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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans
Subject
The topic of the resource
Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans was an oral history project launched by the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library in 2009. The project captured and preserved the stories of Czechs and Slovaks who left their homeland during the Cold War and settled in New York City, Washington, D.C., Cleveland, Chicago and the San Francisco Bay Area. During the second phase of the project, the NCSML recorded the stories of immigrants who came to the United States after the fall of communism in 1989 as well. By the conclusion of the project in August 2013, the NCSML had collected more than 300 oral histories. <br /><br />Both phases of the project were made possible by grants from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. <br /><br />On the project’s website, you can read biographies of Czechs and Slovaks who began a new life in the United States, watch video clips from their interviews, and view photos and other archival materials they shared with us. <br /><br />Full length interviews are available for further research at the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library. For more information, contact Dave Muhlena, Library Director, at dmuhlena@ncsml.org.
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
<h4>Life of a Miner</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/cUOpasPKCNA?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“I guess it was a hard job, but as a foreman, not as hard as the ones that were doing the physical labor. Uranium is a very bad material, so a lot of those guys would get cancer really young. They would make good money. Those dudes, I remember them. They would make so much money, they would make a lot more than some doctors and stuff, but they would die young and they would spend it out, just partying, drinking. I remember that.”</p><h4>Refugee Camp</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/AvfdMFfaCEA?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“There were a lot of Czechs, a lot of Slovaks, a lot of Romanians. The camp wasn’t too bad. We were one of the luckier ones – we had a small cottage. They even had hot showers there. A lot of other people weren’t as lucky. They slept in a tent and had to use public showers which they had there. The food was horrible, I mean horrible. They would make chicken and cabbage every day. I love chicken, but after the camp I couldn’t eat it for a couple years; I couldn’t eat chicken for a few years. I had a good time. I would go to the flea market over there, sell whatever I could sell to get my own spending money. You know, when you’re 17 you need some money.”</p><h4>Return Home?</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/SpgYNxF3NYc?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Back then, yeah I did think about it, but it was different. I was thinking, if I go back now, what’s going to happen to me? I didn’t see anything good happening to me if I would do that. My father wanted me to do that, because he missed me. He missed us all, must have been very hard for him. But I was thinking, if I go back over there, I’d be doomed. I’d be lucky if I got to finish school, the trade school, and then it would just be bad all around. Plus, I would have to go into the army. I would have a scar on my record already, I think it would be pretty difficult. But I did think about it, yes. I did miss my country and my friends.”</p><h4>1st Return</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/puZTRJ6tuFs?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“My first trip [back] to Czechoslovakia was in 1989 and I stayed there for New Years in 1990, so it was very fresh what just happened there. And I still had to go through that stuff. I had to register at the police station, I had to exchange a certain amount of money every day as an American tourist. Although it wasn’t communist any more, it was still the old rules over there. There was a lot of confusion there I guess. What I remember though, with a few dollars in my pocket I was like a king over there. It’s not like that anymore, but you could get a lot back then. It was amazing, it was really was. You could treat like 10 people for 20 dollars. They all got fed and they could drink, and it would cost you nothing.”</p><h4>Cicero Changes</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/JLpKHPMkE00?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“The whole neighborhood changed. It used to be all Czech over here. I remember we’d drive down Cermak Avenue and there would be Czech butcher shops, a bakery, other restaurants, Czech bars, even Polish places. And now you drive down Cermak Avenue and pretty much it’s all Spanish. This [Klas Czech Restaurant] is the last Mohican on Cermak Road. I love this place, it’s very unique.”</p>
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Alex Vesely
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Alex Vesely was born in Příbram, central Bohemia in 1966. His father was a foreman in a mine and his mother worked an office job. He remembers having a happy childhood, with his grandparents visiting often and spending vacations in a houseboat on the Vltava River. Alex and his brother and sister grew up in an apartment in town, but later moved to a house that his father had built a few miles away in the country. He attended trade school where he studied electronics, but left for the United States before finishing his studies.</p><p> </p><p>In 1983, Alex’s mother decided to emigrate with her children and second husband. They escaped while on vacation in Yugoslavia and stayed in a refugee camp in Belgrade for several months before flying to the United States. Alex’s family arrived in Chicago in November 1983, having chosen that city because their sponsors, Alex’s stepfather’s parents, lived there. They were met at the airport by Judy Baar Topinka, a local politician of Czech and Slovak heritage, and settled in Riverside, Illinois. Alex completed his schooling in Chicago, where he took English classes; his new friends also helped him to master the language. He returned to Czechoslovakia for the first time at the end of 1989 – right after the fall of communism. Alex says at this time, the country was in a state of confusion and transition because the situation was still ‘very fresh.’</p><p> </p><p>Alex has been a waiter at Klas, a traditional Czech restaurant in Cicero, Illinois, and also worked a series of technical jobs in heating and cooling. He currently works in construction and, as a sculptor, has participated in some art shows with other Czech and Slovak artists. His pieces are sculpted from materials such as wood, granite, and fiber optics. Alex says he tries to visit the Czech Republic at least once a year, where his daughter lives. He currently lives in Chicago.</p>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
NCSML Archive
Ales Vesely
Arts
Child emigre
Education
English language
Ethnic diversity
Pribram
Refugee camp
Restaurant/hotel industry
school
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e8a0ce745a5e3424d61031612c70dfe5
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans
Subject
The topic of the resource
Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans was an oral history project launched by the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library in 2009. The project captured and preserved the stories of Czechs and Slovaks who left their homeland during the Cold War and settled in New York City, Washington, D.C., Cleveland, Chicago and the San Francisco Bay Area. During the second phase of the project, the NCSML recorded the stories of immigrants who came to the United States after the fall of communism in 1989 as well. By the conclusion of the project in August 2013, the NCSML had collected more than 300 oral histories. <br /><br />Both phases of the project were made possible by grants from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. <br /><br />On the project’s website, you can read biographies of Czechs and Slovaks who began a new life in the United States, watch video clips from their interviews, and view photos and other archival materials they shared with us. <br /><br />Full length interviews are available for further research at the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library. For more information, contact Dave Muhlena, Library Director, at dmuhlena@ncsml.org.
