Dusan Schejbal was born in Prague in 1934. He spent most of his childhood, however, in Moravia – in Brno and then the village of Vranov during WWII. His father, Josef, was an officer in the Czechoslovak Air Force who fled to Britain to become an RAF pilot following the Nazi invasion. Dusan’s mother, Dobruška, meanwhile, was sent to a Nazi internment camp in Svatobořice between 1941 and 1943. Dusan and his mother spent the final years of the War together in Vranov, hiding in the woods, says Dusan, during the last few days of the conflict. They were reunited with Dusan’s father upon liberation in Prague in May 1945.
Dusan’s father had risen to prominence in the RAF during the War, achieving the rank of group captain and receiving an honorary award for his service from King George VI. Upon his return to Czechoslovakia in 1945, he became the commander of České Budějovice airfield. In 1947, he was appointed Czechoslovak military attaché to the United States and moved to Washington, D.C. to serve alongside Ambassador Juraj Slávik. Dusan and his mother followed in 1948.
Following the Communist takeover in 1948, Josef resigned from his post and the family moved to the suburbs of Maryland. Dusan says his father took a job as a gas station attendant, while his mother went to work as a sales lady at Garfinckel’s department store. Dusan attended Northwestern High School in Hyattsville and then the University of Maryland, where he majored in history and studied Russian as a minor. In 1957, Dusan was drafted into the U.S. Army and spent two years in Zweibruecken, Germany. Upon his return, he worked for the IRS and the Navy as a civilian employee. He married in 1962 and has three children. Today, Dusan lives in University Park, Maryland, with his wife, Krista. The pair travel extensively and Dusan says he still audits Russian classes at the University of Maryland.
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Dusan Schejbal was born in Prague in 1934. He spent most of his childhood, however, in Moravia – in Brno and then the village of Vranov during WWII. His father, Josef, was an officer in the Czechoslovak Air Force who fled to Britain to become an RAF pilot following the Nazi invasion. Dusan’s mother, Dobruška, meanwhile, was sent to a Nazi internment camp in Svatobořice between 1941 and 1943. Dusan and his mother spent the final years of the War together in Vranov, hiding in the woods, says Dusan, during the last few days of the conflict. They were reunited with Dusan’s father upon liberation in Prague in May 1945.
Dusan’s father had risen to prominence in the RAF during the War, achieving the rank of group captain and receiving an honorary award for his service from King George VI. Upon his return to Czechoslovakia in 1945, he became the commander of České Budějovice airfield. In 1947, he was appointed Czechoslovak military attaché to the United States and moved to Washington, D.C. to serve alongside Ambassador Juraj Slávik. Dusan and his mother followed in 1948.
Following the Communist takeover in 1948, Josef resigned from his post and the family moved to the suburbs of Maryland. Dusan says his father took a job as a gas station attendant, while his mother went to work as a sales lady at Garfinckel’s department store. Dusan attended Northwestern High School in Hyattsville and then the University of Maryland, where he majored in history and studied Russian as a minor. In 1957, Dusan was drafted into the U.S. Army and spent two years in Zweibruecken, Germany. Upon his return, he worked for the IRS and the Navy as a civilian employee. He married in 1962 and has three children. Today, Dusan lives in University Park, Maryland, with his wife, Krista. The pair travel extensively and Dusan says he still audits Russian classes at the University of Maryland.
“When the Germans came looking for my dad, mother told them that he was on a business trip to Prague and that he was going to return shortly. So for about a week, we had two Gestapo men staying in our apartment 24 hours a day, waiting for my father’s return. We had a large apartment but we had no heat except in the kitchen there was a large belly stove, so we all basically stayed in the kitchen – the Gestapo men, my mom and I, except when we went to bed. Now they really didn’t bother me except one who I think enjoyed seeing me cry, and when I cried, he’d get angry and he threatened to make me kneel on thumb tacks. Now, it wasn’t until my mom died in ’78 that I found through my wife that one of the Gestapo men raped my mother.
“Mother actually pressed charges, and the trail went all the way to court, to the High Court in Vienna, and the man was found guilty. And I believe he was sent to the eastern front. I think it was a very brave thing of mom to do and I was very proud of her because, had she lost, the consequences would have been very dire.”
“I had a lot of bad memories during the War, but I also had some good memories. And my favorite memories were Christmas time in Brno. Before Christmas, there’s a tradition – we call it Mikuláš, anděl a čert, it’s Saint Nick, an angel and a devil [that] come calling on the children. And of course, Saint Nick would be dressed in a priestly robe with a high hat and a staff. The angel would be dressed in white, and the devil was all in black; his face was black and he carried a potato sack or something, and chains. And you could hear him coming because he rattled his chains and made a lot of noise and, of course, that would petrify me! And when they came in the apartment the devil would say ‘Well, I understand you were bad and you’ve got to be punished,’ and sometimes he would pull out a lump of coal or a carrot. And the angel always played interference and said ‘No, no, no, no!’ And Saint Nick would pull out some sweets, bonbons, and all was forgiven and it was good for another year.
“And then the Czechs, the Czechoslovaks – the Christmas Eve meals always consist of, usually consist of fish and potato salad. That was a favorite food on Christmas Eve. And my mother would, a few days before Christmas Eve, she would go and get a, buy a fish, which was a carp. And she had to go early because if you wait too late then there would be nothing left. And she would bring it alive, wrapped in a wet newspaper. Then she would place it in a tub full of water, because there was no refrigeration or anything, and there the fish would stay for several days until Christmas Eve. And that was, I think, my favorite. I watched that fish for I think hours and hours – because it was a big fish, you know, imagine it floating in the tub and I was right next to it. I just loved it!”
“When we arrived in Washington, I remember, I think it was the very first day in Washington, D.C. My father went to work and then it was just my mother, the domestic lady and I in the house and then, all of a sudden, we heard sirens. So we all went down to the basement waiting for the all clear. We were puzzled that Americans still had air raids when the War is long over. Well, after a while, we crept up, because we didn’t get the all clear, but we went up and later we found out that they were the fire engines. I never… in Europe they don’t use [such] sirens.”
“When I arrived, the town was still split in half; there was the Saarland which was controlled by the French and then of course the other side which was controlled by the Americans. The town was like in a little valley and one side there was the Americans and the other side were the Germans, the third side there were the French and the fourth side were the Canadians. And I remember the Canadians… there was an Air Force base. And the Canadians of course had an ice rink there and played hockey, and we would go and watch the hockey games. And the Canadians tend to be quite rough and they would play mostly German teams and the Germans didn’t like that very well! They always would cry ‘Fuj! Fuj!’ when the Canadians played rough.
“When I arrived, my sergeant said ‘Well, you’re the teletype operator’ and I had never seen a teletype in my life. I was taught by I think the WAGs, the women [who] were about in another town called Pirmasens. The other teletypists taught me how to work the teletype. I became quite good at it and I became the operator for the base. That was fun duty, I must say. It was some of the best times of my life. We had quite a lot of money in those days, and after hours we didn’t have that much responsibility once we were on our own and I did a lot of traveling. I made sure… We had a, a friend of mine and I, we owned a ’49 Volkswagen, and we traveled whenever we got a chance. We went through the Alps, we… all the way to Denmark, we had to two big jerry cans in the back full of gasoline (which now that I think about it was rather stupid!) We made it all the way to Denmark never buying gas.”
