1
10
46
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/330f15fb38e3d1fd206c6846cfc0c5ef.jpg?Expires=1712793600&Signature=dKAuoLpTf-ZPdBnUxNsynxk5eiikk1EoRfydxUqd282bfdXBICM3-zAVQvL6TaKFGxYP5u-6leB2pIv-47Wy7kGoowDujX3Ka3l7GHoMfkiInRzmG1DYc8FuQkuPl9-dukAch%7EsGlzYvAvTnaO9i9guLo8ptlt9E1WNo4IWJGsqNmqpE3FVrlYlJdBqzrzT3i%7Esw4Izrx5MVlfhX6S48CtttAT4CHarW%7E7UE5fdszuPXYMc99zdd1k9Yak-lf1Z7ZxY5XMsueZ-3X3KBwoxFP-I21UKZ4JFB5r4uYjqZ-OOti-hZTPKexsX7lK7HzRhYiewrg41%7E9uLXaPJK9YiJqw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
b47c29b689d1f63d4a9c304dc2753552
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>Life of a Miner</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/cUOpasPKCNA?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“I guess it was a hard job, but as a foreman, not as hard as the ones that were doing the physical labor. Uranium is a very bad material, so a lot of those guys would get cancer really young. They would make good money. Those dudes, I remember them. They would make so much money, they would make a lot more than some doctors and stuff, but they would die young and they would spend it out, just partying, drinking. I remember that.”</p><h4>Refugee Camp</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/AvfdMFfaCEA?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“There were a lot of Czechs, a lot of Slovaks, a lot of Romanians. The camp wasn’t too bad. We were one of the luckier ones – we had a small cottage. They even had hot showers there. A lot of other people weren’t as lucky. They slept in a tent and had to use public showers which they had there. The food was horrible, I mean horrible. They would make chicken and cabbage every day. I love chicken, but after the camp I couldn’t eat it for a couple years; I couldn’t eat chicken for a few years. I had a good time. I would go to the flea market over there, sell whatever I could sell to get my own spending money. You know, when you’re 17 you need some money.”</p><h4>Return Home?</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/SpgYNxF3NYc?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Back then, yeah I did think about it, but it was different. I was thinking, if I go back now, what’s going to happen to me? I didn’t see anything good happening to me if I would do that. My father wanted me to do that, because he missed me. He missed us all, must have been very hard for him. But I was thinking, if I go back over there, I’d be doomed. I’d be lucky if I got to finish school, the trade school, and then it would just be bad all around. Plus, I would have to go into the army. I would have a scar on my record already, I think it would be pretty difficult. But I did think about it, yes. I did miss my country and my friends.”</p><h4>1st Return</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/puZTRJ6tuFs?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“My first trip [back] to Czechoslovakia was in 1989 and I stayed there for New Years in 1990, so it was very fresh what just happened there. And I still had to go through that stuff. I had to register at the police station, I had to exchange a certain amount of money every day as an American tourist. Although it wasn’t communist any more, it was still the old rules over there. There was a lot of confusion there I guess. What I remember though, with a few dollars in my pocket I was like a king over there. It’s not like that anymore, but you could get a lot back then. It was amazing, it was really was. You could treat like 10 people for 20 dollars. They all got fed and they could drink, and it would cost you nothing.”</p><h4>Cicero Changes</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/JLpKHPMkE00?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“The whole neighborhood changed. It used to be all Czech over here. I remember we’d drive down Cermak Avenue and there would be Czech butcher shops, a bakery, other restaurants, Czech bars, even Polish places. And now you drive down Cermak Avenue and pretty much it’s all Spanish. This [Klas Czech Restaurant] is the last Mohican on Cermak Road. I love this place, it’s very unique.”</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
Alex Vesely
Description
An account of the resource
<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>
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
Ales Vesely
Arts
Child emigre
Education
English language
Ethnic diversity
Pribram
Refugee camp
Restaurant/hotel industry
school
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/da5a2dd7a579698aeb84702ecbf0b727.jpg?Expires=1712793600&Signature=kfk-sp0Lt7qoN4DYI3WadXuIFInahfVUPMIELwp%7EfzVDqc17zTJzuIp10exYiNorkuOK73HyXSdOB7a5MZAINHWkNxHPrPhvrlE96sXNqUWkhAo4LvWNPxqbiv4sFonFQ398gfDDo1BuQo674%7EQFMWhq79l6GvAc-AMUCEef4CHez1-m2c3wdXVK6R489cHnbeCCe77CXu-nxjAMrXTemYdzJkE37k6Pard%7EETY%7EldhP-fULd6j2tzA4kj2g50gIxkH8IP8MmVwlU7tcXqQDp1dAzIbM8SrILW8sW63RSIJ33DySb1-iI60VE2OVOjAvcngSoWnKT3Uf3o1HilAwnQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
2f0005168c865bd8e4a36c5c005b7dce
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>Rural Childhood</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/XsTipWLzw4E?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“When my father died, we moved back to my grandmother and grandfather’s and my uncle was over there, and they had a farm. But in Czech Republic, it’s not like here. There’s a village, and the fields are someplace else. Over here you have a house and everything is around it, but over there, you have the village and everything was outside.”</p><h4>Detained by Gestapo</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/5sOM_nqzu3E?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Two weeks later, the Gestapo came and picked up my mother. I was 11, 11 and a half, and I was with my grandfather and grandmother [who were] around 70. My grandfather was 70, my grandmother was 69. I was with them and I was going to school four kilometers away, everyday to school. When it was too much for my grandfather, I had to help. I was doing work that was a man’s doing, because my grandfather wasn’t able.”</p><p><em>So why did the Gestapo claim to come for your uncle and for your mother?</em></p><p>“Because they were listening to the radio from England. Then they sent them to Prague to Pankrác and my mother got thirteen months for that and my uncle got two years. And then they sent my mother to Leipzig in Germany and they sent my uncle to [Austria]. My mother came home and she was so hungry that my grandmother cooked two pounds of beef and she ate everything. She was so hungry; and before they let my uncle out, we had to pay for his food and everything. To the Germans we had to pay for it before they let him out.”</p><h4>Germany to U.S.</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/YiD7rGGQXUw?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“When we left Germany, we went on an old airplane – Flying Tiger Lines. It wasn’t alright; they had to repair it. I was seven months pregnant, and Alice was one and a half years old. We were waiting the whole day; the whole airplane was people with children, small children. And then we came to Shannon [Ireland]. They put us in some hotel, a small one, and they said that they have to repair the airplane again. They were repairing the airplane and we stayed overnight there. The next day, they said we will go. We went on the plane and the pilot came back and he said that the plane is still not alright, so they repaired it again.</p><p>“And then we went to Newfoundland. She [Alice] got strep throat and they had to call the doctor, and he brought somebody who started speaking French to me. I said ‘If you can speak English, or if you can speak Russian, or German, that’s ok, but I don’t know any French,’ and the doctor said ‘Oh my gosh, I speak English, but I thought that you don’t speak English.’ Then he gave her some medicine, and we had to stay over there for two days because it was Saturday, and in America Saturday and Sunday are holidays, so we came on Monday. It took us one week to fly to America.”</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