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
<h4>Obstacles to Emigrate </h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Zl_ElO6fbcM?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“My mother had to sell the house and then my father – since the divorce was pretty nasty – he didn’t want to sign papers, he needed to sign papers for me to leave Slovakia. So he actually didn’t sign the papers; I traveled to Austria and I traveled under an assumed name. Relatives lived in Bratislava, and they had already emigrated. Part of the family emigrated to Canada when, after ’68, the Canadians were taking a lot of Slovaks and Czechs. So part of the family was already in Canada, and they were related to my mother, so I guess they got the idea [for me] to assume one of their names, and we lived with them for about two weeks until I got my story straight.</p><p><em>And how did this make your move easier?</em></p><p>“Well, I don’t think it made it easier; it made it possible to travel with my mother. She traveled under her name and I traveled with my aunt.”</p><h4>Assimilation</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/5VfBPDzSdvc?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“You do because you need to survive. You need to be able to talk to people, and if you just speak Slovak all the time, they don’t speak Slovak in the store or Czech or Russian – now they speak Spanish – so you have to assimilate. You assimilate language-wise, but cultural-wise, that comes with the system. As you live there, you start doing what other people are doing. For my mother, she had to assimilate to the system once she bought a house, you have to cut the lawn, you have to take care of the shrubs and all that stuff. That was part of life, and with the same saying, ‘If you go Rome, you do as Romans do,’ and ‘If you go to Greece, you do as Greeks do.’ You left that life in Slovakia, and you’re surrounded by English speaking people. You still have the cultural things and you still get together with Slovaks in different organizations, but at the same time you have to live life and you have to work and make a living so you have to assimilate.”</p><h4>U.S. Army</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/MAkjpMmUQm8?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“[We were] trying to discern – let’s say they served in the military – once we learned they served in the military, then we pursued that angle. They were already refugees at that point. If they were able to provide us with valuable information, then we could help them with getting their German visa or permit to stay in Germany, or wherever they wanted to go. If they came to us and they wanted to go to the United States, then we would debrief them and find out, and if we could help them, of course we would help them. We really weren’t interested in how they lived. What we were interested in was if they worked for the police, then we wanted to know how the police operated. If they were in the military, which most of them were, which units they served in and how did that operate. Where were the training sites and stuff like that.”</p><h4>Slovak Language</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/kFxnZ104GVE?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I’m not forgetting the language, but I haven’t been there to be able to develop the language, to grow the language. Language grows and it develops. I owned a translation service for awhile, but I had to look through dictionaries all the time because I haven’t been there to develop the vocabulary. I left as a 13-year old and because I speak basic Slovak, so to speak, I can’t translate. Some people can translate, they look at it and write it down and it’s done. So it’s not a realistic goal for me to have a translation service.”</p><h4>Identity</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/-MQr2hX1Ip0?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“My life in Slovakia was relatively short, so I’m more culturally developed American-wise than Slovak-wise at this point. For me, I maintain my roots so to speak by listening to Slovenské ľudové piesne [Slovak folk songs]. Now I have sons that I have dancing [with the Slovak dance troupe Lucina], so I associate with that. I was in Bratislava-Cleveland Sister Cities, but I’m an American now. I’m more American than I’m Slovak at this point.”</p>
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Alfonz Sokol
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Alfonz Sokol was born in Michalovce, eastern Slovakia, in 1956. He grew up in the village of Vel’ké Zálužie with his parents, Alfonz and Milena. His father worked in the office of a grain collection and processing facility while his mother stayed at home and raised him. Alfonz’s maternal grandfather had immigrated to the United States for economic reasons prior to WWII; his wife joined him after the War. When Alfonz was in fourth grade, his parents divorced.</p><p> </p><p>Alfonz attended school in his village until fifth grade when he went to a larger school in Michalovce. He recalls his involvement in the Pioneer youth group and says that many of his group’s activities focused on botany. In the summer of 1966, Alfonz and his mother visited his grandparents who had settled in Cleveland. Upon returning home, he says his mother began making plans to emigrate. It took three years before Alfonz and his mother were finally able to leave, as they had to sell their house and receive permission from Alfonz’s father. This permission was never given, and Alfonz left the country under an assumed name. In early summer 1969, Alfonz and his mother crossed the border into Austria. They applied for a visa at the U.S. Embassy, and, while waiting, rented a suite in a guest house. Alfonz’s grandparents sponsored the pair, which facilitated the process and, after five weeks, Alfonz and his mother flew to the United States. They settled in Cleveland where his mother quickly found a job cleaning hotels. On weekends, Alfonz helped his grandmother clean offices at an oil processing plant.</p><p> </p><p>Alfonz went to Hillside Middle School for eighth grade where he says studying was a struggle because he did not speak English. He communicated with a Russian language teacher and a Ukrainian student while learning English from a picture book. He says that biology and math were especially challenging subjects for him. His high school Russian teacher convinced him to study the language in college, and after taking some core courses at Tri-C Community College, Alfonz enrolled at Ohio State University. In 1976, he traveled abroad to Moscow and studied for three months at the Pushkin State Russian Language Institute. On the advice of a professor, Alfonz joined the U.S. Army Reserves as a Russian linguist; he went on active duty in 1981. In the mid-1980s, he was stationed in Munich debriefing Slovak refugees. Alfonz met his wife, Donna, at a Slovak dinner in Lakewood in 1990; the pair married in December 1991. They have three sons together. Alfonz has been involved in the Slovak community in Cleveland, attending dances and picnics and participating in organizations such as Bratislava-Cleveland Sister Cities. Today, Alfonz lives in Parma, Ohio, with his wife and children.</p>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
NCSML Archive
Americanization
Community Life
Divorce
English language
Military service
Russian studies/speaker
Sense of identity
Slovak Language
Translator/interpreter
Velke Zaluzie
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b97330c7d2e95903b4441427b185776b
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans
Subject
The topic of the resource
Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans was an oral history project launched by the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library in 2009. The project captured and preserved the stories of Czechs and Slovaks who left their homeland during the Cold War and settled in New York City, Washington, D.C., Cleveland, Chicago and the San Francisco Bay Area. During the second phase of the project, the NCSML recorded the stories of immigrants who came to the United States after the fall of communism in 1989 as well. By the conclusion of the project in August 2013, the NCSML had collected more than 300 oral histories. <br /><br />Both phases of the project were made possible by grants from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. <br /><br />On the project’s website, you can read biographies of Czechs and Slovaks who began a new life in the United States, watch video clips from their interviews, and view photos and other archival materials they shared with us. <br /><br />Full length interviews are available for further research at the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library. For more information, contact Dave Muhlena, Library Director, at dmuhlena@ncsml.org.
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
<h4>TELSA</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/BiBfJKMJu0A?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“There were parts of the factory where I couldn’t go, that were marked secret. I don’t even know what they were doing. I started to work in the industry in TESLA and I found out, as we were saying in Czechoslovakia, that we were 100 years behind the apes in electronics. Because what they were doing, they were actually doing reverse engineering. They took a transistor, American-made or some other made, or integrated circuit, and they took it apart to find out how it was made and then they tried to make the same thing. But we were running a huge operation. I was a supervisor for a while on the epitaxy, on silicon wafers which were for power transistors. After I was offered membership in the Communist Party and I very politely refused, I was no longer supervisor. I worked as a technologist in integrated circuits and then I left the area to work in the office for inventions and patents – it was still in the same factory, but a different place – and improvement suggestions. I was there for a couple years, and after that, just took off.”</p><h4>Tramping</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/GxtTcUxH8Mw?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Tramp here means somebody who lives on the street; this was completely different, they just used the word – they were like Sokol, but unorganized. There were no leaders. On weekends, they went out and got on trains. Usually they had on soldiers’ dress, like old-time uniforms from the first World War, even backpacks and stuff. And they would sleep outside without a tent, because a tent was considered to be, I don’t know the word for it, but like spoiled. For people who really don’t belong in nature – they sleep in tents, they could as well stay home, or get in a car, drive somewhere and then put up a tent – it was like, no. You have to get on a train and walk. And it was really nice.