Robert Dobson
<p>Robert Dobson was born in Prague in 1956. He grew up in the Nové Město part of the city. His father Vilém worked in construction and died in a workplace accident when Robert was still a child. His mother Alena subsequently raised Robert on her own and worked as an office manager. Robert says his childhood in Czechoslovakia was extremely happy and, once his own family was settled in the United States, he sent his children back every summer to stay with their grandparents and ‘gain exposure to nature’ at summer camps.</p><p> </p><p>Robert studied to become a waiter at vocational school in Prague and then worked at Klášterní vinárna, near the city’s National Theatre, and Restaurace Beograd, a Yugoslav restaurant not far from Wenceslas Square. At this time, Robert also took part in cycling competitions and worked to earn some extra money as a hair model. In 1976, he met his wife Yvonne; the couple’s first daughter Andrea was born the following year.</p><p> </p><p>Robert’s sister-in-law had emigrated to Downers Grove, Illinois, in 1968. He and Yvonne decided that they too wanted to leave Czechoslovakia. After one failed attempt to emigrate to Switzerland (which resulted in Yvonne’s passport being confiscated), Robert found someone willing to accept a bribe and help them assemble the papers they needed. The family came to Downers Grove to stay in 1984. In America, the couple’s second daughter Tina was born.</p><p> </p><p>Robert’s first job was as a bartender at a hotel near Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. He started working for a friend at Little Europe restaurant in Brookfield before he heard of a Czech restaurant coming up for sale in Berwyn. Robert bought Pilsner Restaurant in 1987 and ran the business with his family for the next 13 years. He says the family ‘loved’ running the restaurant, but that they sold the business as Czech custom in the neighborhood declined. Today, Robert runs a remodeling and construction firm based out of Bolingbrook, Illinois. He and his wife Yvonne enjoy spending time with their grandchildren and are determined, says Robert, to teach them to speak Czech.</p>
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Richard Stilicha
<p>Richard Stilicha was born in Bratislava in 1971. His mother, Danica, a researcher, and his father, Peter, an editor, were both studying at university at the time he was born. Richard’s maternal grandparents helped to raise him in the family home in Bratislava’s Old Town. His maternal grandfather, Eugen Suchoň, was a very well-known composer who wrote the first Slovak national opera, and Richard himself began playing the piano at the age of four.</p><p> </p><p>Richard says that one advantage of living in Bratislava was being able to watch Austrian television and gaining some knowledge of happenings in the West. In 1989, Richard graduated from high school and began studying computer science at Slovak Technical University. He also acted in the Slovak National Theatre as part of the background cast of Carmen. On the night of November 18, Richard arrived at the theatre to be told not to dress for the show. To support the student protests in Prague that had happened the previous day, his company went on strike – a moment that Richard says was the beginning of the Velvet Revolution in Bratislava. A few days later, Richard heard that the borders had opened and drove to Austria for the day; he returned home and then took his parents across the border.</p><p> </p><p>Richard went to Finland for three months in 1990 to work on a translation project for computer systems, and he received his bachelor’s degree in 1991. He then enrolled at the University of Economics in Bratislava where he received his master’s degree in international business. In 1995 Richard went to the University of California, Santa Barbara, on a student work program where he developed the first web pages for the university. Although he was offered a full-time job there, he returned to Slovakia to finish his degree. For several years, Richard managed an internet service provider company. He married his wife, Monika (whom he had met during his time in the United States), in 1997. The pair decided to move to Canada in 1999. They arrived in Toronto where Monika quickly found a job with CitiBank. Richard worked as a project manager for five years before branching off to work as a project management consultant – a job he still holds today.</p><p> </p><p>With his friend <a href="/web/20170609053003/http://www.ncsml.org/exhibits/pavol-dzacko/">Pavol Dzacko</a>, Richard began a non-profit organization called Canada SK Entertainment, which brings contemporary Slovak music and cultural acts to Toronto. Richard has one son who visits his grandparents in Slovakia each summer and has learned to speak Slovak. Richard himself returns to Slovakia several times a year and says that he feels both Toronto and Bratislava are his homes. He lives with his wife and son in Toronto.</p>
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Petra Sith
