Karel Ruml
<p>Karel Ruml was born in Prague in 1928 and grew up in the nearby town of Nymburk. His father was a lawyer while his mother stayed at home, raising Karel and his younger sister, Eva. Throughout his childhood, Karel was an active member of the Sea Scouts, which were outlawed in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia during WWII. He and fellow crew members of the homemade boat Vorvaň (meaning ‘sperm whale’ in Czech) began to engage in anti-Nazi resistance, monitoring troop movements on behalf of the local partisans and disarming explosives planted by the Germans in the last days of the War. In 1947, Karel began his studies at Charles University’s Law Faculty in Prague. For reasons of his class background, he was expelled from school in 1949, one year after the Communist coup. He went to work in a knitting factory in the North Moravian town of Frýdek-Místek, where he was approached about becoming a courier of secret documents from the nearby Polish border to Prague. Karel says he was trained by a man called Paul in ways to avoid detection and target shooting.</p><p> </p><p>After about one year in northern Moravia, Karel moved back to Nymburk, but continued to work as a courier, using frequent visits to his uncle in Bohumín as an excuse to travel to the Polish border. In 1951, he received word that other participants in this network had been arrested and that he should escape Czechoslovakia as soon as possible. Through a crewmember of the boat Vorvaň, Karel learned of a plot to hijack a train and drive it over the border into Western Germany.</p><p> </p><p>On September 11, 1951, Karel and a number of other hijackers did successfully tamper with a passenger train’s brakes so that it hurtled across the German border, carrying them and a number of civilians, many of whom chose not to return home. The event was widely reported in the Western media and the locomotive in question was quickly dubbed ‘The Freedom Train.’ Those who escaped on the train spent some time in Valka Lager refugee camp in Bavaria before, in most cases, emigrating to Canada.</p><p> </p><p>Karel settled in Toronto where he lived until 1961, when he moved to California. His work in the insurance industry brought him to Ohio in 1978. After a time spent in Chicago establishing a new insurance company in the mid 1980s, Karel returned to Ohio, where he currently lives with his wife. They have one son. In 2001, Karel published a book about his experience of leaving Czechoslovakia entitled <em>Z deníku vlaku svobody</em> [<em>The Freedom Train Diary</em>].</p><p><a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20170710094631/http://www.meu-nbk.cz/www/index.php?sekce=1&zobraz=cestni-obcane" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">A municipal list of Nymburk’s honorary citizens, in which Karel Ruml is counted (in Czech)</a></p>
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Joseph Masin
<p>Joseph Masin was born in Prague in 1932 and was raised nearby in the Czechoslovak military barracks at Ruzyně, where his father Josef was an army commandant. With the outbreak of WWII, Joseph’s father became a leading figure in an anti-Nazi resistance group called the Tří králové [The Three Kings]; he was arrested in 1941 and executed by the Gestapo one year later. Joseph’s mother, Zdenka, meanwhile, was interned in Terezín concentration camp. Joseph and his brother <a href="/web/20170609145800/http://www.ncsml.org/exhibits/radek-masin/">Radek</a> spent most of the War in the spa town of Poděbrady where, says Joseph, the pair carried out a number of anti-Nazi actions, for which they were decorated by Czechoslovak President Edvard Beneš after the War.</p><p> </p><p><img class="alignright wp-image-3662" src="http://web.archive.org/web/20170609145800im_/http://ncsml.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Handler-141.jpg" alt="Joseph Masin" width="240" height="350" /></p><p>Upon graduation from high school, Joseph found himself unable to pursue his education further. He became a truck driver in Jeseník, North Moravia. During this time, he and his brother Radek headed a small, nameless anti-Communist group. In 1951, the group decided to escape Czechoslovakia and make contact with the American Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) in Berlin; the initial plan was to return to Czechoslovakia and work from inside the country to undermine the Communist regime. The escape, however, was foiled and both Josef and Radek were arrested, with the latter spending two years in prison. Joseph says he was unable to locate his brother during this period. During Radek’s imprisonment, Joseph made plans for a second escape attempt; he and members of his group held up a payroll transport and took hundreds of thousands of Czechoslovak crowns.</p><p> </p><p>Upon Radek’s release in 1953, the brothers set out with three friends to contact the CIC in Berlin. They decided to go through East Germany as the border with West Germany was almost impenetrable by this stage. What was supposed to take around three to four days took one month and saw thousands of East German Volkspolizei [people’s police] mobilized to hunt the group down. The group was involved in a number of shoot-outs and two of its members were captured and later executed.