Alice Vedral
Description
An account of the resource
<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>
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
Akademie obchodni Dr. Edvarda Benese
Arrest
Community Life
Education
marriage
Refugee camp
Rural life
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/75bf83ac4ca9adc0ec8612edeca9e27b.jpg?Expires=1712793600&Signature=qzh8kA3zQiqfmx8eBFqAGsuGjxxfYAVDGFn%7EeAtXpGBP3WT0GXZEG8dO028gwdB34Adhkn%7Ey7e4RTzy9bZCpwcvZoo0IgSm8W1%7Eqvua1HWzTIRjrQ4uIJjJaCBLMNYMqI0bS9bQGqrvYE-hOr86ZMaB7DjG0fkhkfuDrcwZXzAOHbNwg1Md5TXAwejKpjW1-sVJlUgXxJqvcm6-IeQoaztHva7yJI3X-LtXPni6YfcoOnLg1ndsDxED6ctl4s5PP%7Eerqpn1mwkJQ1No9Y74gHI9cHo2sC57IdcTj5KJyTfAi1l8JY-FXPVHOZLJxuyW0SxtLb82sM1PclAMxavdsUA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
b0dbbed7b4f19b67cd509d6f247f49af
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>Killing Rats</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WC7zfxOv-A0?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“They were very big. I was little; that’s why they were even bigger. At night they were very hungry and they used to bite us. There were many more families living in that estate and they had sentries to chase these things away. My dad, before he went to work at the factory, made these steel rods for the kids, and we used to go and kill the rats. Chop them right in the middle. And then we took off the tail and, when the dads came back from work, we showed them the tails, how many we killed. Like cats, they show you the kill, and we were like cats. And our parents were so proud of us when we killed them, because these things were hungry and they used to go through the walls, because the walls were really wet. It was an interesting education. I was a killer of rats as a little kid.”</p><h4>Czech School</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_Enn6lT8pVE?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“It was an indoctrination.”</p><p><em>In what way?<strong><br /></strong></em><br />
“A bunch of lies, which thank God my dad contradicted and gave me some literature so I could find out the truth. So I think the commies were right not letting me proceed with my education because I definitely was a liability, because there was my dad and his version of the truth and then there was this new version of the truth, which was basically a lie, historic lies and blah blah blah. I knew the truth. And I had problems for it, too.”</p><p><em>Can you mention any times that you did get in trouble and what you said that was not appreciated?</em><strong><br /></strong><br />
“I told the class that I knew how Lenin died. It was no good. I said that he died of syphilis, which was true, and nobody knew it here, and it was a big, big problem. The secret police came and investigated where I heard it from. They wanted to pin it on my dad, and I told them I heard it in a pub, guys talking about it. They said ‘What guys?’ I said ‘Well, I don’t know them.’ They asked ‘What time of day’ and ‘When did they go there?’ and I had to lie. And the secret police came with me to the pub and they positioned themselves, and then I was supposed to point these people out. It was a big operation, man; it was no joke. Even for such bulls*** like this, for the truth. So I’m there like an idiot [saying] ‘Hmm, they’re not here.’ They tried twice and then they gave up.”</p><h4>Leaving the Country</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/7d19pOZms8I?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“The first time I didn’t succeed; I was captured, but I had a perfect cover. I found a student ID card, so I changed my name on it, and I was a student of biology on that card, at Charles University. I went through the mountains and I had this literature about the Alps flora, so when I was caught by the soldiers I said ‘Hey man, I’m just collecting materials for my studies and you don’t mark your borders very well.’ I was already in Austria, but I couldn’t make it down the mountains. So they took me down. But they made a mistake; they took me all over, about ten kilometers, and I knew where all the sentries were before they took me down. They knew I was bulls***ing. They said ‘If you ever show your f***ing face here again we’re going to bust you up and send a report to Prague,’ because, when they did that, you were arrested in Prague. But they didn’t do that in this instance because I had an ID card and they were not sure. Three months later, my friend wanted to leave and I said ‘I know how,’ so he paid me to take him across. And we succeeded, because I knew all the sentries.”</p><h4>Return to Czechoslovakia</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_GcGk8Io7Lk?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“For me, the first time I came back was sort of nostalgic, to remember old places, places of my youth. It was more about that, and the Charles Bridge, walking on the Charles Bridge. It was an important journey. I understood how these people who haven’t been here for years and found that they could come in briefly, how could they feel. It was like coming out of prison, and you could walk and there was no guard behind you. It was the same kind of sense I had. It was like somebody unleashed you. You could left, you could go right, without fear. And with my American passport, I felt a little bit more secure.”</p><h4>Return to Prague</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/SbSMfdxLcxM?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“We don’t have the same attitude, the same thoughts. We are different. I left when I was 19; when I came back I was more than 60. I lived most of my life in the West. I was educated in the West. I’m different, and I know I’m different and, since I came here, I even know why I’m different. I don’t have that totalitarian thought and this intolerance towards new things. But I don’t really dwell on it. I don’t let it come to me because I’m enjoying my stay here, because there are a lot of good things as well.”</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
Antonin Kratochvil
Description
An account of the resource
<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>
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
Arts
Refugee camp
school
Vinor
Western/Pop culture
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/3097bade2aaaf9ca719b13a4138326a7.jpg?Expires=1712793600&Signature=lskzWcJ1SYJovUuk1vyGnGGajNY0rIHZWjgiKzKvLMPsMEv8LY7etp-6APyz1K9FY9HWdzaiNTSH6y4t1VvYfGla2zWOfEYw6a4Z9s7CysCOzZPfU8rd0ij3e%7EwHcCiQEjaO4LhdW0IAQDcd%7EOJtSxpa9P%7EnJjfDu2JRoxD5vZT5fHEhO0VdjUIRcQdYHUx6XKNnIGLZFCeaWAR8rzaSrjHYRTxjVa-mlwfPvY6rmBtpdlnXfvA2PT%7E-iPJ98QTza31ZiEsE-oLbYcIt9XVeicUi1fsgmj4VMvGCR5806aOH3IGHqox3--HksjcdDevbpYP8EosmzGdA1hBx9NeWww__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
c4240d8995ad5d5fe40832ebf7ddaa86
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/4049eb6c46c7937d771eb93b5f503d4c.jpg?Expires=1712793600&Signature=Rnf1JclgpOT-0YUqI2IKi8am1IV1HVt313fxPWed7ruNZw7jyvZv05umUkXRcF%7ETMANPs71nWLmXsvLJqHlbRVsE2ytFa19Aryj6cHMEo5urnuRoIRErqzZmSBngZQbQPoUfjQjHfBIY3bxvwLP8EeEmWPwpUE1OC85O-PJkiESZZtqZDnoHPdvipHAscA7JgUUzp8E2IfYCMHDJwpXZQV5uQUQeStP6hr9H-EkyfK3W0KXk-pGGSMCNNMVeRWVXCUNkPKjs%7EYKCxMSYhw8fJ817RJVTqLmFSUB9lPLoxyLB8JV6Epnh9zpirHjhDCwSUAFFdMt9XgN4LpLgWA6eTg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
6351783dbb262e33226db631933cdf18