</p><p>“It was just singing songs. I was even collecting tramp songs for a long time. I really liked it, because those are truly, truly romantic songs about America, which people in America have no idea. It’s just funny how people romanticized this country.”</p><h4>Banjo</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/LVNMRyUHt8A?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“The five-string banjo, actually, I just fell in love with it – I was already playing the guitar. There was a movie, one of the movies they let through, because the movie didn’t contain any scene about a private [swimming] pool. There was a commission approving the films for distribution and one of the things, which I found out, if there was a private pool, the movie was out. It couldn’t be shown. This was not the case; the movie was Bonnie and Clyde – there were no pools in Bonnie and Clyde, just some shooting. And there was this track when the cars were going, it was a chase and there was this track. It was Earl Scruggs playing “Foggy Mountain Breakdown.” That was exhilarating. We went to see that movie maybe four times, just to hear that. And I couldn’t believe it. I was playing at the time the four-string banjo which is a completely different instrument, and I thought, how is his picking so fast? I was trying to copy it and there was no way.”</p><h4>Precautions</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/y74w22Uwsco?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“So we have hidden all the documents in our luggage. There was a piece of luggage, it was this bag, and it had an inforced bottom. It was like thick paper. So I took it apart, sliced the paper apart. I dug out space on both sides, and our marriage certificate and documents which we needed to have with us, I put there, glued everything together, put it overnight under a piece of furniture. I also made it black on both sides, inside and outside, in case they would use some light or something, I thought maybe that would help, the black color would block it, and put it back together. I wouldn’t believe that it was there. And the money that I bought on the black market, where do you hide the money? Well, our son who was nine years old, Bobby, same name as me – our older son’s name is Mark, Marek – so Bobby had a little [stuffed] doggy. And I thought that the doggy, he had a inforcement in the neck, to keep the neck up. So Vilma carefully cut an opening in the bottom of the dog, we took out the inforcement and rolled the money into a roll, put it back on the inforcement, and she nicely sewed it back. So our son had the money all the time, in his doggy.”</p><h4>Refugee Camp</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/td2AJwEorao?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“There was so-called isolation. They put everybody who was new in so-called isolation. You couldn’t talk to anybody else, you were going to meals at different times from everybody else, and we were not allowed to open a window and talk to anybody. The reason for that was that they needed to first separate any people who were escaping from the law, who killed somebody, and in those couple days they hoped they would be able to find out. But also, most important, there was an interview after those three days, and they didn’t want people to get smart, to know what to say, because based on that interview, the Austrian authorities decided if they give you political asylum or not. So if you got political asylum you could stay in Austria, if not, you had to go somewhere else.”</p><h4>Peet Seeger</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/fS0yEDouJPA?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“We came to Baltimore, and I was here for just a couple years, and I heard that my huge idol, Pete Seeger, who I admired so much playing his five-string banjo and how he played guitar – just a tremendous influence on me, and he was in Baltimore, so I had to go see him, even when we didn’t have much money, but this is something I would regret for the rest of my life if I missed it. So I took my two sons and we went to the concert and I was so happy that he was there. But then, President Reagan was president at the time, and Pete Seeger started to sing a song – “This Old Man” – [which] was making fun of President Reagan. I couldn’t believe it, and I noticed all the policemen standing there and I thought, what are they going to do. They’re going to climb on the stage and take him down or turn off the speakers or something. And then I watched – they were standing with their backs to the stage, only watching the audience so nobody would cause any trouble. They were protecting the singer; they were protecting him if somebody didn’t like him so nothing would happen to him. That was just unbelievable. I saw democracy at work. And I was really impressed by that, even when I didn’t like the song.”</p><h4>Fujara</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/HxXpzEAPmrA?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I started to play at festivals, and right now I have about 80 performances behind me. I started to make workshops. The first American fujara workshop was right here, at this house. After that, I did a workshop in Rožnov where I used to work in the TESLA factory. It was just three years back. It was also a two-day workshop and I was playing at a concert. Of course, the most important thing was last year, about one year ago in the Library of Congress. It was really a highlight of my life so far because it was for the American Musical Instrument Society, and they were of course recording it and it’s ‘forever’ in the archives, I mean, the archives of Congress. And I knew it, unfortunately, ahead of time. So you can just imagine the pressure that I had performing in a room full of experts on instruments and music and they wanted me to talk to them about the fujara and about everything concerning the fujara and the overtone flutes. And then it was recorded and everybody will be able to see it on the internet, all my friends. It was really a lot of pressure, but I somehow got through it.”</p>
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Bohuslav Rychlik
Description
An account of the resource
<p> </p><p>Bohuslav Rychlik was born in Krnov, Moravia, in 1950. His parents, Bohuslav and Františka, had moved to Krnov after WWII, because their home in Pustiměř had been destroyed by Americans who were bombing a nearby airport. Under the communist regime, Bob’s father lost his job as a senior office clerk and began working as a laborer, while his mother stayed home and raised Bob and his two sisters. Bob’s father, who died when he was 10, was a keen musician who played piano and violin and passed his talents on to his children. Bob was taught piano first by his sister and later in music school, and taught himself to play the guitar. Although he was fond of filmmaking, Bob says that he had ‘no chance’ to pursue this interest, and that he went to a technical high school in Rožnov pod Radhoštěm to prepare for a career in electronics. After high school, Bob says he decided not to attend university, as he did not want his mother to sacrifice anymore for his education. He got a job at the TESLA factory in Rožnov where he held several different positions before leaving the country.</p><p> </p><p>In August 1983, Bob and his wife, <a href="/web/20170710094829/http://www.ncsml.org/exhibits/vilma-rychlik/">Vilma</a>, decided to leave Czechoslovakia with their two young sons when they had the opportunity to vacation in Split, Yugoslavia. While there, Bob tried to buy tickets for a day trip to Italy, but says he was denied because his passport was valid only for Yugoslavia. They traveled to Belgrade where they learned about the UN High Commissioner for Refugees office. After an interview and a 6-week wait, Bob and his family were given papers allowing them to leave Yugoslavia and enter Austria. They spent about seven months in refugee camps in Traiskirchen and Ramsau before receiving permission to move to the United States. Bob and his family arrived in Baltimore, Maryland, on May 17, 1984. Having learned English at school, Bob says he was able to find work fairly quickly, while his wife took English classes at a community college. The Rychliks became American citizens in the spring of 1990.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Bob says that he is very proud of his sons, who were both valedictorians at Baltimore Polytechnic Institute and earned full scholarships to college. He continues to play music, and more recently has focused on the <em>fujara</em>, a large, flutelike, traditional Slovak instrument. Bob engineered the first <em>fujara</em> workshop in the United States, which he held at his home, and included participants from several different countries. He frequently performs around the Washington, D.C. area and, in 2010, Bob presented a lecture at the Library of Congress for the American Musical Instrumental Society. He has returned to the Czech Republic several times and currently lives in Mount Airy, Maryland, with his wife, Vilma.</p><p><a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20170710094829/http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Y5fonktBzQ" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Bob’s lecture on the fujara at the Library of Congress, 2010</a></p>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
NCSML Archive
American citizenship
Arts
Cultural Traditions
Education
English language
Pustimer
Refugee camp
Roznov pod Radhostem
Tramping
Western/Pop culture
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e4d022b2b64b4f105250086401c2154c
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans
Subject
The topic of the resource
Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans was an oral history project launched by the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library in 2009. The project captured and preserved the stories of Czechs and Slovaks who left their homeland during the Cold War and settled in New York City, Washington, D.C., Cleveland, Chicago and the San Francisco Bay Area. During the second phase of the project, the NCSML recorded the stories of immigrants who came to the United States after the fall of communism in 1989 as well. By the conclusion of the project in August 2013, the NCSML had collected more than 300 oral histories. <br /><br />Both phases of the project were made possible by grants from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. <br /><br />On the project’s website, you can read biographies of Czechs and Slovaks who began a new life in the United States, watch video clips from their interviews, and view photos and other archival materials they shared with us. <br /><br />Full length interviews are available for further research at the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library. For more information, contact Dave Muhlena, Library Director, at dmuhlena@ncsml.org.
