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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>Czech Legions</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/eVyiC9owWjQ?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“He was a Russian legionnaire. In Russia, the czar encouraged colonization, especially in Ukraine, and so lots of Czechs went there, and some ancestors of my father’s settled down there. They were very prosperous – they had a hops farm. Before the outbreak of WWI my father went there to work as an accountant on the hops farm of his relatives. And when the War broke out, he immediately joined the Česká družina – the cradle of the Czechoslovak Legions – and those people who joined so early were called the starodružníci (the old joiners). And so he fought from 1914; he went through the ranks, came back as a colonel, brought his regiment home – he was commanding the Second Rifle Regiment of Jiří z Poděbrad (George of Podebrady), and he didn’t come home until 1920 because he fought in what the legionnaires called the anabáze; they fought on the long stretch of the Trans-Siberian railway all the way from Ukraine to Vladivostok. And then he came back. When the legionnaires were demobilizing, he became a regular army officer and from then on he went up through the ranks.”</p><h4>Belongings</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/vS58t9Op1ZM?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“He had his officer’s saber and some weaponry from WWI and, as a memento, it was mounted on a board and displayed in the room. And of course, you could not have any arms. Any pretext – any weapons found were punishable by death. [That was the case with a] friend of my father’s on that farm where we were during the mobilization. So, my mother was a tiny little lady, she was short, and she had lots of guts. And one day, she took these arms off, put them in a bundle, and at night – if they would have caught her, it would have been horrible – she went though Prague and dumped them in the Vltava River, because we didn’t want to [give the Nazis any pretext]. Since father was already in hiding, it would have been another pretext.”</p><h4>Action E</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/nWkUrUL7djA?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“They called it Action E, the Gestapo – E as in exulants [exile]– you know? They rounded up most of the families who had anybody fighting abroad, to hold us as political prisoners to prevent us from giving aid to Czechoslovak parachutists sent from Great Britain to attack and sabotage the German occupation. Somebody had to hide them and they wanted to prevent that. So they arrested us all and put us in the camp.”</p><p><em>Do you remember that day when they came?</em></p><p>“Oh yes, and my sister, Milica, she was tiny. She was six years old – she’s what, six and a half years younger than I am. So, they took Milan, my brother, my mother and myself and then kicked Milica out of the apartment and left her standing with the keys to the apartment on the street. And that was it. They took us, and so some neighbors then contacted my aunt and she took her in.”</p><h4>Moravia</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WPVxveZm7uQ?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“My mother was always so feisty and I don’t remember what she did but I think some of the gendarmes tried to help, and I guess they caught one smuggling out her letter. So, the punishment place was the morgue. When somebody died, they had the tables for dissecting – it was very primitive and filthy. She was put into the morgue for two weeks. She picked up there an infection in her leg which really was very nasty. But it didn’t break her spirit. And every so often, the Gestapo would come to the camp which they controlled from Brno. They would line us up, and these goons would go and touch our heads, and do some sort of a genetic exam of the shape of our heads to see whether we are Slavs or what we are – they were always looking for Jews. It was frightening.</p><p>“And finally in 1945, when the front was coming from the east towards Moravia, suddenly they opened the camp and I thought ‘Oh my god, they are going to shoot us!’ But they let most of the camp go except 120 people, among them was I and my mother, and they lugged us further north, again to keep us as hostages in another camp. We were there just a very short time and by May 5, when there was already the uprising in Prague, the partisans came and opened the gates, because sometimes the SS people were shooting people just as revenge. And they didn’t want that to happen to us. So they opened the gate and let us out.”</p><h4>Czechs in D.C.</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/6eQv1cRctvU?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“My parents lived on Park Road, our first ambassador Hanak (he used to be our ambassador to Turkey) – he bought a house there. And then all the Czechs suddenly started buying houses there. There were so many of them that they started to call it Prague Road. And it is just the sort of tail of Park Road before the bridge, and if you cross the bridge and go through Rock Creek Park, you come to the Czech Embassy. It’s right there. It’s a very beautiful place, and now the town, I mean Washington, D.C., about three years ago started to put historical markers everywhere to show how each section developed and the diversity of people living there. There is a large historical marker with my father’s picture, my daughter in the Czech national costume, and other photographs of all the Czechs living there to show why they started calling Park Road ‘Prague Road.’”</p><h4>Teaching</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/MNTiWEFGPI0?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Culturally at that time Colombia started to develop a wonderful symphony orchestra, as a matter of fact, lots of players came from Germany, the conductor was Estonian, and so they were just building up the momentum there – the cultural momentum – and it was wonderful. And I was sitting right in the middle of it!”</p><p><em>And do you remember what performances you had there?