</p><p> </p><p>In Berlin, Joseph and Radek signed up for the U.S. Army. They did not return to Czechoslovakia, as they could not agree with the CIC on terms for doing so. Upon discharge in the 1960s, Joseph settled in Cologne, Germany, and established first a business selling stuffed crocodiles imported from South America and then a flight school at which military pilots retrained for a career in commercial aviation. He subsequently moved back to the United States and today lives in Santa Barbara, California. In 2008, Joseph and his brother Radek were awarded a Prime Minister’s Medal for their actions by former Czech premier Mirek Topolánek.</p><p><a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20170609145800/http://www.gauntletinfo.com/homepage.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Website for ‘Gauntlet’: A book written by Joseph’s daughter Barbara about the Masin Brothers’ escape</a></p>
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Jerri Zbiral
<p>Jerri Zbiral was born in Prague in November 1948. Her mother, Anna, was a survivor of the Lidice tragedy in 1942, which saw one Bohemian village razed by Nazi troops in retaliation for the assassination of Reichsprotektor Reinhard Heydrich. The town’s women were separated from their children and transported to concentration camps, while all of the men were taken to a local farm and shot. Jerri’s mother spent the last three years of WWII in Ravensbrueck concentration camp, while Jerri’s sister Eva was sent to live with an aunt in Germany as part of the Nazi <em>Lebensborn</em> program. Jerri’s mother walked back to Czechoslovakia after the war and was reunited with Jerri’s sister. She subsequently met and married Jaroslav Zbíral.</p><p> </p><p>Following the Communist coup in 1948, pressure mounted on the women who had survived Lidice to come out in favor of the Communist Party, which Jerri’s mother refused to do. Jerri also says her mother faced the jealousy of her peers whose children had not returned from the Nazi camps. In May 1949, the family left Czechoslovakia, crossing the border from southern Bohemia into Germany. They spent one year in Murnau refugee camp before settling in Norway. Jerri says the three years she spent in Norway were extremely happy for her as a child. Her father, Jaroslav, however, did not take to the country, and when his brother in Canada suggested that the family move there he jumped at the chance. The Zbirals moved to Montreal in 1954. Jerri first attended English-language Catholic school and then received her secondary education in French. She came to the United States in 1971 to attend graduate school in Rochester, New York. It was her first job which brought her to Chicago, where she has lived ever since.</p><p> </p><p>In 1982, Jerri started to record the stories of her relatives and others who had survived the Lidice massacre. Ten years later, she created a film, <em>In the Shadow of Memory</em>, about the tragedy and her own relationship to the event. She has spoken with her husband Alan about Lidice on Studs Terkel’s show on WFMT Chicago. An art dealer, Jerri’s firm The Collected Image specializes in Czech photography in particular. As an adult, Jerri converted to Judaism. She became an American citizen in 2000. Jerri has two children.</p>
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Jana Fraňková
<p>Jana Fraňková was born in Prague just after WWII in 1946. Her Slovak-Jewish mother had been in hiding in southern Bohemia during the War, and her cousin (who lived with Jana and her mother) had spent two years in Ravensbrück concentration camp. Jana says that she did not learn of her Jewish heritage until she went to school, as her mother did not bring up the subject. Jana’s mother, who joined the Communist Party, worked in telecommunications for the government. As a result, Jana says that her home had the first television set in the neighborhood. As a young girl, Jana was active in sports and joined a competitive gymnastics club. She attended <em>gymnázium </em>and became interested in philosophy and politics; she began studying philosophy and English literature at Charles University. Jana says that the time of the Prague Spring was very exciting and that she and her friends ‘all believed in it.’ While working as an au pair in Britain during the summer of 1968, Warsaw Pact troops invaded Czechoslovakia. Her mother convinced her to stay in Britain where she landed an interview at Oxford University and was admitted to Saint Hilda’s College. She received permission from the Czechoslovak government to commence studies there, and graduated with a degree in philosophy and English. Jana returned to Czechoslovakia after three years and finished her degree at Charles University.