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>Destructive</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/iHIPu2-Ny_E?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“I am from the pre-communist generation, and there is a huge difference… I feel it even here in the Czech church. We are so different from the ones who were raised under the Communist regime.”</p><p><em>How different?</em></p><p>“Well, it’s different because when we had an enemy; it was someone German speaking in a gray uniform. But with the communists, it could be anybody; your neighbor, your family. You did not have the sense of ‘us’ being in the right. I mean you may have felt it… I really thought it was destructive to the soul of the people. You had to be forever on the watch. It was also that way, I mean, I remember the War very clearly; I was a teenager and I was 15 years old when the War ended, you knew where your safety was. I don’t think the generation that was raised under communism (I mean people my age or a little older who stayed) they did not have that security. They had to learn how to float between all the negatives and all of that.”</p><h4>Teen in WWII</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/v_bu5F_4ITk?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Well, one thing is, we were fairly well sheltered in that we had strong family units. Secondly, I was in a gymnázium, I was in a secondary school. We had brave, imaginative teachers. I did not have history in school, but my mom got history books, and every day I would have to sit by the table and read for an hour, we allowed for that. There was bombing, and the city was burning, and I think there was snow outside. But by golly, on Friday, we went to dancing lessons! There were the gentlemen, and there were the ladies, and you learned how to dance because, we learned that not doing things and giving up would be giving in. And dong things stubbornly… My first formal [ball gown] was cut from three different dresses. We never gave up and I think that was the strength. And even as youngsters, we picked it up.”</p><h4>Amazing Austrians</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/-yie09w9lH0?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“We didn’t have any plan. We needed to leave to save our lives. So when we came, the Austrians hid us in a jail when we crossed because there were agents that would come and kidnap people. In Vienna, my sister and I could not speak to each other in Czech; we spoke German because people were kidnapped. This was the beginning; this was a question of pride for the regime. So, we were brought to Vienna, and there, again, gave us false papers to get into the American zone because we were in the middle of the Russian Zone. They hid us in a jail and they transported us.”</p><h4>Refugee Camp</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/kEllHAD4I_g?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“The first thing when we came to a camp, someone came from the village, said they heard there was a little child. So they took my sister to school. Nobody asked, and they gave her free lunch. It was kind of funny, she came home to the camp and she said “Mom! Guess what! I get a free lunch, I am considered poor!” My mother cried for three days and my sister thought it was just peachy! They only took families. They had the openings so they took us. They were so well organized; Of course they refused to go to Tito, that’s why they remained in exile. They were so well organized, that we had services in Sunday, and they had the army cook who was horrible, but we ate, and we were warm. And someone from the village sent skis to me. We went skiing believe it or not. I mean they were kind of rinky-dink skis, but they were good to us. And of course it was so beautiful. St. Johann is just down the stream and down the valley from where Silent Night was composed. So it’s that kind of a thing. On Christmas, they had the whole orchestra, and you came to church. And there were skis in the snow banks all around.”</p><h4>First Impressions</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/PFboSXjB8h4?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Well the first thing of course was, watching out of the train. And, I come from the Tatras, and around Brno. It was hills and trees, and here I went through this plain. Here and there I would see black people working in the fields. It was different. My family was wonderful, but what I missed most was the age of the buildings. Everything seemed so rinky-dink. Not in a bad sense, just so temporary. The first Sunday, I was loaded into the car, and we went to Independence [Missouri]. And when we came to Independence, we parked the car, and we started walking. And we came to this house, and there was a presidential flag, and an American flag, and one U.S. marine. We walked right up there and nobody stopped us. Here he [Harry S. Truman] was at home. Now that impressed me. You know, being used to castles, and moats, and fences. That impressed me. We went in, and me and Willy, (my father’s friend, Willy and Gilda) took a picture of me with the marine, and nobody stopped us, he just stood there. And then we left, so that was kind of cool. I don’t think that would happen today anymore.”</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
Barbara Skypala
Description
An account of the resource
<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>
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
Asylum
Catholicism
Education
gymnazium
Pellerova
Refugee camp
Religion
Ruzomberok
World War II
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/45ad88b80d06bc0dbde712b3a7eaadac.jpg?Expires=1712793600&Signature=ArMMoM0rOH3bdQVG7GylyKWI-xpi%7EMVqbwSBV%7EC41Nt87QLsQx-kPJTvUh0nh39jopjgqG5HdH4lYPw0IpycjJcwGw0xFX9LsSRxEqmIKGX3m7egMSb2VyefIl6uy4qJVStGdemk6N3BTGGw7c0trvW5qHWrqmBMNRPGhGrsmw8nOzTwh70HICIgpDiCdtRHIpsidKiLesc1qX26cB3-isufmSbx1YPbn-BF9PlyoN4pGP0QXOHPrKC1VmzjVIO9IkXH1prUIBm-3l7vYxBJCs6X4f46C0d2tK%7EtvNMhlTFaTseRx2UGIjdLLbheesYe26h3rZeW9--Xao5IjB-R%7EQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
24ea8f8ff999b653b3ee37dcae7563ee
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/0f69dbd61853d32e986755e39759b1fa.jpg?Expires=1712793600&Signature=eABrNEZ8-Vq7kkct4jJv9QJcYGH7u1PLo3JiUxNq1vzGeu%7Et4Mjpj5Ex%7EN6pASGkgCkny3-883l3cZd9UtKQ2O7cmqOcadgnii4aPf%7EHzSQudtykv8LCNqApfiyyXpnYRQO0gBJE-oQOoluZixNx2l5sOl2v67GJZihafailouHqsbnF1mp3Rj5arOCLBMldyZ5SAGmbD819QpFLj2fdPbh6uoS65UaYZbnJxa7-BWYTFsj-OZ%7EwEpm8dS1yj%7EFr2qv36eaMnruQLtverixm0ocpUkwlSWHVyoVqtP76CtgJ69eUxAbAGZ8imfNqZQj3kf0CN8h9d-UwwzskTP%7EmLw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
b33ad1a6506aef82348315b6966c729f
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/3a9893e61b663db9c2b7b27b0e38ff9f.jpg?Expires=1712793600&Signature=uOo56xjazgUsWiFGPuppQOyogdmjPmwBYf3w0TR2w8KbqVU8c6-E1Mfn-ZgfzQd0H-Dkq3L0fgpduJ3%7EMDS4ZliA7A3%7Edfhowqea3JpeWmuciqzcJySReak05Etl2oB12eYG-HrX8BmtFEEpVcNxjkwabqDCdSxLbcXA2JjnwGMfZphy0VxLdksSsz8YLu1EQzUdlgNub4gRDIWxBRZ6t2rSbCSxRGPpVbaV6V8RGEYeLYIHj1J8BTCwKLIerroszhuTHra%7EqVqiii%7ECBeS8oITKXXr%7EOc0-BATVfCFovinbt2roZslqSg6Ljy3Sdlu-XnpHvkm-Qd0hmvr1f0bmuw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
43f6d40be6ddf64bf23a6e0c30c27ef6
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/16cbd1448b2b6f7f61669544a6b0b34c.jpg?Expires=1712793600&Signature=aWA29PcGrSrrxTggmX1jDCY-AgIyfe4fkDhOMVdpFbOyaVh2lM0ukTQD56qf6xdi6akCrN7dSLuXyMHE5iSKH3uLyO4sk0SnBnToQBKqCWjHBCEn9P1BsTRwv5uoUItiMl3fQQCIIVQ0ADFpKpyT%7EwLHFJODXnjV7eouYc7dUy75lo-bqg6pHEOwTVWv3zsi7n6DUSkoYN0lH9tg6nGTpA5R786faZOozey0F%7EMh-xvCHSrTaI3%7EtEofTtLcc15G0mmd1DRzmly1QA14XwNP5Z3MNzsizoj73Dawuhha-8K0n569tnyYoiHm4U8NDqlix09s3oB88LICY3mr%7EyPRmg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
76935431b8668b0fed6c15a0610e1361
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/2257db0df7d320971dfd53355a8bdd70.jpg?Expires=1712793600&Signature=J%7EQB8JtjZ6SfvUxYyypN-yBUqA70zDUV0WJs423M63AJzbEg-LHvENJGUf5MOEPJlkoqMzwRebi6N47sSNdCX5b4kZrkUiZBZG83Smaqiybm1H1rll%7Ekoj0npiNAmzJFaQJhfzDeZS9TRsxzskXIZ8hXp3Jd9IIhnNyRJhDEAE5KB2h87AzVRvb5SMTpEd4rOSXyfEgpnzcv5dxZqKfrVjL77fFoxXBBRJR9orJLox0s09MTdrmqC5Ld5nKfPcUEaCH6HkJY3ws-5Q532mOepqUAbexDqt2T54ESd0QlqiHhWSAfGLjCkFqGaynSUl-UO4LRnc2Taw%7EsAVEU%7E%7E1yfA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
