Her father quickly found a job working in the Canadair manufacturing plant; later he owned a furniture manufacturing business. Ivana’s mother stayed home and raised Ivana and her three younger siblings, all of whom were born in Canada. Ivana says that her mother spoke less English than the rest of her family and so socialized predominantly in the Czech community where, in particular, she participated in local bazaars. Ivana attended a small private school in Montreal and credits her love of history to one of her high school teachers as well as her birth in Prague, which she calls ‘a very historically valuable city.’ In 1964, she returned to Czechoslovakia for the first time since leaving the country, the first member of her family to do so. She says the trip had a ‘tremendous impact’ on her life, as she reconnected with her relatives and discovered a fascination with Prague.
Ivana studied journalism at Boston University and completed an internship in Rome for the Rome Daily American newspaper during the summer of 1968. Her plans to visit Prague during that time were derailed by the Warsaw Pact invasion on August 21. After her graduation in 1969, Ivana returned to Montreal and began working for theMontreal Gazette where she wrote features and worked on the copy desk. In 1971, Ivana’s mother was killed in a car accident, and she and her siblings moved to Florida to be with their father who had started a business there (and later in Haiti). Ivana worked in a few jobs in Miami, including as an office manager and for Manufacturers Hanover Trust Company. In 1980 she moved to New York City where she stayed on at the bank for a couple of years until she started writing again and found a job as assistant to the editor of Lear’s magazine. After the Velvet Revolution in 1989, Ivana spent several years traveling between New York and Prague while freelancing. She wrote several pieces for the New York Times and the book Praguewalks, published in 1994, which concentrates on the lesser-known attractions of the city. Currently she is under contract to a New York publisher to complete the second half of a social and cultural history of Prague. Ivana is an active member of the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences (SVU) and has, for many years, been involved on the steering committee of the Dvorak American Heritage Association.
]]>Ivana Edwards was born in Prague. Her mother Pavla owned a perfume shop in the city (on Na Příkopě) and her father Eduard (upon arriving in Canada he changed his own name to Samuel and the family name to Edwards) owned a leather manufacturing business. In 1949, Ivana’s father, whom she calls a ‘capitalist at heart,’ decided to leave the country. Ivana’s father falsely claimed Jewish heritage, which allowed him and his family to move to Israel with all their belongings. Ivana attended nursery school in Tel Aviv, where she and her family lived for several months before they received permission to immigrate to Canada. In 1950 Ivana and her parents arrived in Montreal.
Her father quickly found a job working in the Canadair manufacturing plant; later he owned a furniture manufacturing business. Ivana’s mother stayed home and raised Ivana and her three younger siblings, all of whom were born in Canada. Ivana says that her mother spoke less English than the rest of her family and so socialized predominantly in the Czech community where, in particular, she participated in local bazaars. Ivana attended a small private school in Montreal and credits her love of history to one of her high school teachers as well as her birth in Prague, which she calls ‘a very historically valuable city.’ In 1964, she returned to Czechoslovakia for the first time since leaving the country, the first member of her family to do so. She says the trip had a ‘tremendous impact’ on her life, as she reconnected with her relatives and discovered a fascination with Prague.
Ivana studied journalism at Boston University and completed an internship in Rome for the Rome Daily American newspaper during the summer of 1968. Her plans to visit Prague during that time were derailed by the Warsaw Pact invasion on August 21. After her graduation in 1969, Ivana returned to Montreal and began working for theMontreal Gazette where she wrote features and worked on the copy desk. In 1971, Ivana’s mother was killed in a car accident, and she and her siblings moved to Florida to be with their father who had started a business there (and later in Haiti). Ivana worked in a few jobs in Miami, including as an office manager and for Manufacturers Hanover Trust Company. In 1980 she moved to New York City where she stayed on at the bank for a couple of years until she started writing again and found a job as assistant to the editor of Lear’s magazine. After the Velvet Revolution in 1989, Ivana spent several years traveling between New York and Prague while freelancing. She wrote several pieces for the New York Times and the book Praguewalks, published in 1994, which concentrates on the lesser-known attractions of the city. Currently she is under contract to a New York publisher to complete the second half of a social and cultural history of Prague. Ivana is an active member of the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences (SVU) and has, for many years, been involved on the steering committee of the Dvorak American Heritage Association.
“His way out of the city, of the country, in those days, which he embarked on in 1949 when the Communists took over – it was sort of an odd maneuver in some ways, an ironic maneuver. He said he was Jewish, which he wasn’t. He acquired some forged documents and told the authorities that he needed to immigrate to Israel. And this was his way of leaving the country without having to escape or swim across the Vltava [River] or something, with all his property, including the equipment from his workshop which, when we eventually got to Israel, he was able to sell, and so he had a little capital. Actually, his intention wasn’t to immigrate to Israel; it was to immigrate to Canada, but that was his route.”
“The Czech community in Montreal decided to start Saturday morning Czech lessons – Czech classes – at some school, but I wasn’t too interested in going to school on a Saturday morning. I was in school all week. Who wanted to go to school on Saturday morning? I thought that was very bad timing. They should have had it Saturday afternoon or something. So I kind of dropped out very soon which is too bad actually. So I had to learn Czech on my own. I mean, I had to fill in the gaps on my own. The kind of Czech that one needs beyond childish, household Czech.”
“I flew to Prague from London, and I remember having my hair done at a beauty salon in London, because I wanted to look really nice and I had it put up. And there I was met at the airport with this big entourage of grandmothers – they actually got together because I was coming, so that was unusual – and my uncle and I think my cousins were there. And it was very grand. They brought me flowers; it was like visiting royalty or something. So I was so glad I had gone to the hairdresser because I looked very photogenic.”
“It was terribly exciting to be there and to stay in the old apartment. My uncle treated me like a princess. He took me everywhere, and I was just stunned by this beautiful city. I couldn’t believe I was born there. It was so emotional. I guess it was unfamiliar enough that it was new, in a way. But I must have remembered something of it, but I couldn’t tell you what exactly. I do know that it had a tremendous impact on me.