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
<h4>Slovakia</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/gDC6_lANSak?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“Grade school was kind of tough. It was communism, and we went to church so it was frowned upon. My uncle emigrated in 1968 and then my mom went to church, so since those two elements we had against us, it was really tough. The teachers were really tough on us, so instead of giving us a break, let’s say, because we had no father they were tougher on us, and therefore we had worse grades than other children.”</p><h4>Learning English</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/duwqMK6EztY?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“We got a tutor. Her name was Raida. She was from Cuba, and she was from a communist country. So the city of Aurora got us a free tutor, and twice a week she came to our house or we went to the library or we went to her house and she was trying to teach us by books, by pictures – pointing and telling us ‘These are scissors; this is a camera; this is a computer.’ That’s how we started communicating, and I think it went on for about six months. She went to the mayor of Aurora and she basically got us into Waubonsie Valley High School. Because they said that we are already 18 and they cannot take us in, but she went and talked to the mayor of Aurora and the mayor of Aurora called the high school and he said ‘You have to take them.’ So they took us and we were juniors. So we went there and we got ESL teachers. For the first six months we were in a bunch of ESL classes, and then senior year we joined regular, normal history, math, English, geography – whatever classes we had to take in order to graduate, because our education back home was only three years. So they figured out how many classes we need, how many more credits we needed. So they told us what kind of classes we needed to take in order to graduate in the United States.”</p><h4>First Impressions</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/N5DTpWwyrCA?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“First thing I remember when we arrived in Switzerland: the airport was like ‘Wow!’ We saw bananas; we saw oranges; we saw all this under-the-table material that was in Slovakia and we were really, really shocked. And this was little boutiques only. And then we came here and we went to, let’s say, Kmart or Walmart or something like that. So to us it was like this super-duper shopping mall. My mom never went to the shopping mall; she went to these local stores only, so to us it was like, ‘Wow.’ Coming from a communist country to Kmart, it was like luxury. Like Gucci or something like that at the time. So that’s what I remember.”</p><h4>Heritage</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_UNQls61shk?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“We go to all these picnics and everything, and at home we do Christmas traditions, Easter traditions. We have pictures of Slovakia, we listen to Czechoslovakian radio all the time. We, at home, only speak Slovak to my children – my husband is Slovak so we only speak Slovak at home. I cook Slovak food. We try to live like we used to live at home, but in America.”</p><h4>Czechoslovak Community</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/KdpvCmehu6s?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“When you go to the Czech Republic or Slovak Republic, there is more hatred between each other. Prague people will say ‘Oh, we don’t like Slovaks,’ or Slovak people will say ‘I don’t like Czechs.’ But here I never hear anybody say that we don’t like each other. Here we are like one big community, and it’s like a brotherhood over here. If you go back home, I noticed that over there they distance themselves. They try to be… ‘We are Slovaks.’ They try to be really proud Slovaks or really proud Czechs. Here we try to help each other and over there they try to be individuals more.”</p>
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Bronislava Grelova Gres
Description
An account of the resource
<p> </p><p>Bronislava (Brona) Gres was born in Liptovský Mikuláš in central Slovakia and grew up in the nearby village of Liptovské Sliače. She and her twin sister, <a href="/web/20170609044444/http://www.ncsml.org/exhibits/zuzana-lanc/">Zuzana</a>, lived with their mother, <a href="/web/20170609044444/http://www.ncsml.org/exhibits/anna-vesela/">Anna Vesela</a>, and their grandparents. Brona says that some aspects of her childhood were ‘tough,’ as her uncle had immigrated to the United States and her family attended church, which led to some unfair treatment at school. In 1987, Brona’s mother moved to the United States and married Zdenek Vesely, an American citizen. Although the plan was for the girls to follow shortly after, it took well over one year for Brona and Zuzana to be allowed to leave the country. Brona says that, although they had no trouble receiving visas, their passports were confiscated for awhile. They arrived in the United States in October 1988 and settled in with their mother and stepfather, who now had their younger sister, <a href="/web/20170609044444/http://www.ncsml.org/exhibits/margret-vesely/">Margret</a>, in Aurora, Illinois.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Brona says that the first few months in the United States were difficult as she was not comfortable with the English language. Brona and Zuzana received English lessons from a tutor who also helped them enroll in the local high school. In January 1989, they started as juniors in the ESL program, and the following year took regular classes as seniors and graduated.</p><p> </p><p>Brona married a fellow Slovak émigré and had two children. She and her husband spoke Slovak to their children, and she regularly cooked Slovak food and kept traditional Slovak customs during the holidays. Although an American citizen, Brona says that she felt like a ‘Slovak living in America’ and she returned to Slovakia every year with her family for visits. She was closely involved in the Czechoslovak community in the Chicago area and attended get-togethers. She lived with her family in Darien, Illinois, until her death in 2014.</p>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
NCSML Archive
Americanization
Child emigre
Community Life
Cultural Traditions
English language
Liptovkse Sliace
Liptovsky Mikulas
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9880e91c01350e2ca09f2768dd0b897a
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans
Subject
The topic of the resource
Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans was an oral history project launched by the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library in 2009. The project captured and preserved the stories of Czechs and Slovaks who left their homeland during the Cold War and settled in New York City, Washington, D.C., Cleveland, Chicago and the San Francisco Bay Area. During the second phase of the project, the NCSML recorded the stories of immigrants who came to the United States after the fall of communism in 1989 as well. By the conclusion of the project in August 2013, the NCSML had collected more than 300 oral histories. <br /><br />Both phases of the project were made possible by grants from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. <br /><br />On the project’s website, you can read biographies of Czechs and Slovaks who began a new life in the United States, watch video clips from their interviews, and view photos and other archival materials they shared with us. <br /><br />Full length interviews are available for further research at the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library. For more information, contact Dave Muhlena, Library Director, at dmuhlena@ncsml.org.
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
<h4>SS Soldier</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/hnZmsadNf2Y?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“Because we were closely watched, that’s why. Because Masaryk, as you probably know, was suspect by not only communists, but by fascists. Any kind of dictatorial regime hated President Masaryk and because he was the grandfather of my mother and my aunt and father-in-law of my grandmother, obviously my family was basically in a bad situation, whether it was communism or fascism.”</p><p><em>What was that like, living with an SS man? </em></p><p>“It was not funny obviously, but you have to find ways to survive.”</p><p><em>And what ways did you find?</em></p><p>“We were out in the country a lot where he didn’t accompany us all the time, and you have to find a modus vivendi under any circumstances.”</p><h4>Grandmother</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/nRTNSMOhMjc?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“In 1948, when Jan Masaryk died and we went to the funeral, my grandmother was very upset because she was listening to Klement Gottwald talking about Jan, saying ‘Our friend, Jan’ and all that stuff, and she stood up, because we were in the front row, and she said ‘And now you will just shut up’ – in Czech obviously – ‘because you know that you killed him. And you will not be saying things like this because it’s not true.’ And we all sort of died because we thought ‘Oh my god, this woman is going to be arrested immediately.’ Again, she got away with it, because she always stood up, and she was very tall and very skinny and very monumental in her own way, and she could just tell anybody anything. She was absolutely fearless. Absolutely fearless. And I guess if you are fearless you can do things, because you have the inner power and inner conviction which sort of gets you away from the trouble.”</p><h4>Lineage</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/NsFMWkv_hac?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“When I was applying for school, for stipends, for travel, for anything, on all the bureaucratic paperwork was always one sentence: ‘Mother of Charlotta Poche (and later Kotík) is Herberta Masaryková!’ and that said it all. So I was not allowed to do anything. I couldn’t find a job, I couldn’t study, I couldn’t join any groups, I was persona non grata, simply. It was as if I had some major disease, if I were a leper. I was totally blacklisted on everything. It was not only the regime or the officials of society; it was people who sometimes were afraid to be friends because they associated me with all these troubles which could spill over on them. So it has been a very difficult situation. It was simply ‘No’ to everything. Every little thing had to be fought for.”</p><h4>Prague Spring</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/D2q9M7XE7zI?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“We wanted to improve the system because there were a lot of good things in the system. The free education, the free medical care. There were a lot of good things and if you could have political freedom and travel and exchange, then I think the system would have been very good. I didn’t understand why anybody would say no to it, because we didn’t want to declare war on Russia or some stupid thing like that. It was just making decent living conditions, so I didn’t understand. But older people, like my mother, they were saying ‘Oh no, this is not going to work. They will come and crush it.’ I said ‘Mom, you are crazy. Why would they do that? We don’t want to do anything against them. We just want to improve what we already have. But I was wrong, because I am slightly naïve. But I really felt it was a great experiment and people were so nice to each other at the time. It was like the society blossomed. People were just so different. They were so hopeful. They were so nice. It was just amazing.”</p><h4>America</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/MqxMg5T3N9E?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“It was very difficult for me to make the decision of leaving because I was leaving my mother and my father and my aunt there and I felt I was deserting them, and also I felt that I was deserting a country that was in a really difficult situation. It was a little bit like leaving a sick person, and I felt that’s not the right thing to do, but ultimately I joined my husband. I was also thinking about the future of Tom [her son] – at the time it was only Tom, not Jan – because I had so many difficulties, really. It was very difficult and I didn’t want them to have to go through – Tom at the time, and I was hoping to have another child later – so I didn’t want to prepare for them the same life I had. I felt that it’s not right. Since I had a chance to leave, I ultimately decided to do it.”</p><h4>Mother</h4>
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Charlotta Kotik
Description
