1
10
3
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/2ac45eb25def801d185514ad58ae2b16.jpg?Expires=1712793600&Signature=Y5Ks5zGCmyZDm589LUwuo8sa%7ETYSxR-P7bkbV%7ELN3oF8W4xOgDZMf-qB5nHj6sNHxP9zANCWk0cNvKE4sd3AMyo1%7Etz8x99OVMjJWxxSAEVcyOqZjLfTt02mgFCer8dkqgEyAUtzFbjcE4ZnqWWVu3Z%7EKAM2dT2i0uDo9%7EpTrGY7Tmq9KsJ74KJOZohivJdM06sctVdCAmgHNZA%7ESKExbwo0ZF8CqKyznlXf4xEZA%7E8Ik6T-%7EUjhmq2GY%7EQCw4Xcu7KDBDg79RulGbBQwtQJd2rTlE7N8ptrXVEJVi-wDTaDQNokJzu8m96TEDlMec-d1uDrDPYFjjQAkdS6N0jYKw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
ec9afa0b966c5898c3be7941bb44a7d2
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>Munitions Factory</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/MJHDcoQSCKU?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“After the War, you know, the Germans left, there was no more need for ammunition so the plant was kind of idled. But the electrification was very damaged, we had a lot of work to get this thing under control – to get this thing back into operation. Although we had our own generating plant, but the Germans were smart, they took the exciters. So we could not use the generators. But we had extra exciters buried in the ground. So we got those out and in about five days we had one generator running, so we could provide the power for the city and some of it for the plant. So we were not that much damaged. But the electrification from outside was totally disturbed. You know, the towers were knocked out… were blown out… the poles and stuff like that. So that took time, but we had power about three weeks after the War was over.”</p><h4>Cinema</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/naxmxTsOH60?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“We had several American pictures, but we had them hidden, we couldn’t play them because under the Germans, they wouldn’t let us play them. We had some Czech, we had a couple of Slovak films, but these came from Bratislava, you know, we always got a new film every week. And I don’t know what kind of film we were preparing because we never –played it – the Russians came and they wanted to… First of all, we got new machines, new projectors, Zeiss, from Germany, very good machines. And how they found out, we don’t know. But they wanted to take those machines to Moscow. They wanted to dismantle them and take them. But we got smart. We knew about this thing, that they wanted to come in and take these machines. So we dismantled them and buried them in the ground. So they were looking for them. Well, when they came in there were no machines and we said ‘well, the Germans took them’. They couldn’t believe it that the Germans had the time to dismantle them but we put them away, the Germans didn’t take them. They were brand new machines. We used them about six, seven, months, that’s all we had them, because we’d just put them up. And we had these old Phillips machines and so, while the Russians were over there, we didn’t want to put these new machines, we put these old Phillips machines up and we used those.</p><p>“Well, they didn’t care too much for them, because they were not as good machines as the Zeiss ones were. So, anyway, that was the experience we had with the Russians. Well, you know, the bad problem was we had movies projected on a wide screen, you know, wide and large. So they came drunk and they shot the screen and everything, shot the audio speakers behind the screen – they did that! Oh, how many times they did that! We couldn’t do nothing about it. We just shut it down and that was it! So this is the way it was. So many times we went without a movie three, four, weeks!”</p><h4>Leaving</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/StlVSKs0q6E?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I went to Prague by night train, you know, the express night train. I got to Masarykovo Nádraží and I got right away to the consul, and the consul told me ‘We have no time’, he says ‘You better get out of here fast, because they are checking everyone coming in and out of these offices.’ That was the American consul. So, they put me on a train from there and he says ‘Let’s get you out of the country before they close the borders.’ So, when I come to Aš, which was the border town, the officer that came to check the various paperwork, he says ‘Well’ – he says, ‘according to my instructions, you should be held up over here. But…’ he says, ‘you want to go, you go. I didn’t see you. If anybody comes to check on me, I did not see you!’ So I got out, and I went through Germany on a train, all the way to Paris. From Paris, we were going to go to Calais. We got to Calais and we could not get onto the Queen Mary – the Queen Mary was the ship that was going to take us to the United States – because there were too many wrecks in the Channel. They did not have it all cleaned up yet. So they were not going to take a chance with that big boat going through the Channel. So they put us on a small boat and took us to Dover, England.”</p><h4>Parents</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/jbjioOHK31c?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Father was always a <em>narodovec</em> – he wanted to go back home, he wanted to go back home. Well, at that time, Masaryk came over here and he was kind of soliciting for citizens. He wanted to have them go back home, he said ‘You know, you don’t have to be in America, we can make America at home, you’ve got the opportunity to make America in Czechoslovakia.’ At that time Czechoslovakia was kind of building up, sprouting up. And so he went over there, he went back. Mother was very much against it, she didn’t want to go. But they finally went in 19… I think it was just before the Depression, I don’t know exactly what year it was. So, through the Depression, they were already there. And father brought a lot of money over there and he lost it all. He lost over a million dollars in investments, because he got into politics. And he got on the wrong side of politics. So there were, you know, we were Catholics, and we got into a village where there were a lot of Lutherans. They were wealthy Lutherans, there were a lot of farmers. So, when he got this mill, he was expecting that he was going to get a lot of business from them. Well, they made a point of not giving him the job because they were so against the Catholics at that time. There were only seven Catholics over there in that village. The rest of them were all Lutherans. So he lost everything over there. That’s the time, like I said, that he moved to Považská Bystrica.”</p><h4>Vist to Czechoslovakia</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/40rcZvS5PR0?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“When I came to Považská Bystrica, I heard the PAs, you know, we had a PA system everywhere. And the first thing they said was ‘So-and-so and so-and-so have these working hours. They did not show up and we want to know why.’ This was on the public address system! I said ‘What will they do? What will they do? Put them in jail or what?’ ‘Ah!’ they said, ‘they’re supposed to be in work and they didn’t show up.’ They said ‘They’re looking for them’. How do you like that? This was in 1984 when I came over there. A lot of things surprised me, which were never there before. You know, the Germans were very tough on us as far as working. If you didn’t show up for work they believed that you are sabotaging their process. So you had to have the right excuse why you weren’t there. But this? I thought that things had changed. They actually got worse – because they looked for you. Because they planned on you, that you were going to be working there. How much they worked, I don’t know.”</p><h4>Old House</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/VxGo5_zoKFY?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“You know, when the communists took over, that mill never got repaired. It was just a shambles, let’s put it that way. There was still machinery that my father built for that mill. It was still there, it was never removed, but it was all cobwebbed and everything and a lot of rats were in the basement and the lower floor. And as a matter of fact there was a generator that we installed for ourselves, for our own electricity for the mill. That was still there but it was all, you know, never used. So for the whole era of the Communists taking over, this was never used. So somebody was living in the upper quarter but the mill was totally destroyed.”</p><h4>Public Radio</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/nssuA8euB_c?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“In 1984, Public Radio came to life, and they were looking for something to fill the time. Because public radio didn’t have all that many opportunities. They didn’t have any money to pay for the program, and secondly they didn’t have any volunteers either. So finally they came up and said ‘Would you want to originate any ethnic programs on this station?’ So we organized a group and we got 13 nationalities. And we started up.</p><p>“The only problem is now that everything is digital. And we have to do everything ourselves. We have to prepare the program right down to the second. If we don’t, the computer cuts us off. So we’ve got to figure out very well how to do it now. My son, he’s an expert on the computers, I’m not. Anyway, so we cut the program on a Thursday. We’re not getting paid, but we’re producing a lot of money for the station. We had the highest, I believe, this is what they told us, we had the highest turnout of donations for that one hour. Even their programs didn’t turn out that much money!”</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