“The city was so old, and the building stones, the buildings, they always sort of spoke to me and they were trying to tell me things about the city and it was so fascinating. I was just transported, in a way, and I wanted to know what it was trying to tell me. It was a great introduction to learning the history, which I proceeded to do by writing about it eventually. It was like a before and after in my life. It was a major milestone for me to go back to Prague. Not just because of the family thing – although that was huge; that was probably half of it – but the other half was being introduced, or reintroduced, to this stunning city where I was born. I had a real connection to that city which was so startling to me.”
“I hadn’t registered with the police. I did the first time. My uncle took me to the police station and we registered, but the second time I think I didn’t. They were furious. The guy at the customs and immigration desk, he treated me like I was a criminal. He was like ‘How dare you defy our laws.’ I don’t remember why we didn’t do it. My uncle, I left him in charge of me because he knew what had to be done. But I was shocked by his treatment of me. It was so uncivil. Here he was, a representative of the government, and he was acting like I was a terrorist or something and he was a prison warden. How dare I defy their rules? I barely got out of there alive, barely got on the plane alive. It made quite an impression, and it sort of illustrated the way communists treated people.”
“Well, because it’s part of my heritage which, to me, has been very important because I was born there and because the city and its history had such a huge impact on me when I first returned there. I was never the same since. I felt like at least part of me belonged somewhere, and I didn’t seem to have those roots in Canada. I didn’t have them. So I realized where my roots really were, and that’s important to me. It may not be important to everybody, but for some reason it was very important to me. Maybe because of my affinity for history and the study of history.”
In 1991, Irena traveled to Austria as an interpreter for friends who were looking for work and was offered a job herself as an au pair. Upon arriving home, she decided not to continue her studies and returned to teaching. Shortly thereafter, Irena moved to Chicago with plans to learn English and see the country. Instead of staying one year as originally planned, Irena found a job in a restaurant and stayed for two years. She returned to the Czech Republic, where she was joined by her American fiancé Kevin. The couple lived in Prague for almost one year, were married in Nymburk, and then moved back to Chicago where Irena decided to return to school. She received an associate’s degree from the College of DuPage, a B.A. in German and Spanish from DePaul University, and an M.A. in Spanish literature from the University of Chicago. Irena credits her husband and her professors for encouraging her in her studies. Irena has been teaching Spanish at the University of Chicago for ten years. She also teaches Czech language classes at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the T.G. Masaryk Czech School in Cicero, Illinois. She currently lives in Chicago.
]]>Irena Cajkova was born in Městec Králové and grew up with her parents and older brother and sister in the town of Nymburk located about 30 miles east of Prague. Irena’s parents both worked for the railroad industry (her father was a railroad engineer and her mother worked in a factory) and, as a result, the family traveled for free and took frequent trips to Bulgaria and other Eastern Bloc countries. Irena recalls listening to Voice of America with her father nightly and being told to keep their activities a secret. She attended a brand-new elementary school in Nymburk and, although she wanted to be a seamstress and attend trade school, her parents sent her to a business high school in nearby Poděbrady where she enjoyed grammar and language classes. After graduating, Irena taught elementary school for one year and then began studying elementary education at Charles University in Prague. Shortly after the start of classes, Irena participated in the student protest on November 17, 1989 that marked the beginning of the Velvet Revolution.
In 1991, Irena traveled to Austria as an interpreter for friends who were looking for work and was offered a job herself as an au pair. Upon arriving home, she decided not to continue her studies and returned to teaching. Shortly thereafter, Irena moved to Chicago with plans to learn English and see the country. Instead of staying one year as originally planned, Irena found a job in a restaurant and stayed for two years. She returned to the Czech Republic, where she was joined by her American fiancé Kevin. The couple lived in Prague for almost one year, were married in Nymburk, and then moved back to Chicago where Irena decided to return to school. She received an associate’s degree from the College of DuPage, a B.A. in German and Spanish from DePaul University, and an M.A. in Spanish literature from the University of Chicago. Irena credits her husband and her professors for encouraging her in her studies. Irena has been teaching Spanish at the University of Chicago for ten years. She also teaches Czech language classes at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the T.G. Masaryk Czech School in Cicero, Illinois. She currently lives in Chicago.
“My parents, my brother, and my sister, we all shared a three plus one apartment. Three plus one meant a kitchen, a living room, and two bedrooms. So, one bedroom for my parents, one bedroom for my sister, my brother, and myself, and I think that is sort of the cause of my enjoying my space and not really being good about sharing my space, because I always had to share it. I actually remember that as a child – this is going to sound ridiculous – but as a child, I actually often played at the toilet, because it was a small room, about one by one square meter, and I would just close the toilet and that was my little desk, and I would draw and do whatever projects there because I think I always felt the need for my own space. So yes, it was a little bit crowded in the apartment, I would say.”
“My father was always very much anti-the regime. He was not in any kind of resistance group; I think it had to do partially because we did live in an insignificant place. But he would always, every evening at 9:00, I remember him tuning to the Voice of America – I think a lot of parents did it, but they wouldn’t tell their kids. I remember since I was very little, and it’s something that I do now value a lot, is that whenever he was listening to Voice of America, he never sent me away from the room. I remember from six or seven years old being told that what they do is not allowed; if I say that my dad listens to this radio station or that he reads the newspapers he reads, that they will get in trouble and I don’t want my parents to get in trouble because I might end up in an orphanage if they would go to jail or something like that. They trained me in what was the official version and then what was the truth. So I think that from very early on, I did learn to read between lines, and I learned not to trust any kind of government, not to trust any kind of institution, always question.”
