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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans
Subject
The topic of the resource
Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans was an oral history project launched by the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library in 2009. The project captured and preserved the stories of Czechs and Slovaks who left their homeland during the Cold War and settled in New York City, Washington, D.C., Cleveland, Chicago and the San Francisco Bay Area. During the second phase of the project, the NCSML recorded the stories of immigrants who came to the United States after the fall of communism in 1989 as well. By the conclusion of the project in August 2013, the NCSML had collected more than 300 oral histories. <br /><br />Both phases of the project were made possible by grants from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. <br /><br />On the project’s website, you can read biographies of Czechs and Slovaks who began a new life in the United States, watch video clips from their interviews, and view photos and other archival materials they shared with us. <br /><br />Full length interviews are available for further research at the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library. For more information, contact Dave Muhlena, Library Director, at dmuhlena@ncsml.org.
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
<h4>Factory Housing</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ENxaxYGGFao?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“Life on the <em>kolonie</em> was absolutely wonderful. Everybody lived very sparsely, as most Europeans. We had an entry area and a little storage room. We had a kitchen which was a kitchen, dining, and living area, and a bedroom area, and that was it. Outhouses on the outside. They were attached on one side, and the storage unit on the other side, of this four-plex. There were little gardens in the back and everybody could have a vegetable garden. This whole thing consisted of maybe 80 apartments that were there and in the middle was the common area which contained a social hall and laundry. Although, the washing of clothing was done in what was called the White River next door. That’s where the washing occurred and the rinsing occurred. The water came right out of the mountains, thus it was pure. Then everything was hung to dry and then after that they had a big thing like a mangle [ringer], and that was like a huge trough with stones in it, and they rolled this over the sheets to straighten them out a little bit, iron them, basically. That’s how people existed. We had close friends next door to where we lived. My mother was a weaver. And all this happened because my grandfather, my mother’s father, was a foreman in that factory.”</p><h4>Slovak Uprising</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/1EwRw8h1j-U?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“They were informed that the next day all the hunters and everybody should come to the military barracks on the east side of town – we had two military establishments, an Air Force and a military – and bring their weapons so they could train to resist the Russian advance, and they would be told what to do and how to do it. So my dad and uncle, of course they went there, and by noon of that day I thought ‘Well, I’ll just go and check and see what’s happening,’ so I took a bicycle and rode out to that camp and I saw them, behind the camp fence, and they were just milling about and doing nothing, and it was boring, so I got back on my bike and biked back home.</p><p>“Well, as I was biking home – we lived on the street called Liptauerstrasse, Liptovská ulica – what happened is, I looked up and, about a quarter mile or so, maybe more, away, I saw trucks with all kinds of red flags on top, and I rushed home, right inside the door and I told my mom ‘There’s something not right.’ So then we went into a room that faced the street and we watched and then suddenly these people were all walking by with machine guns drawn, and the front guy had a whistle in his mouth, and red banners. Well, these were the partisans who were taking over the town. They had made an arrangement with the military to peacefully take over the town. All the men with guns were in the camp, so they didn’t have anybody to fight, and that’s how it was. That’s how all the peaceful times then ended. Because what happened then is, the next day, the partisans then tried to take over my hometown [Kežmarok]. These people had heard what had happened in Poprad. In Kežmarok, they had gotten ready, taken over the military, and, with the military’s help, had prepared for the partisans and actually fended them off.</p><p>“One of my experiences as a young kid: We had, besides repairing trucks, cars and vulcanizing tires – that’s what my father’s responsibility was – we also had gas pumps outside for regular gas. The second day, after the attacked Kežmarok, one of those tanks came back to the pump station to fill up with gas again, and there was part of a body still on the tank. Somebody had been hit. They didn’t even remove and clean; they pulled it just like that with that on it, so… horrific sights for a kid to be seeing.”