Vladimir Mlynek
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Vladimir Mlynek was born in the small village of Hamry, in northwestern Slovakia, in 1926. His parents, although both Slovak, had met in Cleveland, where they were married and had already raised two children, Vladimir’s brother and sister, Steve and Irene. Just before the Great Depression, the whole family returned to Slovakia. They bought a mill, from which Vladimir’s father, Štefan, operated a cabinet-making business. When they were old enough, just before WWII began, Vladimir’s brother and sister returned to the United States. When the family cabinet business failed towards the end of WWII, Vladimir moved with his parents to the more industrial town of Považská Bystrica. There he trained to become an electrician and started working for the local arms factory, later known as Československá zbrojovka.</p><p> </p><p>After the War, Vladimir’s parents returned to the United States and, in 1947, Vladimir himself followed. He settled in Cleveland, working first as an assistant to his father, who was making cabinets for televisions at the city’s DuMont plant. In 1952, after a number of deferments, Vladimir was drafted into the U.S. Army. He was supposed to be sent to Korea, but in fact spent most of the Korean War stationed at Fort Meade, Maryland. He became a U.S. citizen in 1953. In 1955, Vladimir married his wife, Clara, an American of Polish extraction. The couple have two children, Gerald and Jeanette. A life-long radio enthusiast, Vladimir has been involved in Slovak-language broadcasting in Cleveland for over half a century. He has hosted the Slovak Radio Hour on Cleveland’s WCPN with his son Gerald every Sunday since 1985.</p><p><a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20170808010411/http://www.wcpn.org/WCPN/about/personality_bios" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">A biography of Vladimir on WCPN’s website</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
American citizenship
Catholics
Engineers
Family life
Journalism
local
Lutherans
Politics
Povazska Bystrica
Public address system
Slovak Language
Slovak-German relations
World War II
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/44558582a96f2ec21994a963f1f27486.jpg?Expires=1712793600&Signature=igR5XTA6zSxBwYJLku7iZCEsNjjo6nAbgPA-nO-K61Jvm6kV9YIZv4iJlbVjLeaHhzIjzoyZeIB9qNCgzd9kGWPRPCwiLh9fLscY0tR420%7ETut4fje%7E-Ye1k1a72KFRXeDwRSq48pKtvCqHNNVs5gAmmDejMPmuGvANj91eXOFODHP5i3agjjgG8LPion0RIGhs9VLJ6MngZtuvPD8VeRP5LQxGDi6CqoorAYAl1OPlevVaDRXUqjcXbmMn9FlgLHk7wc-WBsD-yjZPevkbx32gMiGpRU8yJhxmdNbvuFMeR0n6-EOR3dwL05gpRPwwyLRYouet6VGE9yLsWV26sbQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
11030a7125069375e5b4c5b0ba8e5580
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/6962d47a6ef991ed43202b8ae8e1d15a.jpg?Expires=1712793600&Signature=ezj3qATaUUrHeAk-k31Bg37vtx2YfZB4pLvCD6CKJ-HiHGKRZRhoOhdkt%7El-hoFtzrqFOPT89LTIQyDyQBFajt7om-aKDH6p3Cdlc-GmpR0fXibtQ8GTJDMnR02wCvD2G4LHRHJqxZTQzsUcCK6DrR1A-v6AMey7G-QtXn2LFHHqRMja%7EU5mFumBIkDb0bpuC6XMrN94D73x2DpZSaHssmIkIjmL%7EV2d-yxEZvMJ7Q6rRg5L-GzlgiGoX1qWuxUr0zOx-6mtIzFlrv-MCjbIsOutOfBMJR%7EVHgQ1fXw1GuwdkUnZWXVN-feRMPg80f1taeQJuzVleimgk5idztipLA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
3474658588585142c2318a2961eee288
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/c3bb987b48733b56c9a7bc4e8a18dd72.jpg?Expires=1712793600&Signature=FX63%7EHmXb%7ETtoxXJIO2ZSpqSKeDW2BOdhRzlVhHW1uumI9j%7EMoSOZP58cjgRb-1jZ9503ekGjBQQhIE28iPMbhfCEhdhGUL0D-q1XvdjbtD5E3bKkv8ZvSPunhvk6M5CqN7LbVzFhaYuANd6s%7E2fwK2ppxaHxFoqIwowXrexj6kcD8zu6j8QuiTnmg644jOOM9KMLIsW758630cusft0WEhrmtnp39JGTg-36Hzl6%7E6xo8ca7UvERzIcLzg8FWS-2kAoabSl4WLby58b%7ExRrKn1a-SdiyystQqLQfBdmLc-WtjTFTYcvvg-yLxiQaIU8eXGaA7zzmDyt1cdQkB%7EBKg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
a5ca1fe5b3caf9828531cb7d4ff61b7d
