them? I hope they didn’t run into problems.’ ‘Well, we don’t know, but fortunately it’s the end [of the seminar]. Do you think we should report them?’ I said ‘Let it be. They’re probably curious.’ In the evening they rang me up and said ‘The IOJ is going, of course, to pay for the interpreters as agreed in the contract, but we’re afraid we won’t need you anymore.’ So I was paid for going to the demonstrations by the IOJ, and the students all followed my advice. So I thought it was good that I actually managed my last-moment revenge.”
“It was always very difficult to explain – let’s say in the ‘70s or even the ‘60s – to explain to Western Europeans what it is to live in a ‘socialist’ country. Because on one hand, they expected entering almost a prison when they came here, and then they were shocked that people lived normal lives, because they didn’t see underneath. The power the regime exerted on the people was much more subtle. It was through allowing you to go to school, or to study at university or not, to get this or that job, to travel somewhere or not, and that’s not what the visitors see. They can’t see this. And this was difficult to understand for Western Europeans, not to speak about Americans. It must be very difficult to understand for the Americans. It was just life that was seemingly normal, but only seemingly.”
Gabriel was traveling from Žilina to Humenné when he heard about the Warsaw Pact invasion in August 1968. On arriving in Humenné, he had an altercation with Soviet soldiers; the next day, he participated in protests against the invasion. Soon after the invasion, Gabriel says, a friend warned him that the secret police were looking for him, and he decided to leave the country. Using a friend’s passport, he crossed the border, made his way to Vienna, and then went to Israel. One year later, he returned to Czechoslovakia as part of an amnesty granted to those who left following the invasion in 1968. Gabriel moved to Bratislava and held a series of jobs including editor for the publishing house Obzor, mailman, and technical assistant in an art gallery. He was involved in the underground cultural movement, drew cartoons and wrote poetry.
His anti-establishment activities were noticed by authorities and he says he was constantly harassed and interrogated by the secret police. The situation deteriorated further when he signed Charter 77. He says he decided to leave for a second time in 1979 when the ŠtB asked him for money. Gabriel and a co-worker left the country with little money and no food or water. He says the two-week journey to Italy, which took them through Hungary, Romania, and Yugoslavia, was a ‘miracle,’ as they were helped by several strangers along the way. Gabriel hitchhiked to Rome where he stayed for several months while waiting for papers to immigrate to the United States.
In July 1979, Gabriel arrived in Cleveland, Ohio, where he lived with an aunt for a short time before moving to New York City and then settling in San Francisco. In 1996, Gabriel worked in Prague as deputy editor-in-chief for the Czech newspaper Mosty. When he returned to the U.S., he settled in New York where he still lives today. Gabriel is a translator, tour guide, and cartoonist, and he has published several volumes of poetry.
]]>Gabriel Levicky was born in Humenné, eastern Slovakia, in 1948. His parents, Hungarian-speaking Slovak Jews, both survived concentration camps during WWII; his mother was in Auschwitz and his father in Sachsenhausen. Gabriel says that they were not forthcoming with their experiences of the Holocaust. Gabriel’s father, a member of the Communist Party, was the director of the Dom kultúry (municipal cultural center) in Humenné. Gabriel says his teenage years were heavily influenced by Western culture, most notably music and literature. He was in a band called The Towers and subscribed to Svetová literatúra, a periodical devoted to world literature. Gabriel’s lifestyle and his involvement in the hippie movement in Czechoslovakia led to conflicts with his father; following his schooling, he left home and traveled around the country.
Gabriel was traveling from Žilina to Humenné when he heard about the Warsaw Pact invasion in August 1968. On arriving in Humenné, he had an altercation with Soviet soldiers; the next day, he participated in protests against the invasion. Soon after the invasion, Gabriel says, a friend warned him that the secret police were looking for him, and he decided to leave the country. Using a friend’s passport, he crossed the border, made his way to Vienna, and then went to Israel. One year later, he returned to Czechoslovakia as part of an amnesty granted to those who left following the invasion in 1968. Gabriel moved to Bratislava and held a series of jobs including editor for the publishing house Obzor, mailman, and technical assistant in an art gallery. He was involved in the underground cultural movement, drew cartoons and wrote poetry.
His anti-establishment activities were noticed by authorities and he says he was constantly harassed and interrogated by the secret police. The situation deteriorated further when he signed Charter 77. He says he decided to leave for a second time in 1979 when the ŠtB asked him for money. Gabriel and a co-worker left the country with little money and no food or water. He says the two-week journey to Italy, which took them through Hungary, Romania, and Yugoslavia, was a ‘miracle,’ as they were helped by several strangers along the way. Gabriel hitchhiked to Rome where he stayed for several months while waiting for papers to immigrate to the United States.
In July 1979, Gabriel arrived in Cleveland, Ohio, where he lived with an aunt for a short time before moving to New York City and then settling in San Francisco. In 1996, Gabriel worked in Prague as deputy editor-in-chief for the Czech newspaper Mosty. When he returned to the U.S., he settled in New York where he still lives today. Gabriel is a translator, tour guide, and cartoonist, and he has published several volumes of poetry.
