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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>Training in WWII</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/MDe2Pz2Q8qA?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“My training was very difficult because it was the War. I was very young, but I remember the SS soldiers coming into Prague with the goosestep and all of that. I was standing, holding on to my dad’s hand and we were all sort of amazed and watching and [thinking] what’s going to happen and all that. I’m the only child so I must say I was protected from a lot that was going on; of course, many things I saw and heard. But the training was very difficult because of the blackout during the War and we had only an outdoor ice rink. There was only one lamp in the middle of the rink and whoever got there first could take the better spot under the lamp. And we did figure eights and all that, very quiet, no music, just the figure eights following the patterns.</p><p>“I loved skating. I really loved jumping and I was not afraid. And it was cold. It was cold as could be. Mami [mom] used to wake me up at 5:00 [and I’d be] on the ice at 6:30. I remember she used to wrap my feet with newspapers, because newspapers are warm. I never knew that, but she wrapped my feet in newspaper before she put them in the boot, and that helped a lot but the boots were not that good either and I had so many corns and so many bloody toes. I don’t know how we did it, but we did.”</p><h4>Figure Skating</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/y_cXOcTWaFo?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Mami and Dad told me not to come back. They said ‘Don’t worry about it;’ they didn’t say that I’ll never see Dad for 13 years; they never did tell me that it’s going to be difficult and all that. They said ‘We’ll see you soon and just concentrate on defending the world title,’ because I think if they would have told me what actually happened, I would never have gone because I would never leave them alone to go through what they went through, but I didn’t know. I said ‘Ok!’ and I left them. I said goodbye and they said ‘Good luck’ and all that and I said ‘Ok, we’ll be talking’ and that’s how I left. There was no drama leaving because I never, never thought that it would come to what it came to.”</p><h4>Staying in London</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/BHVWsT5yq3k?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“We had threatening phone calls [saying] they’re going to shoot my mother – it was from the [Czechoslovak] Consulate from somewhere, from England; I would think it was the consulate – and ‘You’ll never see your parents again’ and all of the sudden I said ‘My god! What have I done?’ So my coach said ‘From now on, you’re not going out,’ so for ten days I was in the house. We were in a very quiet street in Richmond and Twickenham in London, and the car was going back and forth and back and forth and we knew that they were watching me, waiting for me to come out, and there were people coming into the house saying ‘Where is Ája? Can we see her?’ I was never home for anybody. I was either in the attic or in the cellar but for anybody, I was not home.</p><p>“After ten days, Arnold said ‘I’m leaving and I’ll be back in about half hour and don’t leave. Don’t go away. Don’t go out of the house,’ and I said ‘Ok, ok.’ So he left. We thought he went to teach, to the rink. ‘Mrs. Gerschwiler,’ I said. ‘Please let me go to the corner drugstore, just to buy a couple of things. I have cabin fever.’ And she said ‘No, you’re not supposed to go, but if you hurry, I mean, really hurry…’ I said ‘Yes, yes.’ Well, on the way back, I’ve got a bag of something and I hear the car and I turn around and they speed up and I recognize. I started running and I get to the picket fence and the little gate that I opened so many times. The latch wouldn’t open, and I’m yelling; I’m holding on to the picket fence. They come and they were trying to pull me off that. It was a terrible scene and then, at that moment, I mean, if it was ten minutes later it would have been too late, but at that moment, Arnold Gerschwiler and two men came out of the house and ran towards me, and they were from the British Home Office. He didn’t go teach; he went to the Home Office. I couldn’t go out, so he brought the two men into the Richmond Twickenham house to give me my political asylum. And that was a huge, huge thing that they did for me. One was still holding on to me, the other went into the car and they were saying ‘You’re going to ruin the sport of Czechoslovakia,’ and I was beside myself. I thought a thing like that would never come to anything like that, and I came to the house and I broke down. I really cried. I said ‘What have I done? What are they going to do to Mami and Dad?’ and then I couldn’t find them on the phone. It was the most difficult time of my life, I think.”</p><h4>Czech Community</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/tO825JNnEVU?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I’m so proud to be a part of our Czech community here. I was always somehow connected with the Czech community, even when I was with Ice Follies or Ice Capades, because they used to do… It helped them because they advertised me as defected from behind the Iron Curtain, and they did Ája Vrzanova Night at the Ice Follies [sic.] The first three years, every city had Ája Vrzanova Evening and you’d be surprised how many Czechs came to the show. It was so heart-warming; it was really wonderful. In Ice Capades, I always visited the Czech community in every city. They didn’t do Ája Zanova – by then I had the shorter name – Ája Zanova Evening. They didn’t do that, but I myself went and looked up the Czech community. Chicago, Omaha, I had lots of wonderful friends that I visited every year.</p><p>“And then, of course, Paul was a very big Czech. He had no accent; he defected in 1948. When the communists came in, he left the Czech Republic and first he went to Vienna and then he made his way to America and was a renowned chef. When I met him he had three restaurants and then he built me a restaurant called The Duck Joint and I worked there, because I loved it. It was like my stage. I had my own restaurant; I loved every minute of it. We had a lot of Czech people coming to the restaurant, like Milos Forman; we had Ivan Passer, Martina Navratilova, Ivan Lendl, whoever was here. The ice show came through and they came to the restaurant, so it really was a great 15, 18 years.”</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
Ája Vrzáňová-Steindler
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Ája Vrzáňová-Steindler was born in Prague in 1931. She began ice skating as a young girl and recalls training during WWII with little light due to blackouts. She says she felt a ‘whole new attitude’ that accompanied the end of WWII, as many international figure skaters came to Prague. In 1947, Ája moved to London to be coached by Arnold Gerschwiler. She lived and trained in London for six months of the year, and spent the rest of her time in Prague and Davos, Switzerland. Ája held the title of Czechoslovak national champion from 1947 to 1950 and competed in the 1948 Olympics. She won the World Championships in 1949 and, although Soviet authorities wanted her to travel to the Soviet Union to teach and coach figure skating, her mother convinced them to allow Ája to go to London in March 1950 to defend her title. Ája says that her parents encouraged her not to return to Czechoslovakia and so, after winning the championships, Ája stayed on with her coach in London. She says that after receiving threatening phone calls, she did not leave the house until receiving political asylum ten days later. Ája’s mother was able to leave the country as well; she was a passenger on an airplane that was hijacked en route to Prague and landed in Erding, Germany at a U.S. Army base. Ája’s father lost his job in the Ministry of Finance and ultimately decided not to leave Czechoslovakia permanently. It would be 13 years before Ája saw her father again.</p><p> </p><p>Ája signed a contract with the Ice Follies, moved to the United States, and skated with the tour for three years. She then joined the Ice Capades. During her 15 years with the Ice Capades, Ája was known as Ája Zanová. Ája’s mother, who had accompanied her on the Ice Follies tour, settled in Los Angeles where she became a voice and music teacher. Ája spent her breaks from the tour with her mother in California. In the late 1960s, Ája met her future Czech-born husband, Paul (Pavel) Steindler on a blind date. She married him in 1969, after leaving the Ice Capades. The couple lived in New York City where Paul owned several restaurants. Ája says that many Czechs congregated at their restaurants, which began her lifelong activity in the New York Czech community. After Paul’s death, Ája returned to the skating world, working as a judge, consultant and rink manager. She is a trustee of the Bohemian Benevolent and Literary Assocation (BBLA) and involved in the Association of Free Czechoslovak Sportsmen. In 2012, Ája received the Gratias Agit award from the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs, given to her for her “promotion of the good name of the Czech Republic abroad.” She was also awarded the Medal of Merit in Sports by the Czech president Václav Klaus in 2004. Ája has also been inducted into the World Figure Skating Hall of Fame. Today, Ája lives in Manhattan and frequently visits the Czech Republic.</p>
Creator
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National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library
Source
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NCSML Archive
Aja
Asylum
Community Life
Sports
Vrzanova
Vrzanova-Steindler
WWII
