Zdenek left Czechoslovakia in June 1948, after his family received threats from the Communist police. He crossed the border into Germany near Mariánské Lázně with the help of a guide sent by his sister, who had escaped ahead of him. Zdenek spent one year as a trainee nurse in Horton Road Mental Hospital in England before returning to the refugee camps in Germany and working for the International Refugee Organization pending an American visa. Zdenek was sponsored to come to the United States by an acquaintance of his sister, who had already settled with her husband in Milwaukee. He himself arrived in Wisconsin in 1951. In 1952, Zdenek gained a scholarship to the University of Chicago, where he proved a brilliant student. He became a professor of pathology at the University of Chicago in 1973. One of the achievements that Zdenek is best known for is the foundation of the Archives of the Czechs and Slovaks Abroad (ACASA), a collection of more than 10,000 books, periodicals and other materials housed at the University of Chicago’s Regenstein Library. Zdenek lived in Hyde Park, Chicago, with his wife Jarmila Hruban until his death in September 2011.
]]>Zdenek Hruban was born in 1921 in Přerov, Moravia. His father was a mathematics professor who had studied in Austria while Czechs were still subject to Austro-Hungarian rule. By the time Zdenek himself was old enough to attend university, WWII had broken out, and all the universities in what was then the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia were closed by the Nazis. During this time, Zdenek went to the University of Rostock in Germany to study medicine. After the War, he returned to study in Hradec Králové, northern Bohemia, where he says there was standing room only in lectures, since there was such a demand for higher education.
Zdenek left Czechoslovakia in June 1948, after his family received threats from the Communist police. He crossed the border into Germany near Mariánské Lázně with the help of a guide sent by his sister, who had escaped ahead of him. Zdenek spent one year as a trainee nurse in Horton Road Mental Hospital in England before returning to the refugee camps in Germany and working for the International Refugee Organization pending an American visa. Zdenek was sponsored to come to the United States by an acquaintance of his sister, who had already settled with her husband in Milwaukee. He himself arrived in Wisconsin in 1951. In 1952, Zdenek gained a scholarship to the University of Chicago, where he proved a brilliant student. He became a professor of pathology at the University of Chicago in 1973. One of the achievements that Zdenek is best known for is the foundation of the Archives of the Czechs and Slovaks Abroad (ACASA), a collection of more than 10,000 books, periodicals and other materials housed at the University of Chicago’s Regenstein Library. Zdenek lived in Hyde Park, Chicago, with his wife Jarmila Hruban until his death in September 2011.
“In ’48 when the Sokol Slet was having a Prague exhibition, I crossed the border – it was easier to cross, illegally. My sister was already in Germany because her husband was the secretary of the American Institute in Prague, so he was told as soon as the prisons were empty, he would be arrested. So I thought that the best thing would be to go before they are after my family.
“I had a rucksack with dried salami and an English dictionary. I had contacted my sister who lived in Germany and she sent a guide who took me across the border. He was a very brave man, [he had] no sense of danger. We crossed at night, it was several hours walk.”
“There were two people who collected newspapers in Chicago and they were Karel Prchal, head of the Sokol, and Josef Cada, the Roman Catholic professor at the college [Saint Procopius in Lisle], and when I spoke with the Czech librarian here at the University of Chicago, Vaclav Laska, he gave me three shelves where I could store the newspapers. Well, it grew into a much bigger collection. It took some kind of active participation to get newspapers from other places outside of Chicago. I remember my friend Mr. Marek (whose picture is on the wall), he took me in the car – because I don’t drive – he took me in the car to Michigan and we collected some newspapers there.”
Is there one thing in the collection that you love the most?
“We have a handkerchief which Tomas Garrigue Masaryk used!”
After his studies, Mojmir was invited to work for the Beneš Party at its headquarters in Prague. He worked there until just after the Communist coup d’état in February 1948. He left Czechoslovakia two months later; he says he found out afterwards that the Communist secret police had helped him escape. Mojmir was sponsored by the American Fund for Czechoslovak Refugees to come and study at the University of Chicago in 1950. He became an American citizen in 1956. From 1974 to 1989 he was chairman of the Council of Free Czechoslovakia. Following a career in academia, Mojmir retired and lived in Appleton, Wisconsin, with his wife Joy. He died on August 21, 2012. He is survived by his wife of 56 years, Joy, and their two children.
]]>Mojmir Povolny was born in Měnín, a small village near Brno, in 1921. His father owned a local liquor store and his mother stayed at home, raising him and his younger brother, Bořivoj. When Mojmir was old enough to go to gymnázium, he was sent to Brno to study, where he lived with his aunt and uncle. Mojmir’s studies were interrupted by WWII. He was sent to work in the Minerva munitions factory in Boskovice for the duration of the War. In 1945, he enrolled as a law student at Masaryk University in Brno. As an undergraduate he became involved with the Czechoslovak National Socialist or Beneš Party and, within that, an influential group of students and professors called Oddělení pro vědeckou politiku [The Section for the Scientific Study of Politics].
