1 10 20 https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/8e9593e88c4d3a8ef1c5e56da8d17850.jpg?Expires=1773878400&Signature=Z9f6mlpDsUHdUyF6nFgyww%7EPJu7AN0ITYcqEaT6CnLlIiJDnK9mSZMJDRwS0Sq01UIbrAtazG33P8JcKzk4IuVdMBnx%7Ejh3nWwrNuIfHxndAiPB%7EC-SdzZfl44vA0tBV40PVAwVwJF-mApdwEMIQd47gBFzSqYx9BBPqcn6cLZoyzrqHq5Ebfap-ppYjD-eqLQJLRijo%7EBvaWpjhMjGNXm8Cxy5ZB9XDhi5lVH-ga8fHCymSIfnTZNjT5x%7E7PiNjdCXVvmdEx1lokXP1xpmw14cjr0FBrGl-EJHfSmjxmOnGkFBfg%7EEC2wok67rLtq1kV2tzxW7iqs2eHtzrbgHoEA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 60a5a2f75594d9ac8e31cf14535e51ab https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/8aae29e4a9c86af650a485c9afaee49e.jpeg?Expires=1773878400&Signature=QDk-fsLQE4l4evzFm-TGtSkNlH-XODk6vn2dYpNsc2AjiHU63McPWRxICZ4mtZNvhil7yif9bMvR5cOntq1LpLjYEcVBTyr9tFB8qSRKJGm1cPoQX-YibaWeoM8z24o-xHSkeBHawRxupxyH3l-J9-94zWOplWTwyxof2dej%7EFMiV87UgCou3bOV-RlMETB0SraOXVaY7jFo%7EUuBB5WYaqDHeyj1w9JHLQKlwC%7ETjZs0MvpSwOGbjoyGQ3MOKn%7E-9oGbpxEHQ%7EAjz8EXpAH98Fj0omXQHpXKyHhriogIPo08TpzRAEBrCaw0cQcbd9fuL4XXqZHDGCxikkPjF1hnWQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 8c319eb72d4ebb975a195cded55f9002 https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/e5af382c3d9339375d6e41de4326a8c9.jpg?Expires=1773878400&Signature=WHu3lRurZXF4957goadEusRjIZunLYeVIWfNxw1Joi3fAdmIj50bzsFjFQZtbgstoiN0jGnhRJsWFXSrUiO3NQ77Xt465ZQmBD9C-vgAtsjBeROAEPHLvdSTvZZaWI9qEn6e1oHtzyGoee-0keBKga1Q%7EX0Tmv41pQeAe4BsOsNCWoq39Ak-GaeaRGt6mh4-YZTDTTF9Msi8Kq-7Sepmx-xDpdfr56jYk6uvyjTJjgtwq33m4l%7E5wu7lyikbZR6GNKGwI-QeX38E0%7EtYNhn4dceq3QD6tR9TF9EyLDdwXShgnhWHtn6JHN86eVfaKolI99ZM9dAjWNaoAzopphXgKQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM b6311343cb73ed8c640f8ac166b7e9a1 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 &amp; Documenting Memories of Czech &amp; Slovak Americans was an oral history project launched by the National Czech &amp; Slovak Museum &amp; 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 &amp; Slovak Museum &amp; 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>Great Grandfather</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/KZzxhBaNzqQ?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“I was there all the time playing hide and seek among the stacks of cloth. And with my friends, playing cowboys and Indians and everything else, yeah. But it started out as a very small store, by my great-grandfather, around 1910 or so, and he actually ran a general store, and then clothing store, and he was the first man in the country to import Singer sewing machines. And he hired three ladies in the area to start sewing for him, and eventually grew it into the largest company of its type, for that type of clothing, in Central Europe.”</p><h4>WWII</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/zdwKr5taFao?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“My mother finally told me one day that my father was fighting against the Germans. That’s all I knew, in fact, that became my mantra because all the slights that took place during the War – I wasn’t allowed to go to school, eventually I had to be hidden, my mother hid me on a farm when she was taken away to a slave labor camp for Christian wives of Jewish men, and so she hid me, she hid me away – and I always wanted to know why, why were we being picked out, you know, having to suffer, and me not being about to go to school, not being able to play with my friends for all those years, having to hide out? And the answer always was ‘Because your father is fighting against the Germans.’ And I thought, to me, I was so proud of that that it didn’t bother me that all these things were happening to me. I was never told the real truth, I never found out the real truth until really not too many years ago, when I was an adult. I didn’t know that all these things were really happening because I was actually three quarters Jewish.”</p><h4>Going into Hiding</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/wUzcO0d-70Y?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“In 1944, the Germans started taking away women who were, and who had been, married to Jewish men. And they had a camp, a slave labor camp, in Prague. And in that camp they manufactured windshields for German fighter airplanes. So my mother was taken to that camp. And before she left she hid me with some friends, actually farmers, that we had been living with after the Germans expelled us from our home. And they in the meantime had lost their farm, because the Germans had taken their farm away from them, and they became farmhands on a big farm in the same village. So I lived with them and they actually hid me in a closet. And I’d come out occasionally at night and as the War came to an end I started coming out more and more because it was obvious that the Germans were going to lose the War and a lot of people were losing their fear of the Germans.”</p><h4>BBC</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Hv2kVVr-TM4?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Every radio that you saw during the War in Czechoslovakia – or in the Protectorate, there was no Czechoslovakia – had a paper tag on the front, attached to one of the buttons, which meant that it had been inspected and checked and gutted, gutted such that it could not get any international broadcasts. And every Czech was smart enough, almost every Czech was smart enough, to be able to fix it. They had this little bug, it had a name – I can’t remember what it was called, this little thing that they made – it was like a two-dollar item that you would buy at Radio Shack today, that they stuck in the radio so that they could all listen. And everybody listened to the BBC, in Czech. And every night at a particular time, I can’t remember, it was like 8:00 or 9:00, there was a broadcast, and it would start out with Beethoven’s symphony. It went ‘boom boom boom, boom!’ – it would start out like that, and it would say, the first two words would be ‘vola Londyn,’ – ‘London is calling.’ And I would, at first I would sneak behind the door and I would listen to these broadcasts, because it was the only truth we got about what was going on in the War. Because otherwise it was all propaganda and the Germans were always winning, whether it was on the Russian front or, you know, anywhere else. But this was the true story about the War – so that’s how I knew. Eventually, after about a year or so, they knew that I had been listening, so they just let me sit in the room with them each evening. So that’s how I knew what was going on in the War, and you know, even though I was a kid I could comprehend it, pretty well.”</p><h4>Leaving On Foot</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/QNAOxnyHeR8?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“A farmer came riding up on a horse-drawn wagon, and told us to pile in with our three suitcases and a bundle of blankets that I was carrying. [He] took us out to his farm, and told us to sit tight until midnight. They fed us dinner and we sat there just watching the clock and midnight came, the farmer says ‘Okay, it’s time to go,’ and the next thing I heard was my father screaming at the farmer. The farmer had stolen one of our suitcases, and that was about one third of all of the belongings we had in the world at that point. The guy stole one of the suitcases. So, my father gave up, because the guy just wouldn’t admit that he had stolen it, even though we came into his house with three suitcases but now we went out with two. So my mother carried a suitcase, my father carried a suitcase and I carried a bundle of blankets which turned out had jewelry inside, which I wasn’t aware of. I was carrying the biggest asset we owned. And the farmer took us to the edge of the woods at the back of his farm and he said, because it was a beautiful night, it was a clear, clear night, but it was dark – there was no moon, but stars – this was in [March] of 1948, and the farmer says to us ‘That’s the direction to the US zone of Germany, just keep walking in that direction and, in about three hours, if they don’t shoot you first, that’s where you’ll end up.’”</p><h4>Parents</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/CMRArTe7kU0?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Very deliberately no. They wanted to put as much space between themselves and the immigrant community as possible, because – they had friends who were immigrants, I don’t mean to say that they completely forgot all their friends, they had friends in New York, we’d go and visit them over the weekend and so forth – but, they also saw in these immigrants what they didn’t want to be: people who are always complaining about how difficult things are in America, and how wonderful things would have been if we had stayed, and you know, all the things that they, that they didn’t do. They wanted to have nothing to do with the immigrant community – I mean outside of going to a Czech restaurant in New York, because the one thing that all three of us missed more than anything else was Czech food!”</p><h4>Parents</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/KLGCBr-OlhE?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“One thing that was drummed into me by my parents, from the moment we arrived here, was ‘Forget everything that happened to you on the other side of the ocean. Remember nothing. We’re starting a new life.’ And they really believed that I did, you know, and I guess, I think that I believed that I did, somehow, subconsciously. I never talked to my friends; you know, when people would ask ‘Where are you from?’ I would say ‘Oh, I’m from Czechoslovakia,’ but that was it, I would never give them any details, I would never say ‘Well, you know, during the War, I was one of the hidden children.’ None of that stuff, I never discussed it with anybody, or people would say – because I’d played soccer before soccer was very popular here and I was much better than anybody else they’d say ‘Where did you learn to play soccer like that?’ ‘Oh, in Czechoslovakia.’ But that was the extent of any conversation I would have, because I was bound and determined, by God, I was an American – as far as I was concerned, that never even happened. So, I didn’t pay any attention until 1968. When Prague Spring came, it was like a different world, I suddenly, suddenly I felt like I was a Czech. I started listening on… I had this transatlantic Zenith radio, shortwave, and I started listening to Radio Prague. And I heard all these beautiful things, and I heard Dubček speak, you know. All of a sudden, I felt like I was both an American and a Czech. Not for very long. And then after the invasion I put the curtain down again.”</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 Charles Heller Description An account of the resource <p>Charles Heller was born in Prague in 1936. His father, Rudolph, was the owner of a clothing manufacturing firm in Kojetice near Prague, which had been started by Charles’ great-grandfather on his mother’s side, Gustav Neumann. Charles’ mother, Ilona, had been born in Vienna and raised in Kojetice – a devout Catholic in what was otherwise a Jewish family. Charles also attended Catholic church in his youth.</p><p> </p><p>With the outbreak of WWII, the clothing factory was seized by the Nazis and handed to an ethnic German called Hollmann. Charles’ great-grandfather Gustav was sent to Terezín and later, it is thought, to Treblinka camp in Poland, from which he did not return. Charles’ father Rudolph, who was also Jewish, fled Czechoslovakia in 1940 and made it to Palestine, where he joined the British Army, and eventually fought as part of the British Army’s Czechoslovak Division. In 1944, Charles’ mother was taken away to a forced labor camp for wives of Jewish men and Charles himself went into hiding. He spent the rest of the War hiding in a closet in a farm belonging to the Tůma family not far from Kojetice. Charles says he was told that this was because his father was fighting the Nazis; it was only as an adult that he was told it was because he was three-quarters Jewish. Charles was reunited with his mother and father in the summer of 1945; he says, however, 15 other members of his family did not return.