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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>WWII Experience</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/XWDMimpNUII?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“For us, it was the most beautiful time, the War. It’s crazy, you know. Unfortunately, my father was [taken by] the Gestapo several times and my brother was in the Gestapo [headquarters], but they let them go so our family was not really hurt. For the rest of us like me, it was the most beautiful time because we had a beautiful friendship. All the time I was going to the gymnázium and our class was going together and we had a very, very close friendship. The reason for that was, you see, there was nothing else to do. Nobody was going for vacation anymore and we didn’t have money to do anything and we didn’t have money to buy anything and we didn’t have money to eat. But for that reason, everybody was sitting home and we were meeting each other every day and we were very close to each other and we had a very close friendship. Naturally, for everybody who lived through that and was fortunate enough that they didn’t have big problems with the family, it was a beautiful time which I never had after, because once it was all over, you could go dancing here and dancing there. During the War, we couldn’t dance, for example. It was forbidden by the Germans. Dancing was forbidden. We were dancing, but we got a permit for the dancing school. But the only place we could dance was the dancing school in the fall. About two months, once weekly, we had a dancing school, but there was no dancing any other place. It was against the law. Naturally, too many parties. We were having parties as much as we could, but there was nothing to eat, nothing to drink, so everything was very restricted. It was crazy.</p><p>“I have very bad memories which I will never forget. Several times, I came to the pantry and I was hungry. In the afternoon, I came home off the bus and I would like to eat something, so I went to the pantry and I was looking all around and there was absolutely nothing. Absolutely nothing. Not even bread. Nothing!”</p><p>What did you do?</p><p>“Nothing. What could you do? You didn’t eat. My father lost weight and I lost weight. When it was over, I was weighing about 65 kilos. But we had a very beautiful social life.”</p><h4>Underground Activities</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Mge8nwtZseA?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“We used to sabotage. For example, we used to put sand in the wheels of the trains and all kind of nonsense like that.”</p><p>You and your friends?</p><p>“Yeah, you know, you couldn’t have a very big group because they would crack it very fast because the Gestapo was very efficient and when it started getting large, they could always get you. So you could operate only in very small numbers. So there are only three guys, let’s say, and nobody else. Nobody knows about you and you don’t know about anybody else. So they would have to catch one of the three to crack you. But why should they catch you again? Because if you go during the evening or in the night to someplace in the railroad station and you fill the wheels with sand or stones or who knows. They couldn’t watch everything. So we were doing all kinds of nonsense like that. We would put rope over the road, over the highway, because nobody was driving but the Germans. Nobody had gas; nobody had a car, so if somebody was driving on the highway, it must have been Germans. So we would suspend the cable over the road and they would cut the heads off when you hit it.</p><p>“But on the other side, it was very dangerous because, as the Germans naturally do, they just took a hundred people and they killed them. Never mind who did it or didn’t do it, and under that condition it was very difficult to do something because people hated that you were in the underground. Because they were blaming you that the Germans were killing them. So you could never get too much collaboration from the population because the punishment was so severe.”</p><h4>Graduated</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Zut3QvqGkc8?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Once you finish high school, the horizon opens up around you, in front of you, and there is no limit to what you can do. As long as you can remember, you are going to school in the morning and coming home in the afternoon and now, all of the sudden, you are sitting there and you can do whatever you like to do. Which is depressing in a way, because I was with my friends since grammar school, so we were together for some 12 or 15 years sitting in the same class, and all of the sudden it was all forgotten. Everybody went different ways. I had a little problem with it, so my father arranged for me that I went as a guide with a French group of university students which were visiting the Czech Republic, and then spent the whole month with them guiding them through Czechoslovakia – which was very interesting, because in a month I learned perfect French. What I was trying to learn in gymnázium for five years and never learned. I couldn’t say oui. So in one month I was basically perfect in French which was remarkable. Unfortunately, I didn’t have much opportunity to speak French ever after, so most everything I have forgotten, but at that time it was very nice.</p><p>“So we were traveling through all of Czech Republic. I took them to Krkonoše and we walked to the Riesengebirge, and it was very nice. It was unbelievable; it was something that I never witnessed ever after, which happened after the second World War. Because foreigners were sort of heroes and they were very well accepted and invited. Myself with my group, we sort of separated from the main group and five of us went on our own just traveling. Where ever we came, we didn’t have to pay. In the train for example. When we entered the train, the conductor would in the moment find out we are Frenchman, so he would take us to first class and say ‘Ok, sit down’ or if there was not first class, he would excuse himself and say he was sorry, there is only second class because this is a local train and they don’t have first class. I remember, my guys, we were in Prague, naturally as all young people are – we were at that time 20 years old – interested in the night life. So I took them to Lucerna, which was at that time, the largest, the biggest, and the most known nightclub and naturally, my guys, they have on shorts. They were not dressed. They had rucksacks, all of them, and that’s how they were coming. So I took them with the shorts to Lucerna and the head waiter, in the moment he found out we are French, no problem. We got the best table in the place. Unbelievable.”</p><h4>Communist Coup</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/zAZLohl20AY?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“In March ’49, they decided they will make a so-called prověrky [review] that everybody has to come to the commission and has to be accepted to stay in the university. At that time, they expelled 50,000 university students and I was one of them.”</p><p>On what basis?</p><p>“No basis. You have an appointment when you have to go. It was in the fyzický ústav [physics institute] so I had to go there. So I enter into the room and there were three guys sitting there, all of them with beards, and they asked my name. So I told them my name, they looked in some papers, and told me ‘You are expelled from the university’ and that was it.”</p><p>Do you have any idea why?</p><p>“I got a dekret [decree] from the Ministry of the Interior and they sent me a dekret that said I have to go to forced labor for three years. I received that in ’48 in about November, after they let me go from jail. So two weeks later I received the dekret – that’s what it used to be called – and that I have to go in about two weeks or three weeks and register in the concentration camp in the uranium mines. So I was supposed to go there, but that time, they did it to about 35 of my friends in Kolín. Everybody who was sort of going over the evidence, so all of us they consigned to that concentration camp. But that was the end of ’48 and they were not so well in control, so actually what I did, was I went immediately to the doctor – Kaiser was his name – and showed him that I have to go to the jail and he said ‘No, you are not able to go to the jail’ so he gave me a dekret that I am not able to go in jail. So I didn’t go and I just sent in a copy of that and that was it. But it wasn’t it, naturally.”</p><h4>Head Waiter</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/VVSJjuzW5K8?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“It was the best place in New York. Kennedy – the president – that was the only place he ate in New York, Le Voisin, with his wife and his sister-in-law and the count. They were eating at Le Voisin. Everybody. I knew everybody. That was the place where you can see everybody. The King of Spain used to be my customer. Only, at the time, he was not the king. He was studying here at the military academy and, to my pleasure, he was always bringing a different girl each time he came there. But he was very good, very nice. Dali. With him I was very friendly because naturally I spoke [Spanish] with Dali and his señora. Anybody. You name it, I met them. Gregory Peck and Kennedy – the other one – Robert, he was always coming there with three or five kids. I didn’t like him. He never sat at the table. He had five kids sitting there and he was going from table to table. He was always running for something, I guess, because he was going from table to table, talking, because they are all known people there, so I guess he knew all of them. I always had a problem with it because I didn’t know what I’m supposed to do.”</p><h4>Restoration</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/OPJLxCzEFRI?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“So all of the sudden I was president of the Bohemian Benevolent [and Literary] Association [BBLA] which basically didn’t exist because there were the old associations of the ČSA and now the only association was the Sportsmen – the only living association – and myself as the president. Now I naturally decided that I have to do something about the BBLA, to get rid of the old associations which do not exist and get new guys. So the Rada svobodného Československa (Council of Free Czechoslovakia), which was Horák, immediately asked if they could join and I said ‘Ok, why not’ so he brought $2,000 and Rada svobodného Československa was a new member. Papánek came after me and invited me for lunch and said ‘Doctor, what about letting us join the BBLA?’ and the SVU, that was at that time Dr. Pekáček, Dostal and Pekáček. Pekáček came to me and said ‘Pane doktore, could we join the BBLA?’ I said ‘Why not?’ So within about ten days, all of the sudden, we had all the living associations, about seven of them, join the BBLA and so all of this is what I call the founding of the BBLA because the old stuff basically disappeared and now I was the president and I got the new organizations in and that was the new life.”</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