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/d7b2c20e4fee00188ad9c6461076448a.jpg?Expires=1712793600&Signature=atO02d6K3bDyerIHxIKxwCPrsv-ENajeqMEeoEXir81JMOvR26QSPveaBhcCXRGxejMmaNphFfFljjmESGCY4om8ic66kBCsm5CQa3hgT8%7EKq6Nc98vx66IkX-5Zs6eASWBHKYRZwgdfg0YScCf8GrY5rLV17Yz15k0UbEI1iqJsQHUJRNhx2Yht4C1m0xQ9Bq7KhsfStj21PKJWdEh%7EJMEEpprEY7UIsqK9WhpZWcznBSxM5ZIIKOQzXswBctJESnHQlO690%7EXWtyU44xw8grnZXGbEgmfvDdV3L8nWahBhaHHZN0RQ2j6YMN-wCh1tWhXFj%7Eg%7EjHika%7ENpwG2fZQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
06325280fb313c13ba3750942c7f31ec
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>Devoted</h4>
<iframe height="300" title="YouTube video player" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/mgYHJpfQnwc?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe>
<p>“In 1948, when the communists finally took over in Czechoslovakia, people were not accepting it very well, they didn’t want it. Because first of all, people were losing their own property, they didn’t own anything. And my father thought everything belongs to everybody – you couldn’t be having more than I do, or I shouldn’t be having more than you do – we all should have the same. And his own sisters, who lived in a different village, Dubovany, by Piešťany, his own sisters didn’t want to accept that people have to leave their property or something and let Communists run it. And he went over there to talk to his sisters to sign, they had some farmland. My aunt had a small amount of farmland, and my other aunt, and he didn’t feel that they should own that – they should all own it and all together work. So he was very, very strict about it, he would talk and say ‘No, you have to agree, it’s going to be a better life for you, I guarantee you’.</p>
<p>“He had really good ideas, and those ideas which I heard, which he told me, I liked them, because I felt yeah, everybody should… there shouldn’t be hungry people, there shouldn’t be poor people, everybody should have a little piece of something, everybody should have free school, free health program. And that’s what communists promised. So that’s how he believed it.</p>
<p>“Until, I believe, after we left, in the late seventies – he died in 1976. After 1968, it was that Prague Spring and everything, and things were changing. And he went outside, in the city, in Bratislava, and he sees these big shots, these communist leaders talking and being rich, suddenly they were rich, loaded with money and he would say – later on I found out, he never said anything to me, because we were over here – ‘Now something is wrong! Because this is not how I wanted. I wanted to have everything equal, this is not equal.’”</p>
<h4>Communist</h4>
<iframe height="300" title="YouTube video player" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/du2HjQwkEBM?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe>
<p>“It was a small village, farmland, there were about 300 population, that’s it. And that teacher who was working with me – her name was Rosie, Ružena, Rosie – she got me involved with the people. We had a drama club, we had the kids involved in pionieri, that was kids… I was a Pioneer when I was in sixth or fifth grade or something! And sväzáci, that was a teenagers’ club, they wore blue shirts, so we were involved with them. With the drama club we put on some play, that was a teacher’s job in the farmland or villages, the teacher has to do that. And because of that, somebody came up with the idea of ‘Why don’t you become a Communist?’ So that woman, that Rosie said ‘Uh-uh! I don’t want to be!’ She was single, 36 years old, she didn’t want to be. I wanted to be because, I think it was something I wanted to prove to my father, or I wanted him to be proud of me or whatever. I thought that he would be proud.</p>
<p>“And when I told him I was asked to be a Communist Party member, first you are on a waiting list for about a year, and then you are promoted, a full-blown… He looked at me and he says to me ‘Wait a minute! Do you want to go because you believe it, or do you just want to go because you think it’s not time to do it?’ I said ‘No, I want to believe it.’ He said ‘Alright then, you have to live by that!’</p>
<p>“So, I lived by that except one thing: I never claimed that I don’t believe in God. That was my private thing. When somebody asked me the question ‘How are you doing with your view on God and religion?’ I said ‘I’m still working on it.’ That was my answer. That was the only thing that I kept with me, I always believed in God. Because I thought, that has nothing to do with it, communism and God. God is taking care of even communist people.”</p>
<h4>Radio Free</h4>