b97330c7d2e95903b4441427b185776b
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>TELSA</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/BiBfJKMJu0A?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“There were parts of the factory where I couldn’t go, that were marked secret. I don’t even know what they were doing. I started to work in the industry in TESLA and I found out, as we were saying in Czechoslovakia, that we were 100 years behind the apes in electronics. Because what they were doing, they were actually doing reverse engineering. They took a transistor, American-made or some other made, or integrated circuit, and they took it apart to find out how it was made and then they tried to make the same thing. But we were running a huge operation. I was a supervisor for a while on the epitaxy, on silicon wafers which were for power transistors. After I was offered membership in the Communist Party and I very politely refused, I was no longer supervisor. I worked as a technologist in integrated circuits and then I left the area to work in the office for inventions and patents – it was still in the same factory, but a different place – and improvement suggestions. I was there for a couple years, and after that, just took off.”</p><h4>Tramping</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/GxtTcUxH8Mw?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Tramp here means somebody who lives on the street; this was completely different, they just used the word – they were like Sokol, but unorganized. There were no leaders. On weekends, they went out and got on trains. Usually they had on soldiers’ dress, like old-time uniforms from the first World War, even backpacks and stuff. And they would sleep outside without a tent, because a tent was considered to be, I don’t know the word for it, but like spoiled. For people who really don’t belong in nature – they sleep in tents, they could as well stay home, or get in a car, drive somewhere and then put up a tent – it was like, no. You have to get on a train and walk. And it was really nice.</p><p>“It was just singing songs. I was even collecting tramp songs for a long time. I really liked it, because those are truly, truly romantic songs about America, which people in America have no idea. It’s just funny how people romanticized this country.”</p><h4>Banjo</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/LVNMRyUHt8A?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“The five-string banjo, actually, I just fell in love with it – I was already playing the guitar. There was a movie, one of the movies they let through, because the movie didn’t contain any scene about a private [swimming] pool. There was a commission approving the films for distribution and one of the things, which I found out, if there was a private pool, the movie was out. It couldn’t be shown. This was not the case; the movie was Bonnie and Clyde – there were no pools in Bonnie and Clyde, just some shooting. And there was this track when the cars were going, it was a chase and there was this track. It was Earl Scruggs playing “Foggy Mountain Breakdown.” That was exhilarating. We went to see that movie maybe four times, just to hear that. And I couldn’t believe it. I was playing at the time the four-string banjo which is a completely different instrument, and I thought, how is his picking so fast? I was trying to copy it and there was no way.”</p><h4>Precautions</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/y74w22Uwsco?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“So we have hidden all the documents in our luggage. There was a piece of luggage, it was this bag, and it had an inforced bottom. It was like thick paper. So I took it apart, sliced the paper apart. I dug out space on both sides, and our marriage certificate and documents which we needed to have with us, I put there, glued everything together, put it overnight under a piece of furniture. I also made it black on both sides, inside and outside, in case they would use some light or something, I thought maybe that would help, the black color would block it, and put it back together. I wouldn’t believe that it was there. And the money that I bought on the black market, where do you hide the money? Well, our son who was nine years old, Bobby, same name as me – our older son’s name is Mark, Marek – so Bobby had a little [stuffed] doggy. And I thought that the doggy, he had a inforcement in the neck, to keep the neck up. So Vilma carefully cut an opening in the bottom of the dog, we took out the inforcement and rolled the money into a roll, put it back on the inforcement, and she nicely sewed it back. So our son had the money all the time, in his doggy.”</p><h4>Refugee Camp</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/td2AJwEorao?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“There was so-called isolation. They put everybody who was new in so-called isolation. You couldn’t talk to anybody else, you were going to meals at different times from everybody else, and we were not allowed to open a window and talk to anybody. The reason for that was that they needed to first separate any people who were escaping from the law, who killed somebody, and in those couple days they hoped they would be able to find out. But also, most important, there was an interview after those three days, and they didn’t want people to get smart, to know what to say, because based on that interview, the Austrian authorities decided if they give you political asylum or not. So if you got political asylum you could stay in Austria, if not, you had to go somewhere else.”</p><h4>Peet Seeger</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/fS0yEDouJPA?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“We came to Baltimore, and I was here for just a couple years, and I heard that my huge idol, Pete Seeger, who I admired so much playing his five-string banjo and how he played guitar – just a tremendous influence on me, and he was in Baltimore, so I had to go see him, even when we didn’t have much money, but this is something I would regret for the rest of my life if I missed it. So I took my two sons and we went to the concert and I was so happy that he was there. But then, President Reagan was president at the time, and Pete Seeger started to sing a song – “This Old Man” – [which] was making fun of President Reagan. I couldn’t believe it, and I noticed all the policemen standing there and I thought, what are they going to do. They’re going to climb on the stage and take him down or turn off the speakers or something. And then I watched – they were standing with their backs to the stage, only watching the audience so nobody would cause any trouble. They were protecting the singer; they were protecting him if somebody didn’t like him so nothing would happen to him. That was just unbelievable. I saw democracy at work. And I was really impressed by that, even when I didn’t like the song.”</p><h4>Fujara</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/HxXpzEAPmrA?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I started to play at festivals, and right now I have about 80 performances behind me. I started to make workshops. The first American fujara workshop was right here, at this house. After that, I did a workshop in Rožnov where I used to work in the TESLA factory. It was just three years back. It was also a two-day workshop and I was playing at a concert. Of course, the most important thing was last year, about one year ago in the Library of Congress. It was really a highlight of my life so far because it was for the American Musical Instrument Society, and they were of course recording it and it’s ‘forever’ in the archives, I mean, the archives of Congress. And I knew it, unfortunately, ahead of time. So you can just imagine the pressure that I had performing in a room full of experts on instruments and music and they wanted me to talk to them about the fujara and about everything concerning the fujara and the overtone flutes. And then it was recorded and everybody will be able to see it on the internet, all my friends. It was really a lot of pressure, but I somehow got through it.”</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