“Shortly after starting school – maybe a month of classes, a month and a half of classes – I was approached by one of my classmates who sort of knew about or sensed my political views. He said ‘Hey listen, on Friday afternoon, there is going to be this little gathering’ – it was November 17 – ‘there is going to be a gathering of college students on Albertov in Prague and you should come.’ And I came, and I had absolutely no idea that that would be the beginning of the Velvet Revolution. So I was fortunate enough to be there, to gather with everybody, with all the students in Albertov and then just walk down to the National Boulevard [Národni třída] where we were stopped by the police. It was fascinating. Looking back now it was fascinating; I mean, it was kind of freaky being there, but I think even then it was more fascinating than freaky. You just kind of didn’t know what was going on. I went with a friend and then I remember we just separated. Everybody kind of ran for their own life. So I went home that night to Nymburk. I took the train home for the weekend, and when I returned to school on Monday, the student organizers already started the student strike and that’s basically what led to the change of the system. It was nice to be a part of a revolution.”
“I wasn’t really into reading a book, memorizing the information, going to meet with the teacher and being questioned on the information that I read and asked, basically, to repeat that information without being asked about my opinion. We were not trained to have an opinion and that was actually something that was the most difficult aspect when I started studying in the U.S., that all of the sudden they wanted to know what I think, and I struggled with that a little bit. Not because I wouldn’t think, but just because before that nobody wanted to know what I think. Who am I to think something about something? You repeat what the authority says and your opinion in insignificant until, or unless, you become an authority. So that was a big shock and surprise when I started going to school here, but of course, it was also the reason why I enjoyed my studies in this country so much, and why I went on with my associates degree and then bachelors degree and then masters degree and ended up teaching college myself.”
“It was when I decided that I would stay here. Not that I didn’t like working in a restaurant, but I think I was always looking at it as something temporary. I knew that I didn’t want to be a waitress for the rest of my life, so I knew that going to school was the only other way to do something different. Also, to maybe become more American. To fit better in society. To not just be the Czech in America doing Czech things within the Czech community. I guess I wanted to participate more in American society more than the Czech community in America.
“After I married my husband Kevin, he very much encouraged me. He was the one who sent me to school. I didn’t feel ready. I thought my English still wasn’t good enough to go to college and he basically said ‘No, you have to go to college,’ and so I started at the College of DuPage. So after I got an associate degree, I went on to DePaul University to get my B.A. and I thought that’s where I’m ending, but it was the professors that I had at DePaul – with whom I’m actually good friends – my Spanish and German professors, because I did continue with languages, the kind of comments they would write on my papers when they returned the paper graded, they wouldn’t really write comments about the paper, as much as I remember my German teacher, the only comment one time she put on my paper was ‘You have to do a PhD in literature.’ So that was when I started thinking ‘Oh maybe I am actually smart enough to do this.’ I was very insecure. Like I said, college was never a topic of conversation at home. It wasn’t there for me, it was not in the cards. At least that’s how I felt. And it was these professors who made it clear that I do have the intellectual capacity to do this, but who sort of also didn’t really suggest. It wasn’t like ‘Oh, would you like to go to college?’ No, the approach was ‘This is what you are doing. This is what you have to do.’ So, that’s what I did.”
“I enjoy being with the kids. It allows me, in a way, to be a kid myself. Also, the beauty of teaching the Czech language to children who are partially Czech, but they are Americans already. English is their first language; English is the language they think in. Whenever we have a break, they switch to English immediately. That is their natural way of communication. Teaching them the language, not only do I find it extremely important just for the future of these kids, whether they get credit for it when they are in college or just the fact that they can go to the Czech Republic – maybe they can go to college there and they won’t be limited by not knowing the language. Also, just the fact that they can communicate with their grandparents. So I find that very important.
“But also, I think it’s not just that I would be giving something to them, I’m getting a lot back in return. In a way, it makes me appreciate more my culture – the Czech culture. It makes me also perceive the Czech language differently. Sometimes through the errors the children make, you become aware of some subtleties in the language that otherwise you wouldn’t have thought of. So I’m getting a lot back from it, too.”
Ingrid arrived in Chicago in March 1952. She first attended Epiphany Grade School, where she says the nuns were sympathetic and helped her learn English, and then Lourdes High School, where she did well academically. Upon graduation, she started working at Continental Bank downtown and studied accounting at DePaul University at night. She did not finish her degree, but says the accounting classes she took subsequently helped her with her business career. She continued to live with her aunt and uncle and, after years of speaking German in Vienna, re-learned Czech from them at home. Ingrid says she perfected her Czech by going to the cinema to watch old movies with her aunt. In 1963, she married Miroslav Chybik, whom she had known for five years and whom she had originally met at a series of Czech community dances in Chicago. The couple went on to have three daughters.
Ingrid says she became involved in a number of Czech and Slovak cultural groups in Chicago, and remains active in these societies to this day. She was president of the First Czechoslovak Garden Club of America until the end of 2010 and served as a long-term member of the United Moravian Societies. She has taken her children to Vienna and the Czech Republic to meet her relatives on a number of occasions. Today, she lives in Burr Ridge, Illinois, with her Czech-American husband Miroslav, whom she says she feels lucky to have married as he understands her so well.
]]>Ingrid Chybik was born in Brno, Moravia, in 1939. Her mother Hilda stayed at home and raised Ingrid and her younger brother Alfred, while her father (also called Alfred) directed a textile business. During WWII, Ingrid fell ill with diphtheria which, she says, saved both her and her brother, as they were quarantined when the nursery school they normally attended was bombed. Both of Ingrid’s parents were killed during the War and so she and her brother were taken in by relatives living in Novosedlý near Mikulov, southern Moravia. In 1946, Ingrid moved with her brother to Vienna, where the pair stayed with their grandmother. Ingrid spent six years in Vienna until she was sponsored by another aunt and uncle, Bohumil and Erna Hlavac, to come to Chicago. Ingrid says her aunt and uncle had left Czechoslovakia in 1950 when they heard that Bohumil may be arrested on charges of having collaborated with the Nazis during WWII. Such charges, says Ingrid, were ridiculous as her uncle had spent much of the War imprisoned in Mauthausen concentration camp.