Alex Cech
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Alex Cech was born in Kolín in Central Bohemia in 1927. His father Alois was the head of the Board of Civil Engineering in Kolín, while his mother Karolina stayed home and raised Alex and his older brother Vojen. Although there was little entertainment and he often went hungry, Alex says that the years during WWII were a ‘beautiful time’ as he developed very close relationships with his classmates. Alex was also involved in underground activities during the War, which involved sabotaging train tracks and highways used by the Nazi soldiers. He was detained for a short time by the Gestapo because of these activities.</p><p> </p><p>Upon graduating from gymnázium in 1946, Alex spent one month as a tour guide with a group of French students. That fall, he began studying medicine at Charles University in Prague. Following the Communist coup in February 1948, Alex was arrested, but soon released. In 1949, he was expelled from school during a time when the Communist Party undertook a massive review of university students. Alex believes that his expulsion was a result of an incident several months earlier when he was ordered to report to a labor camp, but was able to get a note from a doctor stating that he was not able to do so. In June 1949, Alex and a friend secured jobs at a farm cooperative in the Šumava region with the intention of leaving the country if the opportunity arose. Only a few days after arriving, Alex crossed the border into Germany. He was sent to a processing camp in Amberg, and then to a refugee camp at Ludwigsburg.</p><p> </p><p>In November 1950, Alex’s brother (who had left Czechoslovakia in 1947 and made his way to South America) sponsored him to come to Venezuela. His brother helped him to find his first job as a diesel mechanic in a cement factory. In 1953, Alex moved to Maracaibo and began working as a salesman for a large import company. He met his German-born wife, Katja, in 1957. In December 1958, Alex moved to New York City. Katja, who had returned to Germany, received a visa shortly thereafter. The couple married and settled in Queens. Alex’s first job in the United States was as head waiter at the Golden Door restaurant. In 1961, he worked for one year as a manager for an export agency which saw him traveling through Central and South America for all but two weeks out of the year. In 1964 Alex bought his own export company. He later bought a company that imported steel into the United States. After the fall of communism in his homeland, Alex began working for Pfizer as a liaison between the company and private buyers in Czechoslovakia.</p><p> </p><p>Over the years, Alex was an active member of the Czech community in New York. He was president of the Association of Free Czechoslovak Sportsmen, an organization that sponsored skiing competitions and tennis matches. Alex was also instrumental in the revival of the Bohemian Benevolent and Literary Association, which acts as an umbrella organization for a number of Czech and Slovak heritage groups, and served as president of the association. He lived in Bronxville, New York, with his wife until his death in late 2012.</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
Arrest
Community Life
Education
emigrant
gymnazium
Kolin
Privatization
refugee
World War II
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e8a0ce745a5e3424d61031612c70dfe5
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>Obstacles to Emigrate </h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Zl_ElO6fbcM?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“My mother had to sell the house and then my father – since the divorce was pretty nasty – he didn’t want to sign papers, he needed to sign papers for me to leave Slovakia. So he actually didn’t sign the papers; I traveled to Austria and I traveled under an assumed name. Relatives lived in Bratislava, and they had already emigrated. Part of the family emigrated to Canada when, after ’68, the Canadians were taking a lot of Slovaks and Czechs. So part of the family was already in Canada, and they were related to my mother, so I guess they got the idea [for me] to assume one of their names, and we lived with them for about two weeks until I got my story straight.</p><p><em>And how did this make your move easier?</em></p><p>“Well, I don’t think it made it easier; it made it possible to travel with my mother. She traveled under her name and I traveled with my aunt.”</p><h4>Assimilation</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/5VfBPDzSdvc?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“You do because you need to survive. You need to be able to talk to people, and if you just speak Slovak all the time, they don’t speak Slovak in the store or Czech or Russian – now they speak Spanish – so you have to assimilate. You assimilate language-wise, but cultural-wise, that comes with the system. As you live there, you start doing what other people are doing. For my mother, she had to assimilate to the system once she bought a house, you have to cut the lawn, you have to take care of the shrubs and all that stuff. That was part of life, and with the same saying, ‘If you go Rome, you do as Romans do,’ and ‘If you go to Greece, you do as Greeks do.’ You left that life in Slovakia, and you’re surrounded by English speaking people. You still have the cultural things and you still get together with Slovaks in different organizations, but at the same time you have to live life and you have to work and make a living so you have to assimilate.”</p><h4>U.S. Army</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/MAkjpMmUQm8?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“[We were] trying to discern – let’s say they served in the military – once we learned they served in the military, then we pursued that angle. They were already refugees at that point. If they were able to provide us with valuable information, then we could help them with getting their German visa or permit to stay in Germany, or wherever they wanted to go. If they came to us and they wanted to go to the United States, then we would debrief them and find out, and if we could help them, of course we would help them. We really weren’t interested in how they lived. What we were interested in was if they worked for the police, then we wanted to know how the police operated. If they were in the military, which most of them were, which units they served in and how did that operate. Where were the training sites and stuff like that.”</p><h4>Slovak Language</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/kFxnZ104GVE?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I’m not forgetting the language, but I haven’t been there to be able to develop the language, to grow the language. Language grows and it develops. I owned a translation service for awhile, but I had to look through dictionaries all the time because I haven’t been there to develop the vocabulary. I left as a 13-year old and because I speak basic Slovak, so to speak, I can’t translate. Some people can translate, they look at it and write it down and it’s done. So it’s not a realistic goal for me to have a translation service.”</p><h4>Identity</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/-MQr2hX1Ip0?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“My life in Slovakia was relatively short, so I’m more culturally developed American-wise than Slovak-wise at this point. For me, I maintain my roots so to speak by listening to Slovenské ľudové piesne [Slovak folk songs]. Now I have sons that I have dancing [with the Slovak dance troupe Lucina], so I associate with that. I was in Bratislava-Cleveland Sister Cities, but I’m an American now. I’m more American than I’m Slovak at this point.”</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
Alfonz Sokol