</em></p><p>“Two times I was a soloist with the National Symphony Orchestra, in one I was singing French impressionistic music, in the second one all Wagner like Elsas Traum and Senta’s aria and so forth. And then we had chamber music groups in the Museo Nacional. I had a television program with another Czech soprano, she was a coloratura and I was a heavy-type soprano, sort of leaning towards more dramatic, more mezzo. We had a television show sponsored by a Colombian tobacco company. The singer was Adela Geber, they ended up in the United States too, and her husband was a painter. So, when the announcer was telling the story, he was sketching the characters as the announcer was talking, and then we were singing the major arias or duets and so forth. And then we had another chamber music group with flute and harp and voice, so I was singing constantly.”</p><h4>SVU</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/i_BHxQHoYkM?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“In a way, the time is sort of passing, I would say. The SVU was so important during the Cold War. It was practically your patriotic duty to get involved and be involved. But now that the republic is open, the travel of the artists and everything comes here unhindered. And we can go there at will whenever we want. I think the point has been taken out of it a little bit, and we just have to try to rope in somehow younger generations. You know, I know it with my children, or any of the children of the [exiles]. At this time, they are building their careers, They are so involved with their living and their careers that they do not have time for SVU. During the Cold War, we worked hard to uphold the good name of Czechoslovakia, we felt it our duty to work on this. We will see how long [SVU] is going to last.”</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
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Dagmar White
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Dagmar White was born in Prague in 1926. Her father, Antonín Hasal, was a high-ranking officer in the Czechoslovak Army, and so Dagmar and her siblings grew up between Brno and Prague, depending upon where her father was stationed at the time. When WWII broke out, Dagmar’s father joined the underground resistance group Obrana národa [Defense of the Nation]. Dagmar says that when ‘things got too hot,’ her father escaped and joined the Czechoslovak Army in France and later the Czechoslovak government-in-exile. He served as President Edvard Beneš’s military adviser and chief of the military chancellery. In 1942, following the assassination of Reichsprotektor Reinhard Heydrich, Dagmar, her mother, Josefa, and brother, Milan were arrested in their Prague apartment as part of the Gestapo’s Action E. They were taken to internment camps for political prisoners so that they would not, says Dagmar, provide help and shelter to parachutists sent from Great Britain.</p><p> </p><p>Dagmar and her mother spent the next three years in Svatobořice internment camp in southern Moravia, where they tilled the land, washed the uniforms of wounded and dead German soldiers, and made grenades. Dagmar’s brother Milan was jailed in Brno, in dormitories which provided law students accommodation in peacetime. Dagmar says that towards the end of the War, many inmates at Svatobořice were released, but that she and her mother were moved north, alongside another 120 or so prisoners, to another camp at Planá nad Lužnicí. On May 5, 1945, partisans freed the prisoners at this camp. At the end of the War, Dagmar moved back to Prague and was reunited with the other members of her family. Her father returned from London as commander of the liberated territories and became transportation minister in the cabinet of President Edvard Beneš. Dagmar attended Charles University in Prague and the Prague Conservatory and trained to become an opera singer. Following the coup in 1948, her family found themselves under surveillance, says Dagmar, and decided to leave. They crossed the border on July 2, 1948, whilst a Sokol slet was taking place in Prague and diverting police attention. Dagmar says the family was helped by the U.S. Army in Germany; they were accommodated in Frankfurt at the IG Farben building (which served as U.S. Army HQ) until a special military plane flew the family to Washington, D.C. Dagmar’s parents settled on Park Road in the capital, while Dagmar went to University of Kansas to continue her studies.</p><p> </p><p>After completing her degree at KU in Lawrence, Dagmar graduated from the Juilliard School of Music in New York City, and then received a master’s degree in music education from Columbia University. She moved to Bogota, Colombia, for her first academic post and found herself there at a period of great cultural activity, she says. It was in Colombia that she met her husband Lewis White – an American diplomat. The couple married in 1954. As a result of her husband’s job, Dagmar lived subsequently in New Caledonia, the Dominican Republic and Nicaragua (where she taught at the national conservatories) and Morocco. In each location, she conducted choirs and continued the pursuit of her musical career. She has two children. Today, Dagmar lives with her husband Lewis (Jack) in Vienna, Virginia. A long-time member of the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences (SVU), she chairs the organization’s Christmas bazaar. She founded and directed the local Vienna Light Orchestra in which she sang many of the title roles. Dagmar continues to organize musical programs at the Czech Embassy.</p>
Creator
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National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library
Source
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NCSML Archive
1948 emigrant/refugee
Arrest
Arts
Benes
Community Life
Education
Forced labor
Hasalova
Heydrich assassination
marriage
Military service
Obrana naroda
Plana nad Luznici
Political prisoner
Resistance
Svatoborice