Ingrid arrived in Chicago in March 1952. She first attended Epiphany Grade School, where she says the nuns were sympathetic and helped her learn English, and then Lourdes High School, where she did well academically. Upon graduation, she started working at Continental Bank downtown and studied accounting at DePaul University at night. She did not finish her degree, but says the accounting classes she took subsequently helped her with her business career. She continued to live with her aunt and uncle and, after years of speaking German in Vienna, re-learned Czech from them at home. Ingrid says she perfected her Czech by going to the cinema to watch old movies with her aunt. In 1963, she married Miroslav Chybik, whom she had known for five years and whom she had originally met at a series of Czech community dances in Chicago. The couple went on to have three daughters.
Ingrid says she became involved in a number of Czech and Slovak cultural groups in Chicago, and remains active in these societies to this day. She was president of the First Czechoslovak Garden Club of America until the end of 2010 and served as a long-term member of the United Moravian Societies. She has taken her children to Vienna and the Czech Republic to meet her relatives on a number of occasions. Today, she lives in Burr Ridge, Illinois, with her Czech-American husband Miroslav, whom she says she feels lucky to have married as he understands her so well.
“I remember during the War, and I especially remember when I had diphtheria and I was in the hospital, and every time the bombers came they put us under the beds if they did not have the time to take us down to the cellar. So, we sort of escaped the War in that respect, because we were in nursery school, my brother and I, but because I had diphtheria, he was quarantined, so he could not be in school with the other children, and at that time a bomb hit the school building and all the children there did not make it, you know.”
“It was very lonesome, because I had my brother since our parents died, you know, always we were together and I had my girlfriends in Vienna at that point, and when I came here I had to just put everything behind me and… I learned most of my Czech here, because my aunt and uncle spoke Czech amongst themselves and so I learned Czech by being nosy! I wanted to know what was being said.”
“I remember I came at the age of 12 basically by myself; they put me on the ship and, you know, I came on the ship to America. And in New York, a lady was meeting me, and she spoke Czech. But she soon realized that my Czech was not all that good. So then a different lady came to meet up the next day. But you know I thought my aunt and uncle would come to meet me in New York, but I guess financially they could not do it so, I ended up – they sent me to a convent where the sisters were, and you know, all the time I was on the ship coming here I was happy-go-lucky, but when I came to New York, and I expected to be met by my aunt and uncle and they weren’t there, I just – I didn’t let anybody know but – I was so sad, you know? What’s going to happen to me now that I’m here?
“I felt safe enough, but I was just so… You know, you’re 12 years old and you have a sort of a straight plan that this is how it’s going to be. And then you come to New York and, okay, they picked me up here, and then that other lady explained to me that in two-three days I was going to go to Chicago. They bought me new clothes in New York which was very… I was thrilled, because after the War there wasn’t – we didn’t really have anything. So I got a nice new coat, new shoes and a new dress and new this. So I was thrilled to see that but when they put me on the airplane coming to Chicago, that was really, I mean, wow!
“And then I came to Chicago in March, March 3 or 4, 1952; my aunt and uncle were meeting me there so, I had met them in Vienna and I had known them since I was little in Brno. So I knew who they were and all that, so I came here and first thing I was very disappointed because there was dirty snow all over, and I didn’t see any tall buildings in Chicago, because Midway Airport…you don’t see any tall buildings there! So it was totally different from what I expected America to look like.”
“We came to Vienna and we saw the buildings all bombed out, and there were parts of the concrete all hanging there – not concrete, the plaster on the buildings – and it was totally, you know… And at that point we didn’t even know, because we… I was born in ’39 and you know, all I remembered was bombs hitting and Russian soldiers coming by and then the American soldiers came by and you know I just… We didn’t know what it was because nobody explained things to us. We were just in our own little world as long as somebody took care of us. I was six years old when I came to Vienna and then during the next six years I started school and you know… Until I came here and I think then I sort of started realizing more that, okay, this is not how life goes on, you know? That bombs don’t always fall and, you know, I’ve been very fortunate and happy to be here.”
“I think that people are more spread out, because you know before people lived close-by. I belong to the First Czechoslovak Garden Club of America and that was established in 1935, and the last two years I was president of it, but none of those people speak Czech as well as I do. And I’m not the best, but I can communicate in Czech, you know. So, it was really interesting, because whenever there was anybody who needed something translated from English to Czech I could do it.”
Frank Schwelb was born in Prague in 1932. He and his parents, Caroline and Egon, lived in the center of Prague, and Frank remembers the Nazi troops marching through the city. Caroline was a language teacher and translator, and Egon worked as an attorney. In March 1939, shortly after the German occupation, Egon was arrested and sent to Pankrác prison. Frank says that his father’s clients included German anti-Nazi refugees living in Prague and believes that this, along with his Jewish background, led to his arrest. He was released after two months. Following his release, they were able to secure exit visas, and, in August 1939, took a train through Germany and the Netherlands where they boarded a ship to England. Frank says that most of his family who were unable to leave the country, including his mother’s sister, died in concentration camps.
Frank’s family settled in London where he attended several different schools, including the Czechoslovak State School of Great Britain in Wales; he maintains contact with many of his classmates from there. His father became a member of the legal counsel of the Czechoslovak government-in-exile and served in that capacity from 1940 to 1945. Frank says that his parents initially hoped to return to Czechoslovakia following WWII; however, because of his job, his father understood that the country would likely fall under communist rule and decided not to go back. In 1947, Egon was offered the position of the Deputy Director of the UN Human Rights Division; the family moved to New York City to join him several months after he accepted the post. Frank attended Yale University where he played soccer and joined the NAACP. He began Harvard Law School in 1954, but volunteered to serve in the U.S. Army in 1955 to gain military naturalization. He served for two years before returning to Harvard and graduating in 1958. Eager to participate in President John F. Kennedy’s “New Frontier,” Frank began working as a lawyer for the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice in October 1962; his work with voter registration discrimination exposed him to the segregated South. He was named to the Superior Court of the District of Columbia by President Jimmy Carter in 1979, and was later appointed (by President Reagan) to the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, where he served as a Senior Judge.