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>The Heller family moved to Prague shortly after the War so that Charles could attend school in the capital. In 1948, the clothing factory the family owned in Kojetice was nationalized and one floor of their apartment building they owned in Prague was turned into the local Communist Party headquarters. The family decided to leave and planned their escape to coincide with the funeral of Jan Masaryk, held in the capital in March 1948. They crossed the border by foot at night into the American zone of Germany near Rossbach (a town in West Bohemia today known as Hranice). Charles and his family spent one year and a half in refugee camps in Germany (including Schwabach and Ludwigsburg) before coming to America in May 1949. They settled in Morristown, New Jersey, and Charles’ father again got involved in the clothing business, starting as a pattern cutter and rising to a top management position at McGregor Sportswear. Charles attended Morristown High School and then Oklahoma State University on a basketball scholarship. An engineer by profession, Charles moved to Maryland to work for Bell Labs in the 1960s and has remained in the ‘Old Line State’ ever since. In recent years he has become involved in venture capitalism and conducts seminars for new managers, both in the Czech Republic and the United States. Charles published a book of his memoirs recently, and he lives in Arnold, Maryland, with his wife Sue.</p><p>Related Items:</p> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived NCSML Archive 1948 Catholics Child emigre Community Life emigrant Forced labor Holocaust Jews Nazis refugee Refugee camp Sense of identity Sports Terezin World War II https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/68a721290f6c7d2fc70334e584e2ffd3.jpg?Expires=1773878400&Signature=FZlj4tk2goMSUSk3EllxBGecsp1P78Orsr6vkbwus9ePptVYt54s7A5aiLHg4QPJ5GwXiyz2QZ%7EZPk1QSLG4QTPmHSGHiQBD5xVMH3yTOoOtw7cJGvtoOVQE3JtxYU3T-e8k82AFaC5ctosZ8ttMjV7cB4m4ma99tUYoSyHx982WGBG7JqEOj24xOo-q1ww94p-rpuGxD4m8VsBUpCsgLSdjT%7EiWuvnqiBhLn0wka7pCl%7ENUF-S23J8%7EUFC-JR4nQ-g4jD9cvVsdlA32lkgfUEv1Gilpm4a7vtmonnXYeDug8CbPcHXzNxe%7Eijjgfjk1mbQTjddpLJkG9ckMUtsI3g__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM bf80839a6c06087e9399cae28c63f84a https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/b95d48761066fb818c2640727ca72501.jpg?Expires=1773878400&Signature=fJSVBS3hkljksaDE3DyQ-NB6mrdgxTzg04Hb8TddKEk7iqTZ4DYb-i5YfsaMblwEFqkWODY9rEnU5eXE-mzDzvjfoWZPZ77IvOxGKref7IayGSGAF6yj8GGhYfi1uKBlVAqGmi-C35Q0u%7Ee5pK30dTopIJq-p53iULLKlMqpKZkPNo%7EU39G9UnXNUlGXD4smY3ilNMBNMxUclELlrCELNv2HKd7DMXueCHics-ZhTVrftSbhEz-Orgq-LVUUQTESzNjawMekSkjn5Nb33fRfM3hlLQZAQmuLSePwQ1k38wb31HFRZiosaNJTboTWGhWUR74hAMMewWo9q6uWts%7EH8w__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 448ffb11ed2c770aa2db305f30372229 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 &amp; Documenting Memories of Czech &amp; Slovak Americans was an oral history project launched by the National Czech &amp; Slovak Museum &amp; 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 &amp; Slovak Museum &amp; 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>Trilingual</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/eTsDYNyUA2s?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“Prague English grammar school was I think the very best thing that happened to me in my life. Yes, I’ll tell you, if you speak English… when you speak any other language, and especially if it is one like English or like German, so many people know it, speak it, use it – you’re half a step close to them. So when I left over the border illegally, leaving Czechoslovakia, I knew English. So when they asked me ‘Do you speak English?’ I said ‘Yes, of course I do!’ And they were of course surprised, because they didn’t expect that. And that was one of the first times I started thanking and thinking of my mother; how bright, how farsighted she was, to steer me to a foreign language, because my maternal grandmother – she was not Czech, she was German, but at that time when my grandparents got married, such close, close-by intermarriages were no surprise, no nothing. The Germans were right here, and we were right next to them and they were right next to us, so the mingling was very… ‘Yeah, of course, sure, why not?’ No problems, no friction, no nothing.”</p><h4>WWII</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/IOZt9HPwC4U?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“They had to stay with us, in our home, and never move out, never even open the window when mother and I were gone to the office in the morning. They knew they cannot move because you can hear on the lower floor that somebody is walking up there. My first thing here in America, anywhere I went, I would always listen – can I hear the people from above? No you can’t, because your building is different! But you know, here we are laughing, but it wasn’t laughable. But well, we just felt, we must be lucky enough, because that means there will be four people alive after the War – my mother and I, and the two ladies we were sheltering.”</p><h4>WWII Over</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/r_flfVN8ViE?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Well, we just sat down, and first and foremost my mother said ‘I know this is my last cigarette, but I know I’ll be able to buy them easier now, so I’ll just smoke this one to celebrate.’ So my mother celebrated for all of us, because she was <em>the</em> smoker.”</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 Eva Lutovsky Description An account of the resource <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> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived NCSML Archive 1948 emigrant/refugee Americanization Czechoslovak resistance during World War II Education English language Ethnic diversity gymnazium Jews Kaufmanova Malkova Peticni vybor Verni zustaneme Vysoke Myto Women workers World War II https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/6cb8572f9b89a083709689bd44230e49.jpg?Expires=1773878400&Signature=RAqJo4XywMzbYS4yAlSOq2SRH%7Eh%7EEk%7EjK22TpLsyfAk4VuJAajvAnu2xi0ZTDzQI%7EZA-qr3Lx9QUojNPdj3Lut6EuSX2HC6z6el4mLVn-oHseMVQ6pftx05R%7EEMiF2oBVLXy2KmpYAxGGX9VklSNLRs6yqxOnwS-x6HMB%7EcGCws3EtsG7ZrAZXEQB9iya2mNsOolPAi11ytbB4nUOITiACG3Lxpjj5W-E-S6Shq93KE6cLc-7DR%7EV9Pe7Xp0jFqwYMEqbrqQgRVttb5AJ%7EKVwR6KCUHKYKNlYdinmxMKEIQSNDU4E5gu2Pfezm5RM71nfvrHmH%7E4PJMch40LhsqGvQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 70c539dc6a180d69f56edbe600d95aea https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/031294e7ec9272ffc14e8b0fad7865fb.jpg?Expires=1773878400&Signature=WSBS8fQugKOse7Lyt05NNRe0B9pgYktJk8-lNMVOxmThxEGtjKQPvyroYR3KSvuEDhV0SBdaxo2uAieDEuz%7ELLBrwKTmCGPuRdp9eOiYlswZUEOLGf0Lc4sTdywnsBaLPt1%7EA5qibatNbrRIFP5eFvvx84hTmluTZWBQOCjcJusaBpAfSR7I71325K-kVHUTMzl-7UTVC6Sj3nTsW6KOo5FnQSssZYe9scivVyFFuBhtFNmc2EwGyPBK87vZHbyMKOprZxs63itrsBG84sC3PV-Tk%7E0xHoQnAk6I6IXdwei9jKz-UnTcEOscb7-sVqIkG9f37CeBRUw2ndPI4L3paQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM f83565a16f453b352841db67c29e2386 https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/033195e99de9483f89327a5cba522472.jpg?Expires=1773878400&Signature=KfWFyWa7rnztbhReGbrmCn74SuxOg5QPTB8ebmrVzwLztwmXbFlmvBbN%7E9dDN5ppHQEOux8MR9Z9vQ1AEgigZYOwxEH6W3DGQDnN9FeVkppGL0iXg%7EZ0F-zhEKqah8OOchRQufBhTjJ1hD3Ux9NNkLFHmED0f-8zib5pF1m20NJ9upEmta7LzuYjaldi4CU7Wc1rdTGQCmrGyLgXYIk0F0W6fP7ze3uaAzUITVOCHeJ7tRrcsqb3pTxXomkZs8RoNhqQC56i55a3PnGez1BtXx7P5%7E6mNaqN2udxzUnpNwBG523Kx4RaK0LT5YbCz6EH8pJYAMexTxePw8ormLvnCw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM dd30336d65f74f614c181b8db3e755ac 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 &amp; Documenting Memories of Czech &amp; Slovak Americans was an oral history project launched by the National Czech &amp; Slovak Museum &amp; 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 &amp; Slovak Museum &amp; 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>Holocaust</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/5SOvldrw26c?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“When the Nazi occupation came, in 1942 or 1941 they all had to vacate their premises, their house – they had a beautiful house in one of the nicest parts of Prague – and they were deported to Terezín, where most of the Jews from the Czech Republic, some from other countries as well, lived there. My mom basically survived Terezín, one of just a couple hundred kids, but her entire family, which means parents – my grandparents – her brother, her uncles and aunts and everybody, was deported to Auschwitz almost to the end of the WWII, and upon arrival in Auschwitz they were put right in the chambers. So nobody survived. My mom’s brother was about 18, 19 years old and, according to the German perception, he was still healthy and young, so he was deported and sent on a train from Auschwitz to the east side of Germany to a labor camp. But the train was bombed by the Allied Forces and as the train stopped he jumped out and with friends – this was about February of 1945, so very close to the end of WWII – and they were more or less crawling and walking and freezing through Poland and made it all the way to Prague. From the entire mom’s family, just her and her brother survived.”</p><h4>Leaving Czechoslovakia</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/O-WVRgwHljI?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I was in the military in 1968. Right after I graduated from technical school, I went to the military. On August 21, when the Soviets came around, I don’t know how it even happened, but my dad said I had to come home and so one of the officers called me to his office and said ‘There is a letter from your dad, and you need to come home,’ which under normal circumstances was absolutely unheard of. You know, as a young man you have to go to two years in the military. So he’s reading the letter from my dad to me and then he takes his big stamp and he just puts a stamp on it and says ‘Just go.’ Today I think he probably knew what was happening because it was about two weeks after August 21. Maybe he left too; I don’t know. But I went back to my home town. It took us two days; we packed. One car, five people with five sleeping bags and five pillows and maybe 20 dollars in our pockets, and we left for Austria.”</p><h4>Switzerland</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/lvtcKw6qAKM?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“In Vienna we were led into the sports dome, a large sports athletic complex. There were thousands of Czechs and Slovaks, sleeping on the floor and on the bleachers. I mean, thousands. It was a mess. I remember like it was yesterday. And as my mom walks in – again, I see it just like it’s happening right now – she said ‘No other concentration camp.’ And she turned around and walked out. So we were all walking behind her, and I noticed that she was crying, because she didn’t expect that. So we really didn’t know where to go, and then as we were walking out to our car, some people said ‘Go to the Swiss embassy. They are taking Czechs. Go there and they are going to take care of you. I couldn’t speak any German, but both my parents could speak German so I guess they understood what was happening, so that’s where we went. The Swiss just took our information from us and then they found out that my dad’s youngest brother, with his family, already defected a couple says before us to Switzerland.”</p><p><em>And your dad didn’t know?</em></p><p>“I don’t know. But when I recollect all these events and what was happening, I think he really didn’t know, because that’s where we would have gone first. Why even bother to go to the sports hall in Vienna with my mom crying and finding out what’s going to be next? So I assume that he really didn’t know.”</p><h4>Visiting America</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/3e1WLYDEqWM?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“My friend and I played semi-professional ice hockey, and it was between the seasons and he said ‘Why don’t we go to America?’ It was [1976 sic.], there were the Olympics in Montreal and, since we were in the Olympic center, we knew many of the Swiss athletes and they said ‘Well, come and visit us. We’ll have a good time.’ It was not as tight security as today. You could walk in the Olympic village and go for a beer with the athletes; today it’s impossible. We said ‘Well, why not?’ Both of us couldn’t speak a word of English. It was in April of ’76.</p><p>“So we flew to New York and in the Bronx we bought a 1968 Cadillac, because we loved this big ship. I mean, gosh, I’d never seen anything that big. You could play ping-pong on the hood. And each of us had a hockey bag with our stuff – you could out four hockey bags in the trunk! I thought that was really cool. So we bought this for 800 dollars, a 1968 Cadillac, and we traveled all around the country. We probably have seen all of the national parks, and we zigzagged the country all over. When we got to Los Angeles, some of my mom’s family was there, so we were with them and there was a lady who could speak Czech, so after several months I could speak Czech; that was great too.</p><p>“And our hockey club president lived in Hawaii in the off-season. So he said ‘When you guys are in Los Angeles, just call me and I’ll buy a ticket for you and I’ll pick you up.’ And we got our tickets and flew to Hawaii and we were his guests for two weeks. We didn’t spend a penny! He fed us; he lived in Waikiki Beach in a penthouse on the top. Especially for me, I was still kind of fresh coming from Czechoslovakia. So it was wonderful. We went to Canada, almost to Alaska, just to the bottom of Alaska. And then on Highway 1 we went all the way to Montreal and were there right when the Olympics started and mingled with the Swiss.”</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 Frank Fristensky Description An account of the resource <p>Frank Fristensky was born in Olomouc in Moravia in 1948. He lived with his parents on his paternal grandparents’ farm outside of the city until 1953, when the Frištenskýs moved to Rožnov pod Radhoštěm, close to the Slovak and Polish borders. Frank’s mother was originally from Prague, where her Jewish family was quite wealthy. During the Nazi occupation, her entire family was sent to Terezín. Although she and her brother survived, the rest of her family was deported to Auschwitz and killed in the gas chambers. Frank’s paternal great-uncle, Gustav Frištenský, was a world-famous Greco-Roman wrestler. Frank’s grandfather accompanied Gustav on his tour of the United States in 1913 and 1914, and Frank recalls hearing of his admiration for the country. Many of Frank’s family members were keen sportsmen – and to this day, Frank carries on that tradition.</p><p> </p><p>Frank attended a technical school in Valašské Meziříčí and, upon graduating, began serving his two-year military service. After the Warsaw Pact invasion on August 21, 1968, Frank was unexpectedly discharged from the army at the request of his father. Shortly after, he left the country with his parents and two younger brothers. The family settled in Switzerland where, coincidently, Frank’s uncle and his family had traveled just days earlier. Frank attended the Swiss Federal Institute of Sport and received a degree in teaching and coaching sports. After graduating he joined a semipro hockey team.</p><p> </p><p>In 1976, Frank traveled with a friend to the United States. They spent several months driving around the country and visiting Hawaii, and they ultimately traveled to Montreal where they attended the Olympics. Although Frank returned to Switzerland, he hoped to move to the United States. Two years later, after attending a conference in Texas, Frank visited his friend, Arnošt Lustig, who lived in Washington, D.C., and taught at American University. Arnošt helped him to secure a job at American as the women’s volleyball coach, assistant athletic trainer, and assistant physical education professor. Frank says that his first classes were taught with the help of a German translator, as he did not know English.</p><p> </p><p>Frank met his wife, Victoria, while at American University. The couple had a daughter and moved to Michigan when Frank became the head volleyball coach at Eastern Michigan University. When Frank’s father fell ill, he and his family returned to Switzerland for what he thought would be a short time. They remained in Switzerland for nine years, and their two younger children were born there. Frank and his family moved to Durango, Colorado, in 1996. Today, Frank is a personal trainer and fitness consultant. He also runs a tour company that specializes in travel to central Europe. Frank is extremely proud of his Czechoslovak heritage and has taken a particular interest in his family history. He recently organized a Fristensky family reunion, which was held at Bohemian National Hall in New York.</p> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived NCSML Archive 1968 emigrant Jews Military service refugee Roznov pod Radhostem Sports Terezin Valasske Mezirici Warsaw Pact invasion https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/2548e71a7935ae21d1452e7c9020c8ab.jpg?Expires=1773878400&Signature=LLaaMBBBTG6e37HEachq3ej6lDZFM3rg2M7vLCsx41WwhZ-SyNOSyeujGVtc7YBwdX1hphm79pSk4IjZ0J9kMrGt78YiNSwB4CRoGJ1ZXKk7f2KpaRAch9J0PGT%7EK-pOYpbXWsxQ6JVNmBTlKTeA3R2UmTWeXacjnGnI6uoewfVBw5Ust913oDYB0FNmSvE6iZB7BK9FPzSpP8LW3ETtHSDL3iyP%7EEl2bWySeOZ9rZgar1b-0OPShPTIuUlNK9GDVt%7Ej-bCzyzqYv5SHIh042s0VCnFmE2qTUEEEeSOf%7E%7E7ndlcLVrsxdiN5DUbIL8pz3%7EWWRTMFeO05XzhZ1SD%7E8w__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 015b33d7a29757b5bb3092322b39b70f https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/66aa0cb93194794ba61de802a6be69e2.jpg?Expires=1773878400&Signature=LJK0K0pj%7Ehev4SzyU-A0xLe6vBNSupB0xE0roLqfVEbNi5EbI%7EqBfTlF3YPNFcGGZIB%7EFytJJnOAQwIqAAygcV2ySDQb2NoKxFq90GqcjwyaZhTpXb6H0T7JsQo1A1KmU-4m-Jr2NMb32z5QQJzBOR6ORAn7qMyKzNeW9vpR85M003psk-sNsNz0OmvoGiPT5IfTLyHKPxhvshmnTudqGTXIay8viK3jwe7fPiZZjBrSO412BF9qu5JsVz2yeK1ZE9axmA0-xYbtkUsIxY%7ExvbvG9qP3U%7EHKw4Nc1%7EI-EM4g3K3hu8nlx3p0-M10fgD-JK1IPPV9xadfM-p3Aqi7Uw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 78f5da8a5009d3ef02039980208c8c78 https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/ea54b0f6947661a130a910b190122873.jpg?Expires=1773878400&Signature=tTuADoZD5sUb-St--vLAUcJ%7En2BpO%7EF5B8vyzml94rJ1nYqzoM23ZynQt0t9gTbVeMXxhzKeyM94TY48wcq7XIR-GMmwQEU5os1vnoEfg4JCJ0SGFvLW1EJ0WpR34ZFpgQKMiLFEl3q9lUaDs3jY%7ED3FbH2kZgkbV-u6bR6R06fGzPNnDjLm-Cb8g%7EMqOSJqjJjL%7E6Ag5PUCjOCDM6tnG4uUh6pP4ciJEIBOea9bX-a2Vl15IFh5oYMIxgsGJM8rMfIEGmcUPVzX-vKwBKe9d%7EflHQ2Zx3weQMmwI8hPzogSuBjiutyT2c1UCEFixOVbAhDqSsogG-8ZZyI44cdHcQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM ed939e1670d2a6ed9e3234a2fb467a57 https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/9f67a7a618b915e1b0b10fd87facbf8b.jpg?Expires=1773878400&Signature=mE9mI9YUohWFMt1oOZJuOeCUIZLzWBo5rrijt1aRWB1du38PkBayGlU6ciJOcEhlA3CtIcTPUIMSm7ygqBEBuAJV3GozFcR0HtzNIpU%7Eco1z6iTEUa8sjslSvFjqcovgyESo8hhO7niJEURPmfjFHSQ8Geg5a8mnBUgeHEfEvNhrkVm0K9JIF%7EOPXlpdIB6qma0KcN-2XXClu9bz9q9LJnt4A1c1UOo3c0h4SBNKiQWZlNXknF3-1FaaXjqKQXAQiUH-t8TcqIm1apUK8Q007%7Ed0o-VD1wQIHLcvotNgPqewQGkEi%7EppweDnAk8UWYQftwhZlN7qRE1QVwKqZOhTDw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 10ac777f56028dd4508f96834ce67599 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 &amp; Documenting Memories of Czech &amp; Slovak Americans was an oral history project launched by the National Czech &amp; Slovak Museum &amp; 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 &amp; Slovak Museum &amp; 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>Father Arrested</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/OCNPVgxHRts?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“This Gestapo guy came and arrested him, and he said to him – my father’s blonde, my mother was dark-haired, but my dad was blonde – and he said to him, ‘You can’t be Jewish.’ And my father said, ‘Yes I am.’ And oddly enough, and this is just one of those crazy things because I’m not one to find redeeming features about Nazis, but apparently, this man developed some sort of respect for my father because of what he said. So then my mother told me many years after the fact, she told me she would go daily up to Pankrác prison to see if she could see him or bring him something or something like that, and I don’t know to what extent she got to see him, but she was talking to the Gestapo guy one time and she said, ‘Would it be possible for me to bring my husband some clothes?’ And as she told it, and my mother was a bit of a raconteur, but as she told it, the man said something like this: ‘Clothes? What are you thinking? You think this is a hotel? I’ve never heard of such a thing! Clothes? If you come tomorrow at 3:00 in the afternoon, I’ll see what I can do for you.’ So apparently there was some little bit of humanity in this guy. And that’s always a story I’ve remembered.”</p><h4>Background</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/klXmHfYrYGg?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I didn’t want anybody to think I was any German-speaking Czechoslovak. Probably more than anybody else I know, I felt that way. It’s kind of strange, because many of the German-speaking Czechoslovaks were Jewish and certainly were not Nazis, but I didn’t want to have anything to do with it. I didn’t want anything to do with it, I wanted to be a Czech Czech. Czechoslovak Czechoslovak. Many of my friends came from German-speaking families, and probably objectively, many people would say I come from a German-speaking family, but I wanted to be a Czechoslovak Czech and that remains. A lot of people with a similar background to mine identify with Israel more than with Czechoslovakia, now it never occurred to me that I was more Israeli than Czechoslovak; I was always more Czechoslovak than Israeli.”</p><h4>No Return</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/YaYEn5Dic2M?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“He made it clear to me that he didn’t want me to grow up in an undemocratic country. That one of the reasons was he didn’t want me to grow up in an undemocratic country. My parents were social democrats and all that. The liberties of the citizen were terribly important to them, as they are to me, which generated the career I chose in this country, and so I was very disappointed [that his family ultimately did not return to Czechoslovakia]. Now my father did go back for a visit, either in late 1945 or early 1946, and he came back desolated, sort of, that it wasn’t the same. There was a strong revenge feeling in Czechoslovakia against the Sudeten Germans, and it’s understandable because many of the Sudeten Germans followed Henlein and Hitler, and the so-called Beneš Decrees removed them collectively, took their homes and removed them collectively. And my father, who had served in President Beneš’ cabinet and who was certainly not sympathetic to Henlein and the Nazis and all that, he said that you cannot have a legal democratic state if you have collective punishment of a group of people without distinguishing individual guilt from individual innocence. And the fact that this was done made him even more distrustful of the possibility of democracy.”</p><h4>Coup Reaction</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Q8HAGY5Ql3o?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“You know, it was such a terrible thing to happen to my country. I’d always grown up with a memory of the Nazis coming in and killing part of my family and all that, and then we were so looking forward to a peaceful, democratic world after the War was going to be over and we weren’t going to have any, ‘There’ll be bluebirds over/The white cliffs of Dover/Tomorrow just you wait and see/There’ll be love and laughter/And peace ever after/Tomorrow when the world is free’ and what do you get. You get a dictatorial one-party regime coming after two and a half years of quasi-democracy. So I was very devastated as a boy.”</p><h4>Mississippi</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/twEzZcELyC8?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I was driving along the street and I saw a woman; I was looking for the Harmony community in Free Trade, Mississippi. I saw this woman picking cotton in a cotton field, which is something new to me anyway, but I wanted some directions so I walked up to her and I said, ‘Excuse me, but I wonder if you could tell me how to find…’ and I gave her the address, and she pointed out and whatnot. And I thought, ‘What the heck.’ So I said, ‘Ma’am,’ and I don’t think anybody had ever called her ma’am before, but I said ‘Have you ever tried to register to vote?’ And she looked at me and said, ‘Vote! You isn’t from around here, is you? Vote! Why we can’t vote. That man over there, the owner, he’d skin me alive. My skin is black, and I know my place. Vote! We can’t vote.’ And sort of retreated into the distance. She also mentioned something about a guy being chased; something about a black guy being chased down the street in Carthage by a white gang, and that’s what she said. This was the free world, the lead country in the free world in December of 1962.”</p><h4>Meaning of Freedom</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/SPy_FNnYtxc?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Oh boy. Well, first of all, I was more concerned in those days as to what it doesn’t mean. And what I’ve told you about Czechoslovakia, it doesn’t mean the Nazis coming in and locking up my father for representing people or for being Jewish. It doesn’t mean the communists coming in there and hanging Mr. Clementis and so on. It doesn’t mean having one party ruling. And it doesn’t mean subjugating people on account of their race or color.”</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 Frank Schwelb Description An account of the resource <p><img class="alignleft wp-image-4027 size-full" src="http://web.archive.org/web/20170808051429im_/http://ncsml.