George Heller
<p>George Heller was born in Mariánské Lázně, western Bohemia, in 1948. His father Evžen, who was Jewish, left the country for Palestine in 1938 and there joined the Czechoslovak division of the British Army. Following WWII, he returned to Czechoslovakia and settled in Mariánské Lázně, where he met George’s mother Jiřina who was originally from Plzeň. They established a successful bakery, but when their business was threatened with nationalization following the Communist coup, they decided to leave once again. In 1949, the family moved to Israel. When George’s father learned that he was eligible to live in any Commonwealth country due to his service during the War, the Hellers left for Canada and settled in Montreal in 1952. George’s father began working in bakery and soon opened his own business. George recalls a close-knit, thriving Czech community in Montreal, and he and his parents forged lifelong connections with other Czechs in the city. He says that his mother kept a Czech household; she cooked traditional foods and maintained holiday traditions. When George was 14, his father put him to work in the family bakery and he spent much of his free time there.</p><p> </p><p>After graduating from high school, George began working for Hudson’s Bay Company as a fur trader in northern Canada. He stayed with the company for 20 years and worked his way up through the firm holding numerous positions. He eventually returned to the Hudson’s Bay Company as CEO in 1999 after managing the North American and European arms of the shoe company Bat’a and heading the 1994 Commonwealth Games held in Vancouver. Following the Velvet Revolution in 1989, George’s relatives in Czechoslovakia turned to him for assistance in starting business enterprises of their own. Since then, he has also been contacted by both the Czech and Slovak governments for his business expertise and knowledge of Western markets. In 2005, to celebrate the entry of the Czech Republic into the European Union, George, in conjunction with the Czech Embassy in Canada, organized an exhibit of Czech glass in the Hudson’s Bay Company’s flagship store in Toronto.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>George holds Czech and Canadian citizenship and says that there is ‘no downside’ to dual citizenship. He frequently travels to the Czech Republic, for business purposes and to visit family. He raised his two children speaking Czech and passed on to them Czech traditions. Now retired, George sits on several boards and serves as the Honorary Consul General of Thailand in Toronto. He and his wife Linda split their time between Toronto and California.</p>
National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library
NCSML Archive
Paula Moss
<p> </p><p>Paula Moss was born in Prague in 1925. Her father, Josef Hubka, served as a senator for the Czechoslovak National Socialist Party for three terms until Parliament was dissolved before the outbreak of WWII. Her mother, Anna, was a housewife. Paula attended Jan Masaryk Elementary School in the Prague district of Vinohrady and then the Akademie obchodní Dr. Edvarda Beneše [Beneš Business School], where she specialized in languages. Paula says her father wanted her to focus on studying French, but her first choice of foreign language was English, which she learned, she says, to improve her comprehension of Walt Disney films. Paula remembers food shortages in Prague during the War and says she would travel to the countryside to buy items such as pork illegally, until she came too close to being exposed, and so abandoned such activities.</p><p> </p><p>Upon liberation in 1945, Paula traveled to Plzeň to visit one of her cousins, where her English-language skills were discovered by a member of General George Patton’s American Third Army during a victory parade. She was immediately taken on as a translator for the troops and followed the Third Army to the spa town of Mariánské Lázně when they withdrew to western Bohemia shortly after the end of the War. Paula says part of her work in Mariánské Lázně was with local authorities implementing the Beneš Decrees, which displaced thousands of ethnic Germans from the Czechoslovak border regions.</p><p> </p><p>Paula moved to Germany with the troops about six months later and remained in Heidelberg when they left, working for the Seventh Army (which replaced them) instead. It was then that Paula met her husband, Captain Richard Moss. The pair were married in Prague in June 1947 and moved to his native Chicago upon his discharge the following year. They first lived with Paula’s in-laws on Lakewood Avenue before moving to the Rogers Park district of the city. The couple had three children. Richard worked in a number of roles for NBC Chicago for 35 years, while Paula worked as a librarian and in real estate. She became a U.S. citizen in 1956. Now widowed, Paula lives in Highland Park, Illinois. A long-term member of the Czechoslovak National Council of America, Paula has donated several historic garments originally belonging to her grandmother to the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library.</p>
National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library
NCSML Archive