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<p>Charlotta Kotik was born in Prague in 1940. Her father Emanuel was an art historian and her mother Herberta was a musician. Charlotta’s maternal great-grandfather was Tomáš G. Masaryk and, as a result, one of her earliest memories is of an SS soldier living in her family’s house during WWII. She also clearly recalls the funeral of Jan Masaryk, her great-uncle. While growing up, Charlotta often spent time in Rybná nad Zdobnicí in eastern Bohemia where her grandmother lived. Following her graduation from high school, Charlotta says that she found it impossible to continue her education due to her background, but was able to get a job as a curatorial assistant at the Jewish Museum in Prague, thanks to a friend of her mother. She was responsible for the photo archives and also worked with children’s drawings from Terezín. After three years, Charlotta began working in the Asian department of the National Gallery. She enrolled at Charles University as an evening student and, in 1968, graduated with a master’s degree in art history. Charlotta also worked for the National Institute for Preservation and Reconstruction of Architectural Landmarks, where she was involved in monument preservation during the building of the Prague subway. In October 1969, Charlotta’s husband Petr left Czechoslovakia to take a job at the University of Buffalo in New York. Although she had reservations about leaving her family and her country, Charlotta and their son Tom (who had been born in May 1969) followed, and they arrived in Buffalo in January 1970.</p><p> </p><p>Charlotta soon found a job at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo where she worked for 13 years. She and Petr had a second son, Jan, in 1972. In 1983, the Kotiks moved to New York City where Charlotta began working at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. She retired from there in 2006 as head of the department of contemporary art. Charlotta says that she did not regularly speak Czech to her sons, which helped her master the English language; however, they both spent one year studying in Prague, and Jan eventually settled there, married, and had two children before his death from cancer in 2007. Today, Charlotta is an independent curator. She visits the Czech Republic several times a year where, in addition to visiting her grandchildren, she works with an organization that supports young artists. She is also a member of the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences (SVU) and is on the advisory board of the Czech Center New York. Now divorced, she lives in Brooklyn.</p>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
NCSML Archive
1968
Arts
Community Life
Education
English language
Nazis
Prague Spring
Rybna nad Zdobnici
Secret police
Terezin
-
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
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Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans
Subject
The topic of the resource
Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans was an oral history project launched by the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library in 2009. The project captured and preserved the stories of Czechs and Slovaks who left their homeland during the Cold War and settled in New York City, Washington, D.C., Cleveland, Chicago and the San Francisco Bay Area. During the second phase of the project, the NCSML recorded the stories of immigrants who came to the United States after the fall of communism in 1989 as well. By the conclusion of the project in August 2013, the NCSML had collected more than 300 oral histories. <br /><br />Both phases of the project were made possible by grants from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. <br /><br />On the project’s website, you can read biographies of Czechs and Slovaks who began a new life in the United States, watch video clips from their interviews, and view photos and other archival materials they shared with us. <br /><br />Full length interviews are available for further research at the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library. For more information, contact Dave Muhlena, Library Director, at dmuhlena@ncsml.org.
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Transcription
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<h4>Musical Inspiration</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_XNj0E-jsrU?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“When we were children growing up – I was maybe three, four or five – he [Consuela’s grandfather] always, before we went to sleep, played the cello, and so beautifully. I’ll never forget that. I never slept right away; I was listening because I loved music right from the beginning. My mother remembered me always singing all over the house. I was singing all songs and, because my parents were actually masters of ballroom dancing, they were teachers. Very known in the whole area where we lived. In all the villages and the towns around my parents were teaching hundreds of young people ballroom dancing. And that was my inspiration, because I listened to the music my parents listened to on the gramophone.”</p><h4>Amateur Theatre</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/6WXBI9-E124?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“My artistic development was wonderful and successful because I was in an amateur group of people who were interested in acting and singing and dancing, and there I was on the top because I could play, and that somehow took a little brush off the stress which I was living with normally. These people supported me. There were families who sort of adopted me for that time being and helped me psychologically through and even led me, because I was in the factory so I couldn’t develop in reading certain literature. The factory school was focused just on physical work, not so much on psychologically or intellectually developing. So these families helped me so much. There were two families which were like a miracle coming into my life; they were part of the group of the amateur theatre. We were really on the top. We won many rewards for amateur theatre, and that was such a beautiful time.”</p><h4>Vegetarian</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/IlOV9jFRu0k?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I was actually as young as when I studied yoga, when I was 16, and then I changed and I had to eat meat because in Czechoslovakia there were not so many vegetables and fruit, in the wintertime especially. So we had only carrots; we had cabbage and nothing else practically. It was not around, so I ate a lot of grains and sprouts and so on, but then I had to eat meat because in the theatre, and especially if you live such a rich style of living – acting and theatre and TV – then you have to eat something, so I became again a meat eater. When I came to the United States, I had free everything, so everything was available and I started [taking advantage of] the freedom of choice. So I became vegetarian, vegan.”</p><h4>NY City</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/5ZpVKs4yQxQ?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“The energy of the city is so high so it was actually pleasant, because I was mostly in Prague in my acting life, so I like big cities because there is a lot happening and the energy is very high. It’s so active; there’s no couch-potato stuff. People are not lazy here; at least, you see the energy’s really high. That was actually pleasant. But to go through the immigration was not so pleasant, because we came to New York City in an unusual way because of our sponsor, the cousin. So we got to the city and they checked us all the time. I thought that everyone will open their arms and hug us, just welcome us, but they checked us, by chance, if we are not maybe spies or some negative energy or whatever. So that was not so pleasant and, also, waiting for the papers and going to the immigration [office] was not a pleasant time. But otherwise we were really lucky.”</p><h4>U.S. Job</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/e7xKq2ikKVg?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“There was suddenly so many people on First Avenue, close to Sloan Kettering hospital, and we didn’t know what was going on so we asked people and they said ‘The Pope is in the city,’ so we were watching. We had never seen the Pope before, so we were watching: ‘Whoa, the Pope,’ and we spoke Czech. And suddenly somebody said ‘Oh, you speak Czech!’ She spoke Czech too, and it was this lady, Alice Brown, and she said ‘I work at the hospital here, Sloan Kettering.’ I said ‘We are looking for some jobs,’ and she helped us to get there. My husband, as a doctor, got a job in the computer center where they collect all the information about the patients, procedures and results and everything. So he learned very quickly on the computer how to do that, so he worked in that center. And me, I didn’t have qualifications for anything except the theatre, but I am handy so I took anything. And she helped us to get the first jobs there. So I worked in the restaurant in the hospital.”</p>
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Title
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Consuela Moravkova
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Consuela Moravkova was born in Chrudim in eastern Bohemia in 1944. Her father, Ferdinand, owned a goldsmith business while her mother, Růžena, was an administrator. Consuela had two sisters and one brother, all of whom had names inspired by her grandfather’s (Emanuel Morávek) international travels as a composer and conductor. Influenced by her parents, who taught ballroom dancing, and her grandfather, Consuela showed an artistic bent from an early age and says she was often ‘singing all over the house.’ When Consuela’s father’s business was nationalized and he was arrested, she was not allowed to continue her education and was sent to train in a factory for three years. While there Consuela was active in an amateur theatre organization, which she says was a ‘beautiful time.’ After her work in the factory, Consuela acted in the České Budějovice theatre for a few years and then moved to Prague where she applied to a performing arts academy that did not accept her because she lacked a high school diploma. With her performing experience and some music training, Consuela became a professional actress and worked in movies, television, radio and theatre.</p><p> </p><p>In 1979, Consuela and her husband traveled to Britain with a state-sponsored program to learn English. Instead of returning to Czechoslovakia, they were sponsored by a cousin who lived in the United States and moved to New York City. Consuela says that she loved the ‘energy’ of the city, and she quickly found a job at a hospital cafeteria. She also began teaching yoga, a practice that she had first taken up as a teenager. Although Consuela had a role in an off-Broadway production of <em>Oedipus</em>, she decided not to pursue acting as a career, in part because of the language barrier. She did, however, do some acting and poetry readings with the local Czech community for a time. Today, Consuela is a yoga instructor with the New York Health and Racquet Club (where she has been teaching for over 30 years) and also works with private clients. She lives in Manhattan.</p>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
NCSML Archive
Arts
Ceske Budejovice
Education
English language
-
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans
Subject
The topic of the resource
Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans was an oral history project launched by the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library in 2009. The project captured and preserved the stories of Czechs and Slovaks who left their homeland during the Cold War and settled in New York City, Washington, D.C., Cleveland, Chicago and the San Francisco Bay Area. During the second phase of the project, the NCSML recorded the stories of immigrants who came to the United States after the fall of communism in 1989 as well. By the conclusion of the project in August 2013, the NCSML had collected more than 300 oral histories. <br /><br />Both phases of the project were made possible by grants from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. <br /><br />On the project’s website, you can read biographies of Czechs and Slovaks who began a new life in the United States, watch video clips from their interviews, and view photos and other archival materials they shared with us. <br /><br />Full length interviews are available for further research at the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library. For more information, contact Dave Muhlena, Library Director, at dmuhlena@ncsml.org.