Bohuslav Rychlik
Description
An account of the resource
<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>
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
Arts
Cultural Traditions
Education
English language
Pustimer
Refugee camp
Roznov pod Radhostem
Tramping
Western/Pop culture
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/3b2a5d5eb4bb62744018056d66631c76.jpg?Expires=1712793600&Signature=Z9trwvmfC3wwY-B3XEXBD8ZbgjKpxjAsefHom4tKqbcvpbmmf-yO5CT2uYuPHd2YX4yRfFeiEy58mp5r0f9j04XnnmRL-ZbT7kHE5oI9VeTeeSvCNdWdcSYoYyMB1wckl15iG0YVUZJCxAsCUzn-0G7a4PuHzGfyI3bXbIpYQxWjsMwVvLvEyL0JhDN2BwJVlxZ3J4UJ627CvwyIyTyTIBzyl9x5O0LGV5I%7Eworw8Z9AvQbPUxJAiSUDoKQ3UlP6hQ87ywO2Dfencv1osnH5atnJ4o2SS59iBEJq-r2C4BzlmQqQxtPLdfbPmB5aQcgaP09F-R2D0OW3UtRtXkUVPA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
e7349f7cea3559441e4a2da478d701bf
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/7f7a4310b9bc4d59fa94e176ba0975c6.jpg?Expires=1712793600&Signature=de4J%7EjN-%7EzWHHocySDg3pKt9qunWh3etLvbAKoM2z%7EDqG%7E6-%7ElEtWCxdV-St8vhPbgtxlWIzHXup7G-aJS%7EB59vaDJx3ex7fCaajC9XQJR1S3vbaFlBmWBr%7EBTCOIgRMAC7wETMGEMuYOlpQ9vPL9CqLBrQiQAk3vCPkILs5FwZcviGVMlIwZY9bQ6aeAqtdH0BzqQImINTA8p4Z5mcnxfi8du6gS57OpVfNOYi6oa5zU8wfJKdwCo0fVTLqUv0pGJBBZkpVA%7EICg6MF8ry%7EaQUCYTMqoCfZFfcJT66-a2lnfo9S0v3Q%7EYWl-ZtXh1nY2BMqY80-d5HlgxfATEWb1Q__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
8ac18b90b8295e1bf8e7e05668792c32
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/ed80b24665b2679f837e40bab8019ef5.jpg?Expires=1712793600&Signature=Z1BPSZLgMVCssK-dOs4km9rXAIZvVECDqbacxJgJFbwo4vxMjBB-bGHjTjlnkyVAOb8QAArk%7Ecing2lmfeXJ2mINl4HwN%7EdtJeh%7E9roT5OxlPHlPYcHBNKwsEQFPi2jwnY-OBbgTBVQx%7E2Oc6WTfnqmpqZ00V5%7EKIhpL6QnglDBpYNvxX1OJFMBMFuOGOGQCV3kUfntb3D1iRSh4wqnALSgfe8i64YvZzA63vT8aKKlmKD3Y%7Ek0ar9DAWLYMBbsawOR2dKXYjQKO4EQ2w4jlY2yaoSHDGcg4XbmwaCRFsg8dP7FoQDesWPywYCZMuNv2zu0Aqq5Az0uRYsDT5fgcwQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
2e6b8f5d1e212157d45e567579496822
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>Radio Technician</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/PfDg9UqL9x4?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“You know, I always had a knack for it because I built… we called them crystal sets, I guess they had them here too. The place where I grew up, we didn’t have electricity, so crystal doesn’t require electricity. And I built my own battery – you can take a beer bottle and wind a piece of string around it dipped in, it had to be dipped in alcohol, and you burnt it off, after you burn it off you have to pour cold water on it and snap it, and that thing would be perfect, so that’s how I made my own batteries. And from there I could power something a little more powerful than a crystal radio, but yeah, I always monkeyed around with this, it was my forte, so to say, my cup of tea.”</p><h4>Bananas</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/aWz84uHLncw?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I do remember bananas before the War came. And I didn’t see bananas again until I got to Germany in 1951. The first thing I bought there was bananas, honest to god! Because I remembered the taste, I remembered what they looked like, but we couldn’t buy them. They were not available during the War and after the War either. So, six years after the War I ended up in Germany and I still remembered the bananas from 1938, before the War.”</p><h4>Crossing into W. Germany</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/51AhtZaa3Ac?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Domažlice is about three or four stops from the border, but we figured that that was what they call the border zone. And we figured we didn’t want to risk it because in order to get in the border zone you had to have a special permit, okay? This is before the border was fortified, the border zone in some places would be pretty wide. In some places it was narrower, but then when they fortified the border, meaning they put the barbed wire fence there and plowed the fields, then they didn’t care, they could let you go up to the border or pretty close. But up til that time, no they wouldn’t. So, in ’51 we were pretty lucky, they didn’t have the barbed wire fence up, they had a guard with a dog, that would be one guard and one dog, but we were lucky that the wind was coming from Germany to us, so the dog didn’t sniff us. Every once in a while they would leave the place, we were sitting there about two hours, right on the border before we crossed. Because then, I think it was about 1:00, 12 or 1:00, I’m not sure which, he left his area of patrol, so to say, where they went through the motions of changing the guard, so right behind their backs we went down, it was just downhill, you know. So we were in Germany.</p><p>“But even there, because we had heard stories that sometimes that sometimes they put the border ahead of it or that the Germans would return the escapees back to the Czechs, you know. So we were looking through the paper that was there on the road and it was German. Okay, so we’re in Germany, we knew that. But the Germans when they interviewed us – and that interview, mind you, that took a long time – I remember from, it was dark already when we left the police station. But they were nice, they offered us cigarettes and they fed us, and the guy took us to the restaurant for supper. He had a rifle, and I couldn’t speak German, not that well, but my buddy spoke almost perfect German. Anyway, the guy says ‘You’re not going to go anyplace are you? I would have to shoot.’ ‘No, we’re not.’ So, he put the rifle in the corner, you know, and just sat down with us.”</p><h4>DDT</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/3RvYCCEYnOY?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“The bedbugs, one guy could lie amongst them and they wouldn’t bother him – that was Lukeš, with the glass eye – the other one, Fišera, he would scratch himself so bad he had open sores. And I tell you, they know where to attack, like where your meat is soft over here. My ears in the morning would be like this, except I didn’t scratch myself as much as he did. And we had <em>tepláky</em>, which is like a sweat suit, sweats – we’d tie it here, tie this, and powder our faces and hands with DDT powder. Well yeah, that’s the only thing there was. And bedbugs, it didn’t bother them, they must have been used to it.”</p><h4>Communication</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/dwrgLmvnhM0?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Well that was funny too, we would talk sometimes on the phone and all of a sudden you could tell the volume going down and… nothing! And letters, there was a couple of letters that got out of the country by a person who was leaving, okay, those letters you could write what you want, otherwise you had to be careful what you wrote.”</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
Bruno Necasek
Description
An account of the resource
<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>
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
Benes
Border patrol
Divorce
Domazlice
Klenci pod Cerchovem
marriage
Military service
Refugee camp
Vrchlabi
World War II
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/8e9593e88c4d3a8ef1c5e56da8d17850.jpg?Expires=1712793600&Signature=EEy2e4XrjWg7OEVOEZ8xRix8qrWK8S7tYizVG0luydLv7qcCxbjmsad89-42Tg7RSWMXUD4vuxU97FOfpvcc983BytNBF5zimiDqFk9HoBAxQ2YaIoLIcQOswhFO70j9ovsBpRCktNUW76OcQu5Ru8Sx3kG-zhf9u2465LHWcZqGs3hGj8gc-nmYCtB21BLSqgdjFiCMDHO3JSflCVCEGAETdpzIpVFiPza9veKE8GGf9oS3IS3mUya7FoF1LxrkOOQVUlM3ZROC1MhADRREFtlaD1CpqZX2T5BfTfjsT3Mc48yhH2NV6KAJaikrISKX1kbfgaRZcKmZ8dlN4on1nQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