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Handler94.jpg" alt="Frank in 1988" width="228" height="320" /></p><p>Frank Schwelb was born in Prague in 1932. He and his parents, Caroline and Egon, lived in the center of Prague, and Frank remembers the Nazi troops marching through the city. Caroline was a language teacher and translator, and Egon worked as an attorney. In March 1939, shortly after the German occupation, Egon was arrested and sent to Pankrác prison. Frank says that his father’s clients included German anti-Nazi refugees living in Prague and believes that this, along with his Jewish background, led to his arrest. He was released after two months. Following his release, they were able to secure exit visas, and, in August 1939, took a train through Germany and the Netherlands where they boarded a ship to England.  Frank says that most of his family who were unable to leave the country, including his mother’s sister, died in concentration camps.</p><p> </p><p>Frank’s family settled in London where he attended several different schools, including the Czechoslovak State School of Great Britain in Wales; he maintains contact with many of his classmates from there. His father became a member of the legal counsel of the Czechoslovak government-in-exile and served in that capacity from 1940 to 1945. Frank says that his parents initially hoped to return to Czechoslovakia following WWII; however, because of his job, his father understood that the country would likely fall under communist rule and decided not to go back. In 1947, Egon was offered the position of the Deputy Director of the UN Human Rights Division; the family moved to New York City to join him several months after he accepted the post. Frank attended Yale University where he played soccer and joined the NAACP. He began Harvard Law School in 1954, but volunteered to serve in the U.S. Army in 1955 to gain military naturalization. He served for two years before returning to Harvard and graduating in 1958. Eager to participate in President John F. Kennedy’s “New Frontier,” Frank began working as a lawyer for the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice in October 1962; his work with voter registration discrimination exposed him to the segregated South. He was named to the Superior Court of the District of Columbia by President Jimmy Carter in 1979, and was later appointed (by President Reagan) to the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, where he served as a Senior Judge.</p><p> </p><p>Frank enjoyed speaking Czech whenever he got the chance, rooted for Slavia Praha (a Czech soccer team) and returned to the Czech Republic many times. He was involved in the Czech and Slovak legal community, meeting with visiting lawyers, judges, and students, and he presented the inaugural Rosa Parks Memorial Lecture (in Czech) at Charles University in Prague. Frank lived with his wife, Taffy, in Washington, D.C., until his death in 2014.</p> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived NCSML Archive Anti-communist Arrest Benes Communist coup Czech language Education Jews Military service Pankrac Prison Sense of identity Sudeten Germans World War II https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/0ab27a022bbc159ec3d43b12d23defb4.jpg?Expires=1773878400&Signature=saODZ-jPorWfyp4g98C0dq1E9d-KCVn4c2Hmo7d6gr3EwEOjoGPcdZWT-FlK00qdbzVHYtJmU0yvhFzwoo3wU1ShHFl2-lMNmKFfdbupKRQJmlDvpHCA3DirCdR7aw9CldRxBplzlkUpOcynTurjMcq-6COMUanoxMsXF9XAJASubcsIixJHPGY3kDaxWJMNsIdld620ubWRBjIWwdus%7EF7zhdXP%7EyRHb5cdJeMcRksQbWNcJUnXTBgF3QTpg9WedCAo1YEzK6yX4CPurBSh6nd9RoGHOkVPm-tssdNwYLwBSatUMcDSMyGsp3xdIWETWj6zhkYajQbZT3jWpwRuLw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM ee5a8705f0dae9dbf35449fb34557cd1 https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/880018634cdeb51594880c0b0a8078d0.jpg?Expires=1773878400&Signature=o2N1KY3syFF4ObFrHClZKbBpLlx8gVUC7y1kvg7JcrdjmKL0g%7EeqKa8t5ULskWzJkK5byOWG9dRoDYyv18r4S1%7ErrBGt5PzNeURblCAjYvLF0wwLpRSERRI16MDLa4-qvCPMy5F%7ENCqQy-uzhFyQcbRNTrFTRLS0H3-Ea16j-HBiqElQlMSNyocK6ZtzRrSMNq6TPKgrZyGKuKCDoj4dRBQKKzxuLtGiO7-E8i-iJp1e0FH0ScvSaJdP%7EbDTKDIEAQclP1po6V%7EfHt4fOAp-Uxn0JtXnLeSHvhfb8Rv4ZqvSDatamj1ghAlj6ElvnjCE-sItdbvTLDFiBjw5nXd2fg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM add6de12148c04ec1f2f8e4aa72e713c 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 &amp; Documenting Memories of Czech &amp; Slovak Americans was an oral history project launched by the National Czech &amp; Slovak Museum &amp; 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 &amp; Slovak Museum &amp; 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>Parents</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Vau5kLX1Ew0?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“It’s the supreme example of highly sophisticated survival skills. You don’t want to jeopardize anything. You don’t want to jeopardize your family; you don’t want to jeopardize the future; you will say everything to everybody just to leave you alone. That was the whole principle. In other words, yes, I disagree maybe inside, but I openly say ‘Yes, of course, you are right.”</p><h4>Rock and Roll</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/7EY4N_SYgqM?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I think that the most incredible period for me personally, for us as a young generation at that time, was the invasion of rock and roll. The music. Rock and roll culture. Radio Luxembourg. For us it was a fascinating world because we thought that if this is possible, something over there must be right. And it’s very difficult to explain to people who don’t understand the impact of culture on young minds or a young outlook. And rock and roll really changed a lot in Czechoslovakia. Bands mushroomed almost instantly. Right after a show on Czechoslovak TV, ‘the decadent West’ and they showed a picture of the Beatles running on the street from <em>A Hard Day’s Night</em>, and that day, those idiots created a mass movement. From day one to the next day, everybody started to look, or attempted to look like the Beatles and play the music.”</p><h4>Warsaw Pact Invasion</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/1Opl121kTAQ?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I managed to arrive [in Humenné] late night; it was already martial law declared, and I didn’t know of course. So I was coming from the train and I’m walking towards my parents’ house, and boom. I come to the square. All these Russian tanks, lorries, trucks, they had this white paint through the body for identification. Every Russian vehicle was painted with a white stripe in the middle. So all I could see were these white stripes in the middle of the night, and here comes the patrol. A Russian officer with two soldiers. In Russian – I understand and speak Russian – he says ‘What are you doing here?’ and I said ‘What are you doing here?’ So this dialogue was happening in the middle of the night, and these two guys are holding their guns against me and he’s holding a handgun. And I start to shout ‘You mother f*****s’ – I was 20 – ‘Wait until the… you will see you are going to be kicked out of here when the Germans and Americans come and kick your ass outta here!’ And when they heard the ‘German’ and ‘American’ because it was ‘Ruskii, Amerikanskii, Nemetskii,’ they unlocked the guns, aimed at me, all three of them aimed their guns at me, and they said ‘Run.’ And I realized that’s it. So I said ‘Please don’t shoot,’ and I was running backwards like this, to the passage – there was a passage in the building which my parents lived around the corner – ‘Please don’t shoot, don’t shoot,’ and they let me go. But it was a second. A split second. They could kill me, nobody would find anything about me, they could discard my body, nothing could be done about it, because I was the only one on the square.</p><p>“And the next day, I woke up and I went out, collected money and went to the Czechoslovak-Soviet Friendship House, I bought Soviet flags. I got all these kids with matches and they were walking around burning Soviet flags walking around the square around the Soviet tanks. I thought ‘Hey, they’re not going to shoot the little kids; they’re going to shoot us, but they’re not going to shoot the kids.”</p><h4>Israel</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/TYqE8-GzViQ?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I was young. I was 20, I didn’t know what I was doing. It was my first time in the West. I wasn’t really ready for Israel. I was young, I was naïve. I was also sentimental, I was not ready. I was emotionally drained, I was physically drained.”</p><h4>Charter 77</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_b72SBUx3Cw?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“The police essentially attacked my office. They came to do a search. Plainclothes police. They raided the place with Volgas, [Tatra] 603s and all these other cars and then they left. They took the samples from my type machine. Then my boss, this guy who hired me – he passed away; he was an alcoholic, died a few years ago; he was a very interesting guy – and he came to me and said ‘What was it, a ticket? A speeding ticket?’ And I said ‘No, no, no.’ ‘So what it is it? What happened here?’ ‘Well, nothing really, I just signed Charter 77.’ And he looked at me and said ‘You asshole, now I can’t protect you. Now you are out.’ And in one month I was pink, I was out.”<br /><strong><br /></strong><em>So, why did you sign Charter 77?</em></p><p>“For me, it was a moral imperative. I might sound like an idealist, but the moral imperative was very clear. I’m not supporting the regime. I have a lot to lose – some people had more to lose than me of course – but I’m not going to anymore do it halfway. I’m not going to compromise anymore. I’m just going to make a statement because it’s my responsibility as a citizen of Czechoslovakia to bring up these issues that are destroying the country. That was essentially my argument.”</p><h4>Police File</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/XYt0G1sS2q0?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I asked them for my files; they brought it to me, and I was going through all the interrogation they did with my relatives, my friends, my ex-girlfriend, my ex-wife, including my letter I sent to Charter 77 reporting on abuses in Slovakia, which never arrived there because they confiscated it. Then I found an interesting section that said ‘350 pages erased’ or destroyed. And I said, ‘What the f*** is that?’ So I asked the guy who worked there, he said ‘Well, that’s what they did in ’89.’ Can you imagine? December 1989, they destroyed 350 pages. Some of them are referring to people who are actually spying on me, but it’s missing, it’s gone. So I asked them ‘What happened to my file? Somebody can access my file?’ Can you imagine, people can actually, for study purposes, can access your file which I think is totally absurd. This is your private file. The police could do anything, they could even imitate the signatures if they wanted, they could manipulate anything they wanted.</p><p>“So what’s the big deal, you can’t bring it back, you can do nothing about it, so what are you gonna do? I don’t dwell on it anymore. I mean, it’s my file ok, of course it’s disturbing, it’s mentally disturbing, and very very threatening because you see how they manipulated people and manipulated interviews.”</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 Gabriel Levicky Description An account of the resource <p>Gabriel Levicky was born in Humenné, eastern Slovakia, in 1948. His parents, Hungarian-speaking Slovak Jews, both survived concentration camps during WWII; his mother was in Auschwitz and his father in Sachsenhausen. Gabriel says that they were not forthcoming with their experiences of the Holocaust. Gabriel’s father, a member of the Communist Party, was the director of the <em>Dom kultúry</em> (municipal cultural center) in Humenné. Gabriel says his teenage years were heavily influenced by Western culture, most notably music and literature. He was in a band called The Towers and subscribed to <em>Svetová literatúra</em>, a periodical devoted to world literature. Gabriel’s lifestyle and his involvement in the hippie movement in Czechoslovakia led to conflicts with his father; following his schooling, he left home and traveled around the country.</p><p> </p><p>Gabriel was traveling from Žilina to Humenné when he heard about the Warsaw Pact invasion in August 1968. On arriving in Humenné, he had an altercation with Soviet soldiers; the next day, he participated in protests against the invasion. Soon after the invasion, Gabriel says, a friend warned him that the secret police were looking for him, and he decided to leave the country. Using a friend’s passport, he crossed the border, made his way to Vienna, and then went to Israel. One year later, he returned to Czechoslovakia as part of an amnesty granted to those who left following the invasion in 1968. Gabriel moved to Bratislava and held a series of jobs including editor for the publishing house Obzor, mailman, and technical assistant in an art gallery. He was involved in the underground cultural movement, drew cartoons and wrote poetry.