“I remember dad was telling me one time that he was in the Olympics. I think it was in Amsterdam, before the War, I’m not sure when exactly. I remember he was in five events. I think it was like a military thing, it was horseback riding, pistol shooting, swimming, I imagine running and something else, I don’t know what the events were. But I never sort of paid much attention to it – so I mentioned it to my son-in-law one day and sure enough, he looked it up and gave me the website. I sent… I’m not sure where the headquarters is, but they sent me a lot of information about my dad! Where he placed, how many points he got, they even said that he fell off his horse! So it was just wonderful! I still have it, it was great!”
Frank attended teacher training college in Spišská Kapitula, where he says he received a ‘unique’ education as graduates were trained not only to work as village teachers, but as organists in the local church as well. Frank graduated and became a teacher for a short while, but was taken away from his job in 1938 when he was drafted into the Army. He says that when he reported for duty in Košice, however, he was turned away as no new recruits were being accepted (as this was at the time that the Munich Agreement was signed). He traveled to Bratislava, where he became a student of Slavistics and philosophy at Comenius University. In 1943, Frank was accepted as an exchange student at the University of Padua in Italy. He had a friend who was then the Slovak cultural attaché in Rome and, as WWII progressed, he moved to Venice with his friend and the few remaining representatives of Slovakia in the country. In the last days of the War, Frank moved to Berne, Switzerland, under the protection of the International Labour Organization. By this time, he had already carried out a couple of diplomatic missions and says he worked with the International Red Cross to deliver donated medicines to Terezín concentration camp in Bohemia.
Following WWII, Frank took a job at the Czechoslovak Foreign Ministry in Prague. He says that Foreign Minister Jan Masaryk was a ‘weak man’ and that there was a fear throughout the ministry that Communist Deputy Foreign Minister Vladimír Clementis was aiming to take over the department. Frank remembers employees being ‘tested’ at that time with invites to join the Communist Party and trade unions. In 1947, he was posted to Olso, Norway, on a diplomatic assignment. When the Communist coup happened in February 1948, the Czechoslovak ambassador to Norway resigned but Frank stayed on at the Embassy. He resigned himself in February 1949 when he received an order to return back to Prague.
Frank arrived in the United States on July 10, 1950, as he said staying in Norway would have been ‘too dangerous.’ His first job was as a researcher and analyst at Radio Free Europe in New York City. He moved to the Washington, D.C. area in 1952. The following year, Frank took a job with the CIA which he held until an intelligence leak outed him in 1956. Thereafter, he went to work for Voice of America, where he became a senior editor of the Czech and Slovak service. He retired in 1991. Frank was a member of the Slovak League of America and the First Catholic Slovak Union. He returned to Slovakia to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Matica Slovenska in 1988. Frank lived in Delaplane, Virginia, until his death in November 2011.
]]>Frank Lysy was born in Spišské Vlachy in eastern Slovakia in 1916. His father worked as a maintenance supervisor on the Košice-Bohumín Railway, while his mother stayed at home raising Frank and his six siblings. As a child, Frank was involved in Boy Scouts, and enjoyed playing soccer and skiing. Of his childhood he remembered in particular a visit that Czechoslovak President Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk made to his school on its anniversary, and a fire that caused severe damage to his town when he was around eight years old.
Frank attended teacher training college in Spišská Kapitula, where he says he received a ‘unique’ education as graduates were trained not only to work as village teachers, but as organists in the local church as well. Frank graduated and became a teacher for a short while, but was taken away from his job in 1938 when he was drafted into the Army. He says that when he reported for duty in Košice, however, he was turned away as no new recruits were being accepted (as this was at the time that the Munich Agreement was signed). He traveled to Bratislava, where he became a student of Slavistics and philosophy at Comenius University. In 1943, Frank was accepted as an exchange student at the University of Padua in Italy. He had a friend who was then the Slovak cultural attaché in Rome and, as WWII progressed, he moved to Venice with his friend and the few remaining representatives of Slovakia in the country. In the last days of the War, Frank moved to Berne, Switzerland, under the protection of the International Labour Organization. By this time, he had already carried out a couple of diplomatic missions and says he worked with the International Red Cross to deliver donated medicines to Terezín concentration camp in Bohemia.
Following WWII, Frank took a job at the Czechoslovak Foreign Ministry in Prague. He says that Foreign Minister Jan Masaryk was a ‘weak man’ and that there was a fear throughout the ministry that Communist Deputy Foreign Minister Vladimír Clementis was aiming to take over the department. Frank remembers employees being ‘tested’ at that time with invites to join the Communist Party and trade unions. In 1947, he was posted to Olso, Norway, on a diplomatic assignment. When the Communist coup happened in February 1948, the Czechoslovak ambassador to Norway resigned but Frank stayed on at the Embassy. He resigned himself in February 1949 when he received an order to return back to Prague.
Frank arrived in the United States on July 10, 1950, as he said staying in Norway would have been ‘too dangerous.’ His first job was as a researcher and analyst at Radio Free Europe in New York City. He moved to the Washington, D.C. area in 1952. The following year, Frank took a job with the CIA which he held until an intelligence leak outed him in 1956. Thereafter, he went to work for Voice of America, where he became a senior editor of the Czech and Slovak service. He retired in 1991. Frank was a member of the Slovak League of America and the First Catholic Slovak Union. He returned to Slovakia to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Matica Slovenska in 1988. Frank lived in Delaplane, Virginia, until his death in November 2011.
“The whole town went down in the fire. I remember that very well. I was eight years old and some kids were playing with matches and making… and there was a haystack. The firefighters from the beginning refused to – they said ‘Let it burn to the ground.’ Okay, then a strong wind came and the haystack [blew] from one place to another place. In no time the whole town was on fire, many families were unable to rebuild. Yeah, it was very much so. And our house too went down, but we rebuilt it within one month or something like that. But they had to take a loan from the bank. So it was difficult, it was.”
“We had some Lutheran, evangelical schools and some even Jewish schools. It is interesting that the father of my wife, he was a doctor in Bánovce in Slovakia, he went to Jewish school. I said ‘How is it possible?’ He said ‘Because [the] school was good.’ No religion or something like that. The school was good, his parents sent him over there. So it was kind of tolerance and the difference was that the school cannot finance itself by itself, the local community. So they made a compromise: the state paid the teachers and the community provided the physical needs like a classroom and furniture and stuff – many times with the help of the state. But it was very good cooperation between the state and the church in this sense.”