Frank enjoyed speaking Czech whenever he got the chance, rooted for Slavia Praha (a Czech soccer team) and returned to the Czech Republic many times. He was involved in the Czech and Slovak legal community, meeting with visiting lawyers, judges, and students, and he presented the inaugural Rosa Parks Memorial Lecture (in Czech) at Charles University in Prague. Frank lived with his wife, Taffy, in Washington, D.C., until his death in 2014.
]]>Frank Schwelb was born in Prague in 1932. He and his parents, Caroline and Egon, lived in the center of Prague, and Frank remembers the Nazi troops marching through the city. Caroline was a language teacher and translator, and Egon worked as an attorney. In March 1939, shortly after the German occupation, Egon was arrested and sent to Pankrác prison. Frank says that his father’s clients included German anti-Nazi refugees living in Prague and believes that this, along with his Jewish background, led to his arrest. He was released after two months. Following his release, they were able to secure exit visas, and, in August 1939, took a train through Germany and the Netherlands where they boarded a ship to England. Frank says that most of his family who were unable to leave the country, including his mother’s sister, died in concentration camps.
Frank’s family settled in London where he attended several different schools, including the Czechoslovak State School of Great Britain in Wales; he maintains contact with many of his classmates from there. His father became a member of the legal counsel of the Czechoslovak government-in-exile and served in that capacity from 1940 to 1945. Frank says that his parents initially hoped to return to Czechoslovakia following WWII; however, because of his job, his father understood that the country would likely fall under communist rule and decided not to go back. In 1947, Egon was offered the position of the Deputy Director of the UN Human Rights Division; the family moved to New York City to join him several months after he accepted the post. Frank attended Yale University where he played soccer and joined the NAACP. He began Harvard Law School in 1954, but volunteered to serve in the U.S. Army in 1955 to gain military naturalization. He served for two years before returning to Harvard and graduating in 1958. Eager to participate in President John F. Kennedy’s “New Frontier,” Frank began working as a lawyer for the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice in October 1962; his work with voter registration discrimination exposed him to the segregated South. He was named to the Superior Court of the District of Columbia by President Jimmy Carter in 1979, and was later appointed (by President Reagan) to the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, where he served as a Senior Judge.
Frank enjoyed speaking Czech whenever he got the chance, rooted for Slavia Praha (a Czech soccer team) and returned to the Czech Republic many times. He was involved in the Czech and Slovak legal community, meeting with visiting lawyers, judges, and students, and he presented the inaugural Rosa Parks Memorial Lecture (in Czech) at Charles University in Prague. Frank lived with his wife, Taffy, in Washington, D.C., until his death in 2014.
“This Gestapo guy came and arrested him, and he said to him – my father’s blonde, my mother was dark-haired, but my dad was blonde – and he said to him, ‘You can’t be Jewish.’ And my father said, ‘Yes I am.’ And oddly enough, and this is just one of those crazy things because I’m not one to find redeeming features about Nazis, but apparently, this man developed some sort of respect for my father because of what he said. So then my mother told me many years after the fact, she told me she would go daily up to Pankrác prison to see if she could see him or bring him something or something like that, and I don’t know to what extent she got to see him, but she was talking to the Gestapo guy one time and she said, ‘Would it be possible for me to bring my husband some clothes?’ And as she told it, and my mother was a bit of a raconteur, but as she told it, the man said something like this: ‘Clothes? What are you thinking? You think this is a hotel? I’ve never heard of such a thing! Clothes? If you come tomorrow at 3:00 in the afternoon, I’ll see what I can do for you.’ So apparently there was some little bit of humanity in this guy. And that’s always a story I’ve remembered.”
“I didn’t want anybody to think I was any German-speaking Czechoslovak. Probably more than anybody else I know, I felt that way. It’s kind of strange, because many of the German-speaking Czechoslovaks were Jewish and certainly were not Nazis, but I didn’t want to have anything to do with it. I didn’t want anything to do with it, I wanted to be a Czech Czech. Czechoslovak Czechoslovak. Many of my friends came from German-speaking families, and probably objectively, many people would say I come from a German-speaking family, but I wanted to be a Czechoslovak Czech and that remains. A lot of people with a similar background to mine identify with Israel more than with Czechoslovakia, now it never occurred to me that I was more Israeli than Czechoslovak; I was always more Czechoslovak than Israeli.”
“He made it clear to me that he didn’t want me to grow up in an undemocratic country. That one of the reasons was he didn’t want me to grow up in an undemocratic country. My parents were social democrats and all that. The liberties of the citizen were terribly important to them, as they are to me, which generated the career I chose in this country, and so I was very disappointed [that his family ultimately did not return to Czechoslovakia]. Now my father did go back for a visit, either in late 1945 or early 1946, and he came back desolated, sort of, that it wasn’t the same. There was a strong revenge feeling in Czechoslovakia against the Sudeten Germans, and it’s understandable because many of the Sudeten Germans followed Henlein and Hitler, and the so-called Beneš Decrees removed them collectively, took their homes and removed them collectively. And my father, who had served in President Beneš’ cabinet and who was certainly not sympathetic to Henlein and the Nazis and all that, he said that you cannot have a legal democratic state if you have collective punishment of a group of people without distinguishing individual guilt from individual innocence. And the fact that this was done made him even more distrustful of the possibility of democracy.”