</p><h4>Father Arrested</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/BQMQ91T9-qg?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“We got to Poprad and then we stayed with our neighbors, the Lubajs, and the Lubajs took us in. Of course, people knew my dad as we walked from the train station to our home and, then next day, it was very in common in Europe to have to go to the city hall and to sign papers saying ‘I’m now a resident back here.’ So my dad, having been seen, he went there and was immediately put into detention camp. The Germanic people and Hungarians were all put in detention camps. At night, my neighbors knew this was happening and they arranged for us, overnight, to go to Kežmarok on foot – which was like nine miles – to my grandparents’. So we got to my grandparents’ house and we stayed from June until the end of September inside, so nobody would know where we are hiding.”</p><h4>Mother Arrested</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/6X9PXk2yqVI?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“In the end of July, 1946, on a Sunday morning, the state police came and arrested my mother and my grandparents and took them to the initial camp, a castle in Kežmarok, and that’s where we were, in a castle. My mother had a nervous breakdown there. But things were so badly managed and there was so much disorganization. We were arrested in the morning and there were maybe 100 people or so in this initial detention area. I noticed that by afternoon some of the friends, Slovaks, would come to the gates and try to communicate – this was so sudden and such a horrible thing – and some guards would allow them to come between the two gate doors. They couldn’t arrest my grandmother because she was ill. She was in bed, so they left her there and took my grandfather. So I took my grandfather to the doors and when there was a little lapse of observation, I took him in between and ultimately I said to the guard ‘He’s just visiting.’ So they said ‘Ok’ and let my grandfather out. He got back home and was never re-arrested again, and so that’s how it was. My mother and I were then put on trucks and shipped to that military camp in Poprad, where my dad and uncle went with their guns and all that, and that was a big detention camp then for Germanic and Hungarian people. And from there, then we were shipped out to Germany, in September of 1946.”</p><h4>Deported</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/X3o-3QHjnUk?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“We weren’t really welcome. We were intruders. These people suddenly were asked to take in people that they had never seen before. It’s like you having to take people into your home that you didn’t know, didn’t relate to at all. You were forced to do it. So that wasn’t all that pleasant. And not that they were so unpleasant. They tried to help, but they themselves were… Think about it, 1946 wasn’t all that pleasant. People were on rationing cards. We had milk that you could see through and bread was rationed, margarine was rationed. Everything was rationed. The nutritional conditions were very poor. In 1946 in the winter, I would go to adjacent villages, to the farmers, and ask for a little flour. They’d take a soup spoon of flour and put it in your bag and then you’d go to the next one and he’d put in a soup spoon of flour, and that was it. It was very, very bad. You had to beg for food. That next fall, in 1947, you’d volunteer to work for farmers for food. We would pick potatoes, for instance, and it was all manual, and then you could have a little potatoes afterwards. So things weren’t all that pleasant.”</p><h4>Money</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/oJHoadO4FOM?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I also worked on a golf course caddying for American soldiers. They were allowed to play golf, and I got paid ten cigarettes for carrying the bag for nine holes or a package for eighteen holes, or five candy bars for nine holes and ten for eighteen holes. On the way home, every time we left the golf course, we’d stop at a little restaurant and there were people that would buy these things from us for the black market. I made more money than my dad did working by selling these American goodies to the black marketers.”</p><h4>Excited</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WSMiIa382lg?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“To be American was really important, because America had done so much. After we left Slovakia, Czechoslovakia, and crossed the border, there was security and safety. The American zone offered you that kind of lifestyle. You felt safe and comfortable. You may not have had food enough because there was very little food available but, nevertheless, the food wasn’t as important as the freedom. You were secure. There was no uncertainty about your existence, having to worry about who would come and get you the next day or would you be in prison the next day. All that was gone. And then when you saw the luxury – the cigarettes they’d throw away, half candies eaten sometime – then you’d realize ‘Hey these people are really something. They’re wealthy. They’re what everybody’s trying to achieve.’ You kind of became proud to be an American. After losing all of that… Think about that. You lost your previous identity in a way, national identities. It’s important to be an American. My father was absolutely delighted to be an American, and my mother. So too my brother. We really became Americans. Not nationalists. We didn’t think America was always the best, the finest, the strongest. We didn’t need to be the most powerful. But we were good. And that’s important.”</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