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Alfonz Sokol was born in Michalovce, eastern Slovakia, in 1956. He grew up in the village of Vel’ké Zálužie with his parents, Alfonz and Milena. His father worked in the office of a grain collection and processing facility while his mother stayed at home and raised him. Alfonz’s maternal grandfather had immigrated to the United States for economic reasons prior to WWII; his wife joined him after the War. When Alfonz was in fourth grade, his parents divorced.</p><p> </p><p>Alfonz attended school in his village until fifth grade when he went to a larger school in Michalovce. He recalls his involvement in the Pioneer youth group and says that many of his group’s activities focused on botany. In the summer of 1966, Alfonz and his mother visited his grandparents who had settled in Cleveland. Upon returning home, he says his mother began making plans to emigrate. It took three years before Alfonz and his mother were finally able to leave, as they had to sell their house and receive permission from Alfonz’s father. This permission was never given, and Alfonz left the country under an assumed name. In early summer 1969, Alfonz and his mother crossed the border into Austria. They applied for a visa at the U.S. Embassy, and, while waiting, rented a suite in a guest house. Alfonz’s grandparents sponsored the pair, which facilitated the process and, after five weeks, Alfonz and his mother flew to the United States. They settled in Cleveland where his mother quickly found a job cleaning hotels. On weekends, Alfonz helped his grandmother clean offices at an oil processing plant.</p><p> </p><p>Alfonz went to Hillside Middle School for eighth grade where he says studying was a struggle because he did not speak English. He communicated with a Russian language teacher and a Ukrainian student while learning English from a picture book. He says that biology and math were especially challenging subjects for him. His high school Russian teacher convinced him to study the language in college, and after taking some core courses at Tri-C Community College, Alfonz enrolled at Ohio State University. In 1976, he traveled abroad to Moscow and studied for three months at the Pushkin State Russian Language Institute. On the advice of a professor, Alfonz joined the U.S. Army Reserves as a Russian linguist; he went on active duty in 1981. In the mid-1980s, he was stationed in Munich debriefing Slovak refugees. Alfonz met his wife, Donna, at a Slovak dinner in Lakewood in 1990; the pair married in December 1991. They have three sons together. Alfonz has been involved in the Slovak community in Cleveland, attending dances and picnics and participating in organizations such as Bratislava-Cleveland Sister Cities. Today, Alfonz lives in Parma, Ohio, with his wife and children.</p>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
NCSML Archive
Americanization
Community Life
Divorce
English language
Military service
Russian studies/speaker
Sense of identity
Slovak Language
Translator/interpreter
Velke Zaluzie
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2f0005168c865bd8e4a36c5c005b7dce
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>Rural Childhood</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/XsTipWLzw4E?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“When my father died, we moved back to my grandmother and grandfather’s and my uncle was over there, and they had a farm. But in Czech Republic, it’s not like here. There’s a village, and the fields are someplace else. Over here you have a house and everything is around it, but over there, you have the village and everything was outside.”</p><h4>Detained by Gestapo</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/5sOM_nqzu3E?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Two weeks later, the Gestapo came and picked up my mother. I was 11, 11 and a half, and I was with my grandfather and grandmother [who were] around 70. My grandfather was 70, my grandmother was 69. I was with them and I was going to school four kilometers away, everyday to school. When it was too much for my grandfather, I had to help. I was doing work that was a man’s doing, because my grandfather wasn’t able.”</p><p><em>So why did the Gestapo claim to come for your uncle and for your mother?</em></p><p>“Because they were listening to the radio from England. Then they sent them to Prague to Pankrác and my mother got thirteen months for that and my uncle got two years. And then they sent my mother to Leipzig in Germany and they sent my uncle to [Austria]. My mother came home and she was so hungry that my grandmother cooked two pounds of beef and she ate everything. She was so hungry; and before they let my uncle out, we had to pay for his food and everything. To the Germans we had to pay for it before they let him out.”</p><h4>Germany to U.S.</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/YiD7rGGQXUw?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“When we left Germany, we went on an old airplane – Flying Tiger Lines. It wasn’t alright; they had to repair it. I was seven months pregnant, and Alice was one and a half years old. We were waiting the whole day; the whole airplane was people with children, small children. And then we came to Shannon [Ireland]. They put us in some hotel, a small one, and they said that they have to repair the airplane again. They were repairing the airplane and we stayed overnight there. The next day, they said we will go. We went on the plane and the pilot came back and he said that the plane is still not alright, so they repaired it again.</p><p>“And then we went to Newfoundland. She [Alice] got strep throat and they had to call the doctor, and he brought somebody who started speaking French to me. I said ‘If you can speak English, or if you can speak Russian, or German, that’s ok, but I don’t know any French,’ and the doctor said ‘Oh my gosh, I speak English, but I thought that you don’t speak English.’ Then he gave her some medicine, and we had to stay over there for two days because it was Saturday, and in America Saturday and Sunday are holidays, so we came on Monday. It took us one week to fly to America.”</p>
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Alice Vedral
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Alice Vedral was born near Prague in 1928. Her father, who was Ukrainian, had moved to Czechoslovakia when Ukraine became part of the Soviet Union. Wen she was two, Alice’s father died, and she and her mother went to live with her grandparents and uncle in Nehvizdy, central Bohemia. In the summer of 1940, Alice’s mother and uncle were arrested by the Gestapo. Her mother spent thirteen months in prison in Leipzig, while her uncle was sentenced to two years in Austria. Alice recalls spending much of her free time assisting her elderly grandparents on their farm during this period. When WWII ended, Alice enrolled in the Akademie obchodní Dr. Edvarda Beneše [Benes Business School] to study accounting; she says that her love of mathematics led her to choose this field of study. While attending school, Alice lived with her mother (who had since remarried) in the Břevnov district of Prague and worked in the shop her mother ran.</p><p> </p><p>Following the Communist coup, Alice says that several of her friends were in contact with the CIA regarding uranium mining in Czechoslovakia; when a few of them were caught taking background files from the university, the authorities began arresting members of her group. In the spring of 1949, Alice received word that she too was in danger of being arrested and decided to leave the country. She crossed the border into Germany with three other people in April 1949. In her attempt to cross the border, Alice says she was assisted by a priest and spent part of the journey in a false-bottomed cart.</p><p> </p><p>Alice arrived in Ludwidsburg refugee camp and, six months later, was reunited with her companion from Prague, <a href="/web/20170612093138/http://www.ncsml.org/exhibits/eda-vedral/">Eda Vedral</a>, whom she married shortly thereafter. While in Ludwigsburg, Alice found a job as a receptionist in the camp’s X-ray office. She gave birth to her first child, also named Alice, in 1950, and moved with her husband to Munich in 1951, when he took a job at Radio Free Europe. Alice describes the family’s journey to the United States as eventful, as she was seven months pregnant, they had to make several stops to repair the plane, and the Vedrals’ baby fell ill. In June 1952, one week after leaving Germany, the family arrived in New York and subsequently settled in Chicago. Alice found a job in a factory making coils for radios, but stopped working when their family expanded. Alice and Eda eventually had eight children. Many of their children, and some grandchildren, speak Czech fluently. Alice became involved in the Chicago Czech community and participated in groups such as Czechoslovak Exiles in Chicago and Orel in Exile. She returned to Czechoslovakia for the first time in 1969, and witnessed the Velvet Revolution while on a trip to Prague in 1989. Today, Alice lives in Cicero, Illinois, with her husband, Eda.</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
Akademie obchodni Dr. Edvarda Benese
Arrest
Community Life
Education
marriage
Refugee camp
Rural life
-
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f29e03566db65d25628f03db8f4fb739
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans
Subject
The topic of the resource
Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans was an oral history project launched by the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library in 2009. The project captured and preserved the stories of Czechs and Slovaks who left their homeland during the Cold War and settled in New York City, Washington, D.C., Cleveland, Chicago and the San Francisco Bay Area. During the second phase of the project, the NCSML recorded the stories of immigrants who came to the United States after the fall of communism in 1989 as well. By the conclusion of the project in August 2013, the NCSML had collected more than 300 oral histories. <br /><br />Both phases of the project were made possible by grants from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. <br /><br />On the project’s website, you can read biographies of Czechs and Slovaks who began a new life in the United States, watch video clips from their interviews, and view photos and other archival materials they shared with us. <br /><br />Full length interviews are available for further research at the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library. For more information, contact Dave Muhlena, Library Director, at dmuhlena@ncsml.org.
