Alex Vesely
<p>Alex Vesely was born in Příbram, central Bohemia in 1966. His father was a foreman in a mine and his mother worked an office job. He remembers having a happy childhood, with his grandparents visiting often and spending vacations in a houseboat on the Vltava River. Alex and his brother and sister grew up in an apartment in town, but later moved to a house that his father had built a few miles away in the country. He attended trade school where he studied electronics, but left for the United States before finishing his studies.</p><p> </p><p>In 1983, Alex’s mother decided to emigrate with her children and second husband. They escaped while on vacation in Yugoslavia and stayed in a refugee camp in Belgrade for several months before flying to the United States. Alex’s family arrived in Chicago in November 1983, having chosen that city because their sponsors, Alex’s stepfather’s parents, lived there. They were met at the airport by Judy Baar Topinka, a local politician of Czech and Slovak heritage, and settled in Riverside, Illinois. Alex completed his schooling in Chicago, where he took English classes; his new friends also helped him to master the language. He returned to Czechoslovakia for the first time at the end of 1989 – right after the fall of communism. Alex says at this time, the country was in a state of confusion and transition because the situation was still ‘very fresh.’</p><p> </p><p>Alex has been a waiter at Klas, a traditional Czech restaurant in Cicero, Illinois, and also worked a series of technical jobs in heating and cooling. He currently works in construction and, as a sculptor, has participated in some art shows with other Czech and Slovak artists. His pieces are sculpted from materials such as wood, granite, and fiber optics. Alex says he tries to visit the Czech Republic at least once a year, where his daughter lives. He currently lives in Chicago.</p>
National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library
NCSML Archive
Alice Vedral
<p>Alice Vedral was born near Prague in 1928. Her father, who was Ukrainian, had moved to Czechoslovakia when Ukraine became part of the Soviet Union. Wen she was two, Alice’s father died, and she and her mother went to live with her grandparents and uncle in Nehvizdy, central Bohemia. In the summer of 1940, Alice’s mother and uncle were arrested by the Gestapo. Her mother spent thirteen months in prison in Leipzig, while her uncle was sentenced to two years in Austria. Alice recalls spending much of her free time assisting her elderly grandparents on their farm during this period. When WWII ended, Alice enrolled in the Akademie obchodní Dr. Edvarda Beneše [Benes Business School] to study accounting; she says that her love of mathematics led her to choose this field of study. While attending school, Alice lived with her mother (who had since remarried) in the Břevnov district of Prague and worked in the shop her mother ran.</p><p> </p><p>Following the Communist coup, Alice says that several of her friends were in contact with the CIA regarding uranium mining in Czechoslovakia; when a few of them were caught taking background files from the university, the authorities began arresting members of her group. In the spring of 1949, Alice received word that she too was in danger of being arrested and decided to leave the country. She crossed the border into Germany with three other people in April 1949. In her attempt to cross the border, Alice says she was assisted by a priest and spent part of the journey in a false-bottomed cart.</p><p> </p><p>Alice arrived in Ludwidsburg refugee camp and, six months later, was reunited with her companion from Prague, <a href="/web/20170612093138/http://www.ncsml.org/exhibits/eda-vedral/">Eda Vedral</a>, whom she married shortly thereafter. While in Ludwigsburg, Alice found a job as a receptionist in the camp’s X-ray office. She gave birth to her first child, also named Alice, in 1950, and moved with her husband to Munich in 1951, when he took a job at Radio Free Europe. Alice describes the family’s journey to the United States as eventful, as she was seven months pregnant, they had to make several stops to repair the plane, and the Vedrals’ baby fell ill. In June 1952, one week after leaving Germany, the family arrived in New York and subsequently settled in Chicago. Alice found a job in a factory making coils for radios, but stopped working when their family expanded. Alice and Eda eventually had eight children. Many of their children, and some grandchildren, speak Czech fluently. Alice became involved in the Chicago Czech community and participated in groups such as Czechoslovak Exiles in Chicago and Orel in Exile. She returned to Czechoslovakia for the first time in 1969, and witnessed the Velvet Revolution while on a trip to Prague in 1989. Today, Alice lives in Cicero, Illinois, with her husband, Eda.</p>
National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library
NCSML Archive
Antonin Kratochvil