“Many people don’t realize how free university – Slovak university – was. It was debated in the faculty of philosophy, for instance, against Nazism. In Czech-occupied Bohemia, they abolished, completely closed, all institutes of higher learning because of student demonstration. In Slovakia, students could not only demonstrate but they could openly debate, openly speak against Nazism. I remember well, Germans were coming when Slovakia was declared independent. Okay – independent? Yes, it was in internal matters. The only thing was, you know there were strong German minorities. Even those [who] were not German, but who realized their ancestors were German. And they pushed, and they were ‘fresh’ [Germans]. And we had often conflict. In Bratislava, for instance, on the corner of the street there were collections of money for the war effort of Hitler. So, ‘bitte, eine kleine Spende. Bitte, eine kleine Spende.’ And students [would say] ‘Go and ask Hitler! Go and ask Hitler!’ And things like this. Open conflict.”
“In Plzeň I went to a restaurant to eat. And suddenly in front of me [there’s] one young man in civilian clothes sitting without asking, you know, etiquette or morals – mores. He sat next to me like he wants to eat something so… ‘You came from Switzerland?’ ‘Yes, how do you know?’ ‘Oh, I saw your tags.’ And then he started to talk, and I asked him ‘Are you Slovak?’ ‘Oh yes, of course I am!’ He was speaking Slovak. I said, ‘You are lying, because ‘G’ in Slovak is pronounced a different way!’ G – you know – guttural. And he became bright red, you know, he was embarrassed. And then, ‘And you are a bad spy, because you are red!’ So, it was finished.
“They asked for a permit [to enter the Soviet zone], called the following day, the following day, the following day, no. He said, Prime Minister Fierlinger it was at that time, and Minister Masaryk – both of them intervened for permission [for us] to go through. The Russian general signed all the permits on his desk but yours – so there you are – this was the report of their spy.”
“They wanted to test employees over there. First, they wanted me to join the Communist Party. I said ‘No way!’ Absolutely. Then second was, they tried to… trade union. Zápotocký was president of the odbory – the trade union in Czechoslovakia. It was communist – an arm of the Communist Party. So, every morning I came to my office and on the desk was an application for membership in the trade union. I threw the application into the basket. The following day; the same, a third day, fourth day… I said, ‘Who will win this Cold War?’ They were bringing me every day for one week, and I didn’t react. They found it in the basket. So they stopped, which means you are an enemy of socialism.”
“Eventually the group was dissolved, because the man who was the supervisor one day showed up in Moscow. A double agent. So they had to disperse everybody. Everybody was sent somewhere away, and what happened was that then I could have gone to a foreign country and I said ‘No. I want to raise my family here.’ So I started with Voice of America. In Voice of America I was for 29-30 years.”
After graduating from high school, George began working for Hudson’s Bay Company as a fur trader in northern Canada. He stayed with the company for 20 years and worked his way up through the firm holding numerous positions. He eventually returned to the Hudson’s Bay Company as CEO in 1999 after managing the North American and European arms of the shoe company Bat’a and heading the 1994 Commonwealth Games held in Vancouver. Following the Velvet Revolution in 1989, George’s relatives in Czechoslovakia turned to him for assistance in starting business enterprises of their own. Since then, he has also been contacted by both the Czech and Slovak governments for his business expertise and knowledge of Western markets. In 2005, to celebrate the entry of the Czech Republic into the European Union, George, in conjunction with the Czech Embassy in Canada, organized an exhibit of Czech glass in the Hudson’s Bay Company’s flagship store in Toronto.
George holds Czech and Canadian citizenship and says that there is ‘no downside’ to dual citizenship. He frequently travels to the Czech Republic, for business purposes and to visit family. He raised his two children speaking Czech and passed on to them Czech traditions. Now retired, George sits on several boards and serves as the Honorary Consul General of Thailand in Toronto. He and his wife Linda split their time between Toronto and California.
]]>George Heller was born in Mariánské Lázně, western Bohemia, in 1948. His father Evžen, who was Jewish, left the country for Palestine in 1938 and there joined the Czechoslovak division of the British Army. Following WWII, he returned to Czechoslovakia and settled in Mariánské Lázně, where he met George’s mother Jiřina who was originally from Plzeň. They established a successful bakery, but when their business was threatened with nationalization following the Communist coup, they decided to leave once again. In 1949, the family moved to Israel. When George’s father learned that he was eligible to live in any Commonwealth country due to his service during the War, the Hellers left for Canada and settled in Montreal in 1952. George’s father began working in bakery and soon opened his own business. George recalls a close-knit, thriving Czech community in Montreal, and he and his parents forged lifelong connections with other Czechs in the city. He says that his mother kept a Czech household; she cooked traditional foods and maintained holiday traditions. When George was 14, his father put him to work in the family bakery and he spent much of his free time there.
After graduating from high school, George began working for Hudson’s Bay Company as a fur trader in northern Canada. He stayed with the company for 20 years and worked his way up through the firm holding numerous positions. He eventually returned to the Hudson’s Bay Company as CEO in 1999 after managing the North American and European arms of the shoe company Bat’a and heading the 1994 Commonwealth Games held in Vancouver. Following the Velvet Revolution in 1989, George’s relatives in Czechoslovakia turned to him for assistance in starting business enterprises of their own. Since then, he has also been contacted by both the Czech and Slovak governments for his business expertise and knowledge of Western markets. In 2005, to celebrate the entry of the Czech Republic into the European Union, George, in conjunction with the Czech Embassy in Canada, organized an exhibit of Czech glass in the Hudson’s Bay Company’s flagship store in Toronto.
George holds Czech and Canadian citizenship and says that there is ‘no downside’ to dual citizenship. He frequently travels to the Czech Republic, for business purposes and to visit family. He raised his two children speaking Czech and passed on to them Czech traditions. Now retired, George sits on several boards and serves as the Honorary Consul General of Thailand in Toronto. He and his wife Linda split their time between Toronto and California.
“My father, because he was with the British Army… He didn’t realize it at the time, but anybody who served in the British Army had a right to emigrate to any Commonwealth country. And he learned this after he paid a lot of money to somebody in Canada to sponsor him, and just before we got all the documents, the RCMP [Royal Canadian Mounted Police] picked him up here in Canada and that was the end of that. But at that point we were already in Amsterdam, and while we were in Amsterdam and Paris, trying to get the papers, my father ran into somebody who said ‘I don’t know why you’re doing all this because you actually have a legal right to emigrate to any Commonwealth country.’ So the decision was between Canada and Australia, so we picked up bag and baggage and we flew – I still remember that – we flew from Amsterdam to Iceland, because in those days the jets didn’t go all the way; they had to refuel, and in Iceland, my father bought a polar bear rug. Go figure, right? So from Iceland, we went to Reykjavik, or Thule, I don’t remember which one it was, to Gander, and then Gander to Montreal. So when we landed in Montreal, we had just our suitcases, but a polar bear rug.”