</p><p> </p><p>His anti-establishment activities were noticed by authorities and he says he was constantly harassed and interrogated by the secret police. The situation deteriorated further when he signed Charter 77. He says he decided to leave for a second time in 1979 when the ŠtB asked him for money. Gabriel and a co-worker left the country with little money and no food or water. He says the two-week journey to Italy, which took them through Hungary, Romania, and Yugoslavia, was a ‘miracle,’ as they were helped by several strangers along the way. Gabriel hitchhiked to Rome where he stayed for several months while waiting for papers to immigrate to the United States.</p><p> </p><p>In July 1979, Gabriel arrived in Cleveland, Ohio, where he lived with an aunt for a short time before moving to New York City and then settling in San Francisco. In 1996, Gabriel worked in Prague as deputy editor-in-chief for the Czech newspaper <em>Mosty</em>. When he returned to the U.S., he settled in New York where he still lives today. Gabriel is a translator, tour guide, and cartoonist, and he has published several volumes of poetry.</p> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived NCSML Archive 1968 Charter 77 Concentration camp Humenne Jews Secret police Translator/interpreter Warsaw Pact invasion Western/Pop culture Zilina https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/b5457550057f652a575742f1a8923183.jpg?Expires=1773878400&Signature=cZhetKWJ0TwBhPN2QlNlZZhpcn0RV19Vlls2-hKR%7EQlpd8KnJYLjojA46KdcrY-P7NNHXk1gPEEJoopiDWa6vogTUX12a5CgI62xfQN%7Ek6FtLFnbcO6WtEAQskSbiSqglzrJFREdAVY%7EM0CJJZtDOnFN25AEUJoTQXbX21Na9YmJBGikv5fQN4MWV3A66lOxSiZYsJDwHB%7EiMLYn4xNyRrirp7doUiuUf6xLX67R6nz4EWPIbcHjtqy0YIiyCMR9NH1baO-hSkTSKeiYz5K0ALL28o2s2dpl0vNlu%7EOy0Ynd4YTWPZ2vW%7ELnkxspA9Ih8HEMUAhM3b8LxTIet9dvEA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 2bd100ca2e5a69daa539be0609096891 https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/84b3de0f43dd99d71d4a701a15d669e7.jpg?Expires=1773878400&Signature=oqAr5PmHFemzZysZbJ3p97P0e8ecfrHDa5ZZ%7EYohZUowRT-7dly21cLCgx%7E-XkmyqXD5GVMB7XrE5GGZIc03IuttUSno16OT0YOUgO7EE5F5F5VWzT2YZ6Tz%7ExL2CljsUO8UYN2jJ9cYEG7FqFy3AKbRiTKswx2itrbMGpBK6Y4Rjm%7EzOaDYyJ7axhQP%7ElCiNgdodIjefieUjFu7ZCxmZXQSmqHCWriWTATnWHDKcgrSUvznOinEMHtA8Yq9H-GesjG9GQRwJvWN3zGkT%7E6d-EBWWKEQ5%7EjiEt-ZLRGMm5cx9qn-E-2OYe2rYgJTIYSVNE%7EBJoO0ESq5BMkoM36pLw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM fd0f103ca56dcdfd440ec4d4967a3596 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 &amp; Documenting Memories of Czech &amp; Slovak Americans was an oral history project launched by the National Czech &amp; Slovak Museum &amp; 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 &amp; Slovak Museum &amp; Library. For more information, contact Dave Muhlena, Library Director, at dmuhlena@ncsml.org. Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound <h4>WWII</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/6OUclz5HeKU?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“My dad was born in 1921, which made him exactly army age in 1939 when the war broke out; he was 18 years old. So he got drafted into the Slovak army, but being Jewish, they were actually drafted into a special regiment and they were given different uniforms, and instead of given guns they were given brooms, as a means of humiliation. And then they were sent to forced labor in a <em>cihelna</em>, a brick factory, and he was there, I think until about 1941 – I’m not really sure on the dates, my mother would know – and then he and a few friends escaped from there. And for the rest of the war were hiding in the mountains, and towards the end of the war, he joined the partisans and he was fighting with them for maybe the last six months of the war.”</p><h4>Auschwitz</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/vtUFlJpidsg?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“She was shipped out [to Auschwitz] with the first women’s transport, so there were men who had been shipped out earlier. She was shipped out in June of 1942, she and her sister. Her sister perished in the camp; she was killed, and my mom survived. She has a very strong spirit, and you can imagine it was absolutely terrible. She went through at least one, if not two, bouts of typhoid fever. Even with your fever up in the low 40s Celsius – it’s high – she had to go out and they would support each other and show up for the morning roll call. Because as long as you showed up for the roll call, then during the day there was a kind of way where they could hide you, so the rest would kind of walk out and you would creep back – she managed to do this for a few days.</p><p>As she gets older she talks about it more and more. It’s unimaginable torture. That’s really the only word. We say unimaginable this, unimaginable that. This is truly unimaginable, what that meant for three years. And she was there until what we now call the march of death, the death march, which was the evacuation of Auschwitz by the Germans. The sick and dying were left behind; many of them just died, some survived. And this was in January 1945 and with temperatures below 20, 25, 30 below, they would walk, trudge through snow towards Germany. Of course they never made it, many of them died. If you tried to escape you were shot on the spot. After three months of this, so now we’re maybe into late March, it was completely obvious the war was lost and the Germans just scattered and left the prisoners. And then my mom made her way from Auschwitz, which is really not far from the Slovak border to Humenné, and it took her like six weeks, because all the rail lines were disrupted. But she met very good people along the way who helped her and fed her, and so she made it back home.”</p><h4>George's Uncle</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_uWgrSpbWmw?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“My father believed in communism. He thought, after the War – it was the Soviet soldiers that liberated him, it was the Soviet soldiers that liberated Auschwitz, and so, my mother wasn’t involved at all, but my father was a member of the Party. And he believed that this is the right way to go. And now, bang, his brother gets arrested and he says, ‘No, this is not possible, this is wrong.’ So he traveled to Bratislava to see his brother and they wouldn’t let him see him, so he traveled back. Long story short, his brother was imprisoned, well, he wasn’t in prison, he was in custody, for two years without ever being charged with anything. Let go after two years, his health broken, and never being able to regain the same kind of position. So it took him another five to ten years to be able to get a decent job and get back into his career. And at that point, my father says this is just BS, you know, this whole communism thing is crap. And from that point on, he didn’t want anything to do with it. So on paper, yes, he was still a member of the Party, you couldn’t just quit. But, from very early on, I knew that this was not an ideology he believed in because he knew his brother was innocent.”</p><h4>Relatives Help</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/aLrXz2KSHbw?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“The people from the United States sent us an occasional check for about 50 bucks. Now, for 50 bucks, you couldn’t do anything with the dollars, but you could take the dollars to the bank – and when I say bank, in all of Prague, with its million inhabitants, were maybe three banks. Right, the banks didn’t exist, you dealt with cash. You got your pay slip with the cash, no checks, no Visa card, nothing. So you would take the 50 dollars, you would go to the bank. For that you would get this special currency called <em>bony</em>. And with the <em>bony</em>, you could go to a Tuzex [store]. And so you went to a special store called Tuzex, and in the Tuzex, you could buy stuff that you couldn’t get anywhere else. So you could get Nestlé chocolate milk – phenomenal, I loved it, like a powdered chocolate. Of course, foreign cigarettes. My parents were both smokers, so Marlboro cigarettes or Dunhills, British cigarettes. What else? Coffee, instant coffee. Later on, Beatles records. So that made us a little bit better off because for the 50 bucks, I think one dollar was four <em>bons</em>, so that was 200 <em>bons</em>, and you could put together a pretty nice shopping basket for that. A packet of cigarettes was about five <em>bons</em>, so you know.”</p><h4>Music</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/VX9GUJADQIQ?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Did I want to leave? Of course I didn’t want to leave; I had my band. It was so exciting, I mean, the time was unbelievable. The amount of music that was happening, the bands that were happening. There was a new, even two new, music publications, there was a new record company that started putting out rock music, I started to write my own tunes. I mean, it was unbelievably exciting. Who wants to leave that?”</p><h4>Identity</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/NmNpcDHd8iM?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I am a Czech-Jewish guy. That’s my origin. Is that my identity? Well, I travel with a Canadian passport. I cannot be just associated with the Czech community. Even if I terribly wanted to – and I don’t – but even if I did, I can’t, because I spent from 15 to 24 in Israel. And that’s a very, very crucial part of your life. So I have to be associated with that as well. I have very, very good friends in Iceland who I correspond with, who I visit, who visit me. Although I’m not Icelandic in any way, but I speak the language, I understand it, and there’s a part of me – through my daughters, through the fact that I got divorced there, I had relationships there with other people – that is also very strong. So that pulls me too.”</p><h4>Musician</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/yBxOhA5o9hE?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“The immigration informs it [my music] a lot, because it really formed me. It is this fundamental sadness that I have that has never left me, even though I love joking and I love life and I’m not a person that goes home and cries every day. But the sadness is there and when I write, it just comes out. And it comes out of this disruption of my life at the age of 15 which will never go away as long as I live. So I may not actually write about it, but it’s there. It’s even there when I even sing to crowds.”</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 George Grosman Description An account of the resource <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> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived NCSML Archive 1968 Arrest Arts Child emigre Community Life Concentration camp Dobris Castle Education emigrant English language Jews Jiri Grosman Nove Divadlo Partisan refugee Western/Pop culture https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/e5130a059ac48cd50640941aaa7af18f.jpg?Expires=1773878400&Signature=DjaX1NluWAxzphkZ1Ul4zWCXRWkj02t-nKAU6S2DfX1qfzK7RoHJQ5VyWbrnZ-NZfCSBHYAaeHUkVOxLdyp-kZiS354m8nQ2XKt5jxn0%7Eq5tGcE-Pe%7EWNvMkX%7EzwTu0fVba6qtLuOmLkqKyky0%7EK2IP0hne8qH9ibrXnYrom4s-oYorZZnV8xXc-VtUiw7exWbMIJynnaW2WGDP%7EyJACJdV8tIvpMHGaKOYTT3KbKDwMwrY3WH0lCUEeqzZ9tI0QlGQuBA4q07QeqSdYMhcyzz3XSUyJps1wy6nx3a8pir6tHD3ckxJ1wzD5DeFaOy5S2zalR7G-ynUcPqAROA3bYw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 7f41e0525702cf8b4466da15368a486c https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/d914a7ee8536ec6b075823f5cd102990.jpg?Expires=1773878400&Signature=cT-dJj-RF06lwVzHP01nn1iU28ZYM8lpS67gtQPwRhfK8Wx36uOMXfa4RBztS0PTRYC8nwFfwAqNm65xUyeg8k%7ENtoZV7TaUHw45EUDoaoXRVrQWv9les4Bir5V%7E%7EW8PInMH46BQxs581cmaOczPkp5gElhTa9jbtfodI5OhMpC3ZPl1FUzIGOu-lzpWFaz-iBXpyla%7EGloE5CDKoLnSIn7IuUjreB3-87nBdotPwFNxDITQAF6HuCO5MTpXrhXbeyStuxyNrI474ZoN77ERmbsu2zLk-wa3a3RNi1ZFCc0t7AcizWBDolj0XUbmsVUqWQtEtawZ29m0aMir4aK36w__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM d9daed6629833e84aede71744949d3ec https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/133dac1d8b78e9fcabce04caf186bcbd.jpg?Expires=1773878400&Signature=PrvazWFQgbaf%7Eda4w%7EKV3VrFHbuR1MsInPNLW4NmkbpuU%7EwGy%7EqMB96V%7EFHwRe9t0Q2WnO6%7Eu8lBODsmqCt0aHwq-knYc3M%7E8eeAfJYNi56%7Ekq37541KMDWeKIW8w%7E8gbmuvpKPqBig5JXLRgd8eKsjkIG%7E-piGwBKvP%7EJ5c2MBf07IZU86N2Q2Egbl%7ETAs7mnp7jiRY7gAbaYsSs43dCDyoFiAxUaeQhMFIZ2GaUC0pi5ZYfxzw112t59k9j3F4yg7jQN7HwJ8IextMukl-36jl3HbayokTs310BbWWwxrB4RWCBUlAcXaz9Zo%7E3kwpu1Rr-xS-lMDAeQyfdTbeLw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 810cb034feba3f738780307e6c6a56d7 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 &amp; Documenting Memories of Czech &amp; Slovak Americans was an oral history project launched by the National Czech &amp; Slovak Museum &amp; 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 &amp; Slovak Museum &amp; 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>Jewish Hiding</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/HpdqrFda7XM?