Eva Eisler
<p>Eva Eisler was born and raised in Prague. Her father, Jiří, was a mechanical engineer while her mother, Vlasta, was an artist. Growing up, Eva attended a school specializing in mathematics and physics in her native Prague district of Karlín and then began studying to become an architect. In 1968, her father took a temporary academic job at the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom. Eva says that she learned English over two summers spent living with her father’s colleagues in England. In 1970, Eva’s father decided to emigrate. Eva says that the remainder of her family in Czechoslovakia was “punished” for this decision; as a consequence, she was expelled from her architectural studies.</p><p> </p><p>Eva subsequently began working at the architectural firm SIAL, where she met her husband John. The pair had two children and left as a family for the United States in 1983 when John was hired by renowned architect Richard Maier. Eva, who had been making jewelry since she was young, began to do so much more actively once she moved to New York as, she said, she was unable to secure a job in architecture there. She took several classes at Parsons The New School for Design and ultimately ended up teaching there and at NYU. Eva refers to the 25 years she spent in New York as “the best time of [her] life.” She moved back to Prague in 2008 after her husband set up his own architecture firm in the Czech capital. Today, Eva heads the jewelry department at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague. She says that it has become a “tradition” that she designs one exhibit for either Prague Castle or the National Gallery each year. Her own work has been exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Art and Design in New York City.</p>
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Eva Lutovsky
<p>Eva Lutovsky was born in Vysoké Mýto, eastern Bohemia, in 1922. Her father, František, owned a flower shop, while her mother, Hana, worked as a secretary at the local courthouse. When Eva was still a toddler, her mother moved to Prague without her father and started working at the Supreme Court in the city, raising Eva on her own. Eva was sent to the capital’s English <em>gymnázium</em> to study, for which she says she was subsequently extremely grateful to her mother. During WWII, Eva and her mother sheltered two Jewish women active in the Czech resistance movement PVVZ (Petiční výbor Věrni zůstaneme) for 22 months in their apartment until liberation. One of the women, Heda Kaufmanová, wrote about this experience afterwards in her memoirs, entitled <em>Léta 1938 – 194</em>5 {<em>The Years 1938 – 1945]</em>. Eva says the women had to lock themselves in the bathroom when she and her mother had visitors, and that the hardest part of hiding the women was that Eva’s rations and those of her mother had to be split in half and shared amongst the four.</p><p> </p><p>Following liberation, Eva went to work as a clerk and translator at the British Embassy in Prague. She left Czechoslovakia with the help of a guide shortly after the Communist putsch in 1948, crossing the border into West Germany, where she says she went to work for Radio Free Europe in Munich pending admittance to the United States. In 1954, she was duly granted a U.S. visa and flew to Chicago, where she has lived ever since. She wrote of her adoptive home to the <em>Chicago Tribune</em> in 1995: “After 40 years, Chicago is my home, my favorite city which I watched grow from a duckling into a beautiful swan. More power to it.”</p>
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George Grosman
<p>George Grosman was born in Prague in 1953. During WWII, his father, Ladislav, was drafted into the Slovak army and then sent to a forced labor camp because he was Jewish. His mother, Edith, who was also Jewish, spent most of the War in Auschwitz. After the War, George’s parents moved to Prague where Edith worked as a biology researcher and Ladislav found work in the publishing industry as an editor and writer. George’s father became well-known after writing the screenplay for the Oscar-winning film <em>The Shop on Main Street</em> [<em>Obchod na korze</em>]. George has early memories of walking the streets of Prague with his nanny and spending his summers in the country. He attended three different schools in Prague where he enjoyed history, grammar, and the humanities. However, George’s main interests lay in music. At the age of nine, he began learning classical guitar, and one of his teachers introduced him to more popular music. George spent many weekends and summers at Dobříš Castle, which was owned by the Czechoslovak Writers Union of which his father was a member. In 1967, it was there that George joined his first band.</p><p> </p><p><img class="alignright wp-image-3418" src="http://web.archive.org/web/20170609083637im_/http://ncsml.