“Growing up in Montreal, there was an enormous Czech community and it was extremely vibrant. Interestingly enough, it was a homogenous group in the way that they interacted with one another, but they were anything but homogenous in terms of where they came from, because there were Czechs, there were Slovaks and there were people from every part of Czechoslovakia. I guess they had a common interest because they all left because it was after the War; there wasn’t much there; a lot of them were displaced. There was every possible type of Czech so there was every religion and whatnot. But when they came to Canada, I guess they found comfort in being together, and that’s not only the Czech community; there was a Polish community, there were a ton of communities, and Montreal was kind of the headquarters for it. It was fascinating that the group of people my parents met up with, not that they knew them in the old country, but that group stayed together for 40 years, and they formed lifetime friendships, to the point that all those people I grew up with are more like aunts and uncles. People who I have zero blood relationship to, but I grew up with their kids… I was telling the story where every Saturday night, they would all take turns hosting a gin rummy card game, and they did it religiously, every Saturday night, for maybe 30 years.”
“My parents, for us to learn English, sent us to the Eastern Townships which is a farming area south of Montreal, and for the whole summer, for three summers, we basically boarded with a farm family. As crazy as that sounds, my parents were brilliant in their own ways. But we didn’t speak a word of English, in the summertime we went, and it was all Czech kids. So there were maybe six or eight of us, and they would take us by bus; it was about a two-hour ride to this farm. We lived in a farmhouse and it had horses and cows and pigs. The English family that had this farm were called the Swans. Their last name was Swan and we called them Auntie Grace and Uncle Frank, and that’s where I learned to speak English – on a farm, south of [Montreal], along with the children of the friends of the family. And that’s where we all learned to speak English.”
“I was fascinated with Indians, couldn’t get enough of the north and whatnot. There was this little ad in the Montreal Gazette that said ‘Wanted: Young men for adventure in Canada’s north.’ It almost had my name on it. So I went and it turned out to be the Hudson’s Bay Company and they were looking for trainees to work in their fur trade. I couldn’t join up fast enough, so I joined the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1966. The first place I went to was in Hudson Bay, in a community on the shores of Hudson Bay, and basically the raison d’être for that post was to buy the furs from the Indians and they would buy their goods from us. And that was the foundation of the Hudson’s Bay Company, and there were 250 stores across northern Canada and we bought furs from the Indians and we had fur auctions houses in the States, in Canada and London. I got to live like people would have lived in the 1600s, 1700s because there was no electricity, and that’s what I wanted; that’s the adventure I wanted. The original thought in joining the Hudson’s Bay Company was that I just wanted the adventure and then I was going to go back to university. Long story short, I loved it and found out that I was really good at trading and stayed with the Hudson’s Bay Company. I joined in ’66 and was there maybe 20 years. I left and did a whole bunch of other stuff, ended up back at Hudson’s Bay Company and ended up being the CEO of the Hudson’s Bay Company.”
“In ’89 when that whole system fell apart, I had relatives who were my age who basically lost a good part of their lives to communism, but now all of the sudden they had somebody who understood business and had access to capital, so I set a lot of my relatives up in business in the late ‘80s, early ‘90s, and I’d go back to help them out. One of my cousins, her and her mother – who was my mother’s first cousin, so she was my second cousin – so the two of them worked in the cafeteria of a major factory outside of Prague, and she could buy the cafeteria because the business was being privatized. So I gave her the capital, she actually bought the cafeteria and there were 1500 workers in this, and the whole cost of buying the cafeteria – it sounds crazy right now – I think was $5,000. So, $5,000 is like nothing, but in ’89, $5,000 was an impossible sum of money for most people in Czechoslovakia. So it was really interesting because I had several of them where for a pittance, they could go into private enterprise.”
“The Czech Republic in the ‘30s was the ninth-largest economy in the world. So the history of capitalism, entrepreneurship, existed in Czechoslovakia, so the heritage was all about industrialization, private enterprise and whatnot. Communism was overlaid on them. They never embraced it, unlike Russia which went from being peasants to communists, so there was no history of industrialism and capitalism. So it was really interesting for me to see that it was literally – and this is what is fascinating to me and should be to the world – is that Czechoslovakia went from communism to capitalism in 12 months. Somebody should actually write a book about it because it was amazing. It was genetically encoded in them to be an industrial nation, capitalist enterprise. The minute they finally got rid of the communists, in 12 months, you could not recognize Prague, you could not recognize Czechoslovakia. Because all they needed was freedom and a little bit of capital. They had it in them. This is why it exploded. If you went to Prague in 1988 and then you went to Prague five years later, it was unrecognizable. I’d go with my wife and the whole of Prague was nothing but old buildings with a whole bunch of scaffolding on them and nobody working on them. Two years after they god rid of the communists, you couldn’t find a more beautiful city than Prague, and it’s only gotten better since then.”
“I have a ton of family there, I visit there all the time, I’ve done business in the Czech Republic, I’m extremely proud to be Czech, but I don’t have any sense that I’m misplaced. I’m not misplaced, I’m a Canadian. I’ve been fortunate in business here in Canada. Very proud of my heritage – in any biography of me or any interview, I always start off by telling people ‘I’m Czechoslovakian, my father was Slovak, my mother was Czech, I was born in Mariánské Lázně,’ so I’m very proud of my background, but that’s different from saying that I feel Czech and not Canadian. I’m a Canadian born in Czechoslovakia; I have a great love and admiration for the country and I’ve worked with the Czech government to help them in terms of trade and export. Canada has been extremely good to a lot of immigrants, certainly the Czech community.”
Juraj Slavik was born in Prague in October 1929, son of the then-minister of the interior, Juraj Slávik. In 1936, Juraj’s father was sent to head the Czechoslovak diplomatic mission in Poland, with whom relations were strained because of both countries’ claims to parts of Upper Silesia. Juraj attended the Lycée Français de Varsovie [the French School in Warsaw] but, in light of heightening tensions, was sent to school in Switzerland just before the outbreak of WWII. After a brief spell in Belgium, Juraj spent the War in Britain, first with his parents in London (where his father was a member of the Czechoslovak government-in-exile) and then as a boarder at Magdalen College School in Oxford and the Czechoslovak State School of Great Britain in Llanwrtyd Wells, Wales.
Juraj returned with his parents to Czechoslovakia in 1945. One year later, however, Juraj’s father was appointed Czechoslovak ambassador to the United States and so the family left for America. Following the Communist coup in Czechoslovakia in 1948, Juraj’s father resigned from his post and the family decided to stay in the United States. Juraj’s siblings Dušan and Taňa remained in Czechoslovakia, where Dušan was subsequently arrested and spent 11 years in jail.
Juraj studied philosophy at Dartmouth College and then volunteered for the draft, serving in the U.S. Army between 1953 and 1956 as a translator debriefing Czech and Slovak refugees after they crossed the border into West Germany. In 1960, Juraj married his wife, Julie Bres Slavik. The couple have two children. After a successful career working for the U.S. government’s cultural exchange Program, Juraj, now retired, devotes much of his time to Slovak and Czech organizations, including Friends of Slovakia and the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences (SVU). In 1990, Juraj returned his father’s ashes to his native Slovakia. He has worked with Slovak and Czech historians to have his father’s letters published. In 2006, a book about Juraj’s father, titled Juraj Slávik Neresnický: od politiky cez diplomaciu po exil 1890-1969, was published in Bratislava by Slovak historian Slavomír Michálek.