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“When the deportation of the Jewish population started in 1942, my parents, to protect me, put me in an orphanage that was run by Catholic nuns in Bratislava. So I was there for two years. Fortunately, my parents were not put into a concentration camp, mainly because my mother was a physician and they needed physicians even during the War. So she was allowed to practice ophthalmology, not in Bratislava, but in Prievidza in central Slovakia. And then in 1943, things were not good, but my mother felt secure enough, so she took me out of the orphanage and I joined her in Prievidza. My father actually had a job. I think he was demoted in his position, but was still allowed to work for the same business that he worked for before. And then in 1944, when the [Slovak] Uprising started against Germany and the Nazi government, my father was able to join us and get out of Bratislava, and then when the uprising was suppressed, my mother and I went into hiding in a small village near Prievidza. My father joined the uprising and was able to get through the front line to the Soviet Army by December of [1944 sic.]. And we didn’t know about him and he didn’t know about us, but then we were reunited after the Russian Army came.”</p><h4>Fluent</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/b0DSKEtNMvE?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Being born in Bratislava, I grew up with three languages, partly because my mother was born in Budapest. She not only spoke Hungarian, but her family came from Austria so they continued to speak German at home. So I grew up with three languages which was helpful. In addition, even though at school I studied French, my parents pushed me to study English privately, and I took private lessons in English, attended an intense course in English, and even passed the state examination in English.”</p><h4>Opportunity</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/zIjJrk4NUts?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“We did not think that we would be given permission – my wife and I together – to leave, because that was very difficult. Usually they kept one person behind as [security]. Then, to our surprise, we got an invitation from a colleague in Vienna who I knew professionally, and he said ‘Why don’t you come and stay with us for a weekend?’ So we said ‘Fine’ and we applied for permission, but we didn’t really expect that we would be allowed to go, but to our surprise we were allowed to go for a weekend. Our host in Vienna didn’t know that once we got out we would not be coming back so it was a surprise to him.</p><p>“There was actually one event that’s worth mentioning. About three days before this fateful trip to Vienna, I am at work in the Institute of Virology and somebody comes in and they said ‘You have a telephone call from Vienna.’ So I started shivering because I thought maybe this friend is cancelling the invitation, and it was pretty unusual in those days that you would get a telephone call – especially at work – from a Western country. So I went to the phone with trepidation, and there was Dr. Moritsch, our host, and he said ‘I wanted to let you know that I have tickets for the opera, and could you bring your tuxedo?’ Well, a tuxedo was the last thing I wanted to carry with me, but I said ‘Sure.’ Needless to say, I didn’t bring a tuxedo, but we went to the opera nevertheless.”</p><h4>Plan</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/j5L_9sr_siE?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“We decided to tell my parents, and my wife’s mother was not alive anymore, but we lived with her father in our house and we knew that the first thing that will happen is that that the secret police will come and speak to him. So, in order to protect him, we thought it would be best if we did not tell him. I think he may have sensed it anyway, but we didn’t tell him. We did tell my parents and they were very supportive. They felt that we would have better chances for a decent life in the West, even though it was a risk and we didn’t know how things would work out.”</p><h4>NY Impressions</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Nf4YzSUN4JI?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“We remember that day very well. It was the fourth of February, 1965. It was a beautiful sunny winter day, and we were driving with my wife’s brother through the Triborough Bridge and saw the skyline that was lit up with the setting sun behind the skyscrapers. It was really an unforgettable experience and the first impressions were wonderful. And then there were surprises, like you always see the skyscrapers of Manhattan, but you don’t realize that there are side streets. Especially 47 years ago, there were many more low buildings and brownstones and townhouses, so those were a little bit of a surprise to me because you always only see the tall buildings in photographs.”</p><h4>Dreams</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/utUoKp-1Nuo?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“The dreams usually would be that we suddenly find ourselves back in Czechoslovakia and we are very upset. I don’t think the dream would go as far as that we would actually be put in jail but I would just, in that dream, tell myself ‘How could I be so stupid to come back here?’ And I think maybe there were some parts of it that had to do with the secret police (StB) and jail and experiences of that kind. Usually we would have the dreams when we were getting ready for a trip to Europe, because I remember a few times when we flew to Vienna, we were told that sometimes when an airplane has an emergency they would land in Bratislava. I don’t know if that ever happened in real life, but in the dream, we imagined that we would actually land in Bratislava and they would drag us off the plane and put us in the proper institution – proper for them.”</p><h4>Vilcek Foundation</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ni44_CJRLbo?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Gradually we came up with the idea to combine our backgrounds – our professional backgrounds as well as our personal backgrounds – and develop a program that has something to do with the arts, which is my wife’s background, something to do with biomedical science, and also with immigration, because both of us are immigrants. The current mission of our foundation is to raise public awareness about the contribution of immigrants to society in the United States, especially in the sciences and the arts. We started a program of prizes that we give to very prominent immigrants in the arts and in the sciences; for example, we, just a few weeks ago, gave prizes. The arts field this year is dance, so Mikhail Baryshnikov was one of our winners and the science prize was given to a very prominent professor at the University of California, Berkeley who was born in Peru. His name is Carlos Bustamante. And then we give several more prizes to younger people who are not yet so well-known but have already accomplished something unusual at a young age. In addition, the foundation supports some cultural programs oriented toward immigration.”</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 Jan Vilcek Description An account of the resource <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> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived NCSML Archive Community Life Czechoslovak resistance during WWII English language gymnazium Healthcare professionals Jews Partisan World War II https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/e0673ff84f70eeff0c0f6b5330e630e6.jpg?Expires=1773878400&Signature=j7EHi7exbN23qmfGzDhRtkfUnopRrpJqXRRyjXiqrHzYw6VJoJHI3tnfuXFcJcQ6-hesEaPEY1iCIqrbkVi5V6sjW5r8l3rDwSTwNMauyIsy2A9M6mPUpGtD2c2dPS-4jSbOKQCaagLYlSZeMGUKgXbPCvduUDSB5PR%7EZdCoWonA1ALBnMpn0Z4nXesh7PV-ZfOXyM2RzDlpDbTfr9L1F8ITPhItD3hhf7GeN5TDkSE9WaTRvDjUeC4toPTRUIO6FNPynBkx5GABH5Dui0SVRqJ4YxtAROOrWt2BMDSfruDGM4LmIJMNHttjroMtWBJ6bZ7Vl-d9ChWmGuRA8IbqlA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 678ea61ff63e4b532047b4d6d7feeddf 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 &amp; Documenting Memories of Czech &amp; Slovak Americans was an oral history project launched by the National Czech &amp; Slovak Museum &amp; 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 &amp; Slovak Museum &amp; Library. For more information, contact Dave Muhlena, Library Director, at dmuhlena@ncsml.org. Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound <h4>WWII</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/x7lNhapHgKY?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“She was telling me that she lived there. They didn’t tell me we were Jews for a long time, because Jewish parents just didn’t usually tell their children because they were afraid; they just didn’t want to have anything to do with it. But she was telling me about the people and, actually, I knew them because we used to go to their place during the summer holidays, so they became like a part of our family – family that we didn’t have anymore because very, very few members of the family survived, and most of those who survived left not only this country, but Europe. They just wanted to be away from Europe, so they went to Canada, to Israel, to Australia. But I knew these people and I thought my mom had a beautiful time because she was telling me only about lovely things.</p><p>“My cousin was actually telling me about the concentration camp and only much, much later I found out that I was probably the only person she told, and I suppose she told only me because she thought I didn’t understand – I was little. I knew the word ‘camp’ for summer camps, because bigger children spoke about summer camps, so I thought she went to one of these. And when she was telling me about things that happened, I thought they were games. It was only later, when I went to school and I started hearing about Jews and about concentration camps, I realized what happened, and I realized we were Jews. Even though I didn’t know what it meant, I knew it meant something strange, but that was about all.”</p><h4>Prague Spring</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/a6li3oyjfoE?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Imagine something that you really believe in is happening. You are 21. You feel that you, just by going into the street and signing various petitions, can change something. Can you imagine something more exciting? It was fabulous. And we all believed in it. Even though, I remember my mother and her friends talking and sort of worrying that it wouldn’t work which, in the end, it didn’t. But for us it was incredibly exciting. And it was very difficult then to stay in England, especially at the beginning, to stay in England, when you felt that you ought to come and help the country – we didn’t know at that time we actually couldn’t help the country.”</p><h4>Return to Czechoslovakia</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/kxotEKBWugw?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“In the end, I got stuck here. I knew it would be difficult, but I didn’t know what it would feel like, getting suddenly stuck. So I finished school, then I couldn’t find a job whatsoever for three years. And at that time there was a law that anyone who was not in school anymore and who was not a married woman had to work. It was an obligation, and if you didn’t work and they found you out, they would charge you with ‘leading a parasitical way of life.’ I don’t know who I would be a parasite to but… So I had to take various odd jobs on temporary contracts.</p><p>“Then, a nice good Commie, who was a friend of my mom, was a director of a big firm that built roads, gave me a job. It was the most terrible year of my life because I didn’t have anything to do there. I had to come there every day, spend eight and a half hours there, and there was no job. So I used to help people in other departments. They had to think that I was preparing something like the company magazine, which he told me ‘Look, we really don’t have money for that magazine; we’re not going to produce it, but you are here to get it going.’ So I had to pretend.”