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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>Cowards</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/SqUip6SS8Mo?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“She felt that the assassins were cowards and that they should have given themselves up. Or they should have immediately committed suicide. ‘Because,’ she says, ‘as a result of them hiding, we are the ones that suffered.’ So, I don’t know if everybody felt this way, but my mother felt that they were cowards and that they should have given themselves up.”</p><h4>Concentration Camp</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/3_IF0JneBNg?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“So, the commandant said ‘Okay so, who knows… does anybody here know how to sew?’ And my mother said ‘I do.’ And so she was put into the detail, into the factory with the sewing machines and I think there were like 50 machines there, you know, and all these women lined up making… they were mostly making coats for the men on the Russian front. And they would get either old coats and they would take them and have to turn them inside out, and then sew in linings and stuff like that, or they would take confiscated fur coats and turn them inside out and make them into coats for the men. Oftentimes apparently they found money sewn in, jewelry sewn in, of course that all had to be handed over because otherwise they’d be killed.</p><p>“She got beaten quite a bit in the camps, because you had all this quota that you had to fulfill. Since she was a professional seamstress she was really very good. And she worked very hard, and of course they were on starvation food – they got watered-down beet soup, watered-down oatmeal – that was kind of the food of the day. So, a lot of the women got sick, a lot of the women refused to work, and because my mother was very good because that’s what she did for a living, she was made head of the division, which she absolutely hated, because she was responsible for everybody’s work. So if somebody didn’t want to work, or didn’t work very well, she was the one who got beaten, you know, because she was the one responsible. Oftentimes she would sit down and finish off the work or do extra work so that they would meet the quota. But it became so bad that she convinced the commandant, the head, the capo, that she really didn’t want to do this. I don’t know what happened but eventually at some point they let her not be head of the division.”</p><h4>Visiting</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/vENInl2_Q0c?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“In terms of the children, no one really knew, except for my sister. My sister’s father, like I said, was František Kubík. Kubík had two siblings back in Berlin, one of whom was Ella, who is this remarkable woman. And she had the nerve – she had the chutzpah, that’s the only way I can think of… this good Yiddish word, chutzpah – to, after the tragedy, after June 10… she wrote to the Gestapo in Kládno and said ‘My brother was killed, you have my niece, I’m married to a German who’s a soldier on the Russian front. If you give her to me, I will bring her up as a German.’ And whoever was reading that letter that day must have been having a good day, because they said okay.</p><p>“At one point this crazy aunt of hers, whom I have met and who I absolutely love – she was like this short – an amazing woman… So she took my sister and Renata, with a bouquet of flowers, and went to Ravensbrueck, basically knocked on the gates of the camp and said ‘We want to see Anna Kubíkova.’ And the person who was at the gate basically couldn’t believe who this woman was with these two kids, and they sent her away. They said ‘You better get out of here, this is not a good place to be with two little kids.’ And so she was sent away. But she didn’t go. What she did was she basically started meandering around the perimeter of the camp, which of course had, you know, these fences and stuff, and was speaking very loudly. And the women that were working in the fields were Polish women. And they heard her, of course, and word got back somehow – there must have been this whole network in the camp – to my mother. Because the group of Polish women said ‘We saw a little girl and she looks like you, she resembles you,’ which of course caused… which was an amazing emotional thing for my mother. And so she knew that my sister was alive.”</p><h4>Mother Leaves</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/dqD42GbOmSc?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“There was an awful lot of hatred and jealousy towards my mother, for many reasons. First of all, my sister was the first one to come back. She was very healthy compared to the other children, she was cared for compared to the other children. She didn’t have to work as a domestic, as a few of the girls had to do. She was very well treated, she was with her aunt – albeit it was very difficult, because at one point they left Berlin and tried to make their way down through Poland, but that’s another story which I won’t get into. She had it much easier than the other children had.</p><p>“Since my mother had been married to František, who worked for ČTK, who was an announcer, she had a very good pension. So not only was she receiving concentration camp money for the government, the Czech government, she was also receiving a pension, which was a sizeable amount of money, apparently, from ČTK. She was receiving it, as was my sister. So she had money. And by the way, they relocated all the women, put all the women in Kládno, and every Lidice woman was given a home in Kládno, and we were given a home where my grandmother lived on the ground floor and we, my mother and sister, lived on the top floor. So, they were living in Kládno, and then they had money.</p><p>“And the third thing was that there was an awful lot of German hatred after the War. Totally understandable – there are hundreds of stories of retreating Germans being stoned and beaten to death by mobs. And the sentiment was so high that they started saying that [my mother’s late husband] František was German, that he wasn’t really Czech. He was German, and that’s why my sister had been saved, and that’s why she was getting all this compensation and blah blah blah. And you know how things get on and get crazy. So there was an awful lot of… my mother had a really very hard time. She constantly had to say ‘No, Frantisek wasn’t German. No, I’m really sorry, I don’t know where your other children are.’ It must have just been this intense, crazy time.”