“You know, it was such a terrible thing to happen to my country. I’d always grown up with a memory of the Nazis coming in and killing part of my family and all that, and then we were so looking forward to a peaceful, democratic world after the War was going to be over and we weren’t going to have any, ‘There’ll be bluebirds over/The white cliffs of Dover/Tomorrow just you wait and see/There’ll be love and laughter/And peace ever after/Tomorrow when the world is free’ and what do you get. You get a dictatorial one-party regime coming after two and a half years of quasi-democracy. So I was very devastated as a boy.”
“I was driving along the street and I saw a woman; I was looking for the Harmony community in Free Trade, Mississippi. I saw this woman picking cotton in a cotton field, which is something new to me anyway, but I wanted some directions so I walked up to her and I said, ‘Excuse me, but I wonder if you could tell me how to find…’ and I gave her the address, and she pointed out and whatnot. And I thought, ‘What the heck.’ So I said, ‘Ma’am,’ and I don’t think anybody had ever called her ma’am before, but I said ‘Have you ever tried to register to vote?’ And she looked at me and said, ‘Vote! You isn’t from around here, is you? Vote! Why we can’t vote. That man over there, the owner, he’d skin me alive. My skin is black, and I know my place. Vote! We can’t vote.’ And sort of retreated into the distance. She also mentioned something about a guy being chased; something about a black guy being chased down the street in Carthage by a white gang, and that’s what she said. This was the free world, the lead country in the free world in December of 1962.”
“Oh boy. Well, first of all, I was more concerned in those days as to what it doesn’t mean. And what I’ve told you about Czechoslovakia, it doesn’t mean the Nazis coming in and locking up my father for representing people or for being Jewish. It doesn’t mean the communists coming in there and hanging Mr. Clementis and so on. It doesn’t mean having one party ruling. And it doesn’t mean subjugating people on account of their race or color.”
In December 1956, following the Hungarian Revolution and the subsequent Soviet occupation of the country, Elizabeth decided to leave Hungary. She crossed the border on foot and made her way to a refugee camp in Vienna where she stayed for about one month. She sailed to the United States and arrived in New York in February 1957. After a short stay at Camp Kilmer (a camp for Hungarian refugees in New Brunswick, New Jersey), Elizabeth moved to New York City. She says that although her English language skills were poor, she found a job as a seamstress working for a Viennese woman. While working, Elizabeth was able to attend Columbia University where she received her bachelor’s degree in Germanic language and literature. She later received a master’s degree and doctorate in the same subject from the City University of New York (CUNY). Elizabeth also has a master’s degree in library science from Rutgers University. An expert on Franz Kafka, she taught literature and library courses at City College and the Graduate College of CUNY. She retired as professor emerita from CUNY in 1996 and, in her retirement, has written several books and taken an interest in photography, staging exhibits in the United States and abroad.
Shortly after arriving in the United States, Elizabeth met her husband, Herman Rajec, a Slovak who had immigrated to New York after WWII. The pair became active in the Czechoslovak community in New York, attending dances and events at the Bohemian National Hall. After receiving U.S. citizenship in 1962, Elizabeth returned to Bratislava and Budapest for the first time, and has returned to Europe often to visit family and friends. Today she lives in New York City.
]]>Elizabeth Rajec was born in Bratislava in 1931. She grew up in the center of the city where her parents, Vavrinec and Theresa, owned a tailoring business. She also lived with her two brothers, one sister and grandmother. Due to her diverse background (her four grandparents were Austrian, Slovak, Hungarian and Croat), Elizabeth spoke several languages at home and school. Her family owned a cottage in the outskirts of Bratislava and Elizabeth has fond memories of spending summers there. In 1947, Elizabeth and her family were deported to Hungary following the passage of the Beneš decrees. She calls this event ‘devastating,’ especially for her parents. The family settled in Budapest where Elizabeth graduated from gymnázium and studied Germanic languages and literature at university. After graduating, Elizabeth volunteered to translate for a Slovak folk group that was performing in Budapest. She was then offered a job as a translator and director of cultural affairs for a Czechoslovak cultural organization in Budapest.
In December 1956, following the Hungarian Revolution and the subsequent Soviet occupation of the country, Elizabeth decided to leave Hungary. She crossed the border on foot and made her way to a refugee camp in Vienna where she stayed for about one month. She sailed to the United States and arrived in New York in February 1957. After a short stay at Camp Kilmer (a camp for Hungarian refugees in New Brunswick, New Jersey), Elizabeth moved to New York City. She says that although her English language skills were poor, she found a job as a seamstress working for a Viennese woman. While working, Elizabeth was able to attend Columbia University where she received her bachelor’s degree in Germanic language and literature. She later received a master’s degree and doctorate in the same subject from the City University of New York (CUNY). Elizabeth also has a master’s degree in library science from Rutgers University. An expert on Franz Kafka, she taught literature and library courses at City College and the Graduate College of CUNY. She retired as professor emerita from CUNY in 1996 and, in her retirement, has written several books and taken an interest in photography, staging exhibits in the United States and abroad.
Shortly after arriving in the United States, Elizabeth met her husband, Herman Rajec, a Slovak who had immigrated to New York after WWII. The pair became active in the Czechoslovak community in New York, attending dances and events at the Bohemian National Hall. After receiving U.S. citizenship in 1962, Elizabeth returned to Bratislava and Budapest for the first time, and has returned to Europe often to visit family and friends. Today she lives in New York City.
“I have the best memories. I had a very good childhood. We were kind of middle-class-ish; we had a summer house on the outskirts of Bratislava. In the city we had a three-story building where my family lived too – my grandma lived there, my aunt lived there. I was very, very wanted; I was the [youngest sic] girl after little Theresa died, so I have the best memories. I had excellent school friends. I can say only the very best. A lovely childhood ruined, of course, after 1938 because of the War. Then everything went down.”
What happened?
“For instance, my father was a tailor and he had sometimes even 30 or 40 employees. It was a big enterprise, and lot of the Jewish customers no longer were able to order or came, so that he lost his better lady customers. Because of that, then we moved to a smaller place. The War years were not easy on anybody.”