</p><h4>Charter 77</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/KAqRTuomWfw?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Charter 77 came. At the time of Charter 77, I was on maternity leave with my daughter, and lots of my friends were involved and they said ‘Come and sign it.’ I said ‘Look, if it were only my own decision, I would immediately. But my husband – and the father of my children – is a journalist. He would lose his job. I can’t do it. We are in it together.’ So in the end, we agreed that I would do the work for the Charter, but would not be a signatory. So I did lots of translations. I translated the Charter; I translated various texts that went abroad.”</p><h4>Translator</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/M1DapF91eyQ?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“This IOJ had a lovely house which they used for these purposes. So I come there and the students asked me ‘What’s happening?’ And I said ‘Well, history is happening here. The regime is obviously getting dismantled.’ They said ‘Tell us, what’s going on?’ So I told them about hundreds of thousands of people in Prague and they said ‘What should we do?’ I said ‘I can’t tell you what to do, but if I were a journalist and I was at a place where history is in the making, for God’s sake, I wouldn’t sit in a classroom being lectured by the representatives of the regime that is going down the drain!’ They said ‘Do you think so?’ I said ‘Look, so many journalists are trying to get to Prague, trying to gather pictures, trying to gather news. You are here.’ Most of them already worked; they were active journalists – young ones. Okay, the next day I come there, because I had to come there and they said ‘You know, something’s happened. The students just didn’t come to class.’ I said ‘Oh dear. What could have happened to them? I hope they didn’t run into problems.’ ‘Well, we don’t know, but fortunately it’s the end [of the seminar]. Do you think we should report them?’ I said ‘Let it be. They’re probably curious.’ In the evening they rang me up and said ‘The IOJ is going, of course, to pay for the interpreters as agreed in the contract, but we’re afraid we won’t need you anymore.’ So I was paid for going to the demonstrations by the IOJ, and the students all followed my advice. So I thought it was good that I actually managed my last-moment revenge.”</p><h4>Communist Era</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/lMzDD2uzxr4?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“It was always very difficult to explain – let’s say in the ‘70s or even the ‘60s – to explain to Western Europeans what it is to live in a ‘socialist’ country. Because on one hand, they expected entering almost a prison when they came here, and then they were shocked that people lived normal lives, because they didn’t see underneath. The power the regime exerted on the people was much more subtle. It was through allowing you to go to school, or to study at university or not, to get this or that job, to travel somewhere or not, and that’s not what the visitors see. They can’t see this. And this was difficult to understand for Western Europeans, not to speak about Americans. It must be very difficult to understand for the Americans. It was just life that was seemingly normal, but only seemingly.”</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 Jana Fraňková Description An account of the resource <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> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived NCSML Archive 1968 Charter 77 Concentration camp Education English language Frankova Jews Prague Spring Sports Teachers Translator/interpreter Vanatova Velvet Revolution https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/9d483e1de81519b4067c79648c876466.jpg?Expires=1773878400&Signature=T9tPWiHpb28j6cjh%7EKq9LXHBP53TVnIZAWP8gzkgFg6ipcE8haWmc800vqFFdOqyFhr0biXXuDgFB42jqwuspKf4-8xr-eISW6wz8hear9QBhRWfWtBU1VE8uY1YsdsuLpKWCzzzH-JyvvldPoUsYnXunFwRtNfeaFy0cyxrNFZuIFcZIEEK6Y2Dlb6i9jUL6Iq6FbFE2JFFQDOXTnno3F1EBLMaGh1YiaquMje203szKgi2JW3totgoeH2wkFz%7EDtsQAPUjrqRh8GER695H7q7LkmeaJUB-eh0IJ5f7bOzrjuDKPNU9W0DBOpO5z9wUkgDUC0OAmdgelFvnnoa9gQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 71fc4ab6b15045a83c181a72a1c7b856 https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/a4652eb3c68932242e8898c4c2775235.jpg?Expires=1773878400&Signature=IboH13jPHqvW7HQO2YQHTCbSFzGTbjj2jUMqU1OIVsBM9VujdsTaXI7ggXTMqoGJg1GpMSOB%7EeMSvNqke7kewS0G4CmC81Lqxy5Lyt2sGRE4WhrE-Zb5XFpZOpJ4UfSBtvOV0a1otK9I0hTpm1wHTQ9gc%7ERJXEVv3qjo9VNkdoC2V3e82LwPy0Ht2M4smOC6eoN5CaIfQ2xLVDyrWqsdVWKmpXRWgwjaHudOqaMc1NUH-fvv7Ou00%7E0d%7EyO3bGsF5TImT8up7Dq-SKofP31gshx9DKiQTOWzMRHIYkqZiW87JZhyDR17g7P%7Eiu59tsJTLM5hjODirMERBBcpH8okVQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 9bbf61607420f439c06ea6958011ad45 https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/a751fd95ad3480f12ad29de988bdea4b.jpg?Expires=1773878400&Signature=UggmKjyJL5mxAm3WmDZ1ORZ%7EhvHDZgzU%7EwJMdGtRcmQ%7Eh0OPk2222DIE-Za0qGfY0brlaN6x745eDDXJflVYekMFnQAZh3X9emVofgAp%7EQ0nteWKXWXVXAAFW88vwLAlOJcjNG6%7EvzZrlaRgvSH5alczG3iPPTBqXPpn0RV1pqhRiAO8v8B2MtZSjwShBFqYLNv9Od0cvTyIMmRzJ-j6TCiRMCvAFY7GI93lBqhPXVtBUX2PbLtRz1Pmmz93Yy6jCZiCYXVxwJB%7EiT-KcFkYNF9G26nmH7D-Aahb8jMjcN2zKuTchxqZSJ82FlqKWmA6ZQHg0k9prBKcsW0oejjwLQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM e376d7b2be4b264487a0f7a91c815e55 https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/ab2909551d7b6bc61c06c01f3556bf9c.jpg?Expires=1773878400&Signature=rRUTNz2GERMeBhU251zxDDoavvU57hItHvovPW3%7E3VPQAhsuQcJL5dyq0xBUo-r6hRaJjzvmA7M0LLbwrrD2vgJMbs7CxMgtBs18bUKpg6g5qNBj9t7jc-MTgpP7Zn73cKDjyk1oRuKWfFqpr5Ej0-RFnVZqV-3i5yUsw0qAzuU-FBE-rzN1clZ%7EInDdqn7LvjWiaDfFYXAPvgJj5yCidJoTkeDRcA1XT5B6iRNlZBLXbHYr-GSSBuA91G1KM0EWC8DTrLCuWQhUpkctFgiOzLUjvDQSsqTqi8DELCwN7s8t%7Ew95FjB6MSapHyhdptGVVBrPIrbxaWk-c6WeZDcGdA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 554c1cad2ec1ee8a98904b62d13cbe6b 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 &amp; Documenting Memories of Czech &amp; Slovak Americans was an oral history project launched by the National Czech &amp; Slovak Museum &amp; 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 &amp; Slovak Museum &amp; 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>Unitarian Church</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ahocaD4qvLE?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“I was once walking from the Charles Bridge through the street where the Unitaria is and it was raining, and so I wanted to be somewhere to prevent me from getting wet, and so I went to the Unitaria and there was this little man speaking so persuasively, with such a pathos and with so much depth in terms of the thoughts that he was expressing that I was pretty much taken by that. And that’s how I started to go to the Unitaria, and they introduced me then to philosophy and psychology so that when I was about 17 or 18 I was already able, as a cultural secretary of the Unitarian youth, to deliver a speech on the interpretation of dreams by Sigmund Freud at that age. So I was an early speaker.”</p><h4>To Palestine</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/q0THtR79JUQ?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I experienced the first ripples of the Holocaust. I lived under Hitler six months so I saw what was going on and I understood the evil of the Nazi regime, but I saved my life by leaving with the last transport. If I wouldn’t have done that I would be dead by now and I couldn’t do this interview.”</p><p><em>And how was that arranged?</em></p><p>“There were about 1,000 to 2,000 people who bribed the Germans – they had to pay – and the Germans were very strictly organized. They put us on a steamship on the Donau [the Danube] in Bratislava, and the Nazis were standing with guns on the ship until we went to the Black Sea, all the way through Europe. Once we arrived in the Black Sea they disappeared and we were on our own. And that’s how I saved my life.”</p><h4>Returning to Prague</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Cxh_nL1s3DM?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I was there about three times under the Communists, in the late ‘70s or ‘80s. As a matter of fact, I even participated in one of the demonstrations on Václavské náměstí [Wenceslaus Square] when they came with the water cannons. When Havel and five other dissidents were sentenced to years in jail, I read about it in the New York Times. I decided we had to do something, so the Church of Humanism elected them as Humanists of the Year, and it was the second award amongst these hundreds of awards that he got – the Church of Humanism. You can see it on the internet; we are there. So in connection with that I was also visiting Prague, and the first time when I went there the minister of the Prague congregation was telling me: ‘Don’t give it to me. You will get in trouble; they will never let you back and you are not doing anything good to him by giving him an award.’”</p><p><em>Did you meet any dissidents?</em></p><p>“I attended the last meeting of Charter 77. It was the last meeting, and I have actually a photograph with them.”</p><p><em>Where was that held?</em></p><p>“I don’t know; in some hotel or something. After that the Charter was dissolved and turned into a political party. But they didn’t want to accept that award because they were not sure what the Church of Humanism is and so on. But after I appeared at that meeting, I convinced them and they became so enthusiastic that when we were giving the award in the Unitarian Church it was packed. And five of these dissidents, including Uhl, were there and spoke, and I have pictures and I think even a video of that meeting.”</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 Joseph Ben-David Description An account of the resource <p>Joseph Ben-David was born in Prague in 1920. He lived with his parents and his younger brother in the center of the Czechoslovak capital. His father owned a printing ink factory and, when Joseph left high school, he joined his father at work and learned the trade. As a teenager, Joseph became aware of the Unitarian church in Prague and became a speaker and activist for social causes. He was also a youth leader for the Zionist Youth Movement. Joseph’s father died shortly after the Nazis occupied Prague in 1939 and, in the fall of that year, Joseph took a transport to Palestine. His mother intended to follow on the next transport; however, it did not leave as scheduled and she was deported to a concentration camp where she died.</p><p> </p><p>Joseph arrived in Palestine in 1940 and settled in Tel Aviv. He established a lab where he produced printing media – ink, cement, glue and printing rollers. As a conscientious objector during the Arab-Israeli War in 1948, Joseph worked as a hygiene officer and later became a sanitary officer in Jerusalem. He also continued his activist efforts in social justice.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Joseph moved to New York City in 1954 and shortly thereafter became involved in the American Humanist Association in New York, first as a speaker and later as chapter president. Joseph also created a publication reporting on smoking and health which appeared in Reader’s Digest. In the early 1970s, Joseph founded the Church of Humanism, an organization with which he is still instrumental as senior minister. He has traveled back to Prague several times, mostly in the capacity of social activism. In 1979, his Church of Humanism named six dissidents (including Václav Havel) in Czechoslovakia as Humanists of the Year. In more recent years, Joseph has become involved in the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences (SVU). Today he lives in Manhattan with his wife Alyson.