60a5a2f75594d9ac8e31cf14535e51ab
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/8aae29e4a9c86af650a485c9afaee49e.jpeg?Expires=1712793600&Signature=YmqOTc0ko6ZzHITHbiLfdXUfgRrQ4dNo%7EEFFz1bg4%7EczioS8hPkTFH0E1cDKBWfWpj5p%7EBW1Eww93fXGVuwC38uvCil8zrdL2tuJCN2n2VY5QVhX-7l2V7VnqUPP%7ENRfeDM86Bi2GDRDwDutkh7sVFvdEV7F7INp0iIKsXHAKh0RQd47iozmHAfQSc-6799T023JsvCp8mJALxCzFqFOlSXQAP1J%7EspFUG9Pq0V8nWDcAb5f%7EzCztxDUpNiyFg96nAli4Ohpfw55j6M3YY7MfuVdMkkHD5fkjPVXS0yzZVJv5aOJXuDWwf3RYfHDFXQHQd39yiEHdSFlz0hBfYeh%7EQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
8c319eb72d4ebb975a195cded55f9002
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/e5af382c3d9339375d6e41de4326a8c9.jpg?Expires=1712793600&Signature=SzgTYemL6AMtYpwcrMO0t6nj6bs0Kiq4L2CelGM2oAs3ZSP0d%7EgiFxpmpqVn7nSLbSJRKtFHp0AG-wycbx0VxmmDOGZrEMw9SOaSy0rgd7xS74T4UyUDjvytS4VM0t3%7Ef1EVQDE1FivWp97TG%7E%7EycnK35lTm2bBfhfpxbKWZCRkPhR7ch2c36mQDWQHted4k76uXllYriDtjO8UNvLTO-0VsIxsmzrbHC-Gk19S-EgYNMyyIhwT7uXbn5%7E5rtD-c1TCVllFcIiH0%7E8klXuyzOkP8zbsyx2Gho8Frq3apOHDOhJppJZDMCA6uAz4YiWYq1E7Cc4Xd5ayp4yrdI1dl7A__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
b6311343cb73ed8c640f8ac166b7e9a1
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>Great Grandfather</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/KZzxhBaNzqQ?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“I was there all the time playing hide and seek among the stacks of cloth. And with my friends, playing cowboys and Indians and everything else, yeah. But it started out as a very small store, by my great-grandfather, around 1910 or so, and he actually ran a general store, and then clothing store, and he was the first man in the country to import Singer sewing machines. And he hired three ladies in the area to start sewing for him, and eventually grew it into the largest company of its type, for that type of clothing, in Central Europe.”</p><h4>WWII</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/zdwKr5taFao?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“My mother finally told me one day that my father was fighting against the Germans. That’s all I knew, in fact, that became my mantra because all the slights that took place during the War – I wasn’t allowed to go to school, eventually I had to be hidden, my mother hid me on a farm when she was taken away to a slave labor camp for Christian wives of Jewish men, and so she hid me, she hid me away – and I always wanted to know why, why were we being picked out, you know, having to suffer, and me not being about to go to school, not being able to play with my friends for all those years, having to hide out? And the answer always was ‘Because your father is fighting against the Germans.’ And I thought, to me, I was so proud of that that it didn’t bother me that all these things were happening to me. I was never told the real truth, I never found out the real truth until really not too many years ago, when I was an adult. I didn’t know that all these things were really happening because I was actually three quarters Jewish.”</p><h4>Going into Hiding</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/wUzcO0d-70Y?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“In 1944, the Germans started taking away women who were, and who had been, married to Jewish men. And they had a camp, a slave labor camp, in Prague. And in that camp they manufactured windshields for German fighter airplanes. So my mother was taken to that camp. And before she left she hid me with some friends, actually farmers, that we had been living with after the Germans expelled us from our home. And they in the meantime had lost their farm, because the Germans had taken their farm away from them, and they became farmhands on a big farm in the same village. So I lived with them and they actually hid me in a closet. And I’d come out occasionally at night and as the War came to an end I started coming out more and more because it was obvious that the Germans were going to lose the War and a lot of people were losing their fear of the Germans.”</p><h4>BBC</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Hv2kVVr-TM4?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Every radio that you saw during the War in Czechoslovakia – or in the Protectorate, there was no Czechoslovakia – had a paper tag on the front, attached to one of the buttons, which meant that it had been inspected and checked and gutted, gutted such that it could not get any international broadcasts. And every Czech was smart enough, almost every Czech was smart enough, to be able to fix it. They had this little bug, it had a name – I can’t remember what it was called, this little thing that they made – it was like a two-dollar item that you would buy at Radio Shack today, that they stuck in the radio so that they could all listen. And everybody listened to the BBC, in Czech. And every night at a particular time, I can’t remember, it was like 8:00 or 9:00, there was a broadcast, and it would start out with Beethoven’s symphony. It went ‘boom boom boom, boom!’ – it would start out like that, and it would say, the first two words would be ‘vola Londyn,’ – ‘London is calling.’ And I would, at first I would sneak behind the door and I would listen to these broadcasts, because it was the only truth we got about what was going on in the War. Because otherwise it was all propaganda and the Germans were always winning, whether it was on the Russian front or, you know, anywhere else. But this was the true story about the War – so that’s how I knew. Eventually, after about a year or so, they knew that I had been listening, so they just let me sit in the room with them each evening. So that’s how I knew what was going on in the War, and you know, even though I was a kid I could comprehend it, pretty well.”</p><h4>Leaving On Foot</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/QNAOxnyHeR8?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“A farmer came riding up on a horse-drawn wagon, and told us to pile in with our three suitcases and a bundle of blankets that I was carrying. [He] took us out to his farm, and told us to sit tight until midnight. They fed us dinner and we sat there just watching the clock and midnight came, the farmer says ‘Okay, it’s time to go,’ and the next thing I heard was my father screaming at the farmer. The farmer had stolen one of our suitcases, and that was about one third of all of the belongings we had in the world at that point. The guy stole one of the suitcases. So, my father gave up, because the guy just wouldn’t admit that he had stolen it, even though we came into his house with three suitcases but now we went out with two. So my mother carried a suitcase, my father carried a suitcase and I carried a bundle of blankets which turned out had jewelry inside, which I wasn’t aware of. I was carrying the biggest asset we owned. And the farmer took us to the edge of the woods at the back of his farm and he said, because it was a beautiful night, it was a clear, clear night, but it was dark – there was no moon, but stars – this was in [March] of 1948, and the farmer says to us ‘That’s the direction to the US zone of Germany, just keep walking in that direction and, in about three hours, if they don’t shoot you first, that’s where you’ll end up.’”</p><h4>Parents</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/CMRArTe7kU0?