“It’s the supreme example of highly sophisticated survival skills. You don’t want to jeopardize anything. You don’t want to jeopardize your family; you don’t want to jeopardize the future; you will say everything to everybody just to leave you alone. That was the whole principle. In other words, yes, I disagree maybe inside, but I openly say ‘Yes, of course, you are right.”
“I think that the most incredible period for me personally, for us as a young generation at that time, was the invasion of rock and roll. The music. Rock and roll culture. Radio Luxembourg. For us it was a fascinating world because we thought that if this is possible, something over there must be right. And it’s very difficult to explain to people who don’t understand the impact of culture on young minds or a young outlook. And rock and roll really changed a lot in Czechoslovakia. Bands mushroomed almost instantly. Right after a show on Czechoslovak TV, ‘the decadent West’ and they showed a picture of the Beatles running on the street from A Hard Day’s Night, and that day, those idiots created a mass movement. From day one to the next day, everybody started to look, or attempted to look like the Beatles and play the music.”
“I managed to arrive [in Humenné] late night; it was already martial law declared, and I didn’t know of course. So I was coming from the train and I’m walking towards my parents’ house, and boom. I come to the square. All these Russian tanks, lorries, trucks, they had this white paint through the body for identification. Every Russian vehicle was painted with a white stripe in the middle. So all I could see were these white stripes in the middle of the night, and here comes the patrol. A Russian officer with two soldiers. In Russian – I understand and speak Russian – he says ‘What are you doing here?’ and I said ‘What are you doing here?’ So this dialogue was happening in the middle of the night, and these two guys are holding their guns against me and he’s holding a handgun. And I start to shout ‘You mother f*****s’ – I was 20 – ‘Wait until the… you will see you are going to be kicked out of here when the Germans and Americans come and kick your ass outta here!’ And when they heard the ‘German’ and ‘American’ because it was ‘Ruskii, Amerikanskii, Nemetskii,’ they unlocked the guns, aimed at me, all three of them aimed their guns at me, and they said ‘Run.’ And I realized that’s it. So I said ‘Please don’t shoot,’ and I was running backwards like this, to the passage – there was a passage in the building which my parents lived around the corner – ‘Please don’t shoot, don’t shoot,’ and they let me go. But it was a second. A split second. They could kill me, nobody would find anything about me, they could discard my body, nothing could be done about it, because I was the only one on the square.
“And the next day, I woke up and I went out, collected money and went to the Czechoslovak-Soviet Friendship House, I bought Soviet flags. I got all these kids with matches and they were walking around burning Soviet flags walking around the square around the Soviet tanks. I thought ‘Hey, they’re not going to shoot the little kids; they’re going to shoot us, but they’re not going to shoot the kids.”
“I was young. I was 20, I didn’t know what I was doing. It was my first time in the West. I wasn’t really ready for Israel. I was young, I was naïve. I was also sentimental, I was not ready. I was emotionally drained, I was physically drained.”
“The police essentially attacked my office. They came to do a search. Plainclothes police. They raided the place with Volgas, [Tatra] 603s and all these other cars and then they left. They took the samples from my type machine. Then my boss, this guy who hired me – he passed away; he was an alcoholic, died a few years ago; he was a very interesting guy – and he came to me and said ‘What was it, a ticket? A speeding ticket?’ And I said ‘No, no, no.’ ‘So what it is it? What happened here?’ ‘Well, nothing really, I just signed Charter 77.’ And he looked at me and said ‘You asshole, now I can’t protect you. Now you are out.’ And in one month I was pink, I was out.”
So, why did you sign Charter 77?
“For me, it was a moral imperative. I might sound like an idealist, but the moral imperative was very clear. I’m not supporting the regime. I have a lot to lose – some people had more to lose than me of course – but I’m not going to anymore do it halfway. I’m not going to compromise anymore. I’m just going to make a statement because it’s my responsibility as a citizen of Czechoslovakia to bring up these issues that are destroying the country. That was essentially my argument.”
“I asked them for my files; they brought it to me, and I was going through all the interrogation they did with my relatives, my friends, my ex-girlfriend, my ex-wife, including my letter I sent to Charter 77 reporting on abuses in Slovakia, which never arrived there because they confiscated it. Then I found an interesting section that said ‘350 pages erased’ or destroyed. And I said, ‘What the f*** is that?’ So I asked the guy who worked there, he said ‘Well, that’s what they did in ’89.’ Can you imagine? December 1989, they destroyed 350 pages. Some of them are referring to people who are actually spying on me, but it’s missing, it’s gone. So I asked them ‘What happened to my file? Somebody can access my file?’ Can you imagine, people can actually, for study purposes, can access your file which I think is totally absurd. This is your private file. The police could do anything, they could even imitate the signatures if they wanted, they could manipulate anything they wanted.
“So what’s the big deal, you can’t bring it back, you can do nothing about it, so what are you gonna do? I don’t dwell on it anymore. I mean, it’s my file ok, of course it’s disturbing, it’s mentally disturbing, and very very threatening because you see how they manipulated people and manipulated interviews.”