<p>Antonin Kratochvil was born in Lovosice in northern Bohemia in 1947. His father, Jaroslav, owned a photography studio there, while his mother, Bedřiška, stayed home to raise Antonin and his two older sisters. Following the Communist coup in 1948, Antonin’s father’s business was nationalized and his equipment seized. The family was sent to a cooperative in Vinoř where Antonin’s mother worked in the fields and his father in a factory. In 1953, the family moved to the Karlín neighborhood of Prague. Antonin attended school, which he says consisted of ‘indoctrination’ and ‘lies,’ while his father provided books and literature for Antonin to learn from a different perspective. Antonin often assisted his father with his work as a photographer. He was also interested in sports and tramping. After completing ninth grade, Antonin knew he would not be able to continue to higher education because of his bourgeois background, and he trained as a builder.</p><p> </p><p>In 1967, Antonin secured a passport by signing up for a tour to Egypt with a youth organization. Although he did not go on that trip, he used his passport to travel to Yugoslavia. After an unsuccessful first attempt, Antonin crossed the border to Austria in the fall. He was in Traiskirchen refugee camp for a short time and then went to Sweden where he was assigned to work in a boat yard. He soon started his own business dealing in the black market and spent six months in jail in Sweden before returning to Traiskirchen. He next made his way to France and then to Amsterdam. He received a scholarship to attend art school and earned a bachelor’s degree in fine art photography. In 1972, Antonin moved to the United States. He settled in California where he worked for the <em>L.A. Times</em> and became the assistant art director for the <em>L.A. Times</em> magazine. He also opened a studio where he shot album covers and publicity photos for musicians. Antonin moved to New York where he focused on photojournalism and earned accolades for his photographs and stories on events such as the 1979 revolution in Iran and the Soviet war in Afghanistan. He also covered the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia for <em>Mother Jones</em>. Antonin has won many awards for his work and has published five books, including <em>Broken Dream: 20 Years of War in Eastern Europe</em>, which documents life under communism. Antonin recently moved back to Prague with his wife.</p>
National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library
NCSML Archive
Barbara Skypala
<p>Barbara Skypala was born in Ružomberok, Slovakia, in 1930. She lived there until the age of eight, when she says the family was expelled from Slovakia due to her father’s Czech nationality. The Pellers spent WWII in Brno, where her father worked as a district attorney and her mother made money embroidering. Barbara says she knew the War was coming to an end thanks to the BBC and because ethnic Germans started to leave town before Soviet troops arrived. She remembers stray animals on the street at that time and says her family came to inherit a canary when it flew in through their window and into an open cage they had hanging in the house. The Peller family left Czechoslovakia in April 1948 when a warrant was issued for Barbara’s father’s arrest. They took a bus to Znojmo and crossed the border into Austria, where Barbara says her family was ‘smuggled’ into the American zone with false papers provided by locals. She spent time in St. Johann im Pongau refugee camp near Salzburg before being sent to boarding school in Switzerland with her sister, which she says she disliked, as she was used to much more ‘emancipation.’ Barbara came to America in the fall of 1949.</p><p> </p><p>Upon arrival in the United States, Barbara attended classes at St. Teresa’s College in Kansas, while her family settled in St. Paul, Minnesota. In 1950, she gained a scholarship to study at the University of Kansas. She moved to St. Paul upon the death of her father some two years later, and started taking classes at the University of Minnesota in the evenings after work. After a short stint in New York City (where she met her husband Vaclav Skypala), Barbara moved to Chicago with her family in 1953. Her first job in the city was as an administrative assistant at the Container Cooperation of America. In Chicago, Barbara and Vaclav raised two children, Christine and Madeleine. Barbara gained a master’s degree in theology and began to work with the Archdiocese of Chicago, specializing in religious education. Now widowed, Barbara lives in Elmwood Park, Illinois. She enjoys traveling to Europe and has recently visited Tibet and China, but she says that Elmwood Park is now her home.</p>
National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library
NCSML Archive
Bohuslav Rychlik
<p> </p><p>Bohuslav Rychlik was born in Krnov, Moravia, in 1950. His parents, Bohuslav and Františka, had moved to Krnov after WWII, because their home in Pustiměř had been destroyed by Americans who were bombing a nearby airport. Under the communist regime, Bob’s father lost his job as a senior office clerk and began working as a laborer, while his mother stayed home and raised Bob and his two sisters. Bob’s father, who died when he was 10, was a keen musician who played piano and violin and passed his talents on to his children. Bob was taught piano first by his sister and later in music school, and taught himself to play the guitar. Although he was fond of filmmaking, Bob says that he had ‘no chance’ to pursue this interest, and that he went to a technical high school in Rožnov pod Radhoštěm to prepare for a career in electronics. After high school, Bob says he decided not to attend university, as he did not want his mother to sacrifice anymore for his education. He got a job at the TESLA factory in Rožnov where he held several different positions before leaving the country.