</p><h4>1st Birthday</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/xGuD586niXs?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“He was always looking for ways to make money. So, he played cards. And he was very good at it, but he was also very good at cheating. And my son, my son Max, whenever we’d go visit, my father would teach him how to play cards, and my father would always cheat. And of course he would cheat on purpose, and he would make it obvious he was cheating, because then my son – who was maybe six, seven, eight years old, whatever – would say ‘Děda, you’re cheating!’ And he’d say ‘No I’m not!’ And he’d say ‘Yes you are!’ And that would be the whole thing. But that’s what he did, right? So he cheated a lot, and he won a lot. And my mother was also really terrified, because you know, the guys that were there, you know, they were rough and tumble guys, right. And if they caught him, they’d beat the shit out of him. So it was my birthday, it was November 16, and of course, there was no money for anything, there were no kitchens, you couldn’t bake a cake or anything. So my father apparently comes in from the night before, and throws down a bunch of money – German marks, you know whatever, whatever else there was, including a Canadian 20 dollar bill, or maybe it was American, you know, I don’t remember now – and tells my mother ‘go buy a cake!’”</p><h4>Czech Canada</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/iZqDVG9YWR0?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“They were never able to really, really get out of the country. Here they were in Canada, but they were never able to get out of Czechoslovakia, because there was little Czechoslovakia in our house. We spoke Czech, my mother made only Czech food. No other food but Czech, only Czech pastries and food. Great food, you know, can’t complain, especially the pastries, and she was a fantastic cook. But very limited, only Czech. I did not experience… we never went to other restaurants, my father traveled quite a bit with his work, so he was eating out a lot. He was away from home a lot, so when he came home, he wanted to be home so we never ate at restaurants. And if we went to the country or something, we packed food… Never went to restaurants.”</p><h4>Prague</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/zxqFPy-7I1s?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“And I felt, I think, for the first time… I mean I use the analogy that, and I think it’s pretty corny, that I was a flower ripped up by its roots with dirt still hanging on to it. And it really is, it’s not a unique thing to me… But at six months, I was ripped out of this culture, of this country, in very unpleasant, tension-ridden circumstances. But I still had this dirt attached. But my roots were just kind of dangling, you know, somewhere, and they would dry out, and then I’d be plopped in here, and then pulled out again, and then plopped down here. So I was always being shoved somewhere and then pulled out. And so you don’t really know where you belong. But what was interesting to me was going into the subway, the train, for example, or on a bus or a tram, and I’d sit there and everybody was speaking Czech in close quarters. And that’s all that I was hearing. And there was a kind of a bit of a comfort level – this total immersion. And I don’t know if it is genetic memory, you know, because being so young when I left. But it’s there – it was definitely there. And for years and years when I started to go back in the 1980s, I always had this kind of nervous energy before I went – this very nervous energy and then once I got there, there was like this calmness. Although now, having been there so many times, and being much more secure in who I am, and understanding more who I am, and being 62, having gone through a thing or two, I don’t have the desperate need to go back. I don’t have the desperate need to identify myself as Czech. Because before it was always ‘já jsem češka, já jsem Zbíral, já jsem češka.’ You know, and I don’t have that need anymore.”</p><h4>Rich?</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/JnJ7U5Oap6Q?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Especially when we first came to Canada, not as much Norway, but when we first came to Canada, this was 1954, and Czechoslovakia was in a bad state. A bad, bad, bad, state. And the Czechs back home had an image of us in Canada, and I can say Canada and U.S. too, because I’m sure it was the same here, that we’re wealthy, that we have an easy life, that we have a big car, that we have big houses, that we have, you know, fur coats and all this stuff. A couple of interesting things – and you’ll find this with almost any ethnic group – one of the photos that they send back… my father’s boss had a Cadillac, which my father was allowed to take home on weekends every now and then, because he would also tinker around in it and fix little things here and there. So, what did my mother do? She borrowed a fur coat and we all got nicely dressed up, and we stood in front of the Cadillac and took a family picture of us in front of the Cadillac and sent it back. You know, and you’ll find every ethnic group doing that. But even before we did that, as soon as we got to Canada, we started to get letters – ‘Oh, send me this, send me that, gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme!’”</p>
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Title
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Jerri Zbiral