Juraj Slavik was born in Prague in October 1929, son of the then-minister of the interior, Juraj Slávik. In 1936, Juraj’s father was sent to head the Czechoslovak diplomatic mission in Poland, with whom relations were strained because of both countries’ claims to parts of Upper Silesia. Juraj attended the Lycée Français de Varsovie [the French School in Warsaw] but, in light of heightening tensions, was sent to school in Switzerland just before the outbreak of WWII. After a brief spell in Belgium, Juraj spent the War in Britain, first with his parents in London (where his father was a member of the Czechoslovak government-in-exile) and then as a boarder at Magdalen College School in Oxford and the Czechoslovak State School of Great Britain in Llanwrtyd Wells, Wales.
Juraj returned with his parents to Czechoslovakia in 1945. One year later, however, Juraj’s father was appointed Czechoslovak ambassador to the United States and so the family left for America. Following the Communist coup in Czechoslovakia in 1948, Juraj’s father resigned from his post and the family decided to stay in the United States. Juraj’s siblings Dušan and Taňa remained in Czechoslovakia, where Dušan was subsequently arrested and spent 11 years in jail.
Juraj studied philosophy at Dartmouth College and then volunteered for the draft, serving in the U.S. Army between 1953 and 1956 as a translator debriefing Czech and Slovak refugees after they crossed the border into West Germany. In 1960, Juraj married his wife, Julie Bres Slavik. The couple have two children. After a successful career working for the U.S. government’s cultural exchange Program, Juraj, now retired, devotes much of his time to Slovak and Czech organizations, including Friends of Slovakia and the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences (SVU). In 1990, Juraj returned his father’s ashes to his native Slovakia. He has worked with Slovak and Czech historians to have his father’s letters published. In 2006, a book about Juraj’s father, titled Juraj Slávik Neresnický: od politiky cez diplomaciu po exil 1890-1969, was published in Bratislava by Slovak historian Slavomír Michálek.
“Being minister of the interior, he was in charge of police issues. And the commissioner of police for Prague was, I don’t remember his title, but it was Doležal. And Doležal came to my father and said that they had a report that there was going to be an attempt to assassinate the president, Masaryk, but that they had no real solid information about it, it was just hearsay. But what should they do? Masaryk was supposed to speak at the Obecní dům in Prague…
“The bottom line was that they decided to flood the place with secret police, or tajní, as they used to call them – mufti – in civilian clothes. And the way they identified where they were was to put potted palms in this meeting hall so, beside every potted palm was a policeman out of uniform. And the guy who came to assassinate Masaryk must have sensed this police presence and decided he wasn’t going to try it, it was too much of a chance… So the president was saved and so this guy, whose name was Gorguloff, a Russian terrorist – today, you would call him a terrorist – decided who was to blame and he said ‘Slávik’s to blame, because he is the head of the police system!’ So he came after my father in Schnirchova – that was the name of the street in Prague.
“And he came to our apartment in Schnirchova on the pretext of presenting a book to my father. And so my father – in those days you didn’t think about these things or security – so he agreed that he would meet. It was easier to meet at the apartment than at the office. So, this man Gorguloff came to the apartment. It was fairly recently after my birth. My mother didn’t know that he had a guest. In the deposition that came out later, he said that he had this book for my father to initial or sign, and under the book he had the pistol. And he was going to wait until my father looked down into the book to sign, and he was going to shoot him. And at that point my mother happened to, not knowing that there was a guest, open the sliding doors, somehow she had me in her arms. The guy took one look at her and ran out. Later he said that he had seen the Madonna – so that became a family joke, because they said ‘Who do you think you are?’ And I said ‘I don’t know!’ The bottom line was that later he settled in France and shot the French president, Paul Doumer.”
“The instructions came from the minister of foreign affairs, Chvalkovský, to the embassy – to the mission, because it was not an embassy, it was the mission, the legation, or whatever its titles were – to turn over the legation to the Germans, since they were now the new Protectorate and they had the right… With the exception, probably, of one individual, the embassy staff said no. It was decided that it would not be turned over. The Poles by this time were beginning to be a little worried. They said, you know, it’s an extra-territorial problem, we really can’t get involved in the middle of this. My father at one point had a phone call, which he says was a muffled voice, which he thought he recognized as being Ambassador von Moltke, who was the German ambassador, who was a good friend.
“The warning was that the German Gestapo had gained keys to the Czechoslovak legation and were coming to take over. Do something about the locks… so they put sand and paper and junk into the locks and so the German keys did not work and the Poles had insisted that the takeover be without violence. So the German Gestapo departed the scene, you know, and left without the embassy. And it was used as a focal point for all the Czechoslovaks who were escaping across the border from Czechoslovakia and Slovakia into Poland and where perhaps the nucleus of this potential legion, which took a while to get approved, and so by the time they were approved, it was too late.”
“Tony Mach packed up some papers of my father’s and took them back to his father’s farm in Volhynia, including a suitcase full of my father’s dressier things like the smoking, the dinner jacket, the white tie, tails, you know – the formal dresses, his decorations, his sashes – you know, ambassadors used to wear these formal decorations. And he took them all to his father and mother’s farm in Volhynia, where he spent the war working in a German factory, going back to his parents on weekends, taking out the clothes, brushing them to get rid of the moths, cleaning them up, and keeping them safe, including the papers. Had the Germans found the papers on that farm, it would have been the death of all of them, I mean, it was just that kind of situation.
“Many years later, my father has just learned that he is going to be ambassador to the United States, and about a day or so later, there was this movement of the Volhynian Czechs – they had been brought back into the German Sudeten areas. And the people in Volhynia were told ‘You can opt, you can stay here and become a citizen of the Soviet Union,’ which was expanding into Poland, ‘or you can go back to Czechoslovakia which is no longer subject to counter-reformation practices.’ So, they opted to go back to Czechoslovakia after 300-odd years of emigration.
“And so Tony… they put everything onto horse carts and ox carts and whatever, and the doorkeeper at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Černín Palace, comes up to my father’s office and says ‘Mr. Minister, umm, there’s a man here with a horse cart, and he says he knows you, he’s got some things of yours.’ And so my father says ‘Oh my God!’ So he goes downstairs and there’s Tony Mach, our butler, with all these things of my father’s! And he had brought them on his way from Poland to wherever they were going in the Sudeten area. And so, of course, the irony of it was that my father’s shape had changed over time. Most of the things didn’t fit anymore. But the papers… so half the papers were saved this way – that’s why my father was able to write his memoirs!”
“Rosslyn House had a phenomenal view of London. So of course we watched the Battle of Britain from our windows, when we were not in the air-raid shelter. Although I tended to sneak out and try and watch, because I could see the fires and the German bombers, you know, illuminated in the searchlights. That was real heady stuff, you know! Later, or actually not later – earlier – there was one day that I remember I was in the garden, and there was this roar, and I looked up and a German Heinkel was coming and I could see the pilot with his goggles and his head, looking out, and he was obviously trying to get his bearings, because I thought he was going to hit the hill, I mean, it was just round… And about 30, no it couldn’t have been 30, about 10 or 15 seconds later, two Spitfires were barreling exactly on the same path! That was all the noise! And of course they started, I could hear them shooting, and eventually there was a plume of smoke, so you know they got him. So this would go on, you know, and it was watching the dog fights during the day, because you were wondering, was it one of ours or one of theirs? You know, they’d come plummeting down with smoke trailing and stuff like that. And that was, as I say, very heady stuff.