Roman Scholtz
Description
An account of the resource
<p><img class="alignright wp-image-4055" src="http://web.archive.org/web/20170808051245im_/http://ncsml.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Handler-180.jpg" alt="Handler-1" width="300" height="418" />Roman Scholtz was born in Kežmarok in northern Slovakia in 1934. His father, Ludwig, studied the craft of cabinet-making and was a manager of a cabinet shop. His mother, Adele, worked as a weaver in a factory, and the family lived in factory housing. Roman had one older brother, Ewald. When Roman was eight years old, his family moved to Poprad where Roman’s father opened an auto repair shop with relatives. Roman says that the first years of WWII passed fairly peacefully for his family, until the Slovak Uprising began in August 1944. The partisans quietly took over Poprad and were fought back in Kežmarok, and Roman has memories of seeing the effects of the fighting. His brother, a member of the Slovak Army, was conscripted into the German Army, and it would be several years before Roman saw his brother again. Roman himself spent a few months with relatives near the Moravian border. In January 1945, his family’s equipment and machinery was appropriated for the German war effort. Told they could stay with their possessions, Roman and his family traveled to Jablonec nad Nisou and Jičín in Bohemia before returning home to Poprad at the end of the War. Immediately after returning, Roman’s father was sent to a detention camp for ethnic Germans while Roman and his mother secretly traveled to Kežmarok and stayed with his grandparents. Roman returned to school for one year and then, in July 1946, he and his mother were arrested and sent to a detention center. They reunited with his father and were deported to Germany in September 1946.</p><p> </p><p>For a short time, Roman and his family lived in a refugee camp. They were then sent to live with a German family. Roman attended school and worked at a golf course where he caddied for American soldiers. His father worked in construction. In 1950, they sailed to New York and took a train to Cleveland where several of Roman’s family members had settled decades earlier. Roman’s father worked as a carpenter and his mother found a job as a cleaning lady. They bought a house in Cleveland six months after arriving. Roman graduated from high school in 1952 and attended Ohio University where he studied engineering. He also received a degree in architecture from Case Western Reserve University. In 1971, Roman opened his own architecture firm. Although he visits Slovakia often and raised his children to be aware of their heritage, he says that he and his family ‘took roots’ in the United States and were very proud to become American citizens. Today he lives in Davenport, Iowa, with his wife Mary.</p>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library
Source
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NCSML Archive
American citizenship
Jicin
Kezmarok
Refugee camp
Slovak-German relations
WWII
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans
Subject
The topic of the resource
Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans was an oral history project launched by the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library in 2009. The project captured and preserved the stories of Czechs and Slovaks who left their homeland during the Cold War and settled in New York City, Washington, D.C., Cleveland, Chicago and the San Francisco Bay Area. During the second phase of the project, the NCSML recorded the stories of immigrants who came to the United States after the fall of communism in 1989 as well. By the conclusion of the project in August 2013, the NCSML had collected more than 300 oral histories. <br /><br />Both phases of the project were made possible by grants from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. <br /><br />On the project’s website, you can read biographies of Czechs and Slovaks who began a new life in the United States, watch video clips from their interviews, and view photos and other archival materials they shared with us. <br /><br />Full length interviews are available for further research at the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library. For more information, contact Dave Muhlena, Library Director, at dmuhlena@ncsml.org.