After his studies, Mojmir was invited to work for the Beneš Party at its headquarters in Prague. He worked there until just after the Communist coup d’état in February 1948. He left Czechoslovakia two months later; he says he found out afterwards that the Communist secret police had helped him escape. Mojmir was sponsored by the American Fund for Czechoslovak Refugees to come and study at the University of Chicago in 1950. He became an American citizen in 1956. From 1974 to 1989 he was chairman of the Council of Free Czechoslovakia. Following a career in academia, Mojmir retired and lived in Appleton, Wisconsin, with his wife Joy. He died on August 21, 2012. He is survived by his wife of 56 years, Joy, and their two children.
“When you are 16 or 15, you don’t know or feel that you are a participant in a great enterprise, but when you are hit, or when that enterprise is hit, as it was by the Munich crisis and what this implied for the future – because this was one event and, my generation, we were aware enough to see and to know what to anticipate… We were finishing at the gymnázium, the country became occupied by the Germans, we lost our building, we had to share a building with other schools which were not occupied. My gymnázium, which was a very modern building – opened, I think, in 1928 or 1929 – was immediately occupied by the German state security.
“But at the same time, you know, we were at that time when we were going to take dancing lessons, which meant for the first time to be with girls. It was a very important moment in a 17-year-old’s life, and then you didn’t know what was going to happen after that. You graduated, and after my graduation, the Germans began to recruit – to simply conscript, rather – young people to work in armaments factories.”
“Our neighbor was a decommissioned officer who had been in the Czechoslovak Army, who had two boys, roughly my age and my cousin from that same villa’s age. When we were kids we would play in the street, soccer and that, we had scooters and we would borrow and lend them and all that. The next neighbor was the principal of a German school in Czechoslovakia, his two daughters were teachers there. Come the crisis, the daughters turned out to be Nazis and very unpleasant. In my memory, the symbol of this was that they began to wear white stockings. The two boys appeared in the uniform of the SA [German Sturmabteilung], were immediately mobilized; that decommissioned officer was taken into the German Army. We never saw the boys again because, we learned, they were killed on the Russian front. So that’s a different kind of relationship, you didn’t hate them but they became alien, and I think that it was this alienation which was probably the worst part.”
“The pilots were very young boys, 21, 22 years old, you know, and cheerful kids. And they simply took a bedroom and slept in the bedroom until when they were going to leave. And you know you welcomed them, you were glad that they came. We had two of them, and one day the two of them came and left in the morning and locked their bedroom. My mother [normally] sort of made their beds and cleaned up after them and when they came back, mother said ‘Well, why did you lock the room?’ They said ‘Don’t worry about that, grandma, we will do it;’ she said ‘No! Leave it open! I want to clean the room.’ Well, the next day, again, it was locked. So she said ‘No, no, no – you leave the room open! I’m coming in,’ and she wedged her foot or something in the doorway. And then she smelt an unpleasant smell. And they sort of gave in. So she went to the armoire and they had two rabbits in it.
“So she said ‘Where did you get those rabbits?’ ‘Oh!’ they said, ‘we were given the rabbits.’ ‘Who gave you the rabbits? Nobody gives people rabbits!’ ‘Well,’ they said, ‘we found them in another house.’ ‘So you take them back!’ They were, you know, kids and she was a woman of 50. So she sent them to give the rabbits back, but then they left her a very touching thank you note written on a piece of paper, giving us the address to visit them at in Moscow.”
“I had complete confidence in those people, we were working together. And so I was told ‘You be on this particular evening at the streetcar station, there will be a car and two people and they will take you to the border, and so I did go. So, I went there, there were two young men, one of them was in the [Beneš Party] youth movement, and we drove to the border. There was a border guard, who stopped us, got in the car and took us all the way practically to the border. We saw the barriers on the road and he said ‘Well, we’ll have to stop here. You get out, and walk about a quarter of a mile/half a kilometer along that road here, and then you will see on the other side the lights of the German village. You cross the fields, and in the German village report to the German police.’ The border guard wished me good luck and said ‘come back and don’t forget us.’
“Now, after the Communist regime fell, it came out that the escape was arranged by a branch of [Communist] state security, who wanted to get me out in order to eventually become their agent or something.”
“My mother was afraid about me going to Chicago with all those gangsters and worried whether I would survive. Well, you know, at midnight after the last lesson and the last coffee we would walk to Jackson Park and the lake, and come back safe to start the morning fresh. And I had to study also, one of my fields was American diplomacy and diplomatic history and for that I had to look into the larger picture of American history. And I found it rather inspiring and encouraging, especially in the situation in which we found ourselves. Somehow I learned to understand America and its shortcomings and the way that it gets out of them, because the country, the people, the nation has a cushion, which is several layers. One is the cushion of values and ideals. One is the cushion of resources, and especially in those days, you know, 60 years ago, who would have questioned America not having the resources? And of the institutions, however imperfect they were, they somehow worked. So [my wife] Joy keeps saying ‘You’re more American than a native American.’ And I say ‘Well, it’s a compliment!’”