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Handler-14.jpg" alt="George performing" width="500" height="583" /></p><p>After the Warsaw Pact invasion in August 1968, George’s family made plans to leave the country. George himself forged a letter from his grandfather living in Israel requesting that the family come to visit him. They were able to secure exit visas, and left Czechoslovakia on September 3, 1968. After about a month in Vienna, George and his family arrived in Tel Aviv in October 1968. Although at first George had a difficult time adjusting to life in Israel, he says he eventually learned both Hebrew and English, made some good friends, and got involved with local musicians. George studied English literature and linguistics at Bar Ilan University in Tel Aviv and spent a short stint in the Israeli army.</p><p> </p><p>In 1977, George moved to London to continue his education. He was there for three years and remembers it as “the best time of his life.” In 1980, George secured a position as a teaching assistant for Slavic languages at the University of Toronto. He got married and had two daughters, and eventually became involved in the Czech community there, specifically joining Nové Divadlo [New Theatre]. In 1989, he moved to Reykjavík, Iceland, for a few years, and recalls hearing about the Velvet Revolution there, listening to a short-wave radio. George first returned to Czechoslovakia in 1991, and says that he was able to enter the country at the same border crossing he had used to leave 23 years earlier. Today, George is a professional musician. He frequently performs for Czech audiences throughout North America. He splits his time between Toronto, Canada, and Orlando, Florida.</p>
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George Heller
<p>George Heller was born in Mariánské Lázně, western Bohemia, in 1948. His father Evžen, who was Jewish, left the country for Palestine in 1938 and there joined the Czechoslovak division of the British Army. Following WWII, he returned to Czechoslovakia and settled in Mariánské Lázně, where he met George’s mother Jiřina who was originally from Plzeň. They established a successful bakery, but when their business was threatened with nationalization following the Communist coup, they decided to leave once again. In 1949, the family moved to Israel. When George’s father learned that he was eligible to live in any Commonwealth country due to his service during the War, the Hellers left for Canada and settled in Montreal in 1952. George’s father began working in bakery and soon opened his own business. George recalls a close-knit, thriving Czech community in Montreal, and he and his parents forged lifelong connections with other Czechs in the city. He says that his mother kept a Czech household; she cooked traditional foods and maintained holiday traditions. When George was 14, his father put him to work in the family bakery and he spent much of his free time there.</p><p> </p><p>After graduating from high school, George began working for Hudson’s Bay Company as a fur trader in northern Canada. He stayed with the company for 20 years and worked his way up through the firm holding numerous positions. He eventually returned to the Hudson’s Bay Company as CEO in 1999 after managing the North American and European arms of the shoe company Bat’a and heading the 1994 Commonwealth Games held in Vancouver. Following the Velvet Revolution in 1989, George’s relatives in Czechoslovakia turned to him for assistance in starting business enterprises of their own. Since then, he has also been contacted by both the Czech and Slovak governments for his business expertise and knowledge of Western markets. In 2005, to celebrate the entry of the Czech Republic into the European Union, George, in conjunction with the Czech Embassy in Canada, organized an exhibit of Czech glass in the Hudson’s Bay Company’s flagship store in Toronto.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>George holds Czech and Canadian citizenship and says that there is ‘no downside’ to dual citizenship. He frequently travels to the Czech Republic, for business purposes and to visit family. He raised his two children speaking Czech and passed on to them Czech traditions. Now retired, George sits on several boards and serves as the Honorary Consul General of Thailand in Toronto. He and his wife Linda split their time between Toronto and California.</p>
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Helena Stossel
<p>Helena Stossel was born in Prague in 1946. Helena’s parents both worked at a small silk-screening operation – her father as the manager and her mother as a silk-screener. Helena and her younger brother, Tomas, were watched by her grandmother and spent a lot of time at the <em>chata</em> her grandfather built outside the city. Helena says that she learned to ‘appreciate nature’ from camping, canoeing, and white-water kayaking. She also enjoyed reading and poetry. Helena went to <em>gymnázium</em> where she focused on the sciences and then studied chemistry at the Institute of Chemical Technology in Prague. She married her first husband, Lev, in 1967. The Warsaw Pact invasion in August 1968 left an impression on Helena, as she congregated on Wenceslas Square with other young people and talked with the Warsaw Pact troops. Her parents and brother immigrated to the United States in July 1969 and, although Helena was reluctant to leave as she wanted to ‘fight for freedom,’ she joined her husband when he decided to leave in the autumn of 1969. The pair lived in Vienna for one month and then flew to New York City in December 1969.