<p> </p><p>Petra Sith was born in Bratislava in September 1979, in Kramáre Hospital where her mother, Anna, worked as a nurse. Her mother married her stepfather, Peter Sith (a mechanical engineer for carmaker Škoda), when Petra was four years old. In 1983, Petra’s brother, <a href="/web/20170609122012/http://www.ncsml.org/exhibits/karol-sith/">Karol Sith</a>, was born.Petra started grade school in Bratislava, of which she says she still has ‘fond memories.’ She did not stay there too long, however, before her family left the country. The Siths went on holiday to Yugoslavia in 1986 and it was there that Petra’s parents told her and her brother they had no intention of returning home.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>The family spent about one year in refugee camps in Yugoslavia before moving to Traiskirchen camp in Austria. The Sith family spent another nine months in Traiskirchen before being sponsored by a distant relative in Illinois to come to the United States. They settled first in Chicago before moving to Fox Lake, Illinois, where Petra lived up until three years ago.</p><p> </p><p>Petra says her parents were not able to find jobs at first in the U.S. which reflected their qualifications; her father started sweeping floors at a factory, while her mother worked in a laundromat. Eventually, Petra’s mother became a nursing assistant, while her father became a factory technician. Petra says her parents impressed the value of education upon her; she graduated from Chicago’s Roosevelt University in 2007. She currently works as a billing processor at Robert Half International and is studying for her master’s degree. Petra plays bass in a band called Losing Scarlet, which she describes as making ‘user-friendly, heavier rock music.’ She has a U.S. green card, but still travels on a Slovak passport. She has returned to Slovakia to see her family twice since coming to America; in 1994 and 2007. Today, Petra lives in Ingleside, Illinois, with her husband, Brad.</p><p><a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20170609122012/http://www.myspace.com/losingscarlet" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Petra’s band Losing Scarlet on Myspace</a></p>
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Peter Vodenka
<p> </p><p>Peter Vodenka was born in Prague in August 1955, but raised in Mníšek pod Brdy where his father, Stanislav, worked as an industrial designer at an iron ore processing plant. Peter’s mother, Jarmila, worked in the same processing factory. In 1970, Peter moved to Prague to attend trade school, where he trained to become a plumber. He graduated in 1973 and remained in Prague, living in the city’s Vinohrady district. Unhappy with his job three years later, Peter moved back to Mníšek pod Brdy and quit plumbing to become a lumberjack. It was at this time that he met his future wife, Ludmila – the sister-in-law of one of his colleagues. The couple were married at Karlštejn Castle in 1978. A lover of nature and an avid ‘<a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20170612093725/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czech_Tramping" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">tramp</a>,’ Peter moved to rural southern Bohemia to work on a collective farm. It was there, in Hrejkovice, that he and Ludmila started raising their two children. Peter says he moved to southern Bohemia, among other reasons, so that he could have his own horse; he bought a mare and called it Nelly Gray, after an American song he had heard.</p><p> </p><p>Peter says that he has always been fascinated by America: while still living in Czechoslovakia he and his brother Stanislav owned a U.S. military Jeep dating from WWII, set their watches to reflect American Eastern Time and formed a horse-riding, tramping group called the Corral OK. In 1983, Peter decided to immigrate to America with his family. He drove with his wife and two children first to Hungary and then to Yugoslavia, where they left their car at the border and made their way into Austria by foot in the middle of the night. According to Peter, the crossing attracted the attention of patrolling Yugoslav border guards and the family was pursued. They made it, however, into Austria where one of Peter’s cousins, who had emigrated some months previously, picked them up and escorted them to Traiskirchen refugee camp. Peter and his family were there for three days until they were moved to Ramsau. In September 1983, the Vodenkas arrived in America. Peter and his family were sponsored by the First Lutheran Church in Beach, North Dakota, where they settled for a couple of years. Today, the Vodenkas live in Scandia, Minnesota. Peter regularly speaks publicly about coming to America and, in 2007, he wrote a book about his experiences called <em>Journey for Freedom</em>. Today, he runs a construction company and still enjoys outdoor pursuits, such as hunting in the Black Hills.</p><p><a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20170612093725/http://www.journeyforfreedom.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Peter’s website</a></p>
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Paulina Porizkova