</p><p> </p><p>In August 1983, Bob and his wife, <a href="/web/20170710094829/http://www.ncsml.org/exhibits/vilma-rychlik/">Vilma</a>, decided to leave Czechoslovakia with their two young sons when they had the opportunity to vacation in Split, Yugoslavia. While there, Bob tried to buy tickets for a day trip to Italy, but says he was denied because his passport was valid only for Yugoslavia. They traveled to Belgrade where they learned about the UN High Commissioner for Refugees office. After an interview and a 6-week wait, Bob and his family were given papers allowing them to leave Yugoslavia and enter Austria. They spent about seven months in refugee camps in Traiskirchen and Ramsau before receiving permission to move to the United States. Bob and his family arrived in Baltimore, Maryland, on May 17, 1984. Having learned English at school, Bob says he was able to find work fairly quickly, while his wife took English classes at a community college. The Rychliks became American citizens in the spring of 1990.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Bob says that he is very proud of his sons, who were both valedictorians at Baltimore Polytechnic Institute and earned full scholarships to college. He continues to play music, and more recently has focused on the <em>fujara</em>, a large, flutelike, traditional Slovak instrument. Bob engineered the first <em>fujara</em> workshop in the United States, which he held at his home, and included participants from several different countries. He frequently performs around the Washington, D.C. area and, in 2010, Bob presented a lecture at the Library of Congress for the American Musical Instrumental Society. He has returned to the Czech Republic several times and currently lives in Mount Airy, Maryland, with his wife, Vilma.</p><p><a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20170710094829/http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Y5fonktBzQ" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Bob’s lecture on the fujara at the Library of Congress, 2010</a></p>
National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library
NCSML Archive
Bruno Necasek
<p>Bruno Necasek was born in Semily, northern Bohemia, in July 1932. Both of his parents, Marie and Karel, worked as laborers in textile factories in the region. His parents got divorced when Bruno was still very young, and he was assigned to his father’s care, which he says was somewhat unusual at that period. During WWII, Bruno’s father left home to work in Vrchlabí, and so his paternal grandmother took charge of raising him and ‘making ends meet.’ Growing up, Bruno says his home had no electricity, and he remembers completing his homework by carbide lamp-light and making battery-powered radios to listen to at home. In 1949, Bruno moved to Liberec to study at the town’s textile school, where he says he got into trouble for hanging pictures of former Presidents Masaryk and Beneš on his dorm room wall. Upon graduation two years later, he began working as a statistician in a cotton mill, where, among other duties, he was involved in working on the mill’s five year plan. He emigrated in October 1951 when his supervisor at work warned him that, on account of his ‘political unreliability,’ he may be sent to a mine should his employers find someone else to fill his position.</p><p> </p><p>Bruno crossed into Germany with two friends near Klenčí pod Čerchovem, western Bohemia, on October 20, 1951. His group was escorted by German police to the town of Cham, where they spent several nights in prison. Bruno and his friends were subsequently sent to Straubing for five days and then on to Valka Lager refugee camp near Nuremburg. Bruno remembers the bedbugs in particular at Valka Lager camp and says of the whole experience: ‘You have no idea how bad that was.’ After almost immigrating to Brazil in 1952, Bruno decided to join the U.S. Army. He served between 1952 and 1957, completing basic training at Fort Eustis, Virginia, and then traveling to Austria, where he was stationed as a member of the 516th Signal Company. Upon discharge from the Army in 1957, Bruno settled in Cleveland, where he knew some people from his time in German refugee camps. He became an American citizen the following year. Bruno met his future wife <a href="/web/20170808010802/http://www.ncsml.org/exhibits/zdenka-necasek/">Zdenka Necasek</a> on a trip to Czechoslovakia to see his family in 1972. The pair spent a couple of weeks together before deciding they would marry and that Zdenka would come to live in Cleveland. Preparations for their wedding were complicated when Zdenka was refused an exit visa to visit Bruno in the United States, and Bruno was repeatedly refused permission to enter Czechoslovakia. In the end, the process took four years and the pair were married by proxy, with Zdenka’s lawyer standing in for Bruno at the wedding service. Today, Bruno and Zdenka have two children, who both speak Czech. Bruno is now retired from a career in telecommunications and lives with Zdenka in Seven Hills, Ohio.</p>
National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library
NCSML Archive
Charles Heller