“Hundreds and thousands of us left thinking that we are going to be back in five years time. People lived in this kind of provisional state for years and years. Now, as I said, I was young enough, I was lucky enough, I could study, I could establish myself. So the hope that fed you in the beginning of the homeland to which I’m going to return began to play a secondary role in your planning of your life, in your orientation. I think the trick is, under those conditions, to transcend from the provisorium. It is no longer, however limited it may be, a provisional phase of your life, but you do the best with your life that you can. The trick was then to combine it with a certain amount of living devotion to the cause for which you left. And you know, maybe if you lived in the provisional, maybe you would be more tenacious and more active and more this, but that’s not how life sort of works. And you know, I found a wife who was very supportive, we agreed when we met in 1955 that if I go back to Czechoslovakia, she will come to Czechoslovakia. But if you asked her 10-15 years later, when those little kids were all around running about here, then I don’t know.”
Mila Rechcigl was born in Mladá Boleslav in 1930. His father (also named Miloslav) was a miller who became the youngest member of parliament in Czechoslovakia when he was elected as a representative of the Agrarian Party in 1935. Mila was raised in and around the family mill in Chocnějovice and remembers traveling by horse and cart to nearby Mladá Boleslav in order to sell flour in town. During WWII, Mila says his father was unable to continue his political work, but became president of the Czech Millers Association and was active in the resistance group Obrana národa [Defense of the Nation]. Mila himself remembers people traveling to the mill from Prague to buy flour there on the black market.
Between 1945 and 1948, a period which he refers to as a time of ‘illusionary democracy,’ Mila attended gymnázium in Mladá Boleslav. Following the Communist coup in 1948, his father escaped Czechoslovakia when a warrant was issued for his arrest. Mila also tried to leave the country, but was caught at the border and jailed for a number of months. Mila says he was released as there was an amnesty announced which affected those legally considered to be minors, and he was allowed to return to gymnázium, though he received a dvojka z mravů – a poor grade for personal conduct. In 1949, Mila tried again to leave Czechoslovakia and this time succeeded. He was reunited with his father at Ludwigsburg refugee camp in West Germany, where he stayed until February 1950. Mila says he never saw his mother, Marie, again. In the late 1950s, she was imprisoned for taking grain from the Rechcigl mill (which had been nationalized) and feeding it to her chickens. She received a prison sentence of ten years, though was released after six. Mila came to New York City with his father in 1950. The pair’s first job was at a small jewelry factory, making earrings and bracelets using Czech glass beads. After a couple of years, Mila’s father started working for Radio Free Europe in the city, while Mila himself received a Free Europe scholarship to attend Cornell University. He gained his BS, MNS, and PhD degrees there, specializing in biochemistry, nutrition, physiology and food science.
Mila worked for the National Institute of Health, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and then the State Department, where he became chief of the Research and Institutional Grants division. His involvement with the Czechoslovak Society of Arts & Sciences (SVU) dates back to 1960 when he became the secretary of the society’s Washington, D.C. chapter. He was president of the international organization between 1974 and 1978 and again between 1994 and 2006. One of his proudest achievements was the establishment of the biannual SVU World Congress, which began in Washington, D.C. in 1962 and continues to this day. Today, Mila lives with his wife of 58 years, Eva, in Rockville, Maryland.
Full transcript of Mila Rechcigl’s interview
A link to Mila’s personal memoir ‘Czechmate: From Bohemian Paradise to American Haven’
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Mila Rechcigl was born in Mladá Boleslav in 1930. His father (also named Miloslav) was a miller who became the youngest member of parliament in Czechoslovakia when he was elected as a representative of the Agrarian Party in 1935. Mila was raised in and around the family mill in Chocnějovice and remembers traveling by horse and cart to nearby Mladá Boleslav in order to sell flour in town. During WWII, Mila says his father was unable to continue his political work, but became president of the Czech Millers Association and was active in the resistance group Obrana národa [Defense of the Nation]. Mila himself remembers people traveling to the mill from Prague to buy flour there on the black market.
Between 1945 and 1948, a period which he refers to as a time of ‘illusionary democracy,’ Mila attended gymnázium in Mladá Boleslav. Following the Communist coup in 1948, his father escaped Czechoslovakia when a warrant was issued for his arrest. Mila also tried to leave the country, but was caught at the border and jailed for a number of months. Mila says he was released as there was an amnesty announced which affected those legally considered to be minors, and he was allowed to return to gymnázium, though he received a dvojka z mravů – a poor grade for personal conduct. In 1949, Mila tried again to leave Czechoslovakia and this time succeeded. He was reunited with his father at Ludwigsburg refugee camp in West Germany, where he stayed until February 1950. Mila says he never saw his mother, Marie, again. In the late 1950s, she was imprisoned for taking grain from the Rechcigl mill (which had been nationalized) and feeding it to her chickens. She received a prison sentence of ten years, though was released after six. Mila came to New York City with his father in 1950. The pair’s first job was at a small jewelry factory, making earrings and bracelets using Czech glass beads. After a couple of years, Mila’s father started working for Radio Free Europe in the city, while Mila himself received a Free Europe scholarship to attend Cornell University. He gained his BS, MNS, and PhD degrees there, specializing in biochemistry, nutrition, physiology and food science.