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
<h4>Father</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/wThk50Uw7Cs?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“My father came from a little village in the mountains, about ten miles away from our village, there was an opal mine there, his father worked in the opal mine and almost everybody out of this village emigrated to the United States. My father, [his] two brothers beside him, almost three quarters of the village ended up here. He worked in an Iowan mine and after… Like at that time there was a system that people from a poor country come and make some money, so he could save and come home and buy a farm and a house and marry some Slovak girl and start a family. That’s what happened in my father’s case. So he married my mother, and I have three brothers and one sister, and we lived in a little village as farmers. My father was a very progressive farmer because he gained a lot of experience in America about life. In a little village, in the mountains, you don’t know nothing about it. For example, we had one of the best orchards in town – fruit orchards – and we had about 120 bee houses, which he made good money out of selling honey.”</p><h4>Growing Up</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/hlc6G8nDwAY?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“There was another American down there living. His name was Mr. Mišík. And he was sitting on the front of his house, on a bench, and wore American jeans pants and an American jeans jacket, like a typical American. And all those kids around him, around there, asked him how things are in America [compared to] how things are in Slovakia. And Mr. Mišík says ‘Ha! In America, they put the bull at one end of the factory and at the other end come the sausages. And they taste the sausage and if its good, fine, if it’s no good then they throw it back and the bull comes back out.’ And we kids [said] ‘Oh yeah?’ And he said ‘Oh yeah!’ So we got up in the morning and ran to see Mr. Mišík for a story.”</p><h4>Slovak Community</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/bejiZMEDyj8?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I was amazingly surprised by the activities of the Slovaks in Cleveland. My father about three days later took me here to the Slovak Benedictine Abbey, because also he was a good Catholic. And I met Father Andrew Pier, who was in the same job as I have right now. And my uncle took me to the lodge, the Jednota lodge, and you know, about three or four months later I became a secretary because they were looking for some young blood looking to work. And then there was… In school, okay, at night school, I saw a lot of Slovak people – almost three quarters of the class were Slovak kids, boys and girls, so I figured well, I must do something. So I founded the Slovak Catholic Federation in America. We had about 80 members – it even still exists now, it changed its name to the Slovak Dramatic Club. We did Slovak plays, I can show you some pictures, Slovak dances, and sponsored the Slovak celebration on March 14 and the Tiso celebration, the Slovak day. And the Štefánik monument, we went down there to sing. So, our generation, us – the Slovak Republic generation – prolonged the life of the Slovaks in America for another 50 years. Because sure there were old Slovaks, but that was old, and that was dying, that was tired, you know. So we prolonged its life for 50 years.”</p><h4>Cleveland</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Sqj_6crNksM?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Saturday morning, my aunt took me out shopping, okay. She put $350 on the table and she said ‘We’re going to go shopping, and when you get a job, you’re going to pay the money back.’ So we went shopping and I came back with a brand new suit. But she burned up everything I brought from Slovakia, she burned it up! Because you are going to bring some flies or something. Anyhow, so she bought me the suit, we came back from shopping and I thought, ‘Hmm, I’m in America two days and I owe $1,500 already!’ – at that time! So I got a job in White Sewing. He happened to give me a good job. After about six months, he gave me [the job of] timekeeper, and every time he needed help, he asked me, ‘Andy, you know any Slovak boys?’ And I got him maybe… one time there was working maybe about 40 Slovak boys at the White Sewing Machine Corporation down there. You know I got, I ended up being a timekeeper.”</p><h4>Slovak Garden</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qjOyog0vL6Q?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Before I became the president, there were about 120 people coming to the Slovak Day in Florida. When I was president, for 14.5 years, the highest amount I had one time was 1,200, and never less than 600, okay – people coming to the Slovak Day. So it was very successful, and the next thing you know, they are coming to [celebrate] the liberation of Slovakia. So, the people from Slovakia, they don’t really want to come to Cleveland, you know, Florida was a nice attractive thing, by the sun, by the beaches; they started coming to Florida, the ministers, the mayors and so forth. And so then I organized some groups coming to Florida and here to Cleveland. It was very successful. Then I finally one day, everything was hunky-dory, straight, I decided in 1997 to quit.”</p><h4>Slovak Institute</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qvkbePeYV04?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I keep things up the same way as it was originally founded – to preserve, protect, all the materials concerning Slovaks in America. When I come here with Joe – I appointed Joe as my assistant here, Joe Hornack, maybe one tenth of what you see was here. Everything else was in boxes, like this pile, and unsorted. So we created a lot of systems, a good filing system, we created a personality file; we have a list of maybe 600 personalities, everything, whatever was said about them, we’ve got it in a special file. Same thing on the organizations – if they’re not found in that file, I’ve got them in a big box, that’s what I’m doing right now. So now my question is here how long this can survive here as is. The abbot is here is no longer a Slovak. We have a couple of Slovaks in here, but they are not that interested in things up here. I personally believe that all this precious material belongs to Slovakia, because that’s the history of the Slovak nation is here in America, or the Slovak people. Now I’m in the process of negotiating with the Matica Slovenska, which is a cultural organization, to move some of the stuff to Slovakia, and also with the Catholic University of Ružomberok, to move some stuff. So we are in the process of that thing. They have invited me sometime in the summer time for a final meeting, so I think we are talking between now and five years that we’d start moving some of the stuff. We’ve got an okay from the abbey to move it, the only thing is finances.”</p><h4>Thanks to America</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/vAvo8_vf0hI?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I know that I could not have accomplished one tenth in Slovakia what I have accomplished in America. Because when I compare myself to my friends, with the same education – don’t forget, it’s a smaller country, smaller opportunity. This is a big country, if you have the guts and know how, you can move as far as you want. It’s a beautiful country. I love America.”</p>
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Andrew Hudak
Description
An account of the resource
<p> </p><p>Andrew Hudak was born in Kecerovské Pekl’any, in the Šariš region of Slovakia, in 1928. His father (also called Andrew) owned a farm, which he had purchased after returning to Slovakia from the United States, where he had raised money working in an Iowa mine. Andrew says that growing up, he and his family ‘produced everything they ate’ and that the farm his family lived on employed ‘progressive’ agricultural methods, which his father had learned in the United States. Andrew attended elementary school in his village before being sent to Nitra to study at the Mission of the Society of the Divine Word. He returned to Kecerovské Pekl’any at the end of 1944 when the seminary was closed because of WWII. He says it was at this time that he decided not to become a priest. Following liberation, Andrew moved to the Czech border town of Aš, where he says many hundreds of Slovaks settled following the expulsion of Sudeten Germans under the Beneš Decrees. There, he helped establish The Slovak Catholic Youth Association and had a radio broadcast, called <em>Hlas Slovenska</em> [<em>Voice of Slovakia</em>]. He moved back to Podbrezová, Slovakia, after a short time having lost his job, for what Andrew says were political reasons. Again unemployed in the fall of 1947, Andrew decided to move to the United States and join his father, who had been working in Cleveland for a year already.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Andrew arrived in Cleveland on January 8, 1948. He quickly found a job at the White Sewing Machine Corporation. He says he was pleasantly surprised by the amount of Slovak activity he found in the city and subsequently established the Slovak Catholic Youth Club (later the Slovak Dramatic Club) with some of the new immigrants he met at English-language night classes. After two and a half years in his first job, Andrew bought a restaurant called the Lorain Square Lunch Room, where he worked as a chef. He became involved in property development and construction and eventually established his own travel agency, Adventure International Travel Service, which he opened a branch of in Bratislava in 1992. Andrew remained extremely active in the American Slovak community, as president of the Lakewood Slovak Civic Club for ten years and founder of two branches of the Slovak League of America, in Parma and Strongsville, Ohio. In 1982, he became president of the Slovak Garden retirement community in Florida – a position he held for fourteen and a half years. In 2002, he became head of the Cleveland Slovak Institute, an organization which aims to preserve and protect the history of Slovaks in America. Andrew is married to Sophia Beno Hudak and the couple have three children, Andrew, Paul and Steven. In 1993, Andrew became a dual citizen of Slovakia and the United States.</p><p> </p><p><a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20170609120152/http://www.slovakinstitute.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Link to the Slovak Institute’s web pages</a></p><p><a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20170609120152/http://ncsml.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/e-Hudak_-_FINAL.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Full transcript of Andrew Hudak’s interview</a></p>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
NCSML Archive
Americanization
Catholics
Community leadership
Community Life
Education
Journalism
Kecerovske Peklany
Podebrazova
Religion
Ruzomberok
Saris
Stefanik
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61dd56fefe574aa5e9d30e6982fdd4a9