</p> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived NCSML Archive Community Life Jews Religion https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/e677d7a59ba0f163d40c8e4071487e12.jpg?Expires=1773878400&Signature=pUZA3W6gAGgQP154Ft61TjuCJPGzSyiCRZ4aqLuMvl5aPdavi%7ErsSuKDi6hvvOZZB3Zpp6g37chwCIU5POPfCiJwN45aRK1e8U-BSmhzq6EnUYrkrrnfXXw60%7E-BwVH1oGZdcts%7E8A%7EZdrpsJswcFQHZ4djDvrVcV7eAs4iyGeW6MvYrzsw%7ERHqcHhHkrkiXL-eHpV6DEmol7mAVgpzcIybceINZ8Spb-EznchgRdcNJoI6w2CGN7KDFao4eAjsLJ6e5dDk4sfFHnQG5K8M3c2Mc%7EwtuRe-EJuGGUqmWMtgKn%7EeVv8wki9AGX6L3iALzqdYCnaNKVry95dVKL54U9g__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 7a1f4db2d736cbaf917e9d386275f140 https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/783d09db81e3add55021bd788e6693d3.jpg?Expires=1773878400&Signature=efiyvVKHcisttL0WJ-t5XykGlzyllr7YAu01yx7hE2IQkI2rk5y8y6WzdkzE0fff-rL76xSCMnC9xJuNMEpTyNOnMeVdlMAXd3XQbt2MOeUch7JKEhm9W0kpNEjqcpO97KERBaWnHMKBaIINkHVlO8EmH4ERheGUJR-01EsYVqlYbU3exoeqlmAHAlbYlokbL9r6BYIEMvh8R84KwwIE0ffy2KE88ZmyuXrWjcgZscPdpuje-NP-NdAGHsJQXq5MhmKJnl-j9t5M5rwccp%7EbHqB4DKEp%7ENZtSONnmr3GVuLFyn1PMlSoDpY07XLFduHqLRg3WebcAr7K1J6TpyCdMw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM b64b324f86bfedc97e1e36e4cf47b041 https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/5d4fc59700d44806fb9b816b706e6264.jpg?Expires=1773878400&Signature=uS4wOsgBaQr0T4fRyzZ5rHNrYls%7EGvxhmx%7EujVduzq%7E8OtkbQHbTNuOqVla9t61nMUCQxPIhS2u6KpqV6zZcT-Bhr-hwuFENvr9WhetyKGD7byhRRram2pvprrxXtvm2Gyf2N7rTnSdiLIEktg4KpEG8l5qRQmIMpgpMEaafLS983Cz2DcfcBV6d7vtpJdn-3twtnFAkZGwhD1RTBwVFcm%7EYdyfvFin4DkJHvTtw4P97LSEK5gAA41NRG8TXyALOmwVPqE6PbU%7EgYgYGCztwO5NsXkSvOZ3cI8rrW-DTJZ3%7Ek3x8PpRfx17CHaon1e6umVStBuBSO5festBjzUun-g__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM df4860893c41e15fe2fd979e1d5c5bc3 https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/bea8ec4dfc4a99bbec4cd5a6c86f6fd4.jpg?Expires=1773878400&Signature=kYoaQqzyU3E8FXDc%7E-e6fqmTHprigELBi8JXiasqwfzjKiSWkImadn8bG8eA134JCa9ZhIyOin-uhks77KS8AM3boOoEEvjLeIHiOgv%7Ewnd2Xo6aE1S%7EAmmVmPyleNgCARAz0xm8r-h9uXLwYD-YqTX4%7ERdD%7Eejqts9EljWABY-Vw7HJCxBB3hvao04X-jisDBE4toVa6PTjC28AV%7ErVfi7FpdoP1pEIJG5Oksw-WG9DUDqZSBwOvPz-KmBu4lSXT2pybU2ygyMaPNikN5%7ES55SgT-4L61RGptTPN5S7a%7EYu%7EAvM4ioARqILjpVgrNER1nYUy2hJNl4k07cLxiMrZQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 09261c9d0883d4481a75fcfb1f6ad114 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 &amp; Documenting Memories of Czech &amp; Slovak Americans was an oral history project launched by the National Czech &amp; Slovak Museum &amp; 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 &amp; Slovak Museum &amp; 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>Jewish in WWII</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/wtNyFyw03NI?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“Of course, ’39 was the time when Nazis took over completely, but we did not feel it until ’40, ’41. We only felt it by the everyday happenings in our school where the children would chase us around because we were Jewish and they were not. And we first didn’t understand what happened, we had no idea that we were any different. So my father had another task to explain – how you are different. And he had a great theory; that’s the first time he mentioned that ‘It is not our fault that we are Jewish. Actually, it is not a fault. It’s just something that one is and one isn’t, and these children are to be pitied because they’re just uninformed, obviously their parents are uninformed , and, you know, we just have to try to ignore the best we can.’”</p><h4>Concentration Camp</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/hB12poJltNg?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“We were washing dishes and the soldiers showed up and told my mother and my father that we need to pack up something that we can carry on our backs and we are going to leave. So we were taken to the camp in – the concentration camp – in Žilina. You know the difference, there is a concentration camp and there is an extermination camp, so we were just taken to the first place. So we left our house. That was the last time I saw my house. I don’t really want to go into the whole thing because you probably heard many stories like that, you saw many movies like that, every story is a little bit different. To us, as children, it was a completely unexpected experience. We were city girls and we had no idea that things like that, like you sleep on straw, existed. And that you eat when you are supposed to line up to eat and you eat what you get and not what your mother has for you. Special things, everything disappears, in one moment.”</p><h4>Release</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/XhwYkfhJn9o?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“My father, with all the other men, he went out from the camp every morning. They marched out to work on the roads – break up the stones for the road making. And he was always obviously thinking about how to get us out of there. But he couldn’t come up with anything, because once you’re there you hardly ever…But then he had still a brother in Banská Bystrica, which is one of the bigger towns in Slovakia, who was still out. I don’t know how come they didn’t pick them up yet, but he was still out there. So he chanced it and he wrote a little note and packed it up and wrote on the note that whoever finds it, please send it to such-and-such address, please. That was all. And he wrote to his brother where we are, and do something. Because my father immediately knew what it meant. He was more informed than other people because he was very observant, and he also, with his friends, listened to the radio – that we are not supposed to have anymore. No radios, no jewelry, no purse, no nothing. And he knew that from London that things are really heading to the Final Solution.”</p><p>“And his brother got it. So somebody picked it up. I think it was the first miracle that I ever saw. And my uncle went, and I don’t know to this day how he got a small village past Banská Bystrica, persuaded – they needed a dentist of course – that they should vouch for us, and if they do that, if the commander of the local – it was called Hlinkova garda [Hlinka Guard]. That was a fascist Slovak organization – if he will say that he will watch out for us, and if they need us, we are there and will be handed over. So, they did it. They took our family, and we moved there.”</p><h4>Priest Help</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/3efFrs4asnU?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“The Slovak state had a president who was a Catholic bishop. And he of course was under the command of Hitler, and at the time they were negotiating how many Jews he was going to send him and how much money they’re going to get for it. And the Slovak priest in that village decided that he absolutely doesn’t listen to that kind of…that’s not his boss, his boss is a little bit higher up and that’s the only boss that he listens to. So he told his flock that the pope thinks this way but God doesn’t think that way. God thinks that we don’t hand over innocent people to be slaughtered. Why? And so that’s how we basically got saved.”</p><h4>Discovered</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/J89ahwolBqQ?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“We had sentries, when someone in the village down there saw somebody coming, they would send a kid up to tell us, and then I was sent up there to tell those, but once it didn’t work out, and when I was going up to the last house, there was not a German troop, but the Hungarian troop; which was Hungarian Fascist, which were really, really, hateful. And they had a German commander with them, but the German already knew that they were losing, so he was thinking about the future and how’s he going to get out of this. But it was too late for us…we knew that if they catch so many people in one house they know they are hiding, these people are hiding. And they see the families, the children, and old people and middle-aged people. So they came up there and there we were. It was very unpleasant. And the German commander talked to my aunt who spoke German and he said ‘I know. It’s over, it’s over.’ But the Hungarians said ‘We need to take the guys with us,’ because they had to go through a partisan… the guerilla fighters’ territory. ‘We are going to take the men with us so they lead us through the territory and then we get over where we can join our forces. And the women and the children we need to shoot because, you know, what are we going to do with them?’”</p><p>“So they stood us up against the wall, and my little cousin, who was about six, she saw her father. She was an only child and her father’s little girl. Oh, she didn’t want her father to go anywhere, of course. She jumped off and went to him, and this guy said ‘We are ready to shoot, what is this, the kid?’ So the German commander said ‘Oh for heavens’ sakes guys, they’re just children and women, so why are we going to shoot them? What’s the sense of it? Let’s go.’ So they started leaving, and after they left and led my father and uncle and all the other guys down. And then we got very lucky, because in two days they were back. So they led them through the territory and decided to let them go. So they all came back. Including my father. So there was no better end to the story than this.”</p><h4>Censorship</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/w9DcjPmGlH4?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I worked for the radio – I’ll just tell you a short story – in the section for young people and small children, so at night [we broadcast] fairy tales. So there is a French fairy tale called ‘The Red Balloon,’ everybody knows. So we had nothing to play so I said to my boss ‘Why don’t you reprise ‘The Red Balloon,’ we haven’t seen it in a long time, new children didn’t hear it.’ But you always have to, even if it’s old, you have to send it up to the advisor. That was not a Russian yet, that was our own NKVD [secret police] advisor. And he reads everything and then when he signs under it and you can put the tape on. I get a call: ‘Comrade Sever.’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Do you know what you are doing?’ I said ‘Yeah, I thought so.’ ‘What is this Red Balloon?’ I said ‘It’s a fairy tale.’ ‘I know that. But did you read to the end?’ ‘Yeah, I read to the end. The red balloon flies too high and it pops.’ ‘What’s the red balloon and it pops?’ I said ‘Well comrade,’ I don’t know what we called him. Tlačový dozor are press overseers. ‘I’m so sorry that you have such terrible thoughts. I didn’t think of it, but you did. I don’t know about you.’ He said ‘Stop being silly and change it to another color.’ I said ‘Ok, like what?’ ‘Like yellow.’ I said ok. Ok, no tragedy, but imagine that you are a writer and every word that you have in your book you have to cross out.”</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 Klara Sever Description An account of the resource <p>Klara Sever was born into a Jewish family in 1935 in Trebišov, Slovakia. With the outbreak of WWII and the founding of the First Slovak Republic, Klara and her family were sent to a concentration camp in Žilina. While in the camp, Klara’s father was able to get a note to his brother living in Banská Bystrica, who, in turn, persuaded a local official to vouch for the family and get them released from the camp under his supervision.  The family lived in several locations until they were forced to go into hiding in 1942. Klara remembers being discovered by a troop of Hungarian soldiers who wanted to capture the men and shoot the women and children. At the last minute, however, the commander stepped in and saved their lives. Although the men were forced to march with the soldiers, they all returned in a few days. After the War, Klara and her family traveled to Lučenec to look for the rest of her family. They were only reunited with two of her uncles.</p><p> </p><p>In 1951, Klara attended the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava. Upon graduation, Klara wanted to pursue her studies further, but says she was blacklisted due to her marriage to her husband, whom she refers to as “an enemy of the state.” She recalls having difficulty finding a job as an artist, but eventually found employment restoring castles throughout Czechoslovakia. Working in restoration for five years classified her as a laborer, and she finally received her degree in art history from Comenius University. Klara then began working as a radio reporter and editor of art programming. She supplied material and reports for underground radio broadcasts during the Warsaw Pact invasion in August 1968.</p><p> </p><p>It was at this time that Klara and her husband decided to leave Czechoslovakia and, about two weeks after the invasion, they crossed the border into Austria. Klara says the border was patrolled by both Soviet and Slovak soldiers, and the Slovak soldier who inspected their car told them to leave ‘quickly.’ Her husband had connections with Western journalists he had met in Prague not long before, and he met one of these at the French embassy in Vienna. The French ambassador personally handed them visas, and they traveled to Paris. In 1969, they arrived in New York City. Although she did not know yet any English, Klara worked a series of jobs reproducing sculptures. In the Washington, D.C. area, Klara has worked as a sculptor, preparing commissions and heading her own company. She speaks Slovak with her family, and has maintained Slovak traditions at Christmas and Easter.</p> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived NCSML Archive 1968 emigrant/refugee Arts Banska Bystrica Concentration camp Cultural Traditions Education Jews Journalism Lucenec Trebisov Zilina