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Jerri Zbiral was born in Prague in November 1948. Her mother, Anna, was a survivor of the Lidice tragedy in 1942, which saw one Bohemian village razed by Nazi troops in retaliation for the assassination of Reichsprotektor Reinhard Heydrich. The town’s women were separated from their children and transported to concentration camps, while all of the men were taken to a local farm and shot. Jerri’s mother spent the last three years of WWII in Ravensbrueck concentration camp, while Jerri’s sister Eva was sent to live with an aunt in Germany as part of the Nazi <em>Lebensborn</em> program. Jerri’s mother walked back to Czechoslovakia after the war and was reunited with Jerri’s sister. She subsequently met and married Jaroslav Zbíral.</p><p> </p><p>Following the Communist coup in 1948, pressure mounted on the women who had survived Lidice to come out in favor of the Communist Party, which Jerri’s mother refused to do. Jerri also says her mother faced the jealousy of her peers whose children had not returned from the Nazi camps. In May 1949, the family left Czechoslovakia, crossing the border from southern Bohemia into Germany. They spent one year in Murnau refugee camp before settling in Norway. Jerri says the three years she spent in Norway were extremely happy for her as a child. Her father, Jaroslav, however, did not take to the country, and when his brother in Canada suggested that the family move there he jumped at the chance. The Zbirals moved to Montreal in 1954. Jerri first attended English-language Catholic school and then received her secondary education in French. She came to the United States in 1971 to attend graduate school in Rochester, New York. It was her first job which brought her to Chicago, where she has lived ever since.</p><p> </p><p>In 1982, Jerri started to record the stories of her relatives and others who had survived the Lidice massacre. Ten years later, she created a film, <em>In the Shadow of Memory</em>, about the tragedy and her own relationship to the event. She has spoken with her husband Alan about Lidice on Studs Terkel’s show on WFMT Chicago. An art dealer, Jerri’s firm The Collected Image specializes in Czech photography in particular. As an adult, Jerri converted to Judaism. She became an American citizen in 2000. Jerri has two children.</p>
Creator
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National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library
Source
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NCSML Archive
1948 emigrant/refugee
Child emigre
Concentration camp
Cultural Traditions
Czech language
Czech-German relations
Discrimination
Forced labor
Heydrich assassination
Judaism
Lidice Massacre
Nazis
Refugee camp
Sense of identity
World War II
Zbiralova
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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>Hiding</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/bi7XQlRhcks?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“Her portion of the family became involved in the Heydrich affair. My grandfather was a lay president of the Russian Orthodox church in Prague and it was really his idea to hide the parachutists who killed Heydrich in the Russian Orthodox church in Resslova Ulice. So the Heydrich assassination took place in 1942 and the whole portion of my family on my mother’s side perished. My grandfather was executed shortly after the assassination. There was a mock trial staged by the Nazis where all the members of the Russian Orthodox church were sentenced to death and they were shot in Kobylisy, and my grandmother and my mother and her new husband, they went to Terezín, and from Terezín to Mauthausen, and my mother perished in Mauthausen.”</p><p><em>So your grandfather was an activist.</em></p><p>“My grandfather was an activist in the sense that he was a patriot. He was a member of Sokol and similar nationalistic organizations, and because of his involvement in these organizations he was approached when these parachutists who killed Heydrich needed to be hidden or sheltered. He provided the shelter in the Russian Orthodox church, which is now a museum.”</p><h4>Danger</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/nq62le4ucN0?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“They not only killed the people who assisted directly, but also the family members. Often people ask me how come I survived and my brothers, and the only reason why we survived was because my parents were divorced. So even though it was a painful thing, it really saved our lives. My mother remarried and her husband also perished. The Gestapo did come a few times to our house, but my father, who was educated under the Austro-Hungarian Empire, spoke German and he always managed to turn the Gestapo away. Sometimes he claimed that we were sick with infectious diseases which the Nazis were afraid of. Three times, he said that the Nazis came to get us as children, but he always managed to turn them away.”</p><h4>Prague Uprising</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/HokwmFWMIDE?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I do remember the revolution. I was nine years old. I remember we didn’t go to school because there was already some unrest, but we went to the island Žofín, which is right near the Národní divadlo [National Theatre]. We were there with my brothers and then we saw that people started to hang Czech flags – the tricolore – and so my oldest brother, who was 14, said ‘It sounds like trouble,’ so we ran home, and the shooting started. I remember there was a Protestant church right across from the house where we lived and one of the Nazi snipers holed himself up in the tower of the church and was shooting at people, but eventually he was also annihilated.</p><p>“But then I have memories of driving through the streets of Prague and there were Nazi sympathizers. I remember a woman walking barefoot with a huge picture of Hitler hanging from her neck, covering her entire body, and she was holding a wooden pistol, like a mockery, and pointing it to the picture of Hitler. So they tortured her, humiliated her, etc. And then I remember the Nazis hanging from the lampposts. As a nine-year-old I was very impressed by that picture, even though as soon as we passed that kind of scenery, my father pushed my head down under the car seat.”</p><h4>Hiccup</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/YoYtfV8_Vqw?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“When I was 15 years old, the communists decided that I couldn’t continue my education. It was interesting because I lived in a neighborhood where also lived the later president [Václav] Havel. As a matter of fact, we were classmates in the same public elementary school for five years. That was a fate that I shared with Havel. He was in the same predicament when the communists came; he was also not allowed to go to school, and he worked in a brewery from what I remember. I think for a while in a chemical factory and later in a brewery. Some of his plays refer to this.