<iframe height="300" title="YouTube video player" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/YFIR2HKVygM?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe>
<p>“I know my husband one time brought some radio, it was about midnight, we were listening to something, but we called it propaganda. I didn’t believe that. I said ‘Yeah, they tell you anything they want to.’ We say in Slovak ‘keď vtáčka lapajú, pekne mu spievajú’ – did you ever hear that? ‘If you want to catch the bird then sing to him.’ So I thought, this is a nice, nice, speech, but that’s not my idea… When my husband brought up the idea of leaving Czechoslovakia, I said to him ‘You know what, why don’t you go, because I know some people, older people, men went to the United States and made money and then supported their wives, sent for their wives. Why don’t you go?’ And he says ‘Well, I think I have some place a marriage license, and on the marriage license you’re in my name. So, that makes no sense, me going without you. We all go, or nobody goes.’”</p>
<h4>Army</h4>
<iframe height="300" title="YouTube video player" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/GdEKmOFjV7E?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe>
<p>“My father, because he had contact with everything, he knew what was going on. He said to my husband, ‘You know what, probably you are going to be called to service, because Cuba is happening, and a lot of soldiers are being called and sent to protect the country. Probably you are going to be called too.’ And my husband says ‘Dad, why me? I already did my… I am not like a regular soldier!’ And my father says ‘Well, it can happen.’ We got home and about 10:00 in the evening somebody knocked on the door, a man, in a uniform, and he says to my husband ‘You have to report at the airport tomorrow at 6:00 in the morning.’ And that’s when reality hit me. I had a two year-old daughter, and he left in the morning, he went to the airport, and then, at the end of the day I didn’t hear from him, and it wasn’t like here where everybody has phones. We didn’t have a phone, I was living with my mother in law, she didn’t have a phone, I didn’t have a phone. So, the following day, I went to a phone booth, and I called the army reserve or somebody, and I asked about my husband, and they said to me ‘Oh, you know what, súdružka, you don’t have to worry about it, but we can’t tell you where he is, it’s a secret.’ And I didn’t know anything. So, a week went by, I didn’t know anything, and then about maybe ten days later, he called me and he said that he is in Trenčín – I don’t know how many miles it is from Bratislava – he’s in Trenčín, he’s with the army, he is safe, and he is working as a driver. He was driving some big surgeon or big shot in the army, driving him from one place to another. That’s about it. And I said ‘Are you coming to visit or something?’ And he said ‘No, I can’t even talk to you for long, I have ten minutes only.’”</p>
<h4>1968 Invasion</h4>
<iframe height="300" title="YouTube video player" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/wQnNnucn6so?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe>
<p>“It was a beautiful day and I took my kids to play outside. We had an apartment building with a little kind of playground; there was a sandbox, trees and a line for hanging your laundry. And I used to, in those days, I used to wash diapers by hand, we didn’t have disposable ones, it wasn’t that good a time like now. So I took those diapers and I hung them on a line and my youngest one was in a stroller sleeping, his afternoon nap. And a helicopter was flying. I was in the building already, and then I heard people, I went on the balcony and I saw people on the other balcony screaming ‘Take the children in! Take the children in!’ So, the helicopter was shooting, I don’t know at whom. So I ran downstairs, a couple of people helped me get the kids inside, and then we find in a couple of diapers holes. I wish I saved those diapers those days!</p>
<p>“I’m sure they were not shooting at the children, probably because it was the center of the city, probably some commotion was going on on one of those streets and one little bullet got lost or something. So I had another reason, I’m not going stay here, I’m moving out of here, I’m going to live with grandma. Because I thought in a village, it’s nice and quiet, what is the city offering you? Nothing!</p>