</p><p> </p><p>After spending two weeks with family friends in Ossining, New York, Helena moved to the Boston area where her parents had settled and opened a Czech restaurant. Helena spent a few months becoming comfortable with the English language and then began working in a hospital kitchen. Her next job was in the lab of Glover Memorial Hospital and, at the request of a pathologist, she transferred to what is now Brigham and Women’s Hospital, where she worked for 40 years, retiring only a short time ago. Helena gave birth to her daughter Johana in 1974 and bought a house in Holliston (a suburb of Boston) in 1976. She married her second husband, Frank Stossel, in 1981 and first returned to Czechoslovakia in 1987. She has visited her home country many times since. Helena says that it is only recently that she became ‘at peace’ with her emigration, citing her reluctance to leave Czechoslovakia in the first place as preventing her from feeling at home in the United States. In her retirement, she hopes to travel more and go on a canoe trip in the Czech Republic. Today, Helena lives in Holliston with her husband Frank.</p>
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Igor Mikolaska
<p> </p><p>Igor Mikolaska was born in Trenčín, western Slovakia in 1978 and grew up nearby in Nové Mesto nad Váhom. His father, also named Igor, worked for a company that made air conditioners until the business was privatized following the fall of communism. He now works for an insurance company. Igor’s mother, Helena, worked as a government lawyer specializing in land disputes. Igor attended elementary school and technical high school in Nové Mesto nad Váhom, where he studied English for four years. He played competitive volleyball with the national junior team and traveled throughout Slovakia for tournaments.</p><p> </p><p>Although he considered playing volleyball professionally, Igor decided to study English at university in Trenčín and says that six months of intensive study greatly improved his language skills. In 1999, Igor traveled to the United States for the first time to work at a summer day camp in Fox Lake, Illinois. He settled in Chicago permanently in 2004. Igor received a bachelor’s degree in management and a master’s degree in human resources, both from Roosevelt University. While studying, he met fellow Slovaks and saw there was a need for an organization to promote activities for young Slovak émigrés. He founded Slovak USA, an organization which has put on concerts, film festivals, holiday parties, folk festivals, and other activities. Igor says that he now has to turn down some of the artists approaching him, due to the number of interested groups. He has plans to open a Slovak and Czech cultural center in Chicago. Additionally, Igor works a reporter for Slovak newspaper <em>Pravda</em>covering the Chicago Blackhawks.</p><p> </p><p>Igor says that he was proud to receive his American citizenship in 2008, as he feels at home in the U.S. and is happy to contribute to American society. He frequently travels back to Slovakia, both to visit friends and family and to scout talent for events. He lives in Chicago.</p><p><a id="ucRelatedViewer_dlRelated_ctl00_lnkView" class="lnkRelatedItem" href="http://web.archive.org/web/20170808010030/http://www.slovakchicago.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">The website for Igor’s organization, Slovak USA</a></p><p> </p>
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Jan Kocvara
<p>Jan Kocvara was born in 1946 in Trnava, Slovakia. His father (also called Ján) was a tailor who published a book on tailoring and taught at an apprentice school. After the Communist coup, he was forced to stop teaching and writing and began making clothes at a state enterprise. Jan’s mother, Emelia, had been a homemaker, but she began working under the Communist regime. Jan and his siblings were cared for by their grandmother while their parents were working. Although he was a better-than-average student, Jan says he was not allowed to enter high school until he had completed one year as a chef’s apprentice.</p><p> </p><p>Later, Jan attended teacher’s college, where he studied Slovak and English. During the Prague Spring, Jan says he found himself ‘able to travel,’ and participated in a study-abroad program in Wales. His stay there was extended from three to five weeks as a result of the Warsaw Pact invasion in August 1968. Upon graduation, Jan says he had no problem finding teaching work because he was one of the first graduates with a qualification for teaching English.