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
<h4>Hobbies</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4uBNyVhBfSM?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“As a little boy already I started playing violin. I was about six years old or so, and then later on I switched to flugelhorn and trumpet since I heard the army band in Jičín. So I just loved the brass band. This was my love, music.</p><p><em>What style of music?</em></p><p>“This was the military style music. Like over here, John Philip Sousa type. Very nice, and very happy music. Very happy music.”</p><h4>Busy Young Man</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/wLDUr-7Nh7c?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I was involved in sport. I used to play ice hockey and football – what they call here soccer – and also handball. So I was very busy, and with music, I already had a band. So I wasn’t crazy, I was just always busy, busy doing something.”</p><h4>Participation in March</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/7-l4paEKB80?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I was living in the Masaryk dormitory. This was the biggest dormitory in Prague for more than 1,000 students, and there formed the march to support President Beneš. They caught us before the castle where President Beneš lived, and we got a lot of [beatings] from the police and from the – not the military – but they were from the factories, workers who got arms and they beat us really badly.</p><p><em>So you’re standing in front the castle. How many people are marching would you say?</em></p><p>“Oh, thousands and thousands from all the universities. So we joined someplace and went to this castle to support President Beneš. Oh yeah, many, many thousands. And some people from the streets also joined us and they were supporting us. Only the militia and the police stopped us there. We couldn’t talk to the president. We sent there our representatives, but the militia didn’t let them talk to the president. So it was tough.</p><p><em>Were there chants in the streets? Were you saying certain things?</em></p><p>“Well, especially before the castle we were singing the national anthems. So as long as we were singing the national anthem, they let us. But soon we stopped, so they started to clobber us.”</p><h4>German Boarder</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/6OCf0B9Duv8?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Right away when we crossed the border when we got into Germany, there was some German guy – big guy – who tried to stop us. He said ‘What are you doing here?’ We said ‘Well, we are refugees.’ ‘Oh we don’t want any refugees’ the German said, and he tried to push us back to Czechoslovakia. So we were yelling at each other, and apparently the GI, the [American] military people heard, so they came with the Jeep and said ‘What’s happening?’ So I told them ‘He’s trying to push us back, which is no-no because we are refugees.’ So they put us in the Jeep, and we had to disrobe and they checked everything, it was ok. And they gave us the ticket to Ludwigsburg.”</p><h4>Escaping</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/CE4fjnfrin4?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“No, no. No way. This was a starting point for us to go further. So we didn’t want to stay in Germany, but we could immigrate to either to Australia, Canada, or Brazil – I selected Brazil – so it was ok. A starting point to something better.”</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
Lubomir Hromadka
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Lubomir Hromadka was born in Folvark in 1926, and grew up in Jičín in northeastern Bohemia. His parents František and Julie owned a pub near Jičín, in the area known as Český raj [Bohemian Paradise]. Lubomir’s father had been in the Czechoslovak Legion during WWI, and Lubomir remembers him participating in annual parades that celebrated the founding of the First Czechoslovak Republic. Music was an important part of Lubomir’s life, and at the age of six he began playing the violin. He learned how to play other instruments, including the trumpet, and played in and led several bands throughout his lifetime. Lubomir attended technical school and says that his studies were occasionally interrupted during WWII if students were needed to work for the German war effort. After the War, Lubomir finished high school and studied chemical engineering at ČVUT (Czech Technical University in Prague).</p><p> </p><p>In February 1948, just days after the Communist coup, Lubomir participated in a student march supporting former president Edvard Beneš which was stopped by police and militia. Lubomir says that because of his participation in the march he knew he would come under the scrutiny of the authorities and decided to leave the country. He obtained false papers and, with a friend, was escorted to the border near Cheb. After being lost in the forest for several days, Lubomir crossed the border. Upon arriving in Bavaria, he says a German soldier attempted to send him back to Czechoslovakia. According to Lubomir, an American soldier intervened and sent him instead to Ludwigsburg refugee camp where he stayed for one year. After being told it would take years to receive a visa to the United States, Lubomir decided to immigrate to Brazil where he found employment as a chemist at Pirelli Tyre Company in São Paolo. Lubomir says he was ‘very happy’ in Brazil, as he formed a small brass band and also wrote articles for a sports newspaper.