Mila worked for the National Institute of Health, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and then the State Department, where he became chief of the Research and Institutional Grants division. His involvement with the Czechoslovak Society of Arts & Sciences (SVU) dates back to 1960 when he became the secretary of the society’s Washington, D.C. chapter. He was president of the international organization between 1974 and 1978 and again between 1994 and 2006. One of his proudest achievements was the establishment of the biannual SVU World Congress, which began in Washington, D.C. in 1962 and continues to this day. Today, Mila lives with his wife of 58 years, Eva, in Rockville, Maryland.
Full transcript of Mila Rechcigl’s interview
A link to Mila’s personal memoir ‘Czechmate: From Bohemian Paradise to American Haven’
“In those days, even though cars were already in existence and trucks, we did not use them. We used just horses to pull the wagons with flour. We went as far as Mladá Boleslav, I don’t remember how many kilometers it was, but we had to go to Mnichovo hradiště – that was seven kilometers – and then normally you would take a train. So I don’t know, it must have been about three hours, I would say. So, we would go as far as that, but we had one person who was handling the horse and he had a sort of system whereby, at every village, his wagon would stop in front of a pub and he would go to get a beer. I remember this. I was quite young then, but it was sort of curious.”
And you would go along as well?
“Oh yeah. I was frequently… not frequently, but sometimes I went along. It was just interesting, you know? At the time when I didn’t go to school, obviously, in summer time. It was an interesting experience.”
“Under the Nazi era, I think the farmers in a way, I would say quite often illegally, supported people in the cities. And I know that for instance in our mill, my father had a reputation that he would give flour to even people that he did not know that came from Prague. And he would give them, as I recall – I remember even the number – five kilos of flour, which was at that time quite sizable for the period. Because otherwise you had to purchase four using tickets – you had special tickets. But my father made this flour available to them for good prices. He didn’t ever overcharge them. And I did not know about this, I learned only about it in the last maybe 30 years. When I established some contact [with the Czech Republic] people started coming to me and saying ‘I remember your father from WWII, this is what he did.’ So, I know that this was not unique, because people in the countryside were very helpful.”
“I was not doing it on my own, but somebody was helping. I did not even know the person, nothing, because we called him ‘mister engineer,’ and I don’t know what he was.”
Was he a colleague of your father?
“Yeah, he was a friend of him. Anyhow, then there were problems of some sort, and he was supposed to take me over the border, and he didn’t. At the last minute he sent me on my own. And I was in the middle of nowhere. I ended up – he just pointed me in one direction, and I ended up in a house which was still on the Czech side. And they called the police and whatever else, so I ended up in jail where I was actually, according to the Czech laws, I was quite young. I was below the age or whatever. I was never tried, I don’t know how many months they kept me there. And then they let me go because of my age, because the newly-elected president, Gottwald, issued an amnesty for young people. And I sort of fell under that category and they released me. And fortunately at the time… prior to that I was going to gymnázium, and fortunately, the gymnázium let me come back, although, for a price as I found out later. I received for my effort to escape; they gave me a so-called dvojka z mravů, which meant, in Czechoslovakia you got a grade for behavior, either good behavior or bad behavior. And so for good behavior you got one, and for bad behavior you got two. So I got two; I got dvojka z mravů. And that was pretty bad, you know, to have dvojka z mravů, that didn’t look good on your record. But nevertheless, I have a feeling that maybe this was some kind of a compromise some of my professor friends were able to do so that I could get back. This was maybe one way of doing it – they gave me a dvojka z mravů and I was able to come back.”
“I made efforts lately to clear her name. And I went through the process, [sent the request to] the Ministry of Justice or whatever it was called, and they wrote me an official letter telling me that according to then-existing laws, she committed a crime. According to then-existing laws. So they still, unfortunately, recognize communist laws today. To date, I have not been able to clear her name. It is incredible. And, I mean, she is not the only one. There are many people who are in the same category, for instance, let’s say people that crossed the border and didn’t go to the armed services. That was considered a crime. This still, on their books, is considered a criminal offense. Even these people could not clear their name, because according to the laws that existed at that time, this was a criminal act. So, this is one bitter thing I have against even the current Czech Republic – they cannot rid themselves of the past and get rid of these communist laws. It is incredible to me, absolutely incredible to me.”
“I was hired initially as a senior nutrition adviser. And then I was there a few months and they said ‘Well’… They offered me a job to be the chief of a research division which, in a way, had responsibility for handling and the research sponsored by AID in various developing countries in different fields. And eventually from this job I was elevated up to a director of whatever else. And my job had a number of facets, because we were responsible for not only research but we were also responsible for supporting institutional grants to various universities in a given field in our area. And this covered a number of fields, and interestingly, my background was very helpful to me in as much as I was involved in agriculture initially, and in the medical field at NIH. That gave me a fantastic background, because AID was supporting projects in agriculture; they were supporting projects in medicine and health, and of course they were supporting projects in education.”