</p><p> </p><p>Upon graduating, Jana says that she had trouble finding employment and worked a series of temporary jobs. She worked for a construction firm for one year under the auspices of starting a company magazine; however, she says that she did very little actual work as she was given the job by a friend and the company did not actually have money for the project. She then found a job at a publishing house translating Czech language books into English. She quit her position when she was offered promotion with the stipulation that she join the Communist Party. With the help of her uncle, Jana began teaching at a language school. She married Jiří Fraňek, a journalist, and had two children, Jakub and Ruth. Jana says that although many of her friends signed Charter 77, she declined because of the effect she believed it would have on her husband’s job. Instead, she helped the cause by translating various documents relating to the Charter into English, including the Charter itself. Jana says that her dissident activities and refusal to join the Communist Party led to conflict with the headmistress of the language school at which she taught. She was questioned by the secret police, and eventually resigned. She then began working as a freelance translator and interpreter. She was in this position during the Velvet Revolution, when both she and her 15 year old son worked as interpreters for foreign journalists. In more recent years, Jana has accompanied Czech politicians such as Václav Havel and Václav Klaus on foreign visits to English-speaking countries, where she has been their interpreter. She lives in Prague.</p>
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Geraldine Kraupner
<p>Geraldine Kraupner was born in Roudnice nad Labem, a small town about 40 miles north of Prague. Her father was a chemist while her mother was a seamstress who worked with her grandmother. Geraldine says it was her intention to attend business school, but that most schools were closed as a result of the Nazi occupation when she was old enough to attend. Instead, Geraldine began working at a Bat’a shoe store in Roudnice. Although she remembers little entertainment being available for young adults during WWII, Geraldine enjoyed going to the movies each week. Terezín concentration camp was not too far from Roudnice and, at the end of the War, Geraldine spent two weeks volunteering there for the Red Cross. She says the experience, especially witnessing the state of the survivors, is “something [she] will never forget.”</p><p> </p><p>In 1949, Geraldine’s future husband, Boris Kraupner, was worried that he would be arrested and crossed the border. A short time later, he arranged for Geraldine to join him in Germany. With the help of a guide, on the night of July 31, 1949, Geraldine and several other people hid in a farmer’s truck and crossed the border near Aš. She and Boris, who married later that year, spent the next seven years in refugee camps in Germany including Ludwigsburg, Bamburg, and Stuttgart. Geraldine recalls keeping up holiday traditions with other Czech families. While in Germany, Geraldine gave birth to two children, a daughter in 1950 and a son in 1953. In 1956, the Kraupners received an affidavit from their sponsors (a family living near Chicago) and they arrived in Evanston, Illinois, in late November. Soon after, the Kraupners moved to Chicago where they stayed for a few years before buying land and building their own house in Round Lake Beach. Boris began working as a mechanical engineer for Sargent & Lundy, an engineering firm that designed power stations, and Geraldine’s first job was packaging note cards in a shop. She held several jobs over the years, including working in a school cafeteria, selling linens at Carson’s, and sorting mail at Sargent & Lundy. Geraldine and Boris had two more children, a son and a daughter.</p><p> </p><p>The Kraupners met other Czech families and joined the Stefanik branch of the Czechoslovak National Council of America. Geraldine says they continued Czech traditions, especially during the holidays, and brought up their children speaking Czech. Geraldine has been back to the Czech Republic several times, and has participated in Sokol slets while there. Today, she lives in Forest Park, Illinois.</p>
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George Grosman
<p>George Grosman was born in Prague in 1953. During WWII, his father, Ladislav, was drafted into the Slovak army and then sent to a forced labor camp because he was Jewish. His mother, Edith, who was also Jewish, spent most of the War in Auschwitz. After the War, George’s parents moved to Prague where Edith worked as a biology researcher and Ladislav found work in the publishing industry as an editor and writer. George’s father became well-known after writing the screenplay for the Oscar-winning film <em>The Shop on Main Street</em> [<em>Obchod na korze</em>]. George has early memories of walking the streets of Prague with his nanny and spending his summers in the country. He attended three different schools in Prague where he enjoyed history, grammar, and the humanities. However, George’s main interests lay in music. At the age of nine, he began learning classical guitar, and one of his teachers introduced him to more popular music. George spent many weekends and summers at Dobříš Castle, which was owned by the Czechoslovak Writers Union of which his father was a member. In 1967, it was there that George joined his first band.