</p><p>“When I was 15, the communists said that my education was finished and my parents – my father and my stepmother – they put up a tremendous fight. Everything failed, but then of course my stepmother prevailed because she figured out a way to move me out of Prague and to the village where she was schoolteacher and she knew everybody and everybody knew her. I worked in a chemical factory too, in a lab, Spolana Neratovice, a chemical factory in a small town called Křinec. I worked there for a year and, after a year, I was no longer a bourgeois element, but the working class decided that I needed to further my education, so they sent me to a gymnázium. But the only concession I had to make was that I couldn’t return back to Prague, so I went to a gymnázium in Nymburk.”</p><h4>Escape</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/jfsrCW1yUvg?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“We were 400 Czech tourists and we didn’t know who was an agent. Probably for every bus there was an agent, or maybe two, so I didn’t know if it would be possible to escape. But then one day, they took us to the beach, which of course was a tremendous treat for all of us who grew up in a landlocked country, and then at the beach I decided that I’ll make my escape. I felt the agents lost control of us – who was in the water, etc. – so I left from the beach, and because I was afraid that I would be conspicuous I didn’t have anything with me except my pants and a shirt and a bathing suit. So I made a clean break. The communists gave us pocket money worth six dollars, so I had less than six dollars because I already spent a little bit of it. Even though I brought my diploma onto the ship, at that point, when I was on the beach and I felt I had the opportunity to leave, I didn’t even have the diploma.”</p><h4>President</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/dtX19jcUgVY?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“It’s very interesting because here we decided not to split into two nations. Even though the official name of that organization is the Bohemian Hall, we feel that Slovaks are our brothers, and I always felt that they should be encouraged. As far as I’m concerned, we didn’t split; I consider it still a Czechoslovak organization. Naturally, there is some conflict and controversy about that too, because there are people who perhaps don’t like the Slovaks and there are some Slovaks who don’t like the Czechs, but as far I’m concerned, it’s one nation.”</p><h4>What If</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/kX-fyirZkcw?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“In my opinion, it would have been a horror. I mean, I did experience it a little bit in Teplice, where I worked after my graduation. But the subservience that we were forced into, the insincerity, the inability to trust anybody, to be able to speak freely; in my opinion, it was horrible. Destruction, really, of a human spirit. This is why I treasure this country most because, quite to the contrary, it encourages you. And I would say I am probably a little bit of an individualist, but this country kind of appreciates 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
Paul Ort
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Paul Ort was born in Prague in 1936. His father, Miloslav, was a surgeon, while his mother, Ludmila, stayed home to raise Paul and his two older brothers. When Paul was three, his parents divorced and his mother soon remarried. In 1942, Paul’s family became involved in the assassination of Reichsprotektor Reinhard Heydrich when his grandfather, a lay official of the Russian Orthodox Church in Prague, helped hide his killers – Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš. Paul’s grandfather was executed by the Nazis, and his grandmother, mother, and stepfather were sent to Terezín and Mauthausen, where they died. Paul and his brothers went to live with their father, who later married their governess. At the age of 15, Paul was sent to work at a chemical factory in the small town of Křinec for one year. He then attended <em>gymnázium</em> in Nymburk. Paul was admitted to the medical school at Charles University and graduated in 1961. He worked for one year as a trainee in orthopedics in Teplice.</p><p> </p><p>In 1962, Paul received a tourist visa for a trip to Tunisia. While on the beach with his tour group, Paul left the group and hitchhiked to Tunis where he made contact with a diplomat from the West German Embassy who helped him claim asylum. Paul eventually received permission to immigrate to the United States and, in 1963, moved to New York. He took a qualifying exam which would allow him to work in the United States, and then traveled to Venezuela to visit family members. While there, he was offered a job as an expedition doctor, and spent one year in the Venezuelan jungle. Paul returned to New York in 1964 and completed an internship at the Bronx-Lebanon Hospital Center. When Paul was offered a residency in orthopedics at Bellevue Hospital (in conjunction with NYU), he moved to Manhattan. He worked as an orthopedic surgeon for 30 years and, in 2005, was offered the job of chief of orthopedics at the VA NYC Medical Center. Paul believes that his career has flourished thanks to his move to the United States.</p><p> </p><p>Paul’s first visit back to Czechoslovakia was after the Velvet Revolution; he says that his acquaintance with Václav Havel (with whom he attended elementary school) prevented him from being allowed to return under communism. Since his arrival in the United States, Paul had been involved in the Czechoslovak community in New York. In 2011, he served as president of the Bohemian Hall and Beer Garden in Astoria, Queens. Today, he lives in Manhattan.</p>
Creator
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National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
NCSML Archive
Community Life
Concentration camp
Divorce
Education
Gabcik
Healthcare professionals
Heydrich assassination
Krinec
Kubis
Nazis
Terezin
World War II
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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.