“After I came to Washington I became… They established a Washington chapter at that time. And they made Dr, Feierabend, whom you probably know, Ladislav Feierabend, became the chairman of the local chapter. And I was elected the secretary of the chapter. So that was my first entrance into the society, which eventually grew into more and more responsible positions. And I was, from the very beginning, I was in constant contact with Dr. Nemec, Dr. Jaroslav Nemec, who worked for the National Library of Medicine, which in the meantime was transferred to NIH, and I worked at NIH, so we used to meet quite regularly for lunch. I don’t know, once a week or whatever, we met for lunch. So we talked and talked and talked. So, in the process I obviously learned quite a bit about it. And I had some ideas of my own. And eventually, I guess, it must have been within two years, I came up with the idea of the society holding these conferences, which we then renamed congresses. So actually, originally, it was my idea. And I sold Dr. Nemec about it, and he sold others, and we indeed proceeded and had the first congress. The first congress – I ended up being the person who was responsible for the program. So I prepared the program for the first congress, and I ended up being responsible for the second congress, and so I was the one who was inviting all of these people and the first congress was quite decisive. It was an important milestone because it, in some ways, put the society on the map, because then people took it more seriously and then… In the first congress I know we had 60 speakers, which was unheard of at the time. And these people came from different universities or whatever. And again, my contribution at the time was an insistence upon English. I said it has to be in English, because until that time it was all in Czech.”
“Many people don’t realize why the SVU actually started and under what conditions. The reason was that at the time, there were lots of political disputes in the Czechoslovak community. And there were numerous organizations and clubs. And the politicians, if they belonged to one particular group; they wouldn’t talk to politicians in another group. They just wouldn’t talk to each other. And it was sometimes quite nasty, you might say. And at this time, the situation in Czechoslovakia was going from bad to worse. So this was the time when the intellectuals of Czech or Slovak descent and Czech or Slovak intellectuals decided ‘Enough! Let’s focus on something positive which unites us instead of dividing us!’ That was the society. We created a society where anybody can talk who wishes and explore different issues and what have you. And from the very beginning, it was meant to be a non-political organization.”
In 1983, Joseph flew to Edmonton, Alberta. Five months later, he moved to Montreal where he began working in construction and development. Joseph’s first visit to New York was in 1985 and he spent a few years traveling between Manhattan and Montreal. He eventually settled in New York where he started his own construction business. Today, his successful company specializes in high-end residential development.
When Joseph first arrived in New York he says that he only knew two other Czech immigrants; however, almost 20 years later, he provided consultation for the renovation of the Bohemian National Hall (BNH) in Manhattan which began his involvement with the Czech community in New York. Joseph is on the board of the American Fund for Czech and Slovak Leadership Studies and the American Friends of the Czech Republic (AFoCR). Currently, he is the president of the Bohemian Benevolent and Literary Association (BBLA), an organization which operates out of and administers Bohemian National Hall and promotes Czech and Slovak culture in New York. Joseph frequently returns to Prague to visit his mother. He lives in Manhattan with Stephanie, his wife of 17 years.
]]>Joseph Balaz was born in Prague in 1960. His father Ladislav worked for the national railway system. Prior to Joseph’s birth, his father was arrested and worked in the uranium mines at Jáchymov for seven years as a result of his being abroad for several years following WWII. Joseph’s mother Milada, who still lives in Prague, was an office manager for a company that manufactured paint. Joseph often went to his mother’s home town in southern Moravia to visit his grandparents and other relatives. He says that immediately following the Warsaw Pact invasion in August 1968, his mother sent Joseph to live with his grandparents for several months, and he went to school while there. Joseph attended the Institute of Technology and then began studying civil engineering at ČVUT (Czech Technical University in Prague). In February 1982, while on a university ski trip in Austria, Joseph and a friend left the group and hitchhiked to Salzburg. When advised, they traveled to West Germany to seek asylum. Joseph stayed in Bonn for one year and a half while being debriefed (as he had been in the Czechoslovak Army before leaving) and waiting for permission to immigrate to Canada.
In 1983, Joseph flew to Edmonton, Alberta. Five months later, he moved to Montreal where he began working in construction and development. Joseph’s first visit to New York was in 1985 and he spent a few years traveling between Manhattan and Montreal. He eventually settled in New York where he started his own construction business. Today, his successful company specializes in high-end residential development.
When Joseph first arrived in New York he says that he only knew two other Czech immigrants; however, almost 20 years later, he provided consultation for the renovation of the Bohemian National Hall (BNH) in Manhattan which began his involvement with the Czech community in New York. Joseph is on the board of the American Fund for Czech and Slovak Leadership Studies and the American Friends of the Czech Republic (AFoCR). Currently, he is the president of the Bohemian Benevolent and Literary Association (BBLA), an organization which operates out of and administers Bohemian National Hall and promotes Czech and Slovak culture in New York. Joseph frequently returns to Prague to visit his mother. He lives in Manhattan with Stephanie, his wife of 17 years.
