1
10
2
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/9f39117672d28e85062e6d6a60b8ce12.jpg?Expires=1712793600&Signature=FTeKedRrACUg7XI-qwVlK7JBiDVer7MC5vBeHCeU64volDjYPhsB4lvyQ7BlXuq-6XnGs6PJ51a48WZYionnzEJ2n6z3WPo8nYBBJhddyzktIL3cTvBPZ34RFzxznmZvPh6x0ccQmPv6Kb%7E9nCsxDM-sp-nhkTSUt6M9syonTibr8lWqfEtAIcowcHsxSdKK-BUyq%7Eau-xCmheqaRCOASgYIE94Ln9SAZZ2SQ-hYizVAk6D1fvsBmB1Ssm3BlmE%7E2Sw9dmmx5hg%7E9mxWo9c7YeNcektuukZdiawylZ3iXfJdEHUmCejv-lzcb0Nl91nR6MHNG9M86B410mk6FMp7Ww__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
32da2c39417845a1764b6ecfde942a59
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/14437f4b7f563014961ffa0f42c473b1.jpg?Expires=1712793600&Signature=XOlzZH4JkWSp8ICP%7E3YDdnszEERJlUVY6RDaN3JzgZEF3cNTJqobtf8oHP0cl6%7EUFX50Kv4xs1D1DG65J16s2fRM%7EKsrzJxiLIcXAniFP73sJ30dSCg8lFXOzyW6WJwOzIif%7E%7EF45vEq3cCC3jwnzndnvclgpyhPitgHd%7EL3%7EMZN23DHJT%7EVLK8M8s6X-k0JgpH3dEUTKP4r8SQUmEDflwW%7ECFXuxkeJzPmruL6GIUqJFq0WmRlhJWh65ipycYhkP233-xb8IQdwMsaoaeQZmA3qtXk6946mON1NiFwTMTZ0p89iCmV-wqE1IgiF%7EC18kbPqy6jkKBC2XeLP6sTSxQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
8b1bbacae148de9332f2828f0d3b2f32
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/18e2dc96118c1f4bbed3b6cc433f00f3.jpg?Expires=1712793600&Signature=O294YJoi5PJgVSf4jNLIkRLmyIlJFRP9hHI9QnXIUhKY-NuKhJEVZAqmAoPyhvk%7EQ-hlzuh46zv1iy80RSVeKxXYK3XC7yFAkqURNoWlnwEkAuLglIpDGS0wpsDDXJBORVCFUpBj1ee6jWJOK3Yzslyf51A-Uwd2pZIs0v9WuWcmcuJNL0Je4ypv7rkyh5a1BOoCIgBz4jFRVkHsjAr7HW79Xht-LlNeYfLYCGPK6tA8ELW0vuDYFDuzJ1bsffDiPG3EqSvsaco%7E6tDiW4aTZLZJj-P%7ERraiikvvqYfjDVPR%7EmOmSZmYP5d3frfTgYPAHSFJ%7Elxu59dr3hvmuP6RjA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
51a7cf651c850e40757a1d49ee23ee18
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>Czech Legions</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/eVyiC9owWjQ?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“He was a Russian legionnaire. In Russia, the czar encouraged colonization, especially in Ukraine, and so lots of Czechs went there, and some ancestors of my father’s settled down there. They were very prosperous – they had a hops farm. Before the outbreak of WWI my father went there to work as an accountant on the hops farm of his relatives. And when the War broke out, he immediately joined the Česká družina – the cradle of the Czechoslovak Legions – and those people who joined so early were called the starodružníci (the old joiners). And so he fought from 1914; he went through the ranks, came back as a colonel, brought his regiment home – he was commanding the Second Rifle Regiment of Jiří z Poděbrad (George of Podebrady), and he didn’t come home until 1920 because he fought in what the legionnaires called the anabáze; they fought on the long stretch of the Trans-Siberian railway all the way from Ukraine to Vladivostok. And then he came back. When the legionnaires were demobilizing, he became a regular army officer and from then on he went up through the ranks.”</p><h4>Belongings</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/vS58t9Op1ZM?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“He had his officer’s saber and some weaponry from WWI and, as a memento, it was mounted on a board and displayed in the room. And of course, you could not have any arms. Any pretext – any weapons found were punishable by death. [That was the case with a] friend of my father’s on that farm where we were during the mobilization. So, my mother was a tiny little lady, she was short, and she had lots of guts. And one day, she took these arms off, put them in a bundle, and at night – if they would have caught her, it would have been horrible – she went though Prague and dumped them in the Vltava River, because we didn’t want to [give the Nazis any pretext]. Since father was already in hiding, it would have been another pretext.”</p><h4>Action E</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/nWkUrUL7djA?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“They called it Action E, the Gestapo – E as in exulants [exile]– you know? They rounded up most of the families who had anybody fighting abroad, to hold us as political prisoners to prevent us from giving aid to Czechoslovak parachutists sent from Great Britain to attack and sabotage the German occupation. Somebody had to hide them and they wanted to prevent that. So they arrested us all and put us in the camp.”</p><p><em>Do you remember that day when they came?</em></p><p>“Oh yes, and my sister, Milica, she was tiny. She was six years old – she’s what, six and a half years younger than I am. So, they took Milan, my brother, my mother and myself and then kicked Milica out of the apartment and left her standing with the keys to the apartment on the street. And that was it. They took us, and so some neighbors then contacted my aunt and she took her in.”</p><h4>Moravia</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WPVxveZm7uQ?