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<h4>Plánice</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/5Bhmop2WPRQ?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“The Czech teachers – at that particular time the country was still very young – their aim was patriotism; in Czech it was called vlastenectví. And the patriotism, the Czech patriotism, became my forte. I would be reciting the poem ‘I am a Czech and I always will be Czech,’ (in Czech it was ‘já jsem Čech a Čechem vždycky zůstanu’). I would be singing all these Czech patriotic songs like ‘Čechy krásné, Čechy mé’ – ‘my Czech land, my Czech land.’ And I became… And somehow people said only ‘that must be his American heritage. That’s something in him that [makes him] so outspoken and take an interest in everything.’ And so they actually shaped very much my character. Because then I had to act as an American without knowing how Americans really act. You know, Americans were supposed to have been daring, so if I did [something] then that’s what Americans would do in the West, you know, so I did get quite a reputation and this American stuck with me, so I was always the American, although I tried to be a Czech.”</p><h4>Political Child</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/HJeWR-t9k7o?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“The first Czechoslovak mobilization, when it looked like the Czechs would really go and defend themselves against the Germans’ aggression, happened in May. In that village there were maybe only five radio receivers, so we did not have a radio, I mean the communication was not what it is today, and what it was even 50 years ago. And she took me suddenly one afternoon to a pub, which was called in Czech a hospoda, and lo, there were more than about a dozen people sitting around a table. I was the only child. I was the only child sitting around and listening to President Beneš. We had declared the first mobilization of the Czech Army. And I’ll never forget that moment when it was over and the Czech national anthem was played, everybody stood on his feet, so did I, except one character did not get on his feet, and he was a German. He probably didn’t understand anything that was going on. But when the national anthem was over, the young guys certainly took that poor German and they really shook him up. I won’t talk much about it, but I believe up to today that he didn’t know what was really going on. But I certainly knew that the time, the situation, was changing.”</p><h4>U.S. Citizenship</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/u0pVgih_BCc?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>Every house had to assemble and present their so-called in Czech kmenový list, which means – it was at that particular time a record of who lived in the house; who was there, when were you born. And they looked of course at our house when they came to our house. My mother was so much concerned with her butter and cream and cheese and whatever was hiding, because she felt that they were coming for that, but they were coming for a control to see who lives in the house and if there is any incriminating evidence which would link that thing to the assassination which took place in Prague. That was the objective of that raid.</p><p>“She forgot that in her best room she had displayed all her knick-knacks from Chicago. And there it was, a pillowcase which probably she bought some place in a dime store with terrific loud, clear colors which Americans love so much: ‘Our Hero, 1927, Charles Lindbergh.’ Then she had another pillow which apparently had the beginning of the Gettysburg speech of Abraham Lincoln. And then she had George Washington, again, our first president. I recognized when I came back to the United States after a couple of years that they were still having souvenirs like that at dime stores. But these souvenirs, as soon as the gentlemen arrived, they were hit by all of that – it was very openly displayed. And then, what is this Robert Budway, born in Oak Park? That brought the show down.</p><p>“She had to produce her travel documents, which were confiscated immediately. Fortunately, somewhere along [the way] she didn’t surrender my birth certificate. So that was a fortunate thing. She was taken then to the city of Klatovy, to the Gestapo, there apparently interrogated for a few hours. She stayed with somebody there for a second day, went to the German so-called Oberlandrat, which was a regional office by which Germans controlled the region. And somewhere along [the way] she came up with new documentation for me.</p><p>“I had a passport. The passport was in German and in French, and it was a passport which declared me without citizenship, without a country. It only listed that formerly I was North American. From that moment I was a marked person. Everything about me began… when I was dealing with the official bureaucracy I was referred to someplace else, my ration cards issues were different, a different amount. I had to every six months apply for permission to stay on the territory of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. I was restricted to ever go anyplace else – I could not go anyplace else.”</p><h4>U.S. Army</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/aqBXaIMPv5I?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I came home and I never said anything to my mother that I was not successful. I just packed up my suitcase and left again, and wandered through Germany about for three months before my situation became so hopeless. Then suddenly, totally destitute, hungry, [in an] absolutely desperate situation, I was picked up at Frankfurt railroad station by the [American] military police, and when they looked in my pocket and found an American passport, they were shocked. They were shocked, and of course the Germans were shocked too, because the German police were along with.</p><p>“They were shocked that here is an American; [from] a country of plenty, and look – he’s worse off than Germans! My situation changed so fast, so quickly – the Army classification test was postponed and I was used as a poster boy in the Frankfurt headquarters, pictures and publicity which I still have today, and in no time I found myself back again at Marburg for basic training, and it was the most wonderful experience I’ve ever had. Everybody was helpful. From the fellow soldiers with whom I had to take basic training – because most of them came from very much the same situation in Europe. They were coming from Norway, from Denmark, from Germany, from Holland, England; they were all expatriate Americans who actually were in the same situation.”</p><h4>Arrested</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/t_H-J7gJ8R4?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I was then taken to some interrogating place in the city of Plzeň, right in the center, which was formerly Gestapo, I knew it too, where I was. And then subjected to about 78 days continuous interrogation. The sessions were long, and to share and to talk about them – that’s a book by itself. And all my history, all my connections with anyone I have ever met in that country, outside of the country – anyone I met in any country, any place, anything I have said – here was an open book to them. They had an incredible dossier on me, they had confiscated a great deal of mail already. They made a number of house searches in places of my friends and others. So, they had so much evidence which they construed the way they wanted. I simply was the enemy of socialism; I did not deny that I did not support socialism… And then of course, their aim was, they knew very well about my upbringing in the First Czechoslovak Republic. I was what they would today call Czechoslovakist. I believed in the ideals of democracy, Masaryk, Beneš and Štefánik, and I could repeat their quotes left and right. They knew my feeling, and that I was down deep a Czech and not some imperialist American spy. But what incriminated me was of course the Army – that I was in the unit which was actually involved in the gathering of information and intelligence.”