“Until 1968, there was even a Scout movement throughout the country. It was not an officially sanctioned movement; it was more what people privately would adhere to. I remember that for a couple of years I was a part of this young group – maybe I was a six, seven, eight year old – and we would gather once every two weeks at someone’s house and they would teach us to make knots with rope, and we were recognizing birds. Once a year, during the summer, I would go for about ten days or two weeks to a summer camp that was organized by this group of loosely-connected parents. So I never became a member of the Pioneer movement. I know that in every school across the country, it was mandatory that the kids participated in some of these things, but I don’t remember that much. I know later on, when I was at the Institute of Technology, that there was recruitment for the Communist Party and for the army, obviously, and things like that, but I managed not to participate in these things.”
“In general I was unhappy with the political situation in the country. It obviously bothered me that I couldn’t travel. It bothered me tremendously, even at the technical university, the ridiculousness of the whole setup. Even a simple textbook dealing with concrete and concrete mixtures would start with some proclamation that ‘Comrades in the Soviet Union invented the best mixture’ and nonsense like that. So I felt that it was a sad, strange dictatorship where I lived and I had a keen sense of something out there that fascinated me, and that was the draw. It was definitely this quest for a different life, obviously for some adventure, and also as a young guy you have a certain tolerance to the unknown and the silliness of some of these decisions based on just an emotion or something like that.”
“We managed to take part in this skiing trip to Austria which was organized by this association… sanctioned by the universities. I know that we somehow discovered that this trip to Austria was going to take place in a couple of months, essentially in February [1982], and we were already too late to formally to apply for it. So what we did was we actually took a very individual approach and we started going to all these individual offices that needed to give us an approval. We started with the school; we went to the police and, in my case, the army also. I think that all together we needed close to 12 approvals so that we could participate. Because we were approaching these decision-makers, these bureaucrats, individually, face to face, and obviously we adjusted the truth a little bit, sort of saying that everybody else promised an approval and it’s now just up to you to okay it as well, these people kind of did it, went along with it. Then we were able to go.”
“[My mother] knew that if I had the opportunity that I would leave. She actually supported it and the most traumatic thing was that the day I was leaving I couldn’t tell her. The only member of my family who knew that I was actually leaving was my cousin, who was a buddy and older, and I couldn’t tell my mom; I couldn’t tell anybody. That was most difficult. For me, it was actually quite difficult to leave. The week prior to the trip where I knew I was going to attempt to escape – emotionally, that was the most taxing time frame. What’s interesting is that the friend of mine that I escaped with was extremely upbeat at the time, because he was just planning the trip. He was expecting his wife would join us later on and he was carefree and upbeat, so he helped me tremendously during this time. After we escaped, a couple of weeks later when we were already in Bonn, he was actually down for weeks. Completely devastated, and he was thinking about going back, returning to Czechoslovakia. But at that time, I completely turned around and I was extremely upbeat about the fact that we made it, and it made sense for us to stay. He claims that I helped him, that I kept him there. What’s interesting is that if it didn’t work that way, maybe we would never leave, or he would have returned, or something like that. So it worked out well that we could support each other.”
“I actually wanted to return to Germany, because I spoke German; I was fluent. I didn’t speak English whatsoever. Also, Bonn was this sophisticated, extremely clean, colorful city and Edmonton was this strange outpost. I didn’t want to unpack my suitcase for a couple of months. But then, as it goes, I met some young people and we became friends, and they took me to the Rocky Mountains. And there, somehow, I discovered that this continent has something absolutely magnificent. I mean obviously there are some magnificent areas in Europe as well, and all over the place. I got somehow attached to it and I decided that this continent offers something else as well and I decided to stay.”
“My intent has been not to turn the building into a Czech social club, because I think that’s wrong. It’s sort of enclosing a group of people. On the contrary, I believe that the function of today’s groups, and especially our association and also the cultural center and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, is to showcase Czech culture. Not only the past – I mean, we have to talk about the past because it’s also fascinating – but current, today’s Czech Republic. Democratic Czech Republic. And it cannot be just a showcase for art. It needs to be a showcase for science; also business. So I’m taking a lot of steps to make sure that we have Czech scientific groups or even companies showcasing their things here. So it has to be a platform showcasing Czech things to the U.S., not just New York.”
Eva graduated high school and enrolled in an international program through Comenius University which allowed her to study at affiliate colleges in the United States while traveling back to Slovakia to take exams. While in Richmond, Eva had been given a modeling contract and when she returned to the U.S. she settled in New York to pursue modeling. She also became a project manager and marketing director for a brand of luxury watches. Eva received an MBA from Columbia University. She now owns a branding and licensing firm and does PR consulting for luxury watches and jewelry.
Upon her return to the United States, Eva made friends with a number of fellow Slovak-Americans and émigrés and began organizing small cultural events and get-togethers. One of these events was attended by the newly-appointed Slovak consul general who expressed an interest in collaborating with Eva to formalize these events. She helped to form the non-profit +421 Foundation and is co-president of the organization, whose biggest event is Slovak Fashion Night. Eva says that while Slovakia will always be her home, she is glad to have had opportunities in the United States that have helped shaped who she is. Today, she lives in Los Angeles, California.
