In March 1997, Rasto arrived in Cleveland where he studied for one year at Cuyahoga Community College. He then received a scholarship from Cleveland State University, from which he graduated with a masters degree in music. In Cleveland, Rasto became involved with the Slovak community. He translated Jan Pankuch’s History of Slovaks in Cleveland and Lakewood into English, and assisted with the creation a cataloging system at the Slovak Institute. In 2000, he decided to stop pursing a professional music career and found employment at a residential real estate firm. In September 2007, he moved to Chicago, where he found a job selling commercial real estate.
Rasto knew as soon as he arrived in America that he did not want to return to Slovakia to live. He tried several approaches to gaining American citizenship. He says he was able to gain permanent resident status in Canada because his translating skills were considered valuable; however, in 2000, he also entered the U.S. green card lottery, which he won. In 2006, Rasto became an American citizen, an event he calls “one of the best days of his life.” He has been back to Slovakia several times to visit family and friends. Today, Rasto lives in Chicago.
]]>Rasto Gallo was born in Lučenec, Slovakia in 1970. His father, Zdenko, was a bank manager, and his mother, Eva (an ethnic Hungarian), was a teacher. When Rasto was four years old, his father received a promotion and the family moved to Banská Bystrica. The Gallos had a piano in their home that Rasto enjoyed playing; he later took music lessons. He remembers skiing and hiking in the nearby mountains. Rasto attendedgymnázium in Banská Bystrica where he began learning English. He says that he became interested in popular Western music, and that the only way to listen was from bootlegged cassette tapes because records were not readily available in Czechoslovakia at the time. Following gymnázium, Rasto enrolled at Matej Bel University (which was then a teacher’s college) to study music education. His first year there was marked by the Velvet Revolution. Rasto says he was out in the streets “almost every day” during these protests. He also says that the revolution had a “huge effect” on his life, as he was able to start studying English at university and was influenced by the Western culture that subsequently crossed the border. At university, Rasto became interested in jazz music and began playing the saxophone. He was admitted to study music at the conservatory in Bratislava, where he subsequently won a scholarship to the United States.
In March 1997, Rasto arrived in Cleveland where he studied for one year at Cuyahoga Community College. He then received a scholarship from Cleveland State University, from which he graduated with a masters degree in music. In Cleveland, Rasto became involved with the Slovak community. He translated Jan Pankuch’s History of Slovaks in Cleveland and Lakewood into English, and assisted with the creation a cataloging system at the Slovak Institute. In 2000, he decided to stop pursing a professional music career and found employment at a residential real estate firm. In September 2007, he moved to Chicago, where he found a job selling commercial real estate.
Rasto knew as soon as he arrived in America that he did not want to return to Slovakia to live. He tried several approaches to gaining American citizenship. He says he was able to gain permanent resident status in Canada because his translating skills were considered valuable; however, in 2000, he also entered the U.S. green card lottery, which he won. In 2006, Rasto became an American citizen, an event he calls “one of the best days of his life.” He has been back to Slovakia several times to visit family and friends. Today, Rasto lives in Chicago.
“My father especially, was very careful not to – back then, you didn’t know who you could trust and if you mentioned something in front of your kids, then they go to school and they talk to their friends and you can get your parents in trouble that way – so he was very careful not to show his opinions one way or another, so I don’t know what his views were. But I can tell you he was one of the few people who transitioned successfully [following the Velvet Revolution], he remained in his position, actually improved. Not because he was a Communist, but because he was a very capable guy and fair to everybody and never really got involved with the Communists, so people weren’t after him trying to get his head. It worked out well for him, not expressing his opinions, publicly anyway.”
“At that point I got into music, and I was listening to a British heavy metal band, Iron Maiden – they were my gods – so what helped me was I wanted to know what they were singing about, so I translated all their lyrics, and that’s how I really got much better at English. They were using different words than you’d usually find in high school textbooks and my level of interest was obviously much higher, so that always came very easy.”
“Well, we were there almost every day, but I was just in the crowd. I didn’t want to get involved, and not because I was against or for any of it, but I really didn’t know what was going on, and I’m the type of person that I’m not going to get involved unless I know what’s going on because what I don’t want to do is cause harm to somebody not knowing why. So I knew that I didn’t like communism and we wanted to get rid of that, but beyond that point, I really wasn’t going to get involved on a larger scale and get into the frontline, because it was unclear what the intentions were. And a lot of shady people come to the surface when something like that happens, because they recognize the opportunity to be in the spotlight or to better themselves, and people can quickly switch sides, and that’s what happened in a lot of cases back then. So I was just basically there to support, but as part of the masses and not in any sort of leading position.”
“Oh, I loved it right away. It’s one of those weird things I cannot explain. I felt like I was away from home for 27 years. Right away I liked it and I wanted to stay. I love Americans. They’re the most wonderful people in the world. They’re very friendly, funny, easy-going. I like them much more than Europeans, that’s why I would not go back. So, I liked it right away. When I came here, I knew I wanted to live here.”
“I always made a conscious effort to assimilate. I don’t want to stand out – it’s not that I don’t like to stand out – I don’t want to stand out as an immigrant. Because it always carries a little bit of a negative connotation, no matter what. You’re just not local, you’re not one of us, in a way. Although I’ve never felt that way, nobody ever made me feel that way. Americans are very open and liberal when it comes to that. After all, this country was established on those principles. I’m not afraid of telling people that I’m Slovak, it doesn’t bother me. But actually I feel much better when people tell me that ‘Oh you hardly have any accent.’ I like to hear that, not ‘Oh, are you from Slovakia? Where are you from?’ I don’t want people to pick up on that. Of course they do, but you know what I mean.”
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.
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.
]]>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.
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.
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.
“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.’”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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?’”
“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.”
“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.”