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Peter Demetz
Peter Demetz was born in Prague in 1922. His mother, who was Jewish, was a seamstress and his father (of German ethnicity) worked in a theatre. When Peter was about five years old, he moved to Brno with his parents and lived there for ten years.…
Peter Kubicek
Peter Kubicek was born in Trenčín in northwestern Slovakia in 1930. His father, Andrej, owned a drugstore in town and his mother, Ilka, who was from the Sudeten part of Moravia, often worked there. Peter attended a Jewish school in Trenčín; he says…
Radek Masin
Radek Masin was born in Olomouc, southern Moravia, in 1930. His father, Josef Mašín, was an officer in the Czechoslovak Army who was later executed by the Nazis, while his mother, Zdenka, was a civil engineer, who spent part of WWII in Terezín. Radek…
Thomas Gral
Thomas Gral was born in Nitra, Slovakia, in 1925. His mother, Helena, was a concert pianist who had studied in Vienna and Brno, while his father, Viliam, was a lawyer who attended Charles University. As Nitra was a large town situated close to Vienna…
Thomas Hasler
Thomas Hasler was born in Prague in 1941. His mother, Charlotte Jurdová, was a linguist with a doctorate in philology from Charles University, and his father, Karel Hašler, was a very popular Czech songwriter, actor, director, and playwright who,…
Vera Plesek
Vera Plesek was born in Vrchovina, northern Bohemia, in 1949. Her father, Petr, died when she was four, leaving her mother, Františka, to raise her and her brother on her own. Vera’s mother held strong anti-communist views and because of this, as…
Vlastimil John Surak
Vlastimil Surak was born in 1927 in Brezová pod Bradlom in western Slovakia. His father, Matej, had moved to the United States when he was 15, but returned to Slovakia in 1920 and married his mother, Alžbeta. In 1922, the pair went to the United…
Zdeněk Bažant
Zdeněk Pavel Bažant was born in Prague in 1937. He was raised in Prague, though during WWII he spent a long period in southern Bohemia with his aunt. His father and grandfather were engineering professors ČVUT (Czech Technical University) and his…