<p>“Then, later on that afternoon, my husband – I sent him to get the bread, he came home without bread – he says ‘The stores are empty, no bread!’ I said ‘I need milk for my youngest one.’ Over there for babies, you need a prescription for baby milk, you can’t buy it just like that. And it’s also only in drugstores or pharmacies, they were equipped with the milk for babies. So I said, ‘I’m going to get milk for Lubo,’ so I went down the street, I lined up in front of the pharmacy, I’m standing in line, and they say to me ‘We need a birth certificate, we are not giving you this milk, because anybody can come with a prescription. And we have a shortage, look at the shelves, they are empty.’ So I went back home, walked about ten minutes, meantime helicopters were flying and shooting, we were hiding in one house, in a building, we ran. The whole street, everybody ran into the building. They were shooting, nobody got hurt. I got home, I got the birth certificate, I went back to the pharmacy. No more milk.”</p>
<h4>Departure</h4>
<iframe height="300" title="YouTube video player" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2Jf5kje7-6M?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe>
<p>“In 1969, when we left Slovakia, it was secret, nobody knew about it, not even my father, because my father would call the police and lock us up. He wouldn’t allow it – he said it later on. He said if he knew we wanted to leave, he would have taken precautions so that we won’t leave, even if we went to jail. Yes, he was very upset. Because he was a devoted communist, and he thought he had raised me the same way, and how can I leave my country?</p>
<p>“And he wrote us letters, kind of mean letters, and in those letters he said ‘I don’t think you have an idea what is waiting for you, life out of your country is very hard. I remember my life, it wasn’t easy, and it’s not going to be easy for you, especially because you have four children.’ And ‘Why did you do that? Did I raise you the wrong way, or did I make a mistake raising you? You left this country, you left your family! You shouldn’t do that.’ And he was very upset, and my husband wrote him a letter and apologized to him for me, saying he shouldn’t be mad at me, because it was not me who was doing that, it was my husband who wanted to leave, and I just followed him because I was his wife. So I don’t think my father ever made peace with me leaving.”</p>
<h4>English</h4>
<iframe height="300" title="YouTube video player" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/SijYCOYoD1U?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe>
<p>“The language was really tough, my husband went to Berlitz, so he picked up quick, he was talking all day. The kids, they didn’t have problems at all. My daughter, she was a fourth grader when we left Czechoslovakia, when we got over here they put her in second grade, because they said that’s where she should pick up English. About three months later, she went to the principal, that was a nun, and she said to her ‘I think I speak good enough English, I want to go to fourth grade.’ And they transferred her to fourth grade. So she picked up really good, she didn’t have problems, my boys didn’t have problems. My problem was I didn’t want to talk to anybody, when we were living in that town house, I would go outside, my kids were playing and the next door neighbor would talk to me, I turned I went inside because I didn’t understand her. So, I watched TV, there were soaps, and I would watch them and I said ‘Every day it’s the same people!’ I didn’t understand what was said, I didn’t understand when is the story and when is the advertising, the commercials! I didn’t know, I couldn’t.</p>
<p>“Then my kids were watching a lot of kids’ shows and I would watch with them. And you know what show? Sesame Street! Sesame Street helped me… I watched Big Bird ‘one, two…’ and that’s how I learned English from the TV.”</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
Melania Rakytiak
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Melania Rakytiak was born in Paris in March 1936. Her father was a Slovak laborer at a furniture factory while her mother, also Slovak, was a maid in the home of a wealthy French family. Melania’s mother died when she was only 10 months old. Her aunt came to Paris and married Melania’s father. In 1941, the family moved back to Šúrovce, Slovakia, where Melania’s brother was born. In 1945, the family moved to Bratislava, and Melania’s father, Valent, took a job at the city harbor, on the Danube River. All his life, Melania’s father was a fervent communist and, come the takeover in 1948, he became active in politics, says Melania. He worked for Bratislava Region with secret documents and conducting political screenings on county employees. Meanwhile, Melania enrolled in Bratislava’s Stredná pedagogická škola and trained to be a teacher. Upon graduation, she went to work in an orphanage before being placed in a two-teacher rural school in Čierna Voda, not far from Bratislava. It was here in 1956 that Melania herself became a member of the Communist Party.</p>