“The Germans started to collect any male they could at the very end – and I’m talking here about the end of March and beginning of April 1945; Bratislava was liberated on April 4 – and when my father heard that, and since my brothers were 17 and 18 at that time, in other words, in a very dangerous age group, he wanted to run with them to our summer house and hide there. They were trying to go through the front line where the Russians and Germans were fighting before it closed and they never made it because the Russians came closer and closer. So they made it back to Marianska Street where we lived just in the nick of time. Maybe an hour later Bratislava was occupied by Russians and liberated. Many times we had Russian generals and soldiers sleep in our house. The police came around and asked for people to accommodate, and we had excellent relationships with them, speaking the Russian language too.”
So the Russians were good guys.
“Very. Very welcome, very wanted. For us they were really our liberators.”
“My first kindergarten schooling was in the Czech language because we lived in Grösslingová and that was quite a famous city [school] where better middle-class people had their children. This was still under the Czechoslovak Republic when I was born, so my first education was really in the Czech language. Then came the decision to put me in the Ursuline convent school, which was supposedly the best and there we had Hungarian and Slovak mixed education. After that, by 1941-ish, I was enrolled in the German gymnázium, which of course I couldn’t finish. I was 16 [when deported] and not yet ready and I eventually made my maturita examination and finished my gymnázium education in Budapest. So I was raised in four languages. We always spoke all languages at the dinner table. Everybody could say it in the best way he wanted to, so it was an international polyglot family dinner every night.”
“I left after the Hungarian Revolution and my last day in Hungary was three days before Christmas. My escaping is a very interesting story and luckily, again, I had a good star above me helping me. The railroad people were very kind to us and helped us [know] when to escape and how to escape the last part on foot, because by that time Soviet tanks were already coming on the hour, by the hour and we had a very short time to cross the border. It was very risky. A lot of people died and if we would have been caught, we would have been sent to prison, so that was very difficult. The actual three hours that I needed to cross the border was a very stormy, snowy night and I helped a family with a baby and we most likely walked around in circles. We didn’t know where to go because we couldn’t see in front of our nose; the snow was falling and windy and bad. But here I am and I made it.”
“Since my father was a tailor, I had a fashion school degree and I knew a lot about fashion. So I went to the unemployment office here in New York and said that I would like to find a job in the fashion industry, and it happened to be that a company called Johanna Frankfurter was looking for somebody to help. When I went to introduce myself, it turned out to be a lovely lady from Vienna and, since I spoke German and lived in Vienna for a short while, we fell in love and she immediately hired me. All she is asked is ‘Do you know how to make buttonholes?’ and I said ‘Of course I know,’ because there are three types of buttonholes. For those who are not familiar with the fashion industry, you can make them with fabric, you make them as embroidery and you can even match when you have square fabrics and patterns. My father taught me so I knew a lot and the only problem I had when I asked for the job and introduced myself was when she said ‘Make it three-quarters of an inch’ as a sample, and I had no idea what three-quarters of an inch was because I was raised with centimeters. I did not dare to give it away that I didn’t know, so I thought ‘It cannot be that small like on a shirt; it cannot be as big as on a coat; it must be the in-between like on a jacket or something,’ and I made exactly a three-quarters of an inch buttonhole without knowing. So they came and measured it and said ‘Perfect.’ Then I gave it away and said ‘Sorry if I did not match it exactly, because I have no idea what an inch is.’
“With that, I just indicated I was very ignorant and uneducated for the American system; however, I knew more than anybody else there. They discovered that I knew how to handle velvet, I knew how to handle specials silks, knew how to make patterns, how to cut. So in no time I became almost like the leader at the company which was excellent. The relationship was so good with Mrs. Frankfurter; she became like my mother and I became like her daughter. The other thing was that she let me go and study. I said ‘My goal is that I want to continue and I want to finish and I want to end up with a PhD.’ So she helped me and I could go away anytime I wanted to. For instance, we made fashion shows at the Plaza Hotel, among others, and the wedding dresses, always the biggest job, was always me. And I went there Saturdays and Sundays and I worked on my own to make sure I finished everything. So our relationship was excellent, which gave me an excellent salary that I could pay for Columbia – I didn’t ever have a loan – and could support my parents in Hungary.”
“I felt a little disturbed by that. The reason is I was born in Czechoslovakia, so my childhood, my education, my upbringing was always in the Czechoslovak spirit, the Czechoslovak Republic. Then when Slovakia was first created, that was during the fascist period and that was something negative rather than positive. Then after 1945 when Czechoslovakia was combined again, we were euphoric, we were happy. Then came the communist takeover and the whole change, so it’s almost like a roller coaster you go and experience. Now when I go back – the latest was a year ago, to Prague – I think that it was a good decision. That the two have different backgrounds, and I’m talking economic backgrounds. The Czech Republic region was always more industrial and more advanced and the Slovak [region] was more agrarian, so to speak. They always supplied. I was told all the eggs and all the bread always came from Slovakia. True or not true, I do not know. But today Slovakia has a chance to become more industrialized – Volkswagen apparently has a company there and other American steel industries created companies in Slovakia, so they have a chance to grow on their own.”
In April 1949, Eda’s future wife Alice (whom he had met in Prague while she was at business school) escaped from Czechoslovakia. He spent the next several months attempting to join her. On October 14, Eda crossed the border into Germany with 12 other people. He was sent to Ludwigsburg refugee camp where he was reunited with Alice. They soon married and had their first child, Alice. In early 1951, Eda joined the ranks of Radio Free Europe as a writer on the Czechoslovak desk and moved to Munich. In June 1952, the Vedrals received visas for the United States and arrived in Chicago. Eda says that they were helped by the Czech community there and he quickly found a job in a steel factory, which only lasted a short time. He then started working on the assembly line at Hotpoint, making washing machines and dryers. The Vedrals moved to Cicero, Illinois, and Eda and Alice had seven more children. Eda says that he made a point to speak to his children only in Czech; today, most of them still speak the language fluently. Eda also became very active in expatriate tramping circles. He has been the ‘sheriff’ of a group called Dálava for many years and has traveled to places like Canada, the Czech Republic, and the American West for tramping get-togethers.