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“My mother was always so feisty and I don’t remember what she did but I think some of the gendarmes tried to help, and I guess they caught one smuggling out her letter. So, the punishment place was the morgue. When somebody died, they had the tables for dissecting – it was very primitive and filthy. She was put into the morgue for two weeks. She picked up there an infection in her leg which really was very nasty. But it didn’t break her spirit. And every so often, the Gestapo would come to the camp which they controlled from Brno. They would line us up, and these goons would go and touch our heads, and do some sort of a genetic exam of the shape of our heads to see whether we are Slavs or what we are – they were always looking for Jews. It was frightening.</p><p>“And finally in 1945, when the front was coming from the east towards Moravia, suddenly they opened the camp and I thought ‘Oh my god, they are going to shoot us!’ But they let most of the camp go except 120 people, among them was I and my mother, and they lugged us further north, again to keep us as hostages in another camp. We were there just a very short time and by May 5, when there was already the uprising in Prague, the partisans came and opened the gates, because sometimes the SS people were shooting people just as revenge. And they didn’t want that to happen to us. So they opened the gate and let us out.”</p><h4>Czechs in D.C.</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/6eQv1cRctvU?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“My parents lived on Park Road, our first ambassador Hanak (he used to be our ambassador to Turkey) – he bought a house there. And then all the Czechs suddenly started buying houses there. There were so many of them that they started to call it Prague Road. And it is just the sort of tail of Park Road before the bridge, and if you cross the bridge and go through Rock Creek Park, you come to the Czech Embassy. It’s right there. It’s a very beautiful place, and now the town, I mean Washington, D.C., about three years ago started to put historical markers everywhere to show how each section developed and the diversity of people living there. There is a large historical marker with my father’s picture, my daughter in the Czech national costume, and other photographs of all the Czechs living there to show why they started calling Park Road ‘Prague Road.’”</p><h4>Teaching</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/MNTiWEFGPI0?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Culturally at that time Colombia started to develop a wonderful symphony orchestra, as a matter of fact, lots of players came from Germany, the conductor was Estonian, and so they were just building up the momentum there – the cultural momentum – and it was wonderful. And I was sitting right in the middle of it!”</p><p><em>And do you remember what performances you had there?</em></p><p>“Two times I was a soloist with the National Symphony Orchestra, in one I was singing French impressionistic music, in the second one all Wagner like Elsas Traum and Senta’s aria and so forth. And then we had chamber music groups in the Museo Nacional. I had a television program with another Czech soprano, she was a coloratura and I was a heavy-type soprano, sort of leaning towards more dramatic, more mezzo. We had a television show sponsored by a Colombian tobacco company. The singer was Adela Geber, they ended up in the United States too, and her husband was a painter. So, when the announcer was telling the story, he was sketching the characters as the announcer was talking, and then we were singing the major arias or duets and so forth. And then we had another chamber music group with flute and harp and voice, so I was singing constantly.”</p><h4>SVU</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/i_BHxQHoYkM?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“In a way, the time is sort of passing, I would say. The SVU was so important during the Cold War. It was practically your patriotic duty to get involved and be involved. But now that the republic is open, the travel of the artists and everything comes here unhindered. And we can go there at will whenever we want. I think the point has been taken out of it a little bit, and we just have to try to rope in somehow younger generations. You know, I know it with my children, or any of the children of the [exiles]. At this time, they are building their careers, They are so involved with their living and their careers that they do not have time for SVU. During the Cold War, we worked hard to uphold the good name of Czechoslovakia, we felt it our duty to work on this. We will see how long [SVU] is going to last.”</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
Dagmar White