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Very deliberately no. They wanted to put as much space between themselves and the immigrant community as possible, because – they had friends who were immigrants, I don’t mean to say that they completely forgot all their friends, they had friends in New York, we’d go and visit them over the weekend and so forth – but, they also saw in these immigrants what they didn’t want to be: people who are always complaining about how difficult things are in America, and how wonderful things would have been if we had stayed, and you know, all the things that they, that they didn’t do. They wanted to have nothing to do with the immigrant community – I mean outside of going to a Czech restaurant in New York, because the one thing that all three of us missed more than anything else was Czech food!”</p><h4>Parents</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/KLGCBr-OlhE?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“One thing that was drummed into me by my parents, from the moment we arrived here, was ‘Forget everything that happened to you on the other side of the ocean. Remember nothing. We’re starting a new life.’ And they really believed that I did, you know, and I guess, I think that I believed that I did, somehow, subconsciously. I never talked to my friends; you know, when people would ask ‘Where are you from?’ I would say ‘Oh, I’m from Czechoslovakia,’ but that was it, I would never give them any details, I would never say ‘Well, you know, during the War, I was one of the hidden children.’ None of that stuff, I never discussed it with anybody, or people would say – because I’d played soccer before soccer was very popular here and I was much better than anybody else they’d say ‘Where did you learn to play soccer like that?’ ‘Oh, in Czechoslovakia.’ But that was the extent of any conversation I would have, because I was bound and determined, by God, I was an American – as far as I was concerned, that never even happened. So, I didn’t pay any attention until 1968. When Prague Spring came, it was like a different world, I suddenly, suddenly I felt like I was a Czech. I started listening on… I had this transatlantic Zenith radio, shortwave, and I started listening to Radio Prague. And I heard all these beautiful things, and I heard Dubček speak, you know. All of a sudden, I felt like I was both an American and a Czech. Not for very long. And then after the invasion I put the curtain down again.”</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
Charles Heller
Description
An account of the resource
<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>
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
Catholics
Child emigre
Community Life
emigrant
Forced labor
Holocaust
Jews
Nazis
refugee
Refugee camp
Sense of identity
Sports
Terezin
World War II
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/cd99835ebbdaa07dca03d8f0334c2bc3.png?Expires=1712793600&Signature=c1mQr6E--ydmUxLE-1%7EU-tMmCL%7E1X0%7EbITMbt30O4x7oiYe9HPnFzxWm7BtWKFqjRypUyvxvTjzOSDPeOBDB6VrRpwznoeF2E8hZ4YyUPPAIVerV4CpsF0BakxL29KHfgB3KWDEG8dlBu%7EfmjkSLA5mzbRscw-Bueq3VGZXRZSrnqk4oDSOKIMLMQjm99r6jXcnu%7EQ6aqhLKr0ixO5C4c5kKdmeIyIs3OLMCBJ5u4rTr2j%7E9cEsqsL30wkk4MR9jojm4EVW-iA%7EvnWdn1HvOeaVkMFd7h%7EYSrxCZbEthGNeKHFPJt3VGvfGQYQUxFaVOk4jzoJ1KJCqmxnrAZrA58w__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
94ce4c7a10892b9a63e0941207b19e52
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/6c132b677a3f7b78eb6ae3073d820fa4.png?Expires=1712793600&Signature=akJvkOgjtTEWJ7ZGmJ3pU4NTsl0hsj91NMa1AFGfpk%7Ehtf1HBnD1fwz5cLQjN8ILbLEnCqbRwP2otghjRP7xC4MiUxpkxbIyFUT56nYmbZEWpHQZlGAAywmGR%7EwUccpNowgCOd0rxQrvhFu4qYORkbmcC2-gUqLnh1XegAOQ5BnyYUEFeveV8evRDol-DN7uOcd%7EaoLZ4fi7CLD7NH%7E8MztQdstSiqM04SRNQILI5shI5Hk2Xe9qHNvPSmhctQO1B4iCtVDhTgIjQ7J52cTHYzwEkqUjf5PCpUpI-Tpt6KKleyZ9uODKOtu9wsO1dBaKUHT6FCY7HD--OlaHotQjKQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
28d6bb69987015c9d862d1240d9051b7
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/2878d81a878fefccbc8dec570779e3cc.jpg?Expires=1712793600&Signature=karth0vmtxSnI5lI2J2K8QLcqCF%7EJVHfm1TKGm7JHPpHoztKoyb7VkWxlwyPj27wJZas6rMUg4y0AMoNrCbUmsUil7p2rYLVWqzn4WN6M%7E-nacPShgvu5jEoA3aPQmd5B8A2gstNMTJOtneJTq8jJTLrFQDvowBtnd6UbDm013SSe%7E5smfyUSz9xGY9deSmvQlcLk8PXH%7EC6A0z9Z7MeICAHlnGRyuLbYvIFX%7ExfwpNavOJyjPdA65BSWelhAXtJp8A0oux7WN4Q913h3wOCbyH%7E7mc6oNrmJj0WAKGF43busnfLcNLWMUxdgT7Vce-w-I3lnlw1jJ0bxMUL4otubQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
6c803974d39fd555662b1564cf192ac5
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/475e948f96dc4b857c27e854e3108a44.jpg?Expires=1712793600&Signature=HTCzbw4WrGfCYjcEsgPVXysNBWaoRQfUTaXFEvHe9atjiqrYTQ7ZrbYFl6DBwIHCKVX04zCUfhP%7EqFse8gKMQvTvWnBsUfa3YkPnnAuZgQ80mXja3N48jDg4rc95jRjNWGLdLN4swqyw2XNMbAAIShlTVko2ftmULXOkifCWsSAgwrEX4bKVZMMvHcJnuVzufXY5ZDHJuWtTwCShBBuuskYz8TM%7EPnbNR0WtEz%7EuApLvGX0FNwIsPHkmZwf94Orj4xpwStCu6PLSTtPLxNljb-gf62MUKUi6VUHTjC8rG6wDvDJSJ7jnTpJzgKmirlGj0zBvy2IM0IhPTKR3kx3MTw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
23fa0ab189aeb21288da9275f468efc4
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>Competitive Swimming</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/tE6sbqXEcF4?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“When I was probably 13, they built a team and I started swimming, and that of course, took all of my time. I went to school and we had practice eight, nine times a week, so we went before school. In Kladno we did not have – and this is probably interesting for people, especially these days when they have everything – Kladno didn’t have a pool. They had a ‘city bath’ it was called, where all the people after work, all the steel mill workers and all the coal miners, went to soak themselves. So the water was very thick sometimes. Our pool in there was six by nine meters. It was very, very small. And the water was only – I would have to say, I am 5’8” and I have not grown since grade seven, so I’ve been this tall for a long time – and it was about to here [four feet], was the water. There was no deep end, there was nothing. So when I say thick, [it was] thick. And when people talk about chlorine this and chlorine that, we had a woman that took care of the water come with a bucket of chlorine, powdered chlorine, and just chuck it into the water over our heads.”</p><h4>Journey to the Border</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/RRC47MuNcV8?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“We got into a convoy of Army cars, and then my mother started freaking out, and we of course too, because we didn’t know what was happening. You could look into the woods and there were soldiers dug into dirty, filthy… because they were there for a couple of days. You were getting closer to the border so the woods were there, but they were everywhere. So you could see them and that was a very scary thing. Probably not very much conversation going on in the car, not that I remember. I remember holding a doll and just sitting there, not knowing what was happening.”</p><h4>Refugee School</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Cwh8ZMJ3OTE?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“My parents got a job at Siemens so they started working, and I went to gymnázium. I went to school; the weirdest school I ever went to was in Germany. My sister and I both went to school. The school was – for Germans, when you really think how structured they were and how strict – the school was like a zoo. I remember having a class and having a teacher, and somebody in the first row would start reading a book, tear the page out and send it through the class. They were throwing sneezing powder around so everybody would sneeze. We had an all-girls school across the yard, so the guys had binoculars and they were looking at the girls across the yard during class! Nobody stopped them. It was the weirdest zoo, I have to tell you.”</p><h4>Warsaw Emotions</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/fTCAHERhtzM?