]]>Eva Jurinova was born in Žilina in northwestern Slovakia in 1979. Her mother L’udmila is a pediatric neurologist and her father Vladimír is a nuclear physicist who, prior to the Velvet Revolution, worked in the Ministry of Health. He now heads the radiation protection section of the public health authority of Slovakia. Eva started school in Trnava and later moved with her family to Bratislava. She says that her childhood was ‘beautiful’ and ‘pure’ and that she spent a lot of time visiting her grandparents, who lived in more rural parts of the country. She was an active child and participated in sports, dance, and theatre. Eva was ten at the time of Velvet Revolution in November 1989 and says that although her parents’ careers improved, she did not notice any immediate changes. In 1997, Eva spent one year of high school studying abroad in Richmond, Virginia. Upon her return to Slovakia, she made plans to move back to the United States.
Eva graduated high school and enrolled in an international program through Comenius University which allowed her to study at affiliate colleges in the United States while traveling back to Slovakia to take exams. While in Richmond, Eva had been given a modeling contract and when she returned to the U.S. she settled in New York to pursue modeling. She also became a project manager and marketing director for a brand of luxury watches. Eva received an MBA from Columbia University. She now owns a branding and licensing firm and does PR consulting for luxury watches and jewelry.
Upon her return to the United States, Eva made friends with a number of fellow Slovak-Americans and émigrés and began organizing small cultural events and get-togethers. One of these events was attended by the newly-appointed Slovak consul general who expressed an interest in collaborating with Eva to formalize these events. She helped to form the non-profit +421 Foundation and is co-president of the organization, whose biggest event is Slovak Fashion Night. Eva says that while Slovakia will always be her home, she is glad to have had opportunities in the United States that have helped shaped who she is. Today, she lives in Los Angeles, California.
“My grandparents lived in Kysuce and Orava, these two beautiful mountainous regions, so I spent most of my childhood there and the memories are just beautiful because it was the nature, the animals, the kindness and love of my grandparents. And of course my parents, but they were studying and getting their doctorates, so I was spending a lot of time with my grandparents and cousins. Both sets of grandparents had huge yards, animals – chickens, cows, geese, and ducks – so it was very farm-like and I loved it. I learned a lot about plants and animals and people and love.”
Were you allowed to run wild there?
“Oh yeah, of course! And we would go to the forest, mushroom picking, blackberry, blueberry picking. It was wonderful, really.
“Childhood in former Czechoslovakia was so pure. I was not touched by anything I learned later or read in newspapers about oppression during communism. I definitely felt very secure and safe and all those clichés about communism, that everybody is equal and there is no crime. I really felt that. It was a great level of security, and I really enjoyed that and I don’t see that anymore nowadays, I’m sorry to say.”
“Since my parents were scientists, they tried to be neutral. They were raised Catholic and both of my grandparents were active participants in the church, but since they were living in remote parts of Slovakia, it never really had an effect on my parents’ careers, and my parents were always going to church when we went to visit my grandparents; they went to mass and, yet, they had good positions. It never really impacted them. My dad had a leading position at the Ministry of Health; my mom was a very accomplished doctor. Back then, scientists didn’t really make much money and didn’t have recognition in our society, and I remember my parents complaining about that and my mom sometimes feeling like she was a rag that everybody was wiping their feet on. She would make more comments like that, especially dealing with patients who were workers, plumbers, and who were treating her not very nicely. I recall some memories like that.”
So did life for your family change for better after the Revolution?
“Yes, absolutely. My mom opened a private practice and my dad became a board member of all the multinational organizations, from the UN to the World Health Organization. They’d been traveling always because my dad had to travel for work, even before [the Revolution]. The government would send him on certain missions, and my mom would go along with him sometimes; she would get her visa permit. But, of course, after communism collapsed, my parents were taking full advantage of exploring the world and aligning it with their careers.”
Were your parents in the Communist Party?
“Yes they were. Not active participants, but they understood that if they wanted to advance, or even be functional somehow, they had to do that. It somehow worked out. We would still go to church when we went to visit my grandparents, and then they would be part of the Communist Party and somehow they didn’t think much about it. They just did what they had to do to survive and provide a healthy and happy environment for us.”
“It’s all about the people you meet and the activities you put yourself in, and I felt like that was my new home. Yes, I was very lucky. I met some people who are stimulating and a job that was very inspirational. So it was a flow. I didn’t make the cognitive decision ‘I am going to stay here.’ I just stayed because it was a no-brainer. Everything just fell into place, and with Grimoldi, it was a career that just…It was an international firm, so everything happened so fast. We were working with celebrities of the top format so it was just so exciting that one day you wake up and ‘Oh! It’s five years later.’ So it just felt very organic and natural to stay and be here.”