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Dagmar White was born in Prague in 1926. Her father, Antonín Hasal, was a high-ranking officer in the Czechoslovak Army, and so Dagmar and her siblings grew up between Brno and Prague, depending upon where her father was stationed at the time. When WWII broke out, Dagmar’s father joined the underground resistance group Obrana národa [Defense of the Nation]. Dagmar says that when ‘things got too hot,’ her father escaped and joined the Czechoslovak Army in France and later the Czechoslovak government-in-exile. He served as President Edvard Beneš’s military adviser and chief of the military chancellery. In 1942, following the assassination of Reichsprotektor Reinhard Heydrich, Dagmar, her mother, Josefa, and brother, Milan were arrested in their Prague apartment as part of the Gestapo’s Action E. They were taken to internment camps for political prisoners so that they would not, says Dagmar, provide help and shelter to parachutists sent from Great Britain.</p><p> </p><p>Dagmar and her mother spent the next three years in Svatobořice internment camp in southern Moravia, where they tilled the land, washed the uniforms of wounded and dead German soldiers, and made grenades. Dagmar’s brother Milan was jailed in Brno, in dormitories which provided law students accommodation in peacetime. Dagmar says that towards the end of the War, many inmates at Svatobořice were released, but that she and her mother were moved north, alongside another 120 or so prisoners, to another camp at Planá nad Lužnicí. On May 5, 1945, partisans freed the prisoners at this camp. At the end of the War, Dagmar moved back to Prague and was reunited with the other members of her family. Her father returned from London as commander of the liberated territories and became transportation minister in the cabinet of President Edvard Beneš. Dagmar attended Charles University in Prague and the Prague Conservatory and trained to become an opera singer. Following the coup in 1948, her family found themselves under surveillance, says Dagmar, and decided to leave. They crossed the border on July 2, 1948, whilst a Sokol slet was taking place in Prague and diverting police attention. Dagmar says the family was helped by the U.S. Army in Germany; they were accommodated in Frankfurt at the IG Farben building (which served as U.S. Army HQ) until a special military plane flew the family to Washington, D.C. Dagmar’s parents settled on Park Road in the capital, while Dagmar went to University of Kansas to continue her studies.</p><p> </p><p>After completing her degree at KU in Lawrence, Dagmar graduated from the Juilliard School of Music in New York City, and then received a master’s degree in music education from Columbia University. She moved to Bogota, Colombia, for her first academic post and found herself there at a period of great cultural activity, she says. It was in Colombia that she met her husband Lewis White – an American diplomat. The couple married in 1954. As a result of her husband’s job, Dagmar lived subsequently in New Caledonia, the Dominican Republic and Nicaragua (where she taught at the national conservatories) and Morocco. In each location, she conducted choirs and continued the pursuit of her musical career. She has two children. Today, Dagmar lives with her husband Lewis (Jack) in Vienna, Virginia. A long-time member of the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences (SVU), she chairs the organization’s Christmas bazaar. She founded and directed the local Vienna Light Orchestra in which she sang many of the title roles. Dagmar continues to organize musical programs at the Czech Embassy.</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
Arts
Benes
Community Life
Education
Forced labor
Hasalova
Heydrich assassination
marriage
Military service
Obrana naroda
Plana nad Luznici
Political prisoner
Resistance
Svatoborice
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/36242e847c84a04bba6d37892e35fc58.jpg?Expires=1712793600&Signature=Oy8LQlzrSMGTtfasVNnkw-pKBrmWW3bBCS5VRdJ-E4wvfvXYmCHzwOyGLCtLtZkEkcO3IzztUAFSwc2JYT-GfJbjrL1E5PKA37zuzYNujhOk1CVhoIqO%7Ew-yMxpzkewuZTE3Z5xaDZaQ8-7pG31i5orFMLGeFoxIE35OiKXQb-W6fX3gnHBlsf4uW-xGEREu9fLC7R7xcmbi4PwjN5Ci1FdMKRv9-NBqJuxGfjfqLTd03WgxkjwqX06dp2Huihn3FgEZSPfuENlaIN5oWJVR6674-GrncGvbQ5gOq9Vr4xtR1pPK1XOVS6dUB-7ImG6E24KpuKeDQNNjtz3dvsOARg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
d3f422c5472f9515aa48521cf0ae1eef
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/e7974e7d0f5d50380ea9bd3118e716da.jpg?Expires=1712793600&Signature=UNImtn6ly8QBFTFQImVqhMytWfFLaIlVV8rypiswA2wGL%7EKG-Fx0T%7ESBsqaHGg13uk84flnmreZz3CN9yNxB%7EJk7bEKMFIpfQRWTrVJAKIhCg6FhuPir9Z5zG2VPO1-7qBNRegc8zbjCfhzt29EHPpmWDfYups6IDL4pFKyPt3seHRvCCCptQuetrOn70tDgTdcNfpK3WoAqdYckAOoFctBwi7LH2B60JIFHkByGb-q-EpHaAsSLKs1X27A6x0Luo276ykqqOZQWYB4lEhdWEE91C25Oi6BCTmNE9U9dmd3wMN1MylsD%7E2XQ3XmJIjsqBNKTxIOSQK4nruVq8s77qw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