</p><p> </p><p><img class="alignright wp-image-3418" src="http://web.archive.org/web/20170609083637im_/http://ncsml.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Handler-14.jpg" alt="George performing" width="500" height="583" /></p><p>After the Warsaw Pact invasion in August 1968, George’s family made plans to leave the country. George himself forged a letter from his grandfather living in Israel requesting that the family come to visit him. They were able to secure exit visas, and left Czechoslovakia on September 3, 1968. After about a month in Vienna, George and his family arrived in Tel Aviv in October 1968. Although at first George had a difficult time adjusting to life in Israel, he says he eventually learned both Hebrew and English, made some good friends, and got involved with local musicians. George studied English literature and linguistics at Bar Ilan University in Tel Aviv and spent a short stint in the Israeli army.</p><p> </p><p>In 1977, George moved to London to continue his education. He was there for three years and remembers it as “the best time of his life.” In 1980, George secured a position as a teaching assistant for Slavic languages at the University of Toronto. He got married and had two daughters, and eventually became involved in the Czech community there, specifically joining Nové Divadlo [New Theatre]. In 1989, he moved to Reykjavík, Iceland, for a few years, and recalls hearing about the Velvet Revolution there, listening to a short-wave radio. George first returned to Czechoslovakia in 1991, and says that he was able to enter the country at the same border crossing he had used to leave 23 years earlier. Today, George is a professional musician. He frequently performs for Czech audiences throughout North America. He splits his time between Toronto, Canada, and Orlando, Florida.</p>
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Gabriel Levicky
<p>Gabriel Levicky was born in Humenné, eastern Slovakia, in 1948. His parents, Hungarian-speaking Slovak Jews, both survived concentration camps during WWII; his mother was in Auschwitz and his father in Sachsenhausen. Gabriel says that they were not forthcoming with their experiences of the Holocaust. Gabriel’s father, a member of the Communist Party, was the director of the <em>Dom kultúry</em> (municipal cultural center) in Humenné. Gabriel says his teenage years were heavily influenced by Western culture, most notably music and literature. He was in a band called The Towers and subscribed to <em>Svetová literatúra</em>, a periodical devoted to world literature. Gabriel’s lifestyle and his involvement in the hippie movement in Czechoslovakia led to conflicts with his father; following his schooling, he left home and traveled around the country.</p><p> </p><p>Gabriel was traveling from Žilina to Humenné when he heard about the Warsaw Pact invasion in August 1968. On arriving in Humenné, he had an altercation with Soviet soldiers; the next day, he participated in protests against the invasion. Soon after the invasion, Gabriel says, a friend warned him that the secret police were looking for him, and he decided to leave the country. Using a friend’s passport, he crossed the border, made his way to Vienna, and then went to Israel. One year later, he returned to Czechoslovakia as part of an amnesty granted to those who left following the invasion in 1968. Gabriel moved to Bratislava and held a series of jobs including editor for the publishing house Obzor, mailman, and technical assistant in an art gallery. He was involved in the underground cultural movement, drew cartoons and wrote poetry.</p><p> </p><p>His anti-establishment activities were noticed by authorities and he says he was constantly harassed and interrogated by the secret police. The situation deteriorated further when he signed Charter 77. He says he decided to leave for a second time in 1979 when the ŠtB asked him for money. Gabriel and a co-worker left the country with little money and no food or water. He says the two-week journey to Italy, which took them through Hungary, Romania, and Yugoslavia, was a ‘miracle,’ as they were helped by several strangers along the way. Gabriel hitchhiked to Rome where he stayed for several months while waiting for papers to immigrate to the United States.</p><p> </p><p>In July 1979, Gabriel arrived in Cleveland, Ohio, where he lived with an aunt for a short time before moving to New York City and then settling in San Francisco. In 1996, Gabriel worked in Prague as deputy editor-in-chief for the Czech newspaper <em>Mosty</em>. When he returned to the U.S., he settled in New York where he still lives today. Gabriel is a translator, tour guide, and cartoonist, and he has published several volumes of poetry.</p>
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Barbara Reinfeld
<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>
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