<p>Paulina Porizkova was born in Olomouc in 1965 and grew up in the Moravian town of Prostějov. Her parents, Anna and Jiří, left Czechoslovakia in the wake of the 1968 Soviet-led invasion and settled in Sweden. Paulina remained with her maternal grandparents in Prostějov and says that her time with them was ‘delightful.’ Paulina’s parents, meanwhile, were attempting to reunite their family and gained attention in Sweden for their actions. After three years had gone by, they planned to ‘kidnap’ Paulina after flying into Czechoslovakia with the help of Swedish pilots. On her way to Prostějov, Paulina’s mother (who was traveling on a fake passport) was detained for speeding and arrested when her identity was revealed. Because she was several months pregnant, Paulina’s mother was released to her parents’ house and remained under house arrest. Paulina says that her father, who had remained in Sweden, had managed to keep their case in the media, which put pressure on the Czechoslovak government. In 1973, Paulina, her mother, and her brother were allowed to leave the country.</p>
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<p>Paulina says that her parents divorced shortly after returning to Sweden and her mother worked as a midwife. Because they were not allowed to return to Czechoslovakia, Paulina’s family would travel to an Eastern bloc country each year to meet up with her relatives who remained behind. At age 15, Paulina signed with Elite Models and moved to Paris by herself to begin her modeling career. By 1983, Paulina had become ‘very in demand’ in the United States and moved to New York to continue her career. She says that her first impressions of New York were less than favorable and that she did not become ‘settled’ there until she met her husband, Rick Ocasek, and decided to stay permanently.</p>
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<p>Paulina’s first trip back to Czechoslovakia was in 1991, after the fall of communism. She has returned several times for visits, although much of her family is now in the United States, including her mother and brother. Paulina has made a point to continue Czech traditions and celebrate Czech holidays. Her sons, Jonathan and Oliver, are connected to their Czech heritage, and her younger son especially enjoys Czech history and culture. After a successful modeling and acting career, Paulina has turned to writing in recent years. She has written a children’s book and a novel and produces a column for the Huffington Post. Today, Paulina lives in Manhattan with her husband and sons.</p>
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Monika Smid
<p>Monika Smid was born in the village of Hájske, western Slovakia, in 1950. Her father, Vilém, spent the week in Bratislava where he worked in construction, while her mother, Maria, stayed at home raising Monika and her five siblings and tending to the family’s vineyards and fields. Monika attended school in Hájske and, for three years during her childhood, traveled to nearby Nitra to learn the accordion in the evenings. Upon graduation from high school, Monika moved to Bratislava where she worked for <em>komunálne služby mesta Bratislava</em> [communal (municipal) services of Bratislava] as a pedicurist. In 1970, Monika was sent for training in this field to Gottwaldov (now Zlín) in Moravia, which was also home to the shoe factory Bat’a.</p><p> </p><p>Monika says she loved her job at a salon right in the heart of Bratislava; she counted famous actors and ballerinas as her clients, and maintains friendships with some of her former colleagues. She left the salon in 1974 after marrying her husband, Mirek, and moving to Trnava, where the couple were guaranteed accommodation through his job at a local car factory. In 1975, their daughter Martina was born.</p><p> </p><p>Monika says it was her decision to leave Czechoslovakia four years later. She says she had a number of relatives already in the United States, and that a love of travel ran in her family. She traveled with her husband and daughter first to Austria, where the family spent seven months near Salzburg before gaining visas to travel to the U.S. Monika and Mirek’s son was born in America. The Smid family settled in Seven Hills, Ohio, where they now own several properties which they rent out. Monika plays an active role in the local Slovak community, particularly through her involvement in the trio Slovenské mamičky [The Slovak Mothers], who perform traditional Slovak folk songs as well as a few of Monika’s own compositions.</p>
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Milena Kalinovska