“I had some celebrity friends from Slovakia, so they would come and visit and they were always asking about possibilities of making it here or presenting their works here. So I had a lot of contacts in the music and entertainment industry, so I would try to help them and then through friends – I became friends with a lot of Slovak-Americans and Slovaks living or working in New York, especially – we started organizing little events for my friends coming from Slovakia. And it was very unofficial; it was always just a gathering for the community – the New York friends and the European friends. But then, I think the epiphany came when the first Consul General came to New York – Ivan Surkoš of Slovakia – and the Consulate General was opened, and the Consul General and his wife came to one of these concerts I organized. It was actually for my friend Misha who was a famous singer in Slovakia. And they were like ‘Wow, look at this. It’s so many people and an international crowd. How did you pull this together?’ And that was actually in cooperation with Slovak Info and a friend of mine, Otto Raček, who is also a very active Slovak-American. And the question was how can we institutionalize and enhance these activities? So the question was answered with two possibilities: one is to establish a non-profit organization that would help us obtain funding and would help to really attain volunteers and the whole community of artists and performers and other diplomats who are wanting to be active. And the second was for my ability to become part of a consulate team. So I’ve established, together with the Consul General’s wife, L’ubica, this non-profit organization called the +421 Foundation.”
“We organized many small exhibitions, concerts, book presentations, film festivals that the following year started to grow and they were not so small anymore. So one hundred people that were attending the first year became three to five hundred to fifteen hundred this year. And I do have to depict the biggest – and my favorite program – which is called Slovak Fashion Night.”
That’s the signature event, correct?
“That is. Not only because I used to be in fashion, but because it’s New York. Fashion is the breathing organism of the city, or one of the major industries in the city; and of course it’s very glamorous, models are always very attractive, and we have a very wide scope of guests, so we decided to organize a fashion show. I had to convince the Consul General and the whole team who, at the beginning, was very hesitant to do that, but eventually gave in, and the next thing you know, Slovak Fashion Night becomes a huge event where we get approached by our Austrian colleagues or other European consulates or non-European consulates or other colleagues in the cultural field to co-produce events with them, and it’s very pleasing. Also, since it’s such a popular program, it provides a platform where we can really introduce not just our upcoming and talented fashion designers from Slovakia, but also other performing artists like dancers, singers, photographers, visual artists, moderators. We’ve been able to compile a whole program of different art sections and put it all together and create one huge show that’s definitely, very surprisingly, great.
“It attracts Slovaks living here or other emigrants who have forgotten how Slovakia is and how it’s been growing and evolving, and this is an opportunity for them to come and see, and they’re like ‘Wow, we have all this? This is amazing!’ And I’m very happy to be able to provide this reality check, or this educational aspect in raising awareness about what’s going on in Slovakia and how Slovakia is growing. Also, culture, in my opinion – and this is my little phrase I use every time I promote Slovakia or what we do – culture is the best marketing tool to promote Slovakia as an economic or investment destination, and to help us form mutually beneficial relations, not only in the cultural sphere, but in the economic and beyond as well. So yes, we do invite all of the investors or potential business partners for Slovakia to these beautiful events, and strengthen their relationships. Show them how wonderful we are and what we can do.”
“It’s a constant aspiration of ours, and we do bring in the traditional aspect of Slovakia and all those features that you mentioned – the folklore, the beautiful traditional embroidery, the beautiful music and dances and traditional attires of Slovakia – but that’s not what we want to showcase only because that’s something that’s always been there and we’ve always been showing it in the past. But we bring the old and the new and bridge the modern, evolving, ascending culture and the arts that Slovakia is, as a modern, world-leading country. That we definitely are not stuck in the past or all we have are the wooden dolls and corn dolls and those beautiful, but yet older, traditions. So we bring the old and the new, and our fashion shows have folklore dances or the demonstration and presentation of the embroidery or the traditional costume, and I think it’s just a fun and very innovative way to connect both worlds. I think our guests can relate to that and have been relating to that very well. It’s refreshing, in my opinion.”
“It’s very simple and pure in a sense, because, when I come home to Slovakia, I just feel a sense of belonging. This really deep, gut feeling that that’s my home and that’s where I’m from, and the nature, the feel, the essence, the flair – that’s something that will always be me, my true essence. And when I am in the U.S., especially New York or Los Angeles – I’ve been spending a lot of time in Los Angeles because of my company that’s based there – I feel like this is great, this is where I have my house and my friends, but it’s sort of like a pied-a-terre. It’s not the true house, the true home. So, Slovakia will always be my home, and I hope I will be able to marry someone or find someone who will be either European or Slovakian or somehow will always be able to have that home with me there, too. I don’t have a vision how yet, but I know it’s possible to maybe have an international home, but always be able to spend a certain amount of time there.”
“I think it doesn’t matter whether it’s communism or it’s now or democracy or this era or the other era. It’s about individuality and who we resonate with or what we resonate with, and I as an individual definitely resonated with and found my perfect match in the USA and found my way to create another realization and self-actualization, and that’s what I think is wonderful about the world being open and the world being your oyster. But, my roots will always be in Slovakia and I will always come there and it’s always my home. But America really allowed to become who I am becoming. Who I feel that I can identify with. Who I can understand. And I’m very grateful for that.”
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 Hlas Slovenska [Voice of Slovakia]. 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.
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.
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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 Hlas Slovenska [Voice of Slovakia]. 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.
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.
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”