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
<h4>WWII</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/XBPqr3MXBO4?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“[Forces were] bombing Brno very heavily, so we moved to a little village and it was full of German soldiers. We never had any problems with them, very disciplined. But it was the opposite with the Russians, completely opposite.”</p><h4>Crossing the Border</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/B_GKE5J6b6o?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“So we went to a garden restaurant. They’d been celebrating, dancing, and I sat down and I think he ordered some wine or whatever. And then he said ‘Come and dance,’ and I said ‘What are you, crazy?’ He said ‘Come and dance,’ so we’re dancing, then I looked around and the Russians came there. And they come with their machine guns and they looked at the people. He [my guide] said ‘Now be nice, smile at me.’ I said ok, I don’t know what he’s talking about. He said ‘Don’t be so stiff.’ He said they were checking people that were close to the border, so they kind of knew who doesn’t belong there or whatever. So fortunately they didn’t think, but they picked up a few people, so that’s why he said ‘Let’s dance,’ we had been sitting, and we went with the crowd. But we made it to Vienna.”</p><h4>Learning English</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/apL_QUllQm8?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Just what I’m listening and learning. I’m getting a little better at spelling now, after so many years. I wanted to learn, and thank god we moved on the north side [of Chicago]; if we had been on the south side – Berwyn, Cicero – maybe I would still not speak English, I don’t know. But we had a few friends and I wanted to learn. And they told me, which was kind of helpful, they told me ‘Doris, don’t worry if you put the horses behind the wagon, just so the people understand you, keep talking.’ So I’m talking.”</p><h4>Impressions of Americans</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/sqig_3gC3zE?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“American people are very giving people. Sometimes I think they are very idyllic people. I think they should be a little more tough and not always helping, helping. Let the people help themselves. But that’s what I mean, they are very idealistic. You don’t see that in so many countries – wherever you go, the people are first thinking about themselves and the Americans, they always want to help somebody. That’s my experience, what I have experienced.”</p>
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Title
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Doris Drost
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Doris Drost was born in Olomouc, central Moravia, in 1920. Her parents had met in Poland during WWI, as her mother Jana was from there, and her father Vojtěch was a Czechoslovak legionnaire stationed in the country. Doris grew up in Rohatec where her father was the vice president of a chocolate factory; she attended elementary school there until fourth grade, and then transferred to a larger school in Hodonín. Doris moved with her family to Brno a few years later when her father found a new job, and so she finished her schooling there. She remembers spending a few summers in Poland with her grandparents and being very active in Sokol.</p><p> </p><p>Doris attended a teacher’s institute and taught kindergarten for one year before marrying John Drost in 1940. Doris and John had two children, Rudy and <a href="/web/20170609111847/http://www.ncsml.org/exhibits/george-drost/">George</a>. After the Communist coup in 1948, John left the country and Doris and Rudy followed a few months later, leaving George with John’s mother. With help from a guide, Doris crossed the border into Austria and then made her way to Vienna where she joined her husband. The family made plans to move to the United States once they were reunited with George. While in Austria, they lived in Kranebitten, a suburb of Innsbruck, where John found a job. With the help of a family friend and John’s sister, George rejoined the family in January 1950. The Drosts arrived in New York City in July of that year and settled in Chicago, where their sponsor, Ravenswood Presbyterian Church, was located.</p><p> </p><p>Doris says they were helped by many people when they first arrived and worked very hard to carve out a life in the United States. Doris cleaned houses and John worked in a factory before becoming a caretaker at a church and attending law school at night. He eventually opened his own law practice, and Doris became the lunch manager at Woolworth’s. The family was active in the Czech community, and both boys learned to speak Czech. Doris visited Czechoslovakia for the first time in 1990, an experience she describes as ‘very disappointing’ because of the condition of Brno. Doris lived in Arlington Heights, Illinois, until her death in August 2016.</p><p> </p>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
NCSML Archive
1948
Community Life
Education
emigrant
English language
Family life
Hodonin
marriage
Matelova
refugee
World War II
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6fea25b29739baedf40972d0b0841163
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans
Subject
The topic of the resource
Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans was an oral history project launched by the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library in 2009. The project captured and preserved the stories of Czechs and Slovaks who left their homeland during the Cold War and settled in New York City, Washington, D.C., Cleveland, Chicago and the San Francisco Bay Area. During the second phase of the project, the NCSML recorded the stories of immigrants who came to the United States after the fall of communism in 1989 as well. By the conclusion of the project in August 2013, the NCSML had collected more than 300 oral histories. <br /><br />Both phases of the project were made possible by grants from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. <br /><br />On the project’s website, you can read biographies of Czechs and Slovaks who began a new life in the United States, watch video clips from their interviews, and view photos and other archival materials they shared with us. <br /><br />Full length interviews are available for further research at the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library. For more information, contact Dave Muhlena, Library Director, at dmuhlena@ncsml.org.