Eda became an American citizen in 1965; he says that he waited so long because he believed he would be returning to Czechoslovakia to live. In 1972, he made his first trip back to visit his mother in Písek. His father, whom Eda had not seen since he left the country, died shortly before his visit. Eda says he feels at home in both countries and, if not for his children living in the United States, would consider returning to the Czech Republic to live. Now retired, he lives in Cicero with his wife Alice.
]]>Eda Vedral was born in České Budějovice in 1927. His mother, Ludmila, was a teacher and his father, also named Eduard, was a journalist. When Eda was six, the Vedrals moved to Mladá Boleslav where his father worked as writer and editor for the local newspaper. Eda says that the year before he graduated from gymnázium, his class was sent to dig trenches for the German war effort. Since Eda had knee problems, he was sent back to Mladá Boleslav and became a firefighter to provide assistance in case of a bombing. At the end of WWII and in light of his training as a fireman, Eda took part in watching over and transporting Nazi prisoners. In the summer of 1945, Eda’s father again changed jobs and became a political writer for a newspaper in Liberec. Eda graduated from gymnázium there in 1946 and began studying journalism at Charles University in Prague. After the Communist coup in 1948, Eda switched his course of studies to law; he says he was eventually kicked out of university in 1949 because of his father’s political background. Back in Liberec, his uncle helped him to find a job as an accountant in a factory. He was fired three months later, but soon became an accountant for Liberec’s municipal services [komunální služby města Liberec].
In April 1949, Eda’s future wife Alice (whom he had met in Prague while she was at business school) escaped from Czechoslovakia. He spent the next several months attempting to join her. On October 14, Eda crossed the border into Germany with 12 other people. He was sent to Ludwigsburg refugee camp where he was reunited with Alice. They soon married and had their first child, Alice. In early 1951, Eda joined the ranks of Radio Free Europe as a writer on the Czechoslovak desk and moved to Munich. In June 1952, the Vedrals received visas for the United States and arrived in Chicago. Eda says that they were helped by the Czech community there and he quickly found a job in a steel factory, which only lasted a short time. He then started working on the assembly line at Hotpoint, making washing machines and dryers. The Vedrals moved to Cicero, Illinois, and Eda and Alice had seven more children. Eda says that he made a point to speak to his children only in Czech; today, most of them still speak the language fluently. Eda also became very active in expatriate tramping circles. He has been the ‘sheriff’ of a group called Dálava for many years and has traveled to places like Canada, the Czech Republic, and the American West for tramping get-togethers.
Eda became an American citizen in 1965; he says that he waited so long because he believed he would be returning to Czechoslovakia to live. In 1972, he made his first trip back to visit his mother in Písek. His father, whom Eda had not seen since he left the country, died shortly before his visit. Eda says he feels at home in both countries and, if not for his children living in the United States, would consider returning to the Czech Republic to live. Now retired, he lives in Cicero with his wife Alice.
“I remember that, yes, for sure. We remember the Nazi occupation for sure. Even as kids, we know how the situation is, we understand it. Even if we were young kids, it didn’t bother us much, but we knew it was a really serious thing, especially after the Heydrich assassination and so on. ‘Keep your mouth shut and be careful.’”
“The end of the War came, so we, who were working for the firefighters, we got this stuff [weapons], and we started taking the Germans together, something like that, so I had a machine gun.”
So, were you rounding up Germans at the end of the War?
“Well, they wanted some of those prisoners, they have to move them to other cities for example. So we have to accompany them, watch them, or watch them at the barracks in Mladá Boleslav, so that’s why we had to have guns. And I had it at home, and my brother almost killed me.”
Did you use this gun? Were you shooting people?
“Well, I started to. Once, one of the prisoners tried to escape and I saw him. Now, you are a young man, you never had something, and he’s an old soldier, he knows what to do. I didn’t shoot him, exactly, I shot over his head. It was nothing funny, I tell you. Now I make a little fun out of it, but at that time it was nothing funny.”
“Some of those people [from RFE] went through those camps, Czech camps, looking for editor-writers and so on. I had luck – it was luck – they thought I was my father, because [we have the] same name, and the guy was from Mladá Boleslav, he knew my father. He knew me personally, so he said ‘Hey, this is it.’ He said ‘You have to go to Munich and have an interview.’ So I went over there, I interviewed in English, he spoke a little bit of Czech, this English guy. ‘Ok, dobrý.’
“I was an editor-writer for announcements in between [pieces], continuity. You have to find out what the guy wrote about, say it in two sentences, and they put it between programming. So the people in Czech Republic will know ‘Hey, tomorrow will be this,’ because they don’t want to listen to it eight hours a day; it’s dangerous. But if you are interested in this program – that was my job, to tell them what the program practically is.”
“Tramps are practically wild Scouts. The Scouting organization is organized. Tramps, not. Everybody knows about everybody or what’s going on, but you have no organization. That’s why the Nazis and Communists could ruin up Scouts or other organizations, but they couldn’t ruin up tramping. So most people going with the tramps enjoyed themselves or covered what they were doing, because nobody could catch them, even the Communists. And when they sometimes went over there and beat the people, they wondered ‘How come there are so many people here? How come you know there’s something here?’ Nobody had to send anything because everybody knew from Czechoslovakia, from the First Republic, every Sunday, every second Sunday in April, we’re going there. But otherwise, it’s like Scouting. But it’s wild because there’s no organization. You can change it, you can switch it, you can close it up, you can start a new one. There can be one man, there can be two, there can be thirty. Nothing’s written either. But you love nature. The real tramps, they really love nature and enjoy it. And clean up after themselves.”
(Video courtesy of Studio Na Koleni, Chicago)