“And then going to school was fascinating, because there was a lot of shrapnel on the road, and it was suggested that it would be helpful to collect the shrapnel, so we had bags or buckets or whatever, putting the pieces of shells in to collect so that they could melt it and shoot it back. And the prize collection was always the fuse – the shell fuse, which was the settings for the explosion at a certain altitude – so that was, those were real collector’s items, those you could trade, and so it was great fun collecting. Of course it also meant, because the air-raids would come in the morning, we always hoped it would be in time to slow us down on going to school! Because then we could do the collecting of the shells, the ammunition, the spent shells, the shrapnel and be late at school, so that was a benefit – and do a good deed by turning it in, and then in the evening, we’d spend the night in the shelters, because they would do some bombing at night.”
“There were some cases that were pretty horrendous. I don’t think it’s a classified one – one border guard shot the other border guard who was patrolling with him, they were covering the border security, you know the mined area and stuff like that, the barbed-wire fences and the machine gun sectors and stuff like that. And this guy was on the border, was on a patrol with his buddy, and he shot him in the back, killed him, and then escaped. He said the reason he shot him was it was the only way he could feel secure to effect his own escape; the Czech authorities said he was a murderer and had escaped in order to escape punishment for his crime. Two different stories – one the government’s, one this ordinary border, pohraniční stráž guy’s – we were hard put, because obviously, if it was murder and escape from the penalties of murder, he should be returned. If he had in effect gotten out because he had killed a guy in order to effectuate a successful escape, that was another question. The question of course immediately comes to mind ‘Why didn’t he just knock him in the head and pass him out, and then make his way out?’ The question there was ‘How long would it have taken him to get out?’ He had no way of knowing how long it would take to effect his escape, whether the guy would recover and call the alarm before he could… you know, so there was a real judgment… I had to take him to Frankfurt for a lie-detector test that we did, and the lie-detector operator said ‘I believe his story checks out, his escape rationale, however, I would not like to be his mother and tell him no about having a cookie!’ So, we sort of knew how amoral this individual was.”
“At one point he says he was visited by a couple of secrets, tajní, you know, and they said ‘Would you write a letter to your father to tell him it’s okay to come back to this country?’ You know, ‘Everything will be forgiven’, and Dušan said ‘What do you mean, forgiven?’ And they sort of negotiated this. And he said ‘Look, I can’t see my wife, I can’t see my child, I don’t have anything to read, I can’t write, everything is forbidden. Forget it!’ And they said, ‘Well, if we were to give you some of these benefits, would you consider writing a letter?’ And he said ‘Consider? Of course! Sure!’ And so of course then he did write a letter, and he obviously put in little references which they didn’t like. So they never sent the letter, but they did give him the freedom, and they asked him what did he want to read? And he said ‘I want to read Karl Marx, Das Kapital.’ They said, ‘Why do you want to read that?’ And he says ‘To learn how you think so I know how to fight you!’ So, he said ‘I figured I was in for a beating’, but he said they only tried to do it once. He was big, much bigger than I am, heftier, and he said the interrogator came at him, and he said he took the chair he was sitting on and pinned the guy against the wall and he said ‘You try and do that again and I’ll kill you, I have nothing to lose!’ And they never beat him after that.”
Marek settled in Paris, where he began by working as an au pair. He resumed his psychology studies at Paris X – Nanterre and, in 1986, started working at the legendary Czech exile publication Svědectví [Testimony], run by Pavel Tigrid. He worked at the quarterly as the deputy editor until after the Velvet Revolution. After a couple of years working as a journalist and lecturer in Paris, Marek was invited to join the new Czech Foreign Ministry (following the breakup of Czechoslovakia in 1992). He did and started his diplomatic career on the French desk in Prague. He was subsequently sent to Paris as the deputy chief of mission, and then to Vietnam and Lebanon as ambassador. It was on a posting to the latter that he met his Slovak wife, Lydia, with whom he has two children. Marek was the first ever consul general of the Czech Republic in Chicago between 2005 and 2010.
]]>Marek Skolil was born in Slaný, central Bohemia, in March 1962. His mother, Jaroslava, was a nurse who later worked for the national chain of record stores Supraphon, while his father, Pavel (whom he did not see very often following his parents’ divorce), served in the Czechoslovak Army. Marek started primary school in Slaný before being sent to nearby Kládno to attend a special language school where he learned German, Russian and French. After attending the local secondary school in Slaný, he decided to spend his last year of schooling as a boarder at a school in Žd’ar nad Sazavou, which prepared students to go to university in Moscow. Marek says he had no intention of studying in the USSR, but that this year away from his family did subsequently help him live abroad. In 1980, after being rejected and then accepted in a series of events he refers to as ‘surreal’, Marek began a degree in psychology at Charles University in Prague. He left the country before finishing his studies in June 1983.
Marek settled in Paris, where he began by working as an au pair. He resumed his psychology studies at Paris X – Nanterre and, in 1986, started working at the legendary Czech exile publication Svědectví [Testimony], run by Pavel Tigrid. He worked at the quarterly as the deputy editor until after the Velvet Revolution. After a couple of years working as a journalist and lecturer in Paris, Marek was invited to join the new Czech Foreign Ministry (following the breakup of Czechoslovakia in 1992). He did and started his diplomatic career on the French desk in Prague. He was subsequently sent to Paris as the deputy chief of mission, and then to Vietnam and Lebanon as ambassador. It was on a posting to the latter that he met his Slovak wife, Lydia, with whom he has two children. Marek was the first ever consul general of the Czech Republic in Chicago between 2005 and 2010.
“They wanted to give me more chances in life. People were really… on the one hand, people living in a communist country – or at least in communist Czechoslovakia – were on one hand isolated, they didn’t have access to information and they were definitely not making a lot of money, that’s why they couldn’t travel etc. etc. But on the other hand, education and languages were important, even if they were not very important practically, because you couldn’t travel. It was something that was actually quite wise of my parents to open this gate for me – that was good.”
“I tried to get to Charles University and that was a typical communist-era anecdote. You know, the whole thing was that I was not accepted, although I had all the best scores with the exception of Russian, where I had a slightly… I had a dvojka z ruštiny [a B for Russian]. But still, you couldn’t get into these quotas. And so, funnily enough, I didn’t even… send an appeal – as far as I remember, I didn’t even do this. And that’s actually when I realized that I want to leave the country; if I cannot study, I will leave. But strangely, my stepfather, he met as it happens – there was this school maybe gymnázium, (secondary school), gathering of people. You know, from time to time, they have this anniversary gathering – and there was this guy who must have been a big-shot whatever in the Ministry of the Interior or wherever – something like this – and he said ‘If you want some help just call me.’ So my dad did, and suddenly I received an answer to an appeal that I never posted, that yes, I am accepted to university, which was rather surrealistic; people had already started university, I came a week later. And that’s how I started psychology, but in my head, in a way, this was the breaking experience, I felt like ‘No, I don’t need this, I want to see the other side.’”