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>Moravia</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/PpDpAeEaNV4?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“We were always very poor, due to political reasons, so basically my grandparents played a big part in my life. They gave us a place to stay; they supported us, giving us… If the pig was slaughtered we got some of that and otherwise we were just supporting ourselves by planting fruits and vegetables and having the animals at home so we can survive.”</p><h4>Brother Leaving</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/D446A1mz_xo?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“My brother is very spontaneous. He decides; he goes. So he very spontaneously on the way to the train, which is a 15 minute walk, he tells me ‘Come with me.’ He’s already packed, he’s going to the train, and he says ‘Come with me.’ I said ‘What do you mean? Like, right now, this minute?’ He says ‘Yeah, why not?’ I said ‘Yeah, but I’m just going to be a burden to you because I don’t know anything. I wouldn’t know how to take care of myself. I’d be just dependent on you; I don’t want to do it. But I am certainly going to try to get out when I become something, when I have a profession to fall back on.’ So he just went. I guess I was quite reasonable then. I’m pretty much down-to-earth, so I was thinking logically that it’s not practical to leave right now, and I should at least finish my studies in the<em>gymnázium</em>.</p><p>“But it certainly planted a bug in my head that I should follow him, and I was certain I could get out. And then I thought ‘Ok, I’ll still try to do the university’ and university didn’t work out; then I really purposefully became a nurse, figuring that I speak German, I’m surrounded by German-speaking countries, Germany and Austria, so I’m going to try to get there and I could work as a nurse. I found out also later on that in Germany there was a shortage of nurses so it would have been great. But there was no way to get out. Absolutely no way for me because we were considered such high-risk that we were not even allowed to go to Yugoslavia, which was the route that many people fled – and I admit, I would be the first one.”</p><p><em>You couldn’t even go on vacation to Yugoslavia?</em></p><p>“No, no.” </p><h4>Voting</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/rNa-7lojaqs?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“The voting I went through in Czechoslovakia was absolutely ridiculous. With the age of 18 you had the ‘right’ to vote, and it consisted of you being forced to go and vote. You were handed a paper filled out with the Communist candidates, which you folded and threw in some container. That was the extent of the voting. Absolutely absurd stuff. I don’t know if they were putting up some image for the Western countries because there was no real free election.”<br /></p><h4>Staying in America</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/21D2DFIwfKQ?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“With my family, with my husband, with the properties, and emotionally, much more invested here. I love this country, very much so, because it gave me freedom. I was so fascinated when I came here in ’76, switched on the TV and people were bad-mouthing the president, for example. They were saying bad things about him or people high in the government. This was absolutely a no-no in Czechoslovakia. The freedom of speech was just, to me, so refreshing and so amazing. After ’89, I went there almost every year; I still do, so I saw the changes and all that. But you grow apart from these people. You become different, and I don’t think I would be accepted 100 percent back because I am different already.”</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
Anna Balev
Description
An account of the resource
<p><img class="alignleft wp-image-2339 size-full" src="http://web.archive.org/web/20170609072058im_/http://ncsml.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/SQ-Anna-Balev.png" alt="" width="235" height="235" /></p><p>Anna Balev was born in Olomouc, in Moravia, in 1950. She grew up outside the city in the small village of Březce with her parents, three siblings and grandparents. Prior to the Communist coup, Anna’s father, Jaroslav, was a language professor at a nearby <em>gymnázium</em>. Anna describes him as an ‘avid Catholic’ who ‘went out of his way to provoke’ the communist authorities. He was arrested and sent to prison for two years. Anna’s mother, Blažena, returned to school to become a nurse in order to support the family once her father ran into trouble. Anna says that she was the only one in her class who was not a Pioneer and was instead sent to religion classes. Each year Anna spent the summer with her maternal uncle and aunt in Krnov, times she fondly recalls. Following the 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion, Anna’s brother left the country and settled in Canada.</p><p> </p><p>Anna attended <em>gymnázium</em> in Šternberk and hoped to study languages at Charles University (she was taught French, German and Latin by her father), but was not accepted. She instead decided to study nursing, recognizing that a practical profession would make it easier to start a life elsewhere if she left the country. Anna studied for two years in Olomouc and moved to Prague where she worked at a psychiatric hospital. She then took a job in Karlovy Vary, where she was hired because of her German language skills. In 1975 Anna reconnected with her future husband, an American who had emigrated from Ukraine. The pair had met while she was living in Prague and he was visiting the capital city. They decided to marry in order for Anna to legally leave the country. After getting married in Karlovy Vary, Anna immediately set about getting permission to immigrate to the United States. She arrived in New York City in May 1976 and was handed her green card at the airport.</p><p> </p><p>Anna says that she ‘fell in love immediately’ with the city and was astonished at the freedom she now enjoyed. While studying for her RN exam, Anna found a job at a women’s clinic. She subsequently worked at Roosevelt Hospital and for a plastic surgeon. Anna stopped practicing nursing when her first daughter was born in 1980. Her second daughter was born two years later. Anna also attended Hunter College part-time from her first year in New York. In 1985 she received degrees in English and theatre arts. Today Anna is the owner of a rental company and owns property in the Czech Republic as well as New York.</p><p> </p><p>Anna has returned to the Czech Republic nearly every year since she left and has recently become a dual citizen of the Czech Republic and the United States. She is active in the Czech community in New York as a member of Sokol and the local chapter of SVU (Czechoslovak Academy of Arts and Sciences). Today, Anna lives in New York City with her husband.</p>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
NCSML Archive
1968
Catholicism
Community Life
Education
Family life
gymnazium
Healthcare professionals
Machova
marriage
Religion
Sternberk
Warsaw Pact invasion
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fc3e4a13162168c76bb6cfd9e930c6c5
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>Melbourne</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Ay-8Yz7cx5Q?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“Well, he [Anne’s father] obviously spoke fluent English, so people didn’t have a place to live, my father would help, people were in hospitals. So then this whole group of Slovaks then decided they were going to meet at St. Monica’s one Sunday a month, and then they started these dances. Six years they built a little church in the outskirts, the boonies, with all the money they made as profits from the dances.</p><p><em>Can you maybe tell me a bit more, for example, you’ve mentioned these dances a couple of times. How many people were coming along to them, and what sort of foods were you making?</em></p><p>“Well, the typical goulash and whatever they could haul on the trolley busses. I know all the ladies got involved, and of course they served beer and I guess hard alcohol. As a child I remember dancing a lot. But then the young men would have arguments, and so my mother took it over, Mrs. Gornal took it over. And there was no more trouble.”</p><h4>Indiana</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/7xW9FCksQYM?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Well, there were two Slovak churches. One for the people from Orava, and one for the people from the other side, St. John the Baptist, and Immaculate Conception. There was also a Slovak Lutheran church, and there was also a synagogue in the town. And yes, the Irish were on one side with Sacred Heart and the Polish were at St. Adalbert’s. Now this is a town of 10,000. There must have been a church on every block depending on what nationality you were. That’s the way it was, you went to your church. And it was very hardworking – hardworking people.”</p><h4>Education</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/coXszeLcqSs?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“So everyone, all of these Slovaks in the ’50s, or that left in the ’40s, ’50s, the big thing for you was ‘You go to school!’ And of course, because this family was so bright, my mother would say, ‘If you don’t do your studies I’m gonna put my head in the oven!’ You had to study.”</p><h4>Return to Slovakia</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/YP8-T7fniQI?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“You were very cautious about everything you did. With my mother’s first cousin, Oliver, he was probably about 60, we were in our 20s. And I can remember crossing the Austrian border and there was a border patrol, one gentleman at the Austrian border in a shack and he saluted us and he said, ‘Good luck.’ We go into the bridge into Bratislava, and everything there is machine guns, soldiers. There’s not a tree, there’s watchtowers every thirty feet. It was so frightening. They’re looking under your car with mirrors, they’re opening your car – frightening, frightening.”</p><h4>Mikulas Party</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZdjnDfrenfo?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I’d go to the events, but I wasn’t as involved. Then I became more involved. Then we started having the Mikuláš parties. And normally I was in charge, I was in charge of Mikuláš. We’d have volunteers make <em>holúbky</em> and desserts and things like that, and it’s just gotten bigger and bigger. Now of course, we go to the Slovak embassy. It’s become big. And then of course we invite the embassy staff. Last Christmas we had thirty children, which is a large amount. And we have an actor who plays Mikuláš. We’ve had other people, but he’s the best. And so we told him this year, ‘Do it fast, because we have thirty kids.”</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
Anne McKeown
Description
An account of the resource