a07a1a7a92defc796a9f523c87179394
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/dc7c7ae8702a958fc456b5bc261c3278.jpg?Expires=1712793600&Signature=j7XKvRCG4Z4%7Ee6axTyxu5EfAXYC0MRXxEQbjvsd7AcpFN7yy9gxu9kB2BL6gEe0F0MGJHQA%7EfUCau3OrOCnaK6JoIOTK%7EXTJZIoYIMInigJI40BKunJbi423s4ASkT2oG2BsxaoIng6R5WJKkgpIIkqZVbOneUuie4-bRwDiL7ihG41n9VIVkeZeVhcgURULA1j46hQXfTRTqnHbfsZGpP6M0uGtH%7EN4aYD113SnudyOKv3jUANxd2HQtaqk1CdusNbczROJYGTiXF5Y6mHXdqYYWsoZhFrjPWTJK2P9L7Cb7eqcjUFlMc0sjcWLC8ELMfNGJdNA5HArd46CIDz6dQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
cde9364c61b409f6528b494cba99dbfb
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/e94728d548e3ba0fbabf732f1114ba94.jpg?Expires=1712793600&Signature=dWi65o83Om2KTIfnOdjqXZRVki-Qqrq2LtXflLiapgxQGu6EoUiMY-Tfd3VxKLDtCqpKPOAqflNzjZxDqOy9if4uloCVEBZjwbEF8hoOzbsQKyi0AFX%7EFuPn7YhfIWCvdYoN4Rm2uTxXGr6j06k4THAiPEh9PBKv5PaH9neJ6R1a93MTLbxtqgV-I5-1r-hYG73IHerb-m1FTpeQuYJAOuuOwMlJgertcb7PHsafpdISQnj%7EbLQyogXhsDy5aZFxoFH%7EUxFVMq-6QWmIjhutzyw1NPsW-jSXSha7a7NRp84dazmtSTIbHLN3fC4f59q%7EhSC7YdFfYRM6K8TuY1PURA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
d1805ab3ff30b4bfbf3566e21df48e3d
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>Horse Cart</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/EZropicbPkU?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“In those days, even though cars were already in existence and trucks, we did not use them. We used just horses to pull the wagons with flour. We went as far as Mladá Boleslav, I don’t remember how many kilometers it was, but we had to go to Mnichovo hradiště – that was seven kilometers – and then normally you would take a train. So I don’t know, it must have been about three hours, I would say. So, we would go as far as that, but we had one person who was handling the horse and he had a sort of system whereby, at every village, his wagon would stop in front of a pub and he would go to get a beer. I remember this. I was quite young then, but it was sort of curious.”</p><p><em>And you would go along as well?</em></p><p>“Oh yeah. I was frequently… not frequently, but sometimes I went along. It was just interesting, you know? At the time when I didn’t go to school, obviously, in summer time. It was an interesting experience.”</p><h4>Illegal Food</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/c3RAyJwH76I?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Under the Nazi era, I think the farmers in a way, I would say quite often illegally, supported people in the cities. And I know that for instance in our mill, my father had a reputation that he would give flour to even people that he did not know that came from Prague. And he would give them, as I recall – I remember even the number – five kilos of flour, which was at that time quite sizable for the period. Because otherwise you had to purchase four using tickets – you had special tickets. But my father made this flour available to them for good prices. He didn’t ever overcharge them. And I did not know about this, I learned only about it in the last maybe 30 years. When I established some contact [with the Czech Republic] people started coming to me and saying ‘I remember your father from WWII, this is what he did.’ So, I know that this was not unique, because people in the countryside were very helpful.”</p><h4>Escape</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/8viCQjPK0JQ?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I was not doing it on my own, but somebody was helping. I did not even know the person, nothing, because we called him ‘mister engineer,’ and I don’t know what he was.”</p><p><em>Was he a colleague of your father?</em></p><p>“Yeah, he was a friend of him. Anyhow, then there were problems of some sort, and he was supposed to take me over the border, and he didn’t. At the last minute he sent me on my own. And I was in the middle of nowhere. I ended up – he just pointed me in one direction, and I ended up in a house which was still on the Czech side. And they called the police and whatever else, so I ended up in jail where I was actually, according to the Czech laws, I was quite young. I was below the age or whatever. I was never tried, I don’t know how many months they kept me there. And then they let me go because of my age, because the newly-elected president, Gottwald, issued an amnesty for young people. And I sort of fell under that category and they released me. And fortunately at the time… prior to that I was going to gymnázium, and fortunately, the gymnázium let me come back, although, for a price as I found out later. I received for my effort to escape; they gave me a so-called dvojka z mravů, which meant, in Czechoslovakia you got a grade for behavior, either good behavior or bad behavior. And so for good behavior you got one, and for bad behavior you got two. So I got two; I got dvojka z mravů. And that was pretty bad, you know, to have dvojka z mravů, that didn’t look good on your record. But nevertheless, I have a feeling that maybe this was some kind of a compromise some of my professor friends were able to do so that I could get back. This was maybe one way of doing it – they gave me a dvojka z mravů and I was able to come back.”