</p><h4>Jail Food</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/XjELd7M3Dlg?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“When I finally had a cellmate, one of them was very experienced; at first I suspected that he might have been put there to find out something from me, so I was very careful, but anyway, I found out that he was not. You know, the city of Plzeň is known for beer – well known Pilsner beer – and the Czechs say ‘it is because of our good water.’ Well, we did not have a faucet, a water faucet in there; there was only water out of the toilet. And believe it or not, we drank that water from out of the toilet. And he made it palatable, my cellmate, by saying ‘after all, they make beer out of it in Plzeň, you know?’ So that was so-called, Czechs call it šibeniční humor [gallows humor] – it is a humor which you use when you are in jail or things like that. And part of it was educational, and certainly I learned a lot, and at times there were moments of amusement too.”</p><h4>Put to Work</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qt3ZQYsCboM?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I came into some industrial hall, and we were supposed to work on little flags, little paper flags – pasting little paper flags which, when let’s say Leonid Brezhnev visited the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, kids would stand on the sidewalk and wave. But we had a quota of how many flags to do. I believe my quota per day was around 1,500 flags – to paste them up. And somehow along [the way], a few of those prisoners who were around me; they noticed that when they asked me something, I had a little accent. And I made one big mistake: instead of the Czech rádio, I said radio [in an American accent]. And their antennae were up, you know?</p><p>“Well, I said that I am a tourist, and they had incredible fun. ‘We have a tourist! From where?’ From America. ‘Oh! We have an American tourist!’ It was a sensation. It went so quickly through that hall and some gypsies came around and brought me an onion. You know, I don’t know where he got the onion but I took the onion, because by that time I no longer had so much pride. There I said ‘thank you very much.’ But anyway, he was practicing his English on me; he kept saying ‘okay! Hokay!’ It was all very amusing.</p><p>“First of all, it was clear that I wouldn’t be able to meet my quota. But see, the prisoners started to make my quota. It was a sensation, and of course the guard knew immediately that they have to take me out of there, because I created – I stole the situation. ‘We have an American tourist!’ And, of course, there was lots of joking – ‘how’s your hotel room?’ And things like that. If it was two years and nine months of this fun, it would have been fun!”</p><h4>America</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Ijz9vKy7suA?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I accomplished education. Something my mother really treasured. And my children have an education, really, and they did not have to beg anybody, you know, to recommend them to the Party. I got an education and I did not have to degrade myself, to the Party, to any line of anybody, you know. And I had the opportunity to travel, to read, to meet people. This I think would have not happened in my time if I lived in Czechoslovakia. It is different now. It is different, but it would be too late for me. I caught everything in time.”</p>
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Robert Budway
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<p>Robert Budway was born to a Czech mother and Canadian father in Oak Park, Illinois in 1928. He became estranged from his father when the latter traveled West to find work during the Great Depression. In 1931, Robert moved to Czechoslovakia with his mother, Marie, who had decided to return to the family farm in Těchonice, western Bohemia. He says that the following year was ‘when his life really began.’ Robert attended school in the village of Plánice. He says his education was intensely patriotic, and that he has been a ‘Czechoslovakist’ ever since, but that at school his accent and American-sounding name marked him out as foreign. Robert refers to his childhood as ‘happier’ than he believes it would have been in Chicago during that era.</p><p> </p><p>Robert remembers the Nazi occupation of Bohemia and Moravia during WWII as a traumatic time, and says that his life was greatly complicated following the assassination of Reichsprotektor Reinhard Heydrich in 1942, as it was then that local authorities realized that he was an American citizen. He was unable to continue with school and was sent to work at the Hotel Centrál in Klatovy. Towards the end of the War, he was sent to a labor camp in Silesia, where he worked digging ditches.</p><p> </p><p>Robert returned to the Hotel Centrál after the War, but says that the atmosphere there grew hostile on account of his American citizenship. He says he was warned by local policemen that he was in Czechoslovakia ‘illegally’ and turned to the American Embassy in Prague for advice. In 1947, he was issued an American passport and told to report to Marburg an der Lahn in Germany where he could join the U.S. Army. Robert failed the entrance test and spent a number of months wandering around West Germany destitute. He was picked up by military police in Frankfurt and sent to basic training – this time, his written test was postponed until he had learned more English. Robert subsequently spent four years in the US Army in Germany. He came to the United States in 1951 and settled in Washington, D.C. He worked for the American Red Cross and then George Washington University and the YMCA.</p><p> </p><p>In 1957, Robert visited Czechoslovakia for the first time since leaving. He returned to the country in 1959. On his third visit in 1962, he was arrested on charges of espionage and subversion (three years previously, he had been handed a stone which he was told was uranium, and which he took to the United States for further examination). He was sentenced to four years and nine months imprisonment, though he only spent six months in jail. Robert was released from Pankrác prison in Prague in February 1963.</p><p> </p><p>He returned to Washington, D.C. and there met his Moravian-born wife Maria. The couple had two children, one of whom now lives in Prague. Robert says his experience inside Czechoslovak jail ‘made him more American,’ but that he continues to feel a strong sense of Czechoslovak patriotism.</p>
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National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library
Source
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NCSML Archive
American citizenship
Arrest
Heydrich assassination
Hotel Central
Military service
Pankrac
school
Techonice
World War II