<p>Melania married her husband, Fedor Rakytiak, in 1957. She says they had three weddings – a civil ceremony, a Catholic service and a wedding in a Lutheran church. The couple had four children. In 1969, Melania’s husband and brother, Ivan, devised a plan together to immigrate to Canada. Melania says she was strongly opposed but suspected her husband would relent at the last moment. He did not, and on April 30, 1969, Melania, Fedor and their four children went to Austria, on the premise of visiting an aunt. They spent the whole of May at Traiskirchen refugee camp before moving to Bad Kreuzen, where they lived for a further two months. Melania says Canada was not accepting refugees at this time, and so the family decided to apply to the United States. They arrived in Cleveland in August 1969. At first, Melania says the family was greatly supported by Joe Kocab and Karlin Hall. Melania worked as a cleaner before she and her husband purchased a dry cleaning business, which they ran until 1981. In 1989, Fedor was diagnosed with lung cancer and died the following year. Melania lives close to her children and grandchildren in Parma, Ohio, and, as an avid cook, she is working to collate a family cookbook of Slovak recipes.</p>
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
1968 emigrant/refugee
Catholicism
Catholics
Cierna Voda
Communist coup
Communist Party members
Divorce
Education
Family life
local
Lutherans
marriage
Marxism
Politics
Prague Spring
Refugee camp
school
Strecanska
Stredna pedagogicka skola
Surovce
Teachers
Warsaw Pact invasion
Women workers
World War II
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/7ab40fd4fe0e6db9280997d7b2ed38e6.jpg?Expires=1712793600&Signature=WBAO03B7kk98oATX6ZOEjMt%7EiXFbtWy9mQBTpkpalvUDxw1t9scgRdYuFttXulUpjTyRnSQ%7EZZH6RoQPwkT-sL5er-D-b-cF442w-LCr2GvAUb47DIOjep3FzboZJwYD-LkWsmrdxR9oiTA6-C-gk0xE2vEvHsDqNvILL71B2qM5CNfqDcrL8bDA%7E3PKb9aMLpJ2g-0V8RCMMl-1arzPirbpJK5Nw7ml1r7KZ5RUlBqgcfmgblvI11f82nFIW9gd6Dq3GrhFZTUWy9mVaLTXXTHtXFmfLQBfc2HzI-ya3S672WGQRGUvDd2VPYwnFH9aesW%7ER1Pr6yjx7S0aWjoggw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
aab3fc3d8e90a8f89f1e0577bf6e2e9c
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>WWII Chicago</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/pzDvWdU_79Y?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“He managed to find this place in FNB Manufacturing – it’s a company which still exists, though now they do different things. He would actually bring me home components which had been rejected to play with. And so I had switches and transformers and things of this sort which I could take apart and unwind and string the wire all over the place. It was actually a bit of a hazard in the apartment.”</p><h4>Elementary</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZRxO2smO0DQ?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“It was a school that my grandfather had helped to build. He came to the opening of the school in 1938, it was named in his honor. So I went to my grandfather’s school, so to speak, for the second half of first grade. That was a very bad experience, because the students there were way ahead of anything we had done in the Chicago public schools. And most particularly, they were all writing in cursive, and they were using quill pens that you had to dip into the ink, and I only knew how to write in pencil, and I only knew how to print – I didn’t know how to write cursive. And I had never gone to school in Slovak, and it was a much more formal attitude and when I walked in I had no idea that you were supposed to stand when the teacher came into the room and all those kinds of traditional ways of being in the classroom – that was all new to me. So I was not very happy in that school.”</p><h4>Escape 1949</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/lTpwqCNo2Vs?