</p><h4>6 yrs in Prison</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/uYNfKs479no?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I made efforts lately to clear her name. And I went through the process, [sent the request to] the Ministry of Justice or whatever it was called, and they wrote me an official letter telling me that according to then-existing laws, she committed a crime. According to then-existing laws. So they still, unfortunately, recognize communist laws today. To date, I have not been able to clear her name. It is incredible. And, I mean, she is not the only one. There are many people who are in the same category, for instance, let’s say people that crossed the border and didn’t go to the armed services. That was considered a crime. This still, on their books, is considered a criminal offense. Even these people could not clear their name, because according to the laws that existed at that time, this was a criminal act. So, this is one bitter thing I have against even the current Czech Republic – they cannot rid themselves of the past and get rid of these communist laws. It is incredible to me, absolutely incredible to me.”</p><h4>State Dept.</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/MgeOOMdrNYc?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I was hired initially as a senior nutrition adviser. And then I was there a few months and they said ‘Well’… They offered me a job to be the chief of a research division which, in a way, had responsibility for handling and the research sponsored by AID in various developing countries in different fields. And eventually from this job I was elevated up to a director of whatever else. And my job had a number of facets, because we were responsible for not only research but we were also responsible for supporting institutional grants to various universities in a given field in our area. And this covered a number of fields, and interestingly, my background was very helpful to me in as much as I was involved in agriculture initially, and in the medical field at NIH. That gave me a fantastic background, because AID was supporting projects in agriculture; they were supporting projects in medicine and health, and of course they were supporting projects in education.”</p><h4>SVU in D.C.</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/vBZkcL5Y3qw?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“After I came to Washington I became… They established a Washington chapter at that time. And they made Dr, Feierabend, whom you probably know, Ladislav Feierabend, became the chairman of the local chapter. And I was elected the secretary of the chapter. So that was my first entrance into the society, which eventually grew into more and more responsible positions. And I was, from the very beginning, I was in constant contact with Dr. Nemec, Dr. Jaroslav Nemec, who worked for the National Library of Medicine, which in the meantime was transferred to NIH, and I worked at NIH, so we used to meet quite regularly for lunch. I don’t know, once a week or whatever, we met for lunch. So we talked and talked and talked. So, in the process I obviously learned quite a bit about it. And I had some ideas of my own. And eventually, I guess, it must have been within two years, I came up with the idea of the society holding these conferences, which we then renamed congresses. So actually, originally, it was my idea. And I sold Dr. Nemec about it, and he sold others, and we indeed proceeded and had the first congress. The first congress – I ended up being the person who was responsible for the program. So I prepared the program for the first congress, and I ended up being responsible for the second congress, and so I was the one who was inviting all of these people and the first congress was quite decisive. It was an important milestone because it, in some ways, put the society on the map, because then people took it more seriously and then… In the first congress I know we had 60 speakers, which was unheard of at the time. And these people came from different universities or whatever. And again, my contribution at the time was an insistence upon English. I said it has to be in English, because until that time it was all in Czech.”</p><h4>SVU Founded</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/AAmknUA8CaE?