</p><p> </p><p>In 1957 Lubomir received a visa to the United States and moved to Cleveland. He found employment as a research chemist at Gibson-Homans Company where he worked for over 30 years, becoming a chief chemist, manager, and eventually vice-president. Lubomir is especially proud of discovering a method to eliminate the asbestos fiber in industrial products. In 1959, Lubomir married Jarmila Humpal, an American of Czech descent. He became involved in Czech theatre — writing, updating, and directing plays. In 1994, Lubomir’s Old Style Bohemian Brass Band toured the Czech Republic and he was invited to conduct at the Kmoch Festival in Kolín. Now a widower, Lubomir lives in Washington, D.C. with his former classmate from Jičín, <a href="/web/20170609084322/http://www.ncsml.org/exhibits/kveta-gregor-schlosberg/">Kveta Gregor-Schlosberg</a>.</p><p> </p>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
NCSML Archive
1948
Arts
Benes
Border patrol
Cesky raj
Communist coup
emigrant
Jicin
refugee
Refugee camp
Sao Paolo
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eea38b593326172abf8b75d7b4e7eb63
Dublin Core
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Title
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Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans
Subject
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Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans was an oral history project launched by the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library in 2009. The project captured and preserved the stories of Czechs and Slovaks who left their homeland during the Cold War and settled in New York City, Washington, D.C., Cleveland, Chicago and the San Francisco Bay Area. During the second phase of the project, the NCSML recorded the stories of immigrants who came to the United States after the fall of communism in 1989 as well. By the conclusion of the project in August 2013, the NCSML had collected more than 300 oral histories. <br /><br />Both phases of the project were made possible by grants from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. <br /><br />On the project’s website, you can read biographies of Czechs and Slovaks who began a new life in the United States, watch video clips from their interviews, and view photos and other archival materials they shared with us. <br /><br />Full length interviews are available for further research at the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library. For more information, contact Dave Muhlena, Library Director, at dmuhlena@ncsml.org.
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Transcription
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<h4>Dancing</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/JZORKzRZFaU?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“Hitler ordered [everyone] who was born in 1925 has to immediately stop all schooling and go work, and you have to have an <em>Arbeitsbuch</em>, (a working book). So, my gosh, I didn’t know what to do, because that year, everybody was sent to Dresden to work. So, my gosh, my father was in Plzeň, my mother in Jičín, and I didn’t know what to do. So where we lived for school, in the <em>pensionat</em>, downstairs was a theatre. And I decided to go down and ask for a job, and explain to them otherwise if I don’t have an <em>Arbeitsbuch</em> I’m going to be sent. So they said ‘What education do you have? What do you do?’ I said that I do ballet since I was 16 with Madame Nikolská. So they said, ‘Go to her and she will write everything, and go to the <em>Arbeit</em> office and they will give you a book. I ran to Madame Nikolská’s house, woke her up at 6:00, and she signed everything she had to do, and I went with it to the office and they gave me an <em>Arbeitsbuch</em>. And they gave me an engagement in the theatre. So I went to school – I kept on with German – and had school, and in the night I would go dance in the operetta, it was an operetta theatre.”</p><h4>Plzen</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/0wliLq8WWMA?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“When he wasn’t there, we had fun with the Americans. They were throwing cigarettes at us. Plzeň, the only place where the Americans came, and I would practice the little bit of English that I knew, and we would look out from the window; we smoked so much with my mother.”</p><h4>Secret Police</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/A29hJmHkIrs?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“My father went at 6:00 to the Ministerium, and we didn’t see him for a year. We called the office, ‘Where is he? He didn’t come home.’ ‘Oh, just look in all the hospitals.’ That was their answer; there were already Communists there. And Jake [her husband] calls and says ‘Get out of there. Get on the plane and get back.’ The next day, for us came two Czech communists. They interrogated us in our home.