<p> </p><p>Anne McKeown was born in Pribiš, Slovakia, in 1945. Although her parents were living abroad due to her father’s position as a diplomat, her mother returned to her family home to give birth to Anne. They returned to Marseille, France, when Anne was six weeks old and lived there for the next five years. Anne’s brother, Patrick, was born in 1949. That same year, Anne’s father, knowing that he did not want his family to live under communism, resigned from his government position and applied for asylum in the United States, Canada, and Australia. In 1950, they received permission to move to Australia, and settled in Melbourne where her father got a job with Caterpillar and her mother took in boarders. Anne says she had a ‘wonderful’ childhood in Melbourne and particularly remembers attending the Slovak dances that her mother helped organize.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>In 1957, Anne and her family moved to Whiting, Indiana, under the sponsorship of old friends who were from the same town in Slovakia. She graduated high school at the age of 16 and enrolled in the nursing school at Purdue University. After graduating, Anne moved to the Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C. and began working at Northern Virginia Doctors’ Hospital. She subsequently worked as a doctor’s assistant in a private office and then as the assistant to the chief of surgery at Columbia Hospital for Women in Washington, D.C. Anne met her husband in 1968, and they married two years later in Whiting. Anne says she vividly recalls her first trip back to Czechoslovakia in 1973 where she was viewed with suspicion because of her Slovak origin.</p><p> </p><p>As an active member of the Slovak American Society of Washington, D.C., Anne has recently been involved in planning the annual Svätý Mikuláš [St. Nicholas] party. Her husband, Jim, has taken an interest in her Slovak heritage and enjoys painting traditional decorated <em>kraslice</em> [Easter eggs]. They split their time between Falls Church, Virginia, and Bratislava, where they own an apartment.</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
Community Life
Cultural Traditions
Education
Gornalova
Holubky
Pribis
Svaty Mikulas
Women workers
-
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f86cd568591763e4074b0f4c9adead61
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
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<h4>Why Chicago?</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/hFwNSiEbfQ8?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“Because lots of people were here. I don’t know, in a short while I got to know around 300 people. Because there were constantly parties or bands were playing. We were in a band, they were in a band, and then it grew; from two bands it suddenly grew to become ten. There were festivals and all these sorts of things. Now I’m kind of used to it here and it seems to me a bit like Europe. Everything is like at home.”</p><p><em>What was the cultural life like here in Chicago for Czechs and Slovaks in the 1990s?</em></p><p>“Well I think until about the year 2000 there wasn’t much. The old culture here was dying out – the culture of those people who had come here in the ‘70s. You know, like it is dying right now with all these Czechs going back home, or with those who went home about five years ago. So, when we came it was dying out in this way. But you could say that we got it going again.”</p><h4>Theories for Leaving</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WPJg3ip75ws?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Well, guys thought that the situation would be better in the Czech Republic when it comes to women. And that’s why they left. And they were wrong, of course. And women left because they wanted to have a family, for example. With their kids, or because they wanted to start their family in the Czech Republic. Or when their kids were older they wanted them to go to school there. From about seven years of age, when they go to school, their parents wanted them to go to school in the Czech Republic. I don’t know, or they missed their family. It’s difficult to say.”</p><h4>No Plan to Return</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/HUscrHQl6Pc?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Yes I’ve considered it. But you know, it’s difficult. Because life here is better. I don’t want to go to work and slave away from morning ‘til night. I want to live like this and what I have here is enough for that. What I earn here is enough and allows me to do what I do. I sit for, I don’t know, about 50 hours a week at the computer and I put songs together. And this is really what I want to do.”</p><p><em>… So music is your life?</em></p><p>“Music is my life. I just don’t want to go to work from dawn to dusk and slave away at it, and leave it feeling ground down. I just want to play. I want to play, and that’s that.”</p>
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Antonin Varga
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Antonin Varga was born in Šternberk, Moravia, in 1966. His mother was a waitress and his father worked in a number of different jobs, notably as a butcher and waiter, and then as a guard. Antonin says that, prior to his birth, his father had spent one year in prison for attempting to emigrate. Antonin grew up with an older sister, Ludmila, and a younger brother, Roman. From an early age, Antonin says his dream was to become a DJ. In the 1980s he would record music he was lent onto Polish cassette tapes, and says he played parties and special events in villages close by.</p><p> </p><p>Antonin came to the United States in 1997. He says he had wanted to travel for a long time, but had never had the money to do so. He came to America with two of his former colleagues after receiving severance pay from his employer. Antonin says the plan was to stay in the United States for one year before returning home. He quickly began to enjoy living in Chicago, however, and came to know many expatriate Czechs in the city. Antonin says he soon found DJ-ing jobs at Klas Czech Restaurant and Café Prague, and played in a band. At around about this time, Antonin says he felt that Czech and Slovak cultural life in Chicago underwent something of a revival. Today, Antonin says he can make a living playing music in Chicago in a way that he would not be able to in the Czech Republic. For this reason, he has no plans to return to Europe. Antonin adds that he has ‘no regrets’ about his decision to move to the United States, although he says he still feels totally Czech and ‘not at all American’ after 15 years in the country. He continues to DJ in Czech restaurants in Chicago three nights a week. Today, Antonin lives in Chicago with a collection of over 3000 CDs.</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
Community Life
Post-1989 emigrant
Sense of identity
Sternberk
Western/Pop culture
-
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99dfaa0bd07fec1570a4aeab77b88262
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>School</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/97xpUHvEEMk?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“What I remember about school is that the first day of schooling, my official first school experience, was that we had to Heil Hitler when we first started the school day. So these teachers who are all Czech patriots would always do it funny. They wouldn’t do it right, and then the principal would walk down the hall and if he saw a teacher doing it wrong, they could be reprimanded. But they’d do that as a gesture of anti-Nazi [sentiment].”</p><p><em>And the principal was a Nazi?</em></p><p>“No, no, just a Czech that was concerned that a Nazi might be looking over or some inspector would come and see this. The other thing we did was we had to learn German, so as a point of patriotism we made sure we didn’t do well. So I could have very good German, but I don’t because of this. We’d come back with a C [grade] and the parents would say ‘Great! You’re doing great.’”</p><h4>Concentration Camp</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/U1_RboI6iQk?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“My mother, at the end of the War, came back first, and I was living with an uncle of mine. I was so happy to see her; I said I wanted to go home immediately, so we went out on the street and we hailed a truck, and this truck took us home and I was so happy. It had to be one of the happiest days of my life. And then from that point on, everyday my mother would go to meet the transports to see if my father was on a transport coming back from Mauthausen, and for days and days she came back with nothing, so I kind of thought ‘Well, that may be it,’ but then one day she found him.”</p><h4>Mission</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2izCULfcufo?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“My father, in 1947, came to the States on a mission connected with the YMCA, because he was involved with the Y. He went back [to Czechoslovakia] thinking he had done his mission which was to explain to the Americans that Czechoslovakia was going to be the bridge between the two, between East and West. So it might be communist, but it wouldn’t be anti-American, because the Czech communists were different. Bad idea, but at that time he was operating on that idea.”</p><p><em>Did they believe him?</em></p><p>“Well, some people did because Czechoslovakia had been liberated by both, Russians and the Americans, so on that basis there was this thought that it could be the bridge between East and West. And my father believed it at the time. So he made a tour; it was two months or so. And he thought the tour went well as far as getting the idea across, that Czechoslovakia was not part of the Soviet bloc.”</p><h4>Decision</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Qt8PvZmbuzs?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“My father, I think, was very conscious of the fact that he wouldn’t survive another concentration camp or another prison. My mother was aware of that as well. So no, he did not hesitate at all, because other people were already getting arrested. And, actually, when he was being interrogated by the communists, it just happened that this guy came in and he said ‘Oh, you’re here’ and my father said ‘Yes, I was asked to appear at some hearing’ and this guy said ‘You come see me after you’re finished at [a] room’ in this office building. So my father went there and this guy said ‘You remember me?’ and my father said ‘Of course I remember you.’ It turned out that he had been in Mauthausen with my father but he was a big communist now and he told my father ‘Get out as quick as you can,’ so we did. But even if that hadn’t happened, I think he would have gone, because my father felt so strongly that he couldn’t survive another thing like that.”</p><p><em>Well that’s very kind of the communist.</em></p><p>“See the reason he did that is that my father had been very good to him in the camp. He would always give him an extra roll or whatever because he liked him as a human being. He was always very cooperative and very kind. He was a nice guy.”</p><h4>No Communication</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/5tziM5eW87I?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“There was always that fear that we would get them in trouble, so we never wrote, and I think at some point they must have found out where we were, but there was no contact. Except one time. One time, the uncle that I used to live with during the War – he was a doctor – he did get out for a conference in Munich and my parents were in Munich. He wrote them, or they were somehow able to communicate and he said ‘Is there anything you want that you left behind?’ Even though we hadn’t told anybody, my mother did tell him that we were going to leave, and he said ‘If there’s anything you really want, bring it to our house and we’ll keep it for you.’ So when my parents asked if there was anything we really wanted to have if we ever came back, I decided to pack up my glass menagerie and it was taken to my uncle’s house, where I lived during the War. Then in the early ‘70s he was able to get out of the country to go to a medical conference and he was able to go to Munich. Somehow he was able to communicate with my parents and he asked ‘Is there anything I can bring?’ They said ‘Bring Barbara’s menagerie if you can’ and he did. So this is extremely precious. And now I’ve added to it a little bit since, and now my grandsons adore this menagerie and they’re so good. They just kneel and look and study and gaze at these wonderful blown-glass figurines.”</p><p><em>So these are examples of Czech glass.</em></p><p>“Exactly. Well, now there’s some other things in there now, but mostly they’re Czech blown glass.”</p><h4>Going Back</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/FGfNjSDG-E0?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“The general atmosphere, even though it was hopeful, seemed grim to me and the conversations sounded like conversations I remembered after the War, like ‘This person’s coming back from prison;’ ‘This person’s being arrested by the communists;’ ‘This person’s being somehow mistreated.’ It sounded so similar that I decided I wouldn’t go back until things really changed. Then it looked like things were going to change, for the better obviously, but that got completely nixed by the Soviets, so then it was another 20 years. I didn’t go back until 1990 and then I started going back a lot. And then in 2007, I had a wonderful swan song of my career. I took 20 Hofstra students to Prague. I was the director of the whole program.”</p><p><em>What was the program?</em></p><p>“Hofstra University in Prague. They got credit for history, art, architecture… We had about five or six courses, they could choose three and they got nine credits, and we also did a trip to Auschwitz. It was wonderful. These kids were so wonderful. I was so proud of them. They were 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