<p>Milena Kalinovska was born in Prague in 1948. Her maternal grandparents emigrated from the Soviet Union following the Russian Revolution due to their anti-communist views, and her grandfather became a librarian who started the Slavonic collection at Charles University. Milena’s father’s family was from Moravia where they had a furniture-making business. Věra, Milena’s mother, worked as an accountant at TESLA, but was fired from that position in the 1950s when her Russian background was discovered; she was sent to work in a factory instead. Milena’s father, Adolf, built camera rails for the film industry and worked for several well-known directors.</p><p> </p><p>Milena grew up with her maternal grandmother in the Prague district of Strašnice. She spoke Russian at home and observed traditional Russian holidays. In addition to participating in sports and the Pioneer youth organization, Milena was also interested in art, having been exposed to museums, film and other culture by her father from a young age. She joined an art club in high school and put on an exhibition at a local movie theatre. As a teenager during the Prague Spring, Milena recalls a ‘great sense of liberalization’ and took advantage of the music and theatre happening in the capital city. Following her graduation from high school, she began studying law at Charles University.</p><p> </p><p>Shortly after the Warsaw Pact invasion in August 1968, Milena went abroad to work as an au pair in the U.K. She returned to Czechoslovakia in the fall of 1969 and, because of the ‘oppressive’ environment she saw forming the beginning stages of normalization, began making plans to leave the country permanently. With money given to her by her grandmother, Milena secured a three-week trip to the U.K. She did not return with the group and went to London where she was granted asylum. In 1975, she graduated from the University of Essex with a degree in comparative literature and began teaching Russian literature while also working with dissident and exile publications. She then received her master’s degree in Slavonic studies from the University of British Columbia and decided to pursue a career in the arts. Back in London, she found a job at Riverside Studios, a gallery and studio for contemporary and experimental art. In 1986, Milena married her husband, Jan Vanous, a Czech-born American, and moved to the United States.</p><p> </p><p>Milena’s art career has flourished in the United States, where, in addition to working as an independent curator, she has held the position of director at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston and is currently the head of public programming and education at the Hirshhorn Museum, part of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. Milena’s Czech heritage has played a large role in her professional accomplishments, as she has made it a point to highlight artists from eastern and central Europe, particularly those whose work was suppressed during the communist era. Milena holds British, American and Czech citizenship, and she travels to the Czech Republic annually. Her two children speak fluent Czech and she continues several Czech traditions at home. Today Milena lives in Chevy Chase, Maryland.</p>
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Milan Hauner
<p>Milan Hauner was born in 1940 in Gotha, Germany. His Czech father, Vilém, married his German mother, Gertrud, when she was threatened with sterilization (because of a handicap) by the Nazi government under the Nuremberg Laws. During WWII, Milan’s grandfather and uncle were arrested and executed on charges of anti-Nazi activities. Milan moved to Prague with his parents when he was just over one year old and grew up there. Vilém was a renowned book binder and Gertrud worked as a seamstress. Both Milan’s parents were deaf and, in addition to speaking German and Czech, he and his younger brother Roland learned sign language. From an early age, Milan loved history and says he had access to many older books, including some that were eventually banned by the Communist government. He attended elementary school and <em>gymnázium</em> in Prague, and began studying history and literature at Charles University in 1957. Upon graduation, Milan was conscripted into the Czechoslovak Army and served for two years. He remembers spending most of his second year in the army in prison as punishment for ‘breaches of discipline’ and his outspoken ways.</p><p> </p><p>After leaving the army, Milan returned to Charles University for postgraduate work in history and earned his doctorate. He also spent this time applying for visas to study abroad. In 1966, he was accepted to a one year study program in France, and, after some friends who were Communist Party members vouched for him, was given a visa. Milan returned from France in the fall of 1967, and the next year was able to secure a travel visa to the United Kingdom. He left Czechoslovakia in the first week of August in 1968 with a plan to work for one month and then travel the British Isles for another four weeks. Milan was picking fruit on a farm in East Anglia when he heard of the Warsaw Pact invasion on August 21; he decided to stay in Britain and moved to London shortly thereafter. In London, he joined an organization that assisted Czechoslovak refugees and soon began studying at Cambridge where he received his doctorate in English. Milan married his wife, Magdalena, also a scholar, and he built a career in academia. In 1980, Magdalena received a job offer from the University of Wisconsin, and the family moved to Madison, Wisconsin. Subsequently, Milan taught and held research positions at several universities and institutions in the United States.</p><p> </p><p>Milan and Magdalena have three children who all speak Czech. He says he felt ‘exhilarated’ upon hearing about the Velvet Revolution, and has returned to Prague since then to teach. Today, Milan is a history professor at the University of Wisconsin, and his areas of expertise include Czech and military history. In 2011, Milan was awarded a stipend to conduct research at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. He lives with his wife in Madison, Wisconsin.</p>