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Many people don’t realize why the SVU actually started and under what conditions. The reason was that at the time, there were lots of political disputes in the Czechoslovak community. And there were numerous organizations and clubs. And the politicians, if they belonged to one particular group; they wouldn’t talk to politicians in another group. They just wouldn’t talk to each other. And it was sometimes quite nasty, you might say. And at this time, the situation in Czechoslovakia was going from bad to worse. So this was the time when the intellectuals of Czech or Slovak descent and Czech or Slovak intellectuals decided ‘Enough! Let’s focus on something positive which unites us instead of dividing us!’ That was the society. We created a society where anybody can talk who wishes and explore different issues and what have you. And from the very beginning, it was meant to be a non-political organization.”</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
Mila Rechcigl
Description
An account of the resource
<p> </p><p>Mila Rechcigl was born in Mladá Boleslav in 1930. His father (also named Miloslav) was a miller who became the youngest member of parliament in Czechoslovakia when he was elected as a representative of the Agrarian Party in 1935. Mila was raised in and around the family mill in Chocnějovice and remembers traveling by horse and cart to nearby Mladá Boleslav in order to sell flour in town. During WWII, Mila says his father was unable to continue his political work, but became president of the Czech Millers Association and was active in the resistance group Obrana národa [Defense of the Nation]. Mila himself remembers people traveling to the mill from Prague to buy flour there on the black market.</p><p> </p><p>Between 1945 and 1948, a period which he refers to as a time of ‘illusionary democracy,’ Mila attended <em>gymnázium</em> in Mladá Boleslav. Following the Communist coup in 1948, his father escaped Czechoslovakia when a warrant was issued for his arrest. Mila also tried to leave the country, but was caught at the border and jailed for a number of months. Mila says he was released as there was an amnesty announced which affected those legally considered to be minors, and he was allowed to return to <em>gymnázium</em>, though he received a <em>dvojka z mravů</em> – a poor grade for personal conduct. In 1949, Mila tried again to leave Czechoslovakia and this time succeeded. He was reunited with his father at Ludwigsburg refugee camp in West Germany, where he stayed until February 1950. Mila says he never saw his mother, Marie, again. In the late 1950s, she was imprisoned for taking grain from the Rechcigl mill (which had been nationalized) and feeding it to her chickens. She received a prison sentence of ten years, though was released after six. Mila came to New York City with his father in 1950. The pair’s first job was at a small jewelry factory, making earrings and bracelets using Czech glass beads. After a couple of years, Mila’s father started working for Radio Free Europe in the city, while Mila himself received a Free Europe scholarship to attend Cornell University. He gained his BS, MNS, and PhD degrees there, specializing in biochemistry, nutrition, physiology and food science.</p><p> </p><p>Mila worked for the National Institute of Health, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and then the State Department, where he became chief of the Research and Institutional Grants division. His involvement with the Czechoslovak Society of Arts & Sciences (SVU) dates back to 1960 when he became the secretary of the society’s Washington, D.C. chapter. He was president of the international organization between 1974 and 1978 and again between 1994 and 2006. One of his proudest achievements was the establishment of the biannual SVU World Congress, which began in Washington, D.C. in 1962 and continues to this day. Today, Mila lives with his wife of 58 years, Eva, in Rockville, Maryland.</p><p><a href="/web/20170609150111/http://www.ncsml.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/e-Rechcigl_Final.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Full transcript of Mila Rechcigl’s interview</a></p><p><a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20170609150111/http://www.authorhouse.com/Bookstore/BookDetail.aspx?BookId=SKU-000419564" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">A link to Mila’s personal memoir ‘Czechmate: From Bohemian Paradise to American Haven’</a></p><p><a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20170609150111/http://www.rozhlas.cz/svobodne/kdobylkdo/_zprava/miloslav-rechcigl-1904-1973--866956" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">A profile of Mila’s father Miloslav (in Czech)</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 emigrant/refugee
Arrest
Chocnejovice
Community leadership
Community Life
Education
gymnazium
Journalism
Mlada Boleslav
Mnichovo hradiste
Obrana naroda
Political prisoner
Resistance
Rural life