Barbara Reinfeld
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Barbara Reinfeld was born in Prague in 1935. Her father, Miloslav, was a journalist who had also worked as a parliamentary stenographer for the National Socialist (or Beneš) Party. Her mother, Zdislava, who studied in the United States for two years, taught English and physical education before Barbara and her older brother, Erazim, were born. In 1941, Barbara’s father was arrested for resistance activity and sent to Pankrác prison for one year. He was then sent to Mauthausen concentration camp for the remainder of the War. Barbara’s mother was taken to Terezín in 1944. While both of her parents were imprisoned, Barbara lived with her mother’s brother in Prague. Barbara’s parents survived Nazi detention and returned to Prague at the end of the War. In 1947, Barbara’s father, who was active in the YMCA, was sent to the United States on a goodwill mission. Soon after he returned, the Communist coup occurred and Barbara’s parents decided to leave the country. In March 1948, the family traveled to Kvilda in southern Bohemia where they met a guide and other escapees. They crossed into Germany on foot and were sent to Regensburg refugee camp. Barbara’s father, with his connections through the YMCA, secured an apartment for the family in Munich where they stayed for almost one year while waiting for permission to immigrate to the United States.</p><p> </p><p>In August 1949, Barbara and her family sailed to New York City. They were greeted by their sponsor, Mr. Sibley, whom Barbara’s father had met while on his mission to the United States. For a few months, Barbara’s family lived on a farm owned by Mr. Sibley in upstate New York. In 1950, Barbara’s father got a job with Radio Free Europe and they moved to the borough of Queens in New York City. Barbara attended Adelphi Academy in Brooklyn and then Carleton College in Minnesota. Meanwhile, Barbara’s parents moved to Munich where her father continued his work with Radio Free Europe and her mother became a librarian. Barbara received her master’s degree in history from Columbia University and began studying for her doctorate. She married and had two children. Barbara returned to Czechoslovakia twice in the 1960s. She finished her dissertation on the Czech writer and journalist Karel Havlíček Borovský and received her doctorate in Czech history from Columbia in 1979. Barbara taught history at the New York Institute of Technology and Hofstra University for over 25 years. In 2007, she took a group of students from Hofstra to Prague where they took classes and experienced the culture. Barbara has been a long-standing member of the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences (SVU). In her retirement, she volunteers at local landmarks and is looking forward to traveling to her home country once again. Today, Barbara lives in Carle Place, New York, with her husband, Bob.</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
Benes
Child emigre
Community Life
Concentration camp
Education
Journalism
Karel Havlicek Borovsky
Kohakova
Pankrac
school
Teachers
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
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Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans
Subject
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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
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Transcription
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<h4>Slovakia</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/gDC6_lANSak?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“Grade school was kind of tough. It was communism, and we went to church so it was frowned upon. My uncle emigrated in 1968 and then my mom went to church, so since those two elements we had against us, it was really tough. The teachers were really tough on us, so instead of giving us a break, let’s say, because we had no father they were tougher on us, and therefore we had worse grades than other children.”</p><h4>Learning English</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/duwqMK6EztY?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“We got a tutor. Her name was Raida. She was from Cuba, and she was from a communist country. So the city of Aurora got us a free tutor, and twice a week she came to our house or we went to the library or we went to her house and she was trying to teach us by books, by pictures – pointing and telling us ‘These are scissors; this is a camera; this is a computer.’ That’s how we started communicating, and I think it went on for about six months. She went to the mayor of Aurora and she basically got us into Waubonsie Valley High School. Because they said that we are already 18 and they cannot take us in, but she went and talked to the mayor of Aurora and the mayor of Aurora called the high school and he said ‘You have to take them.’ So they took us and we were juniors. So we went there and we got ESL teachers. For the first six months we were in a bunch of ESL classes, and then senior year we joined regular, normal history, math, English, geography – whatever classes we had to take in order to graduate, because our education back home was only three years. So they figured out how many classes we need, how many more credits we needed. So they told us what kind of classes we needed to take in order to graduate in the United States.”</p><h4>First Impressions</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/N5DTpWwyrCA?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“First thing I remember when we arrived in Switzerland: the airport was like ‘Wow!’ We saw bananas; we saw oranges; we saw all this under-the-table material that was in Slovakia and we were really, really shocked. And this was little boutiques only. And then we came here and we went to, let’s say, Kmart or Walmart or something like that. So to us it was like this super-duper shopping mall. My mom never went to the shopping mall; she went to these local stores only, so to us it was like, ‘Wow.’ Coming from a communist country to Kmart, it was like luxury. Like Gucci or something like that at the time. So that’s what I remember.”</p><h4>Heritage</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_UNQls61shk?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“We go to all these picnics and everything, and at home we do Christmas traditions, Easter traditions. We have pictures of Slovakia, we listen to Czechoslovakian radio all the time. We, at home, only speak Slovak to my children – my husband is Slovak so we only speak Slovak at home. I cook Slovak food. We try to live like we used to live at home, but in America.”</p><h4>Czechoslovak Community</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/KdpvCmehu6s?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“When you go to the Czech Republic or Slovak Republic, there is more hatred between each other. Prague people will say ‘Oh, we don’t like Slovaks,’ or Slovak people will say ‘I don’t like Czechs.’ But here I never hear anybody say that we don’t like each other. Here we are like one big community, and it’s like a brotherhood over here. If you go back home, I noticed that over there they distance themselves. They try to be… ‘We are Slovaks.’ They try to be really proud Slovaks or really proud Czechs. Here we try to help each other and over there they try to be individuals more.”</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
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Bronislava Grelova Gres
Description
An account of the resource
<p> </p><p>Bronislava (Brona) Gres was born in Liptovský Mikuláš in central Slovakia and grew up in the nearby village of Liptovské Sliače. She and her twin sister, <a href="/web/20170609044444/http://www.ncsml.org/exhibits/zuzana-lanc/">Zuzana</a>, lived with their mother, <a href="/web/20170609044444/http://www.ncsml.org/exhibits/anna-vesela/">Anna Vesela</a>, and their grandparents. Brona says that some aspects of her childhood were ‘tough,’ as her uncle had immigrated to the United States and her family attended church, which led to some unfair treatment at school. In 1987, Brona’s mother moved to the United States and married Zdenek Vesely, an American citizen. Although the plan was for the girls to follow shortly after, it took well over one year for Brona and Zuzana to be allowed to leave the country. Brona says that, although they had no trouble receiving visas, their passports were confiscated for awhile. They arrived in the United States in October 1988 and settled in with their mother and stepfather, who now had their younger sister, <a href="/web/20170609044444/http://www.ncsml.org/exhibits/margret-vesely/">Margret</a>, in Aurora, Illinois.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Brona says that the first few months in the United States were difficult as she was not comfortable with the English language. Brona and Zuzana received English lessons from a tutor who also helped them enroll in the local high school. In January 1989, they started as juniors in the ESL program, and the following year took regular classes as seniors and graduated.</p><p> </p><p>Brona married a fellow Slovak émigré and had two children. She and her husband spoke Slovak to their children, and she regularly cooked Slovak food and kept traditional Slovak customs during the holidays. Although an American citizen, Brona says that she felt like a ‘Slovak living in America’ and she returned to Slovakia every year with her family for visits. She was closely involved in the Czechoslovak community in the Chicago area and attended get-togethers. She lived with her family in Darien, Illinois, until her death in 2014.</p>
Creator
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National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library
Source
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NCSML Archive
Americanization
Child emigre
Community Life
Cultural Traditions
English language
Liptovkse Sliace
Liptovsky Mikulas