<p>Charles Heller was born in Prague in 1936. His father, Rudolph, was the owner of a clothing manufacturing firm in Kojetice near Prague, which had been started by Charles’ great-grandfather on his mother’s side, Gustav Neumann. Charles’ mother, Ilona, had been born in Vienna and raised in Kojetice – a devout Catholic in what was otherwise a Jewish family. Charles also attended Catholic church in his youth.</p><p> </p><p>With the outbreak of WWII, the clothing factory was seized by the Nazis and handed to an ethnic German called Hollmann. Charles’ great-grandfather Gustav was sent to Terezín and later, it is thought, to Treblinka camp in Poland, from which he did not return. Charles’ father Rudolph, who was also Jewish, fled Czechoslovakia in 1940 and made it to Palestine, where he joined the British Army, and eventually fought as part of the British Army’s Czechoslovak Division. In 1944, Charles’ mother was taken away to a forced labor camp for wives of Jewish men and Charles himself went into hiding. He spent the rest of the War hiding in a closet in a farm belonging to the Tůma family not far from Kojetice. Charles says he was told that this was because his father was fighting the Nazis; it was only as an adult that he was told it was because he was three-quarters Jewish. Charles was reunited with his mother and father in the summer of 1945; he says, however, 15 other members of his family did not return.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>The Heller family moved to Prague shortly after the War so that Charles could attend school in the capital. In 1948, the clothing factory the family owned in Kojetice was nationalized and one floor of their apartment building they owned in Prague was turned into the local Communist Party headquarters. The family decided to leave and planned their escape to coincide with the funeral of Jan Masaryk, held in the capital in March 1948. They crossed the border by foot at night into the American zone of Germany near Rossbach (a town in West Bohemia today known as Hranice). Charles and his family spent one year and a half in refugee camps in Germany (including Schwabach and Ludwigsburg) before coming to America in May 1949. They settled in Morristown, New Jersey, and Charles’ father again got involved in the clothing business, starting as a pattern cutter and rising to a top management position at McGregor Sportswear. Charles attended Morristown High School and then Oklahoma State University on a basketball scholarship. An engineer by profession, Charles moved to Maryland to work for Bell Labs in the 1960s and has remained in the ‘Old Line State’ ever since. In recent years he has become involved in venture capitalism and conducts seminars for new managers, both in the Czech Republic and the United States. Charles published a book of his memoirs recently, and he lives in Arnold, Maryland, with his wife Sue.</p><p>Related Items:</p>
National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library
NCSML Archive
Dagmar Benedik
<p>Dagmar Benedik was born in Kladno, Central Bohemia, in 1952. Her mother, Jarmila, taught at an after-school program and her father, Jiří, was a hockey coach. Dagmar recalls her childhood in Kladno as ‘fantastic.’ She says that many of her friends played on her father’s hockey team and she enjoyed traveling to Prague each week for French lessons and swimming practice and competitions. In the summer of 1968, Dagmar’s family planned to travel to Germany where her younger sister, Zuzana, was going to spend a few weeks with a family studying German. Because of a delay in processing, they received visas just a few days prior to the Warsaw Pact invasion on August 21, and Dagmar says her father made the decision to leave Czechoslovakia for good immediately following the invasion. Dagmar’s family drove toward the border at Rozvadov; because they entered the town through a local route instead of the main road from Plzeň, they avoided the barricade that had been set up to prevent travelers from crossing the border. Once across the border, they stayed with Dagmar’s sister’s host family for two weeks before spending six more weeks at Karlsruhe refugee camp.</p><p> </p><p><img class="alignright wp-image-2609" src="http://web.archive.org/web/20170609053007im_/http://ncsml.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/dagmar-dad.png" alt="" width="250" height="371" /></p><p>In October 1968, Dagmar moved with her family to Toronto. She says that her parents chose to immigrate to Canada because it was a neutral country. Her mother started working as a housekeeper and nanny, and her father found employment as a watch-maker – a trade he had learned in Kladno. Dagmar attended high school and took English lessons in the mornings before school. She continued to swim and, in 1969, won the Toronto Championships. After graduating from high school, Dagmar began working at a bank and married her first husband, Josef Benedík, who was also a Czech émigré. In the late 1970s, then divorced, Dagmar traveled around the United States and says she ‘fell in love’ with the country. In 1986, she had a business opportunity there and moved to Tampa, Florida. She received American citizenship when she married her second husband. In 1995, Dagmar went to Prague with the intention of working as a translator for one month; she stayed in the Czech Republic for six years, where she ran her own business and then worked for Strojexport and Adamovské strojírny.</p><p> </p><p><img class="alignleft wp-image-2610" src="http://web.archive.org/web/20170609053007im_/http://ncsml.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Handler-53.jpg" alt="Handler-5" width="400" height="254" /></p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Dagmar says that she continues to keep Czech traditions at home and has learned several Czech crafts. She refers to herself as a ‘citizen of the world’ and exercises her voting rights in the countries of her citizenship. Today, Dagmar lives in Richmond Hill near Toronto, but is planning on moving back to Tampa, which she considers home.</p><p> </p>