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“The idea was to move when there was no light in our sector and then drop to the ground as the light started to come closer. And of course it had a fairly regular rotation and so you could be sort of out of reach of the light. I remember very distinctly that this was a heavily ploughed field and so there were big, big chunks of earth and it was not easy walking, especially for little feet. We were held together by a rope, a light string, that we all held onto. And so the leader would go, he had made the crossing a number of times, and he would go when it was safe, he would drop when it wasn’t safe, and the rest of us did the same. And then we came to the barbed wire fence and, in my memory, the wires were either spread, or one was lifted, anyhow – a crawling space was made for me at any rate. And we crossed over to the other side, which was just as dangerous, because it was still ploughed, and it was still within reach of the searchlights, and it was the Russian zone of Austria. So this was not a complete escape by any means. But we did make it across safely and we did end up in another safe house.”</p><h4>New York City</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ed0kXN8NmHs?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“My mother tried her best to assimilate. My father I don’t think ever really tried to assimilate. He tried to make a living, but that’s different than really assimilating. He didn’t do that, but it wasn’t because he was resentful or because he thought it wasn’t appropriate, he just… I think the energy had gone out of him. By the time of one escape, and then another escape and being jailed in between, and having sort of come from very elevated circumstances and having had to do this really menial work during the war, and trying to run a business and that failing – it was just a tremendous amount of discouragement. And how much the imprisonment had to do with it, I don’t know. We certainly never talked about it, but my cousin in Bratislava… my closest cousin says that he remembers his mother saying that when she saw my father after he’d been released from prison, her first reaction was ‘this is a beaten man.’”</p><h4>Revisit</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/aR8WZGyH9o4?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“You just had to be really careful and basically stay out of trouble and find ways of not yielding to the system completely. That was particularly difficult with children, because children went to school, and at school they might repeat anything that was said at home. And so parents were faced with this horrible dilemma of either not saying anything and having their children brainwashed, or saying what they saw was the truth and then risking that everybody would be severely penalized if this ever came out into the open – and this easily could through the children. It was… Not only was it dangerous, but it confronted everybody with the problem of how to live within the regime and not sell out to it completely.”</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
John Palka
Description
An account of the resource
<p>John Palka is the grandson of Milan Hodža, the prime minister of Czechoslovakia between 1935 and 1938. He was born in exile in Paris in 1939, without his father present. His father, Ján Pálka, joined the family some months later, after playing an active role in the anti-Nazi resistance back home. The family spent most of WWII in Chicago, with John attending kindergarten and elementary school there. In 1946, the Palka family returned to Czechoslovakia and settled in Liptovský Mikuláš (today found in northern Slovakia), which had for generations been the home of the Palkas. Following the Communist takeover in 1948, John Palka’s father spent four months in jail, and the family eventually fled in 1949, when it was suggested that he may again face arrest. John was nine when the family escaped.</p><p> </p><p>The Palkas crossed the border into Austria at Petržalka, which under communism became one of the most heavily guarded borders in the country. After nine months spent in Innsbruck, Austria, the family obtained American visas and moved to New York City. John’s mother, Irene Palka, worked as a translator at Radio Free Europe, while his father tried to set up an import/export business, which eventually failed. John excelled at his studies and landed a scholarship at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. It was there that he met his wife, Yvonne. They have two children. Until recently, John taught biology at University of Washington. He has written a book about his experiences which was recently published in Slovak by Kalligram in 2010.</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
Arrest
Border patrol
Communist coup
Czechoslovak resistance during WW II
Education
Hodza
Lutherans
national
Politics
Prison
school