</p><p> </p><p>Jan married in 1971 and had two sons, Ondrej and Matej. He says it was a series of events which led him to leave Czechoslovakia with his family in 1979. He and his wife were unhappy with the ideas their children were being taught in school. During the period of Normalization, Jan says that he himself was ‘encouraged to leave’ his teaching position. As a teacher, he was not granted permission to leave the country; however, once he became a waiter he was allowed to travel abroad. At first, Jan was granted permission to travel alone, but after some bartering with a well-connected family acquaintance, his whole family were issued exit visas. They took a train to West Germany and then to London where they lived for five years. Because of his language expertise, Jan got a job with BBC Radio where he was an on-air broadcaster of news and sports. He decided to move to the United States with his family when he began to feel unsafe, amid a number of attacks on radio employees. Jan applied for a job at Voice of America, and after waiting two years for his papers to clear, he and his family moved to the Washington, D.C., area. At Voice of America, Jan translated and broadcast news reports, some of which involved interviewing other Czechoslovak émigrés.</p><p> </p><p>Upon arriving in both London and Washington, he immediately joined the local Sokol and other Slovak émigré groups. Because of the effect his broadcasting work had on other Czechs and Slovaks, and the success of his family, Jan says he ‘did not escape in vain.’ Jan has been back to visit Slovakia twice since he left. Today, he lives in McLean, Virginia, and teaches Slovak language classes at the Foreign Service Institute.</p>
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Jan Vilcek
<p>Jan Vilcek was born in Bratislava in 1933. His father, Julius, was a business executive and his mother, Bedriška, was an ophthalmologist. Prior to WWII, Jan recalls often traveling to Hungary, where his mother was raised, to visit family. In 1942, when deportations of Jews began in the Slovak Republic, Jan’s parents sent him to a Catholic boarding school and orphanage. Despite the family’s Jewish heritage, for a while Jan’s father was permitted to continue to work in Bratislava, although in a lower position, and his mother was sent to work in Prievidza in central Slovakia. Jan joined his mother in Prievidza and, in 1944, his father left Bratislava and came to Prievidza as well; however, when the Slovak Uprising of that year was crushed, Jan’s father joined the partisans while Jan and his mother went into hiding. As the Soviet Army advanced into central Slovakia, the family was reunited and lived in Košice for a few months before returning to Bratislava.</p><p> </p><p>Jan attended <em>gymnázium</em> in Bratislava and was accepted to medical school at Comenius University. He became interested in microbiology and immunology research and, after graduating, started working at the Institute of Virology (part of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences) where he earned his doctorate. Jan married his wife, Marica, in 1962. In October 1964, the pair was invited by a colleague of Jan’s to spend a weekend in Vienna. At the American Embassy in Vienna, they were given permits to travel to Germany where they claimed asylum. A little more than two months later, Jan and Marica received visas, and they flew to New York City in February 1965. After a short stay with Marica’s brother, the couple moved into an apartment in Manhattan and Jan started his job (which he had arranged overseas) at the NYU School of Medicine. Jan has spent his entire professional career in research and has done important work with the proteins interferon and tumor necrosis factor (TNF). Together with his colleagues, he created an antibody to block TNF and helped develop the drug known as infliximab or Remicade, used for the treatment of Crohn’s disease, rheumatoid arthritis and several other inflammatory disorders.</p><p> </p><p>In 2000, Jan and Marica started the Vilcek Foundation, an organization that recognizes the contributions of immigrants to the United States in art and science. Jan has received several awards and recognitions for his professional and philanthropic achievements including the Gallatin Medal from NYU. In 2013, he was presented with a National Medal of Technology and Innovation by President Barack Obama. Today, Jan is a professor of microbiology at the NYU School of Medicine. Although he visits Slovakia often, he considers himself a ‘true New Yorker.’ He lives in the city with Marica.</p>
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Jana Fraňková
<p>Jana Fraňková was born in Prague just after WWII in 1946. Her Slovak-Jewish mother had been in hiding in southern Bohemia during the War, and her cousin (who lived with Jana and her mother) had spent two years in Ravensbrück concentration camp. Jana says that she did not learn of her Jewish heritage until she went to school, as her mother did not bring up the subject. Jana’s mother, who joined the Communist Party, worked in telecommunications for the government. As a result, Jana says that her home had the first television set in the neighborhood. As a young girl, Jana was active in sports and joined a competitive gymnastics club. She attended <em>gymnázium </em>and became interested in philosophy and politics; she began studying philosophy and English literature at Charles University. Jana says that the time of the Prague Spring was very exciting and that she and her friends ‘all believed in it.’ While working as an au pair in Britain during the summer of 1968, Warsaw Pact troops invaded Czechoslovakia. Her mother convinced her to stay in Britain where she landed an interview at Oxford University and was admitted to Saint Hilda’s College. She received permission from the Czechoslovak government to commence studies there, and graduated with a degree in philosophy and English. Jana returned to Czechoslovakia after three years and finished her degree at Charles University.</p><p> </p><p>Upon graduating, Jana says that she had trouble finding employment and worked a series of temporary jobs. She worked for a construction firm for one year under the auspices of starting a company magazine; however, she says that she did very little actual work as she was given the job by a friend and the company did not actually have money for the project. She then found a job at a publishing house translating Czech language books into English. She quit her position when she was offered promotion with the stipulation that she join the Communist Party. With the help of her uncle, Jana began teaching at a language school. She married Jiří Fraňek, a journalist, and had two children, Jakub and Ruth. Jana says that although many of her friends signed Charter 77, she declined because of the effect she believed it would have on her husband’s job. Instead, she helped the cause by translating various documents relating to the Charter into English, including the Charter itself. Jana says that her dissident activities and refusal to join the Communist Party led to conflict with the headmistress of the language school at which she taught. She was questioned by the secret police, and eventually resigned. She then began working as a freelance translator and interpreter. She was in this position during the Velvet Revolution, when both she and her 15 year old son worked as interpreters for foreign journalists. In more recent years, Jana has accompanied Czech politicians such as Václav Havel and Václav Klaus on foreign visits to English-speaking countries, where she has been their interpreter. She lives in Prague.</p>
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Jana Pochop
<p>Jana Pochop was born in Hořic v Podkrkonoší in northeastern Bohemia in 1947. She grew up on a farm in the village of Bukinova u Pecky with her parents, Jaroslava and Josef, and her two brothers and one sister. Jana says that her village was self-sustaining, but that after the farms were collectivized she remembers shortages of food and other goods. Because her father was in the hospital for several weeks, her farm was one of the last in the area to be collectivized. Jana attended elementary school in her village, but after fifth grade she had to travel to nearby towns. She says that high school was an especially difficult time as she struggled to balance travel, homework, and housework, and her mother was in the hospital. Her mother died when Jana was 16. After graduating high school, Jana attended the Institute of Chemical Technology in Prague for one year. She returned home to help take care of the farm for one year and then moved to Hradec Králové where she worked in the accounting office of a company that brought entertainment from Prague to the city. In 1970, Jana married Vladimir Pochop, whom she had known since she was 16, and moved to Prague.</p><p> </p><p>Jana received a degree in physical therapy from a vocational school and, in 1975, began studying psychology at Charles University. Jana says that in order to be accepted, she applied for membership in the Communist Party; however, her application was not processed. She received her degree in 1979 and, in January 1980, she and Vladimir traveled to London for two weeks. When they were not granted asylum there, on the way home, the pair got off the train in Munich and went to the American Embassy. Jana and Vladimir were granted asylum and found an apartment; Jana says that she loved their time in Munich. When they received permission to immigrate to the United States, Jana was eight months pregnant. Their son Jan was born in September 1981. Eight months later in April 1982, the Pochops flew to Atlanta, Georgia. Jana stayed with Jan in Atlanta for six weeks while Vladimir found a job and a place to live in California. Once settled in Mountain View, California, Jana says that the language barrier was very difficult for her. She took many ESL classes and raised her sons (Martin was born in 1984) speaking English in order to improve her own language skills. In 1990, the Pochops returned to Czechoslovakia for the first time and Jana was able to retrieve her transcript from the vocational school she had attended for physical therapy. A few years later, she began working as a physical therapist at a hospital. In 2011, Jana completed a program in psychology at St. Mary’s College. As both of their sons now live in Prague, Jana and Vladimir have considered returning to the Czech Republic. Today, they live in Concord, California.</p>
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