“Maybe a year before leaving the country – so when I was 20, 21 – I got baptized at home, at my friend’s home, where we were meeting regularly, reading evangelical, but, you know, very modern guys, like Bonhoeffer and these freedom evangelists – you know, people who were rather avant-garde in terms of their theological thinking.”
Why did you decide to get baptized at that age?
“That was something that, at the time, was very meaningful to me. It was a very rich (and enlightening to me) alternative to the philosophy that was being served to us politically – Marxism, and those things. And as all religion, it was also obviously because there was a community of people who were very interesting and very strong. You know, people with whom I am friends until today.”
“It was tolerated, now of course, when you were… you know, the fact that I got baptized in an apartment – that would be already a big problem for the friend of mine who made the ceremony, and who actually later on became a professor of theology at the Prague faculty etc. That was really forbidden, but for the rest, it was tolerated. Obviously, a lot of people in these circles were people who were also politically active in their position, but it was not necessarily the same thing. Some people were very far… were clearly opponents to the regime, other people, like my father, were actually, you know, in the Party, as many people were, and still going to church, and somehow he could manage…
“You know, small towns were always worse, in Prague you could hide somehow, there was so much going on. In a small town like this of 20,000 people, it was actually a little bit more dangerous or you needed more courage, because everybody knew you and you were going to church. But people were going to church, some people were going to Catholic church, it was not exactly like in Poland, where church was really strong and the regime… These churches – the communists did not like them, but it was okay, at least they knew who they were – these people. And as long as you didn’t cross a certain limit, a certain red line, which was basically to be publishing and spreading information of not just religious, but even religious, it was not encouraged… but that was the line.”
“People were queuing in a queue, as I did, for three days, you know, making shifts – there was this self-organization of the people. You know, you came for two hours, and then you left, and then the day after, you came for another two hours and people were helping themselves in the line like this, because – they knew why – because on the day, D-Day, when the sale was open, even though I was eleventh in the line, after these three days, five minutes before the opening of the store, some people from the store came, opened the door and suddenly, even when you were eleventh in the line, there was not enough seats for me on the trip to, what was it? France or Western Europe, which was supposed to have a number of 14 or something. So clearly, things were going on. So I ended up in the trip to Greece – a wonderful country – and I spent my two weeks there. And what happened was that I sold my record collections, my parents gave me some money; it cost 20,000 crowns, which was a lot of money at the time! A lot of money! So, there were not many 20 year olds, young people, taking this trip. And this didn’t escape the people traveling. You know, on this day I came to the meeting point and they would say ‘Oh yes, there were young people like you last year – they didn’t return!’ And I was like ‘Oh no! That’s not my case!’ And you know, I have my sleeping bag with me – a sleeping bag for a trip in a hotel! You know, there were things…
“And then I was selling these albums, so obviously I had to tell these people, because otherwise they wouldn’t understand why I was selling these albums. So I think I was very lucky, there must have been at least maybe 40-50 people who knew I was emigrating. Nothing ever happened to me; nobody ever denounced me, because there were cases when this happened. People were all ready with their luggage, and two hours – that’s the way they were doing it – they were coming to the house two hours before you were leaving, and they just took your passport and you go nowhere.”
“It just happened that at the time, this was the time that computers were becoming more important, especially, among other things, in the printing business and the publishing business, and they just needed someone in the rédaction to take care, not of IT (I would not be the right person), but someone who could use it – that was the breakthrough, to be able to use it. And it happened to be me – so I started like this: I was actually basically just typing one of Mr Tigrid’s books on the computer – you had people for this at the time – and then from this it moved on and suddenly I was among the inner circle of Svědectví, which was a very small, family owned kind of operation. And this was quite exciting, I was a little bit afraid that it might really affect negatively my family back in Czechoslovakia, but suddenly it happened. And so, after a few years where I was working at the Centre Pompidou, you know, to make my living during my studies, I was offered a job at Svědectví and I took it, and I think I was what you call the deputy editor, or in France they call it secrétaire de rédaction – you know, the guy who is taking care of collecting the manuscripts, keeping to the deadlines and getting the issue together. And I stayed there from 1986, I think, until 1990.”
“Every emigrant, with the time you are [away]… your idea and your image of your homeland – where you are coming from – gets frozen in what you left. Just this very idea that life and changes could continue after you… that there even could be changes, is an abstract thing for you. In your deeper way of thinking, you believe it’s like it was. I mean this was a rather short time, I only left in 1983, we were in 1989, so it was six years, but still, I was not exactly following and realizing that things that were not possible before were [now] possible. But on the other hand, I was actually following Gorbachev and I think I was the only one in the whole editorial committee who probably naively believed that Gorbachev is maybe bringing something… I was not wrong on this, that it was actually opening new opportunities, so it is not that I was totally pessimistic or disconnected, but I was very skeptical specifically about Czechoslovakia.”
“I thought that I would never, ever return to the country unless things changed, and I didn’t believe that they were going to change. It was really like a tabula rasa, which was important, I think. Again, it is something I would recommend to everybody if you jump like this – if you want to really emigrate – I think that’s the mentality. I always believed this; I was not looking specifically to… well, I did have Czech friends, and I worked, actually, with Czechs, which was something, but I was really not looking for it. It was an accident. And this whole time, basically these eight years that I spent in Paris, I was doing my best to become French. I mean, as ridiculous as it might sound or look, that was the philosophy. The philosophy is: you cannot do this halfway. And there is a wisdom in this, the challenge of living a new life wherever in the world is quite huge, and if you stay halfway, I… I always pitied these people who were living in Paris, and actually I had friends like this, and they are friends until today, some of them returned, and I understand them, it’s their point, but in a way I pitied them…
“I don’t like this ambiguity, you know, I think at some point in life you can overcome this and you, you have [your] identity built enough, and it can be a double identity, and then no problem. But, when you struggle for life, and you start a new life, I think it is definitely more conducive to success and to even some kind of logic, to focus on the world where you live and that was my philosophy – I mean, you can do it both ways, all kinds of ways, there is not one way.”
Otomar completed high school in 1949 and says he was lucky to be able to continue his studies in mathematics at Charles University, as many of his classmates were not given that opportunity. Otomar says that his university years passed relatively quietly because he was not politically active. He says he is proud of the fact that he was never asked to join the Communist Party, because officials knew he was a ‘hopeless’ cause. He remembers in particular being sent to a labor camp for one summer while still a student. Upon finishing his degree, Otomar applied for postgraduate studies, but, because of his father’s intelligence background, he was rejected. He was placed as a junior assistant at ČVUT (Czech Technical University in Prague), in the faculty of electrical engineering. Otomar says he was fired about six years later as a result of ‘political changes’ and had a very hard time finding a job, again because of his father’s previous intelligence position. He finally found work at a computer research institute where he and his colleagues were tasked with creating Czech computers. Otomar remembers this being very difficult, as they had little to no access to equipment and scientific knowledge from outside of the country. He was later able to return to research at Charles University, where he received his doctorate in 1963.