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
<h4>Family Restaurant</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/oRPCc00h--U?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“Up to a certain time, I think 8:00 or 9:00 in the evening, the regular soldiers could come in and eat, okay? By 10:00 they had to be in the camp. And after10:00 or 11:00 the big echelons with the stars [came]… And those are the ones, I remember how they used to, how could I say, enjoy themselves. They were dancing on the table and drinking from the glasses, and then they took those glasses and threw them into the corner, there was a pile of glass like this in the morning, you know? Honest to god, I’m telling you! Not only that but some of these guys, they had those long sabers on their side. And so when they got a little tipsy, a little drunk, you know, they’d pull out their sword and there were chairs and this guy, he’d start cutting the chairs and said ‘this is what we’re going to do to the Russians.’ And chips were flying all over the floor. But they didn’t hurt anybody, our people or anything, except they were against the Russians. But these incidents [happened] and when they were going to the washroom outside, the outhouse, my mother had wash-lines stretched across the yard and they were so – poor guys – they were so stupid with alcohol, there was one guy who was hanging his head over the wash-line and vomiting, you know.</p><p>“But they just had a good time, these people knew how to enjoy themselves. Next day, they came in, two of them and ‘Mr Sarvady, how much? What’s the damage that we did?’ And my father, he knew what to do, if it was $300, he said $600 or $700, a chair is so much or so much. And not even one word was said about it. Everything was undercover, undercover, yeah.”</p><h4>Stepfather Arrested</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/uXIk9e-N8iQ?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Anybody who sided with the Germans, they rounded them up and they locked them up. My stepfather was locked up for 117 days. But they couldn’t find anything against him. Because he was strictly a businessman and had nothing to do with politics, you know. He never cared for it. So, after 117, they finally released him. But that wasn’t enough, it was a few months later and one of the gendarmes we knew, who used to be in our town, they had to turn Communist too, but they still were friends and one day he came over to our house and told may father, he says ‘Emil, we have orders to lock you up tomorrow.’ He says, ‘it would be the best thing if we wouldn’t find you here, if you know what I mean.’”</p><h4>Soda Truck</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZV52TkZK9_A?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“We were going with this guy who picked us up, and we were going in this small paneled truck to Vienna, all four of us. So we were traveling, maybe half an hour, 45 minutes, it wasn’t too far from Vienna, where we were, and all of a sudden, right in the middle of the road, there was a soldier, a Russian soldier with an automatic [weapon] on his side – a brbka they call it, you know, with the bullets, you know. So anyway, the driver had to stop, because he was right in the middle of the road. So anyway, the way it turned out was actually our luck, you know, that this guy came with us, because he just wanted to get a ride. So he got up on the back of the truck with us and was riding with us all the way to Vienna. So we come into Vienna and they’ve got the whole set-up out there, they’re checking credential and Ausweis and everything, you know. And I say ‘Oh my god! Which way to run?’ you know? ‘What are we going to do?’ you know? And there were about five or seven cars and a couple of trucks, and these guys, they took their time, you know, these Russians checking this and checking this. And so it was only about two or three vehicles ahead of us and this guy who was sitting with us started swearing and saying ‘What the hell is the matter with you? What’s the hold up here?’ And he [the guard] says ‘Okay, davaj! Davaj! Davaj!’ So he let us go without checking our credentials or anything!”</p><h4>Soccer</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/mzgMujKGz0Q?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“He says ‘All three of you are soccer players and I’ve got a place for you, for all three of you to play soccer on the Hungarian team.’ So I remember, it was the Pannonia team and my two brothers and I, we joined them. There were 11 soccer players and seven of them were Slovak. So [there were] only four Hungarians, but they were a Hungarian team. But we were good. We played about a year or so. And then they got us jobs, I found a job working for Simpson, putting little scooters together, and little baby buggies and so on. They came with a shipment from overseas in little boxes and we put them together you know, and so on.”</p><h4>Learning English from the Bible</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/edoOT2KHuWI?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I took the Slovak bible and the English bible and said ‘Well this word is this and this is this, and this word is this’ because the bible is usually word for word the same. And then I started reading newspapers and books and got interested in art and went to art schools and academies and other academies; the Chicago Academy, the American Academy and then the Palette and Chisel… And then I became a studio chairman at the Palette and Chisel, and these are my accomplishments right here – a silver medal, another one is a gold medal, another one is a diamond medal. I was judged by fellow artists, not by the public, by fellow artists – those are the tough ones. And then I started, with another friend of mine, he was a famous seascape artist, Charles Vickery, we started another club, I approached him if he would help me, because my problem was that I was foreign, I didn’t know that much English, I said ‘You’re established, you’re one of the top seascape artists and painters,’ I say ‘Would you help me?’ He says ‘Yeah, we will start it, okay.’ So that’s how we started the club Oil Painters of America; I was the original founder right here.”</p>
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Dusan Ciran
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Dusan Ciran was born in Brezová pod Bradlom, western Slovakia, in 1929. His father Martin died when he was only a few months old and his mother, Darina, subsequently remarried a widower called Emil Sarvady. Around the time that Dusan started school, the family moved to the nearby town of Senica, where his stepfather took over a restaurant which the whole family helped run. Dusan says that WWII was a particularly profitable time for the restaurant with the establishment proving popular amongst the 2,000 German soldiers stationed at the local barracks.</p><p> </p><p>Following the War, Dusan’s stepfather was arrested on charges of collaborating with the Germans, but was released, says Dusan, when such charges could not be proved. In 1949, a family friend who worked for the local police tipped Dusan’s stepfather off that a warrant was again out for his arrest, prompting Dusan’s family to flee the country that very evening. Dusan says he and his family crossed the Morava River into the Soviet Zone of Austria, from which the challenge was still to make it to Vienna and the American Zone of the country. Dusan’s family successfully did so when the truck they were riding in was stopped by a Soviet soldier, who traveled with the family and shouted at his colleagues at the border checkpoint to hurry up and let them through.</p><p> </p><p>From Vienna, the family was sent to Wegsheid refugee camp in Linz where they spent just over eight months. Dusan and his family arrived in Canada in 1950; they were sent first to Lethbridge, Alberta, to pick sugar beets before moving to Toronto, where Dusan and his brothers Emil and Milan played for the local Hungarian football club – Pannonia – and through this found work assembling scooters at Simpson manufacturers. Dusan moved with his family to Chicago in 1952, settling first on the city’s North Side. He quickly found work at the city’s Continental Can Company, where he rose through the ranks to work in the firm’s master plate department, designing and producing labels. Dusan says he made some extra money at this time by playing violin at Chicago Slovak and Czech events. He attended art classes at the Chicago Academy and then the American Academy of Art in Chicago. Together with artist Charles Vickery, Dusan founded the Oil Painters of America club, which to this day attracts a large membership. Dusan currently lives in Cicero, Illinois, with his second wife Anna.</p><p><a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20170611035225/http://www.flickr.com/photos/32224489@N04/page2/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">A link to some of Dusan’s artworks</a></p>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
NCSML Archive
1948
Arrest
Arts
Brezova pod Bradlom
Education
emigrant
English language
Family business
German occupation
Political prisoner
refugee
Refugee camp
Restaurant/hotel industry
Sports
WWII
-
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34e06267b8b124b7a86a21701e3e1b99
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans
Subject
The topic of the resource
Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans was an oral history project launched by the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library in 2009. The project captured and preserved the stories of Czechs and Slovaks who left their homeland during the Cold War and settled in New York City, Washington, D.C., Cleveland, Chicago and the San Francisco Bay Area. During the second phase of the project, the NCSML recorded the stories of immigrants who came to the United States after the fall of communism in 1989 as well. By the conclusion of the project in August 2013, the NCSML had collected more than 300 oral histories. <br /><br />Both phases of the project were made possible by grants from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. <br /><br />On the project’s website, you can read biographies of Czechs and Slovaks who began a new life in the United States, watch video clips from their interviews, and view photos and other archival materials they shared with us. <br /><br />Full length interviews are available for further research at the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library. For more information, contact Dave Muhlena, Library Director, at dmuhlena@ncsml.org.