National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library
NCSML Archive
Dagmar Kostal
<p>Dagmar Kostal was born in Klatovy (in southwestern Bohemia) in 1925 and grew up in nearby Sušice. Her parents, Karel and Marie, owned a bakery in town. Dagmar attended elementary school in Sušice, but after fifth grade was sent to a school in Hartmanice, a town close to the German border. When the Munich Agreement was signed in September 1938 and Hartmanice (as part of the Sudetenland) was annexed to Germany, Dagmar returned home and finished her schooling there. She then went to school in Písek to learn the baking trade. Following the War, Dagmar apprenticed in Prague, where she also took English classes at Charles University. In 1946, Dagmar continued her training in Basel, Switzerland. When this was complete, she found a job in a pastry shop in Neuchatel where she met and befriended other Czechs. She says that her father urged her to stay abroad, as he was anticipating a communist takeover. When the coup occurred in February 1948, Dagmar knew that she would not be able to return to Czechoslovakia and turned to the International Refugee Organization (IRO). The IRO helped her immigrate to Australia in 1949 where she, after a 38-day boat trip, arrived in Melbourne.</p><p> </p><p>Dagmar stayed at Bonegilla refugee camp for one month – a time that she calls ‘a beautiful vacation.’ She found a job at a bakery and took a room in a house with her fellow Czech émigrés. In 1950, Dagmar married Miroslav Kostal. The pair bought their own pastry shop in a suburb of Melbourne and, shortly after, had their first son, Michael. Eight years later, the Kostals moved to the United States with the idea of going into business with Miroslav’s uncle. In 1959, they sailed to San Francisco and drove to New York while stopping at landmarks throughout the country. After a short time in New York and New Jersey, Dagmar and her family moved to the Chicago suburb of Berwyn where they had friends and had enjoyed the large Czech community while passing through. Dagmar and Miroslav again bought a pastry shop which they owned and operated for a number of years. They were active in the Chicago Czech community. Dagmar says that the family spoke Czech at home and both her sons (their younger son Martin was born in the United States) went to Czech school. Dagmar is a dual citizen of the United States and the Czech Republic and says that despite more than 50 years in the United States, her ‘heart is completely Czech.</p>
National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library
NCSML Archive
Duke Dellin
<p>Edward (Duke) Dellin was born in Prague in 1940. His father, Eduard, had studied agricultural engineering and, after a time spent at the helm of the Sugar Beet Growers’ Association, became involved in politics as the Secretary of the Czechoslovak Agrarian Party. Duke lived with his parents and older sister Jane in Prague’s Nové Město (New Town) until he was eight years old, attending a French-language school run by nuns in the center of the city. Following the Communist coup in 1948, a warrant was issued for Duke’s father’s arrest, leading Eduard Dellin to flee Czechoslovakia for Paris, where he joined a number of other former Czechoslovak politicians. Duke says that his mother, Marie, was not sure at first what she should do and, in a bid to curb mounting pressure placed on the family by the authorities, took the first steps towards divorcing Duke’s father. After a short while, however, she was approached by a number of Western agents, says Duke, who gave her instructions on how to get out of Czechoslovakia with her two children. In July 1948, Duke arrived in Regensburg, West Germany with his mother and sister. They remained there for one week before being transferred to Ludwigsburg refugee camp. There, Duke’s father joined the family and the Dellins applied to come to the United States.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p><img class="alignright wp-image-2723" src="http://web.archive.org/web/20170609072243im_/http://ncsml.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Handler-47.jpg" alt="Handler-4" width="310" height="450" />Duke and his family arrived in Chicago in July 1949. They had been sponsored by some of Duke’s mother’s relatives, who had settled in the United States before WWI and owned a Czech bakery in Berwyn. Duke says that the family stayed in Berwyn for less than a month, with his mother and father quickly deciding to take jobs as a maid and a gardener in one household in Winnetka, just north of Chicago. There Duke began his schooling at Hubbard Woods School. He gained his degree at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, and was in the middle of studying at DePaul Law School when a friend told him about the work he was doing in the investment banking sector. Duke was impressed and applied for a job at Hornblower & Weeks, which he got. He has worked in the industry since and is now partner at William Blair & Company, which is based in downtown Chicago. Duke says he is ‘incredibly proud’ of his Czech background. Today, he is active as chairman of the Chicago Prague Sister Cities Committee. He is also on the Czech-North American Chamber of Commerce’s board of directors.</p>
National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library
NCSML Archive