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Michlean Amir
<p><img class="alignleft wp-image-2336 size-full" src="http://web.archive.org/web/20170609111851im_/http://ncsml.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Michlean-Amir-SQ.png" alt="" width="260" height="260" /></p><p>Michlean Amir was born in Nîmes, France in 1940 to Czech Jewish parents. When her father Oscar joined the Czechoslovak Division of the British Army, Michlean and her mother Gertrude traveled with him to various training camps in England. At the close of WWII, the Lӧwys returned to Czechoslovakia where Oscar and his brother re-established the family wholesale food distribution business in Plzeň. Michlean’s grandparents (who owned the business) had been killed in the Holocaust, as were other relatives, including her uncle and his family. Michlean says that her father’s business became very successful, along with two family farms that he ran. After the Communist coup, Michlean’s maternal grandmother, who lived in Israel, came to Czechoslovakia to help the family emigrate. They arrived in Israel in 1948 and settled in Haifa where Michlean’s parents ran a small grocery. Michlean says that her years in Israel were instrumental in solidifying her Jewish identity and that she was reluctant to move to the United States with her parents and younger sister.</p><p> </p><p>Michlean says that it was always her parents’ intention to immigrate to the United States, and they began making plans soon after their arrival in Israel. It was seven years before the Lӧwys were sponsored by a family friend. They left Israel in December 1955 and settled in Rochester, New York. Michlean says their household was very Czech, as they listened to traditional Czech music, her mother cooked Czech food, and her parents were active in the Czechoslovak émigré community; however, any Jewish holiday celebrations they held were because she organized them. After graduating from high school, Michlean returned to Israel for a few years. She met and married her husband, and then moved back to the United States. She studied American and Jewish history in college and received a master’s degree in library science, and has been an archivist at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. for 14 years. Today, Michlean lives in Rockville, Maryland, with her husband.</p>
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Melania Rakytiak
<p>Melania Rakytiak was born in Paris in March 1936. Her father was a Slovak laborer at a furniture factory while her mother, also Slovak, was a maid in the home of a wealthy French family. Melania’s mother died when she was only 10 months old. Her aunt came to Paris and married Melania’s father. In 1941, the family moved back to Šúrovce, Slovakia, where Melania’s brother was born. In 1945, the family moved to Bratislava, and Melania’s father, Valent, took a job at the city harbor, on the Danube River. All his life, Melania’s father was a fervent communist and, come the takeover in 1948, he became active in politics, says Melania. He worked for Bratislava Region with secret documents and conducting political screenings on county employees. Meanwhile, Melania enrolled in Bratislava’s Stredná pedagogická škola and trained to be a teacher. Upon graduation, she went to work in an orphanage before being placed in a two-teacher rural school in Čierna Voda, not far from Bratislava. It was here in 1956 that Melania herself became a member of the Communist Party.</p>
<p>Melania married her husband, Fedor Rakytiak, in 1957. She says they had three weddings – a civil ceremony, a Catholic service and a wedding in a Lutheran church. The couple had four children. In 1969, Melania’s husband and brother, Ivan, devised a plan together to immigrate to Canada. Melania says she was strongly opposed but suspected her husband would relent at the last moment. He did not, and on April 30, 1969, Melania, Fedor and their four children went to Austria, on the premise of visiting an aunt. They spent the whole of May at Traiskirchen refugee camp before moving to Bad Kreuzen, where they lived for a further two months. Melania says Canada was not accepting refugees at this time, and so the family decided to apply to the United States. They arrived in Cleveland in August 1969. At first, Melania says the family was greatly supported by Joe Kocab and Karlin Hall. Melania worked as a cleaner before she and her husband purchased a dry cleaning business, which they ran until 1981. In 1989, Fedor was diagnosed with lung cancer and died the following year. Melania lives close to her children and grandchildren in Parma, Ohio, and, as an avid cook, she is working to collate a family cookbook of Slovak recipes.</p>
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