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
<h4>Summer in Vienna</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/au8YNfjgTbc?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“My father was living far away and so I was raised by my grandmother and the relationship wasn’t that great, so I tried to basically – not necessarily for political reasons – get away, and Vienna was the closest city. So I was kind of contemplating going there and working there and saving some money and maybe buying a car. So, that was back in 1967.”</p><p><em>Was it very different in Vienna than it was in Bratislava?</em></p><p>“Looking at it now, I would say yes, because even to a teenage boy, buying a bottle of Coca-Cola was very rewarding. So I guess just living there and seeing all the items which are very, very normal for our kids right now was a big surprise and [I felt] admiration.”</p><h4>Canada</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/93MN7rDwlT0?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I never thought about it originally, but living in Vienna for two months pretty much, from July 2 to August 21 when the occupation took place, a lot of countries opened up their borders to political refugees because then it was obviously a political situation. And all my friends all of a sudden came to Vienna, I mean almost everybody did, and they had all these ideas to go to different countries, so we just pretty much went to different embassies and tried to figure out where is going to be the most, I guess, feasible place for us, or for me, to go.</p><p>“Surprisingly, maybe you don’t know about it but, I went to the American Embassy first, but you had to commit to the draft – not at the Embassy, but once they gave you the entry paper to the United States, you would have to sign up for the draft here. I, as an 18 year old, got scared. So, the next trip was, I believe, to the Swiss Embassy, where we also obtained a visa. Pretty much all the countries, including South Africa, were really accommodating all these political refugees. For whatever reason, we went to the Canadian Embassy where they, you know, gave us the visa and they also paid for the airline ticket which we had to return the money. So that was… We decided to go to Canada. I mean, I’m talking we – me and my friends – and I believe on October 4 we landed in Toronto.”</p><h4>Feels American</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/o7Smb9hKhIQ?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I think that I feel a little more American because I am 62 – I spent here pretty much 42 years, and I only spent in Slovakia 18. And being exposed to the business community here, I just somehow think that we are a little bit more American. I never will forget the Slovak roots or anything, and we are proud to go back there. We still, you know, my wife is Slovak, we speak Slovak at home but somehow I think that I am a little more American.”</p><h4>Learning English</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/23cMNJnAIdI?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“We were very fortunate, I really have to give credit to the Canadian government that, when we landed there in ’68, they pretty much almost advised us not to look and seek work. There were schools – the government, first of all, I guess it released millions and millions of dollars for all of these political refugees, and we were all sent to school, whatever you were, 18 years old or 50 years old. And the school was very intense, it was a daily school, as I said, six to seven hours a day, five days a week. And, after six months, if you felt that you need a little more education, like some people went back to the Province of Quebec, and they said they want to learn French. So, it was like a prescription, then the government just gave you another six months of schooling. And we were compensated for this, this is not [a situation where] you had to go to work. It wasn’t much money, if I remember correctly, it was maybe 40, 50 dollars a week. But keep in mind also that we paid for room and board maybe 15 bucks a week someplace where we stayed in somebody’s apartment or something – it wasn’t an apartment per se, but let’s say two, three guys stayed.”</p>
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Dusan Surovy
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Dusan Surovy was born in Bratislava in 1949. He was raised by his grandmother and says that his upbringing was ‘strict.’ He attended electro-technical school in the Slovak capital and emigrated just days after graduating. In 1967, Dusan spent a couple of months working in Vienna where he stayed with a family friend. He decided to repeat this experience in the summer of 1968, and subsequently claimed political asylum in Canada following the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia on August 21. Dusan says that at this time many countries were ‘really accommodating’ to the wave of Slovak and Czech refugees in Vienna</p><p> </p><p>Dusan arrived in Toronto on October 4, 1968 and moved to Kitchener, Ontario, four weeks later. He learned English through an intensive, six-month course which the Canadian government organized for refugees and then took a job as an assistant electrician. In 1970, Dusan came to Chicago. He married his first wife and became an American citizen eight years later. As soon as he became a U.S. citizen, Dusan made a visit to Czechoslovakia, which he refers to as a “strange” experience.</p><p> </p><p>In Chicago, Dusan established his own electrical contracting company which then expanded into property management. He says he was not initially extremely involved in the local Slovak community, but did enjoy playing soccer with other Slovaks in Berwyn. Now semi-retired, Dusan and his second wife, Ingrid (also a Slovak émigré), spend their time between Chicago and Florida. They have two children, both of whom ‘are proud’ to speak Slovak.</p>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
NCSML Archive
1968 emigrant/refugee
English language
Sense of identity
-
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ea0a6c7c8ea4f9daf44c03fe58d8c17d
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans
Subject
The topic of the resource
Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans was an oral history project launched by the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library in 2009. The project captured and preserved the stories of Czechs and Slovaks who left their homeland during the Cold War and settled in New York City, Washington, D.C., Cleveland, Chicago and the San Francisco Bay Area. During the second phase of the project, the NCSML recorded the stories of immigrants who came to the United States after the fall of communism in 1989 as well. By the conclusion of the project in August 2013, the NCSML had collected more than 300 oral histories. <br /><br />Both phases of the project were made possible by grants from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. <br /><br />On the project’s website, you can read biographies of Czechs and Slovaks who began a new life in the United States, watch video clips from their interviews, and view photos and other archival materials they shared with us. <br /><br />Full length interviews are available for further research at the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library. For more information, contact Dave Muhlena, Library Director, at dmuhlena@ncsml.org.
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
<h4>Brewery Experience</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/z9oCjIydGnY?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“The brewery was in Nitra and we were just working there as students. So, they let us go near pivo, or beer, but it was either working with bottles or just little things, because we were there for just four hours. It was partially to see what’s going on so it’s not the first time we walk into a factory after we finish school. So they kind of let us observe what was going on in the real world; that was nice. During summers when I was in school, we used to go for letné aktivita – summer activities – and I spent one month of every summer, while I was in school, in Prague in an ice cream factory – I loved that place! – or I worked in Čelnice where they made fruit compote, so that was really nice. I loved those times because we could see and go to Prague. At that time we paid koruna for the metro, and every day we finished work, we showered, changed our clothes and went to Praha.”</p><h4>Family and Summer</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WTANmoRURJ8?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Because my uncle emigrated in ’68, we could not get a passport; we could not go anywhere. So we didn’t travel. We just stayed at home, and I think we lived in one of the most beautiful places in the world in Slovakia with the mountains… We also had a little farm. On top of my parents working, we always had a cow, and of course for winter you had to collect the food for the cows, so my father was working the fields and we went and helped. Then we went in the summer to pick blueberries and wild raspberries, but that was in the mountains. So that’s where are summers were. And we had a little lake, but we had to go on bicycles; it was maybe 6-7 kilometers, but we took our bikes, when our parents let us, and a whole group of kids went there for a whole day and we went to the lake.”</p><h4>Pepsi-Cola Factory</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/AOfuCD_NYew?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“To move to Košice I moved to my aunt’s apartment, because they helped me find the job right after school, and I wanted to go to America to see my uncle. Where I lived, in Banská Bystrica [region], they knew my uncle emigrated and it was on file, but in ’85 there were not many computers and my uncle helped me to get permanent residency in Košice. So because I had permanent residency in Košice, I applied for a visa to America from Košice, and that’s how I could go to America to see my uncle.”</p><h4>Learning English</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/TWezrlhFOVI?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I went to school, the ESOL program, but most of the English I learned with my kids. They started growing up and we read Slovak stories and then English stories. Watching TV, news, and classical stories. But mostly with kids, when they were doing homework, vocabulary…”</p>
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Title
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Elena Brlit
Description
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<p>Elena Brlit was born in Pohorelská Maša in 1964 and grew up in the small village in central Slovakia with her parents, younger brother and younger sister. Elena’s mother, Anna, stayed home while her children were growing up and later worked in the factory in nearby Pohorela. Her father, Juraj, worked in a different factory – one that made pumps. During elementary school, Elena was involved in several activities including dance lessons and skiing. She recalls summers spent picking berries and cycling to a nearby lake with friends. Elena attended high school in Nitra, where she lived in dormitory and studied food chemistry. As part of her education, she and her classmates spent several hours a week observing and working in different settings, including a brewery and ice cream factory.</p><p> </p><p>Elena graduated high school and moved to Košice, where her aunt and uncle had helped her secure a job at the Frucola (Pepsi-Cola) factory. According to Elena, one reason for her move was to attempt to visit the United States. Another uncle had emigrated in 1968, and Elena was unable to receive a visa in her hometown. After establishing permanent residency in Kosice, she was given permission to travel and flew to Florida in June 1985. Although her visa was for 20 days, Elena realized she wanted to stay permanently. Shortly after arriving, she met her future husband, <a href="/web/20170609051416/http://www.ncsml.org/exhibits/emil-brlit/">Emil Brlit</a>, and the two married.</p><p> </p><p>Elena became an American citizen in 2000. Since arriving in the United States, Elena has worked with her husband’s dental lab. The couple has two children, both of whom speak Slovak. Elena and her family regularly travel to Slovakia, as her parents still live in the village where she grew up. She enjoys keeping Slovak traditions and has a large circle of Czech and Slovak friends. Today, Elena lives in Sarasota, Florida, with her husband, Emil.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p>
Creator
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National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library
Source
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NCSML Archive
Banska
Education
English language
Family life
Haluskova
Kosice
marriage
Pohorelska Masa
Rural life
school