Otomar attempted unsuccessfully to leave the country several times, both legally and illegally. He finally had the opportunity in 1966 when he was permitted to accept a job at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland for one year and bring his wife, Olga. Otomar says that he felt obligated to return to Czechoslovakia after the year, but his brother convinced him otherwise. In Cleveland, Otomar and Olga had their son, Michael, and became involved in the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences (SVU). They became American citizens in 1974. Otomar is well known in his field of applied mathematics and was a Humboldt scholar at TU Darmstadt in the mid-1970s. His son Michael speaks Czech, and his wife Olga cooks traditional Czech, Slovak, and Hungarian food. Otomar and Olga frequently visit the Czech Republic and are in regular contact with their families there, thanks to Skype. They live in Fredericksburg, Virginia.
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Otomar Hájek was born in 1930 in Belgrade, Serbia, where his father, František, a military officer and diplomat in the Czechoslovak Armed Forces, was stationed. When his father became head of military intelligence in 1935, Otomar’s family moved back to Prague, but then left again four years later when his father was appointed military attaché to the Netherlands. Following demobilization of the Czechoslovak military, Otomar’s father became an officer in the French Foreign Legion, and the family moved to Algeria. The Hájeks subsequently spent time in Southern France before they were evacuated to London in 1940. After his father died in a car accident in 1941, Otomar’s mother Ružena, despite having no work experience, found a job as a radio announcer at the BBC. During WWII, Otomar attended the Czechoslovak State School of Great Britain. Otomar, his mother, and his brother moved back to Czechoslovakia after the War, and he says they were very happy to be back.
Otomar completed high school in 1949 and says he was lucky to be able to continue his studies in mathematics at Charles University, as many of his classmates were not given that opportunity. Otomar says that his university years passed relatively quietly because he was not politically active. He says he is proud of the fact that he was never asked to join the Communist Party, because officials knew he was a ‘hopeless’ cause. He remembers in particular being sent to a labor camp for one summer while still a student. Upon finishing his degree, Otomar applied for postgraduate studies, but, because of his father’s intelligence background, he was rejected. He was placed as a junior assistant at ČVUT (Czech Technical University in Prague), in the faculty of electrical engineering. Otomar says he was fired about six years later as a result of ‘political changes’ and had a very hard time finding a job, again because of his father’s previous intelligence position. He finally found work at a computer research institute where he and his colleagues were tasked with creating Czech computers. Otomar remembers this being very difficult, as they had little to no access to equipment and scientific knowledge from outside of the country. He was later able to return to research at Charles University, where he received his doctorate in 1963.
Otomar attempted unsuccessfully to leave the country several times, both legally and illegally. He finally had the opportunity in 1966 when he was permitted to accept a job at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland for one year and bring his wife, Olga. Otomar says that he felt obligated to return to Czechoslovakia after the year, but his brother convinced him otherwise. In Cleveland, Otomar and Olga had their son, Michael, and became involved in the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences (SVU). They became American citizens in 1974. Otomar is well known in his field of applied mathematics and was a Humboldt scholar at TU Darmstadt in the mid-1970s. His son Michael speaks Czech, and his wife Olga cooks traditional Czech, Slovak, and Hungarian food. Otomar and Olga frequently visit the Czech Republic and are in regular contact with their families there, thanks to Skype. They live in Fredericksburg, Virginia.
“Things seemed right; not entirely right, but somewhat right. Things were far worse in Poland, where a person who was a Polish politician who lived on our street in London by the name of Mikołajczyk – they settled accounts with him by machine gun. Assassinations and so on. Things in Prague seemed to be ok, but not exactly right. And the bottom dropped out of things completely in February 1948.”
“Things were getting progressively worse at the university. I kept my head down, I did not collaborate with anybody with anything. I was not a member of the quite standard communist youth organization, kept that quiet. They sent me to a labor camp for one summer after the first year at university, where things were bad. Really bad. We were guarded by armed guards, work was very heavy, food was terrible, hygiene was unbelievable – there was an epidemic of typhus and essentially everybody got it. I don’t know why I was sent there. I think it was a sort of general warning, or a matter of principle; ‘Let the guy work his way.’”
“Essentially, immediately after the Communist takeover, we destroyed all our address books and diaries. We started avoiding all people who weren’t extremely close friends, because we would endanger them or they would endanger us once they were arrested. Whoever didn’t do that caused havoc among people. We didn’t read newspapers. We didn’t read magazines because there were very few of them. Books, new ones, weren’t very interesting. We borrowed books, one from the other; these in time became tattered and we still have a couple of those here. Social life was very circumscribed. One did not want to endanger others and be endangered by them. So if someone was your friend, he was really a close friend.”
“We were supposed to come up with Czech computers. We started out about six years behind the world situation, state of knowledge of computer design, manufacturing, and so on, and ended up about thirty years later [behind] because it was so slow. No contact with the outside world; occasionally we got a magazine, a professional magazine. Complete isolation, even from the Russians and the Poles.”
Do you think the nature of coming into a brand new industry, like creating computers allowed for a certain leeway?
“Yes, very much so. Very much so.”
That you didn’t have the bureaucracy that didn’t understand…
“They didn’t understand. There’s a standard story of a minister coming to inspect and learning about semiconductors and saying, ‘Socialist engineering needs conductors. Not semiconductors. Complete conductors.’”
“What was very unpleasant for anyone in the sciences was access to periodical literature. That was almost non-existent. One thing that is curious and somewhat funny – we got Russian books. I soon learned that we had no textbooks and I learned Russian at university, not in high school where I was supposed to learn it. Technically, I was extremely proficient in Russian. The Russians produced a lot of books themselves and sold them extremely cheaply. A poor university student could acquire a reasonable library. There was a shop in almost all larger cities, which on Friday mornings, showed new acquisitions and we rushed there. And they also then started translating American, good American textbooks. So with a couple of years delay, one could see what was happening. But, otherwise, no contact with world science. This probably hurt physicists far more than mathematicians who needed this, and publications, and occasional contact with other colleagues. They [physicists] need labs, apparatus, extremely expensive things. So a number of people who otherwise would have gone into physics and into medicine went into mathematics.”
“Our impression when we first came to the U.S., Olga and me – Olga had not been out of the country before, I had spent the War outside and so on. We felt – we agreed that both of us got this impression individually, not by osmosis – as if we had come home. As if we had come back to pre-War Czechoslovakia or something. People were normal, in a sense. As if we were beginning a normal life again. Our son was born here. He prides himself on being the first American. He was the first one who had a passport. We had re-entry permits and he had a passport.”
So do you think the system was what turned the people into something different?
“Yes. There was social engineering. There was even the phrase ‘an engineer of human souls.’ Definitely. There was an explicit attempt to do that, to change people’s natures, to change the nature of a human family. Not only society and community, but even a family.”