</p><p>“So anyhow, finally he got sent to military prison, and we could not visit, we could do nothing, and for us, come two gentlemen. So they locked my mother in the kitchen and they locked me in the living room. So one interrogates my mother, another one hits me over my mouth. Horrible, horrible. And from then on, they watched us. They stayed in front of our door downstairs. And we would go listen on the balcony, with my mother and they would say ‘It’s 10:00, they’re not going to go anywhere. Let’s go.’ Can you imagine, to put two communists to watch us two? What were we going to do?”</p><h4>American Embassy</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/jqLyFXNbNN4?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“One day, the bell rings about 8:00. And I said ‘Mommy, don’t open, don’t open. It’s those idiots from downstairs.’ Mom says ‘They’re not there anymore. Let’s look who it is.’ So we looked, and we see a man; I never saw him in my life. It was the consul from the American Embassy to come check on me and to ask ‘Please come work for us. We need you.’ Boy, I got a job like you don’t dream. And the money! I could take my mother for dinner, and pay everything. So I was there at the American Embassy for two years.</p><p><em>Did you come under extra scrutiny for working at the Embassy? Did they watch you more closely? The secret police?</em></p><p>“No, they watched the Embassy. One time, they locked us all there, but they had to give up. It was a beautiful job. Of course, my mother was scared all the time that something would happen, but I felt good. I felt that the Embassy would know about me if something would happen.</p><p>“We were the permit office. We decided if [the applicant] was a little bit communist, and we would say ‘Oh, we don’t have a visa [to the free zone] for you yet.’ I knew, so we would hold them. ‘Oh, I want to go to Germany’ and so on. ‘Yeah, come next week. Come in two months.’ In the meantime, they would check him. Always, I was right.”</p>
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Kveta Gregor-Schlosberg
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Kveta Gregor-Schlosberg was born in Jičín, northeastern Bohemia, in 1925. Her mother’s family owned the chateau, Čeřov Jicin, in which she was born, and Kveta describes her childhood there as a ‘fairy tale.’ Kveta began ballet lessons in Jičín when she was six years old, and says she made her debut at the National Theatre in Prague at the age of seven. When Kveta was ten, she moved to Prague with her family, as her father Josef, a military officer, was transferred from his regiment to the Ministry of Defense. In Prague, Kveta attended a language school where she studied English, French, and German, and continued dancing.</p><p> </p><p>When Nazi forces occupied Prague, Kveta and her family were separated. Her father lost his job in the Ministry of Defense and moved to Plzeň for work. Kveta’s mother returned to Jičín, and Kveta remained in Prague. She says that she only saw her father a few times during WWII; later, she was told that her father had been active in underground resistance and did not want to jeopardize his family. Kveta recalls other changes the Nazi occupation brought to her life. Hitler mandated that all people born in 1925 would be sent to Germany to work unless they could prove they had employment. Kveta says that she immediately found an appointment as a dancer for a theatre company housed in the basement of her apartment. She says she was able to continue studying, but only German, as her other studies were banned.</p><p> </p><p>Immediately following liberation, Kveta and her mother traveled to Plzeň to find her father; however, he was traveling to Prague to meet up with them. Kveta says that the few days she and her mother spent in Plzeň while waiting for things to get straightened out were fun, as they were able to celebrate liberation with the American soldiers. Once back in Prague, Kveta began working at another theatre and dating an American soldier her father knew. They married in September 1945 and for one year traveled around Germany to various military stations; Kveta says they spent time in Nuremberg during the war criminal trials. Kveta and her husband then moved to San Antonio, Texas, but in December 1947, she returned to Czechoslovakia to visit her parents. The Communist coup occurred while she was visiting in February 1948, and Kveta found herself unable to return to the United States, as her father was arrested and made to stand trial. She was offered a job processing visas at the American Embassy. In 1949, her father’s trial ended and Kveta’s boss arranged for her to receive a visa back to the United States. Divorced from her husband, Kveta settled in Washington, D.C. where she found employment as a receptionist in an apartment building. She later married her second husband, Bruce Schlosberg and had three children. Today, Kveta lives in Washington, D.C. with her former classmate from Jičín, <a href="/web/20170609054922/http://www.ncsml.org/exhibits/lubomir-hromadka/">Lubomir Hromadka</a>.</p>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
NCSML Archive
1948
Arrest
Arts
Cerov Jicin
emigrant
Jicin
marriage
Plzen
refugee
World War II