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“In those days, you would go to the movies and there was a newsreel. There were still newsreels before the movie in the late ‘60s. A lot of the things, I had to get out, because a lot of it was about the occupation of Czechoslovakia and I couldn’t take it. To this day for example, if I watch, from time to time, The Unbearable Lightness of Being and the part of the occupation, I have to leave the room because I start crying. And it’s not a bad cry anymore and I don’t know if it ever was, but what I did not realize then and what I realized it much later when I was here and I was older, that it was a death of life, because the life that we knew was gone.”</p><h4>Importance of Heritage</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ECDhzH7IVOU?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“What changes is, I think, the need to do something with it and to leave something behind and have the younger generation continue with that. But it’s always been important for me. That’s why I learned a lot of the crafts and the specific crafts. When I was in Czech [Republic], I learned the wire work and doing those things. I did the blueprint, the fabric, I made my own clothes. When I was in Tampa, of all places, I did a lot of that because I was part of a program the city had called ‘Artist in the School,’ and they paid people to go and teach underprivileged kids. And that was one of the most satisfying things is to see these little kids and you teach them to weave and they leave you a note and write thank you, you were part of their Thanksgiving Day or whatever. I think that’s what I feel is important. As I grow older, I wish I could teach. As is popular, ‘nobody is really interested in doing this,’ that’s not true. You have to find the ways and teach the old ways.”</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 Benedik
Description
An account of the resource
<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>
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
Child emigre
Cultural Traditions
emigrant
gymnazium
refugee
Refugee camp
Sports
Verflova
Warsaw Pact invasion
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/d71a21344a14b716bab3c3b19d87a9c9.jpg?Expires=1712793600&Signature=ohTIEps8VBvZYtkHHGWUrt94GK-fGFsT5DyuJXD1C%7Eu5WiRJkPBnCKz0JzndaNArna5whYuugfdo%7E6yV1-OUOYFTxIMXTEfzWe9IgZXou7tBUy%7EE2rWl7qmO8y9I0GYA9-Tq%7EbT%7EHBWOhobh52uQ4CEaFyhzY1ofYAXZ-Ux7UA7S%7EuxDpTjYY5xmNwqvHmBmVrWdjg0TKIoE%7EhC6Wlg5AMhuD%7EEUrPloDqK4J2ZK08TvI2qLcC1V8CxMEunlMVWl4fwT9n5jO2PwoD7265w3OvLLxeNX7lK0G1XbUVtctwyjPpODlT6e4JFZG2OSAVemHLWZHPSpcxA2dgsX5hZxZQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
a2c2b24e39ebee5d1eb1c12895366192
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/2729a5b45900466e28d8d6d071107586.jpg?Expires=1712793600&Signature=OLxGGYpSSwKH2O0qDNHG0I3%7ElV0KLkwslCpaBGiZQ97%7E%7EsXYEsjz6e5-tKHb93YrBq4tuMcJ-WxqXSxqr8ZFBnH6KRNfYe98u4Y50qy%7ElZEp38IXyg6H6rjFLvt5rN-ag6VqaxGr0UCXSE-J0DjNmtCshDaYC2BEPmlSuKssaDj2GAo652OQW9Sah%7E3lDYRUWyj8LYjowKtB23qmt20uWrT5jgAJnsADs0qbhBmA5yDfU63Eftf3Q%7Ehl1t5v%7EWD86UoC5I20mUhATdOhBIHK9b6ZKROO-s3wM2QzYTp-wCk5ahcgSvEMdppFtDEBpUUSzSZgF0-pab5yRkyiG0m4hQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
8d1b7e5985b998d106a330fabf20cfcb
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</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/iqS28OF33Mo?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“I remember that the Germans came to my house a few times looking for some revolvers or some guns, trying to catch something that could make problems. It worked out all those years pretty good, thank god. We had the pastry shop, so I never knew what it meant to be hungry after all. For example, I walked with my friend home, and her father was working at the match factory. She opened the door and she was yelling, ‘Mom, I’m hungry!’ I thought ‘How does that feel?’ because I really didn’t ever have to feel that, until later when I was on my own.</p><p>“I had a curfew at 8:00 at night no matter what, so I had to be home. I had friends coming, actually even relatives from Prague, because they couldn’t go to their places in Šumava, so they stayed in Sušice and we had good times, because there was a couple of cousins and they’d bring their friends. I had four cousins in Sušice, so we all ganged up together and it was ok. We just had to be careful about what we were doing.”</p><h4>Immigration to Australia</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/SRjmW9ETevU?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“We boarded a boat in Bremerhaven in Germany and [the ship] used to be a military boat before. It took us 38 days to go from there, through the Suez Canal – I should say Gibraltar first – the Suez Canal, and then we finally made it to Melbourne, Australia, and they had a strike so we couldn’t get off the boat. But anyway, we had a good time on the boat. There was about 18 Czech people, guys and women, and everybody had some little duties and I was an assistant to a doctor who was from <em>Podkarpatská</em> [Sub-Carpathian] Russia and he studied in Prague, so he spoke perfect Czech. And he helped us on the boat; we were able to go to the bridge, and the time passed okay. The sea was pretty nice to us; it wasn’t really too bad.</p><p>“So we came to Melbourne, finally made it out, and the Czech people who came already, who came before us, [saying] ‘Is there any Czech on the boat?’ and this and that. So they took us to Bonegilla which was another camp and we stayed a month. I had a month of a beautiful vacation. Beautiful weather; there were guys who rented horses so we went horseback riding; we had bicycles we could go around on; there was a lake we could go swim in; and they cooked for us! Can you imagine?”</p><h4>Pastry Shop</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/8-8hCD4GmPA?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“We made Czech pastries, Czech <em>kolačky</em> and Czech turnovers. Czech this and Czech that and Czech cookies and Czech rye bread, and it was said that it was a very good bread. So we had a good recipe for it, I guess. I didn’t know how to make bread. My younger son, he would sit in the proof box, watching the bread rise, and when the oven was cleaned up, he would take a rest in there. He would lay down on one of the floors.</p><p>“Cermak Road in the main street in Berwyn and we were close to the crossing of Oak Park – it was like the center of town almost. There were about seven Czech bakeries at the time, and there were different Czech stores, like a furniture store and a clothing store [called] Pivoňka’s, and different things like that. A lot of people spoke Czech in the stores, but they spoke Czech like the Franz Josef Czech was which different. Then came the younger generation, younger emigration. We were not in the store anymore, but we still kept up with all that.”</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 Kostal
Description
An account of the resource
<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>
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
Community Life
Cultural Traditions
Hlavata
Refugee camp
school
Susice
World War II
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/fd13d19137455dd998b3d5a4bf08e254.jpg?Expires=1712793600&Signature=q4lRSNatPOumAahTbRNimXnNME1SZvoCDY0YUKyZccMJOB8Kv0gUf-FyJi-dI-5uO1vTKHsjfxezIngxOx4a7OmoxW3LnRIAmjBOU58iWFBHPjCyNnufJM5qs8lzXm3PmV97Vx9vpvIYOjnNG5-YemyHbNIUNzjJ5ALElZGOsNpGl0mzmeCgYYY8GlzcFh8ndmQS7GjOIJLSstnq593uLhfxKSqgJt1DeBjEzjPoJFR-e15owG6SKSBzcle-Pskf0Hdg6ZQ0QqZfwEIcReoR6iqIM%7E04N%7EYw7LSPOOeotHp3szbLvxAvrV-bG9a-O-W9DendDiSF6Nu1XkEHvzNYsA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
5213198a08ac2f3f666439eb68484499
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/f3be557cfcbd7fa6e81dd81eebc4a43f.jpg?Expires=1712793600&Signature=BGQ3dfaq4uLRiMcsuK-6vPVaY8P2jh4WcOezzfhy9AiAG72frPK7QQ5p8TChySEmrsuOOM6wpHl8UJNqoD2kXzqMGuv-9JLXEsp5NLR0QyG-C4PEJUQ6eJxk3yT7lnBm86vW-Blg99WCwEmNPc7aTSaqQ-nAHnPYdS8bqcrhhHNahxRxsQEmxV8YuYo0zap5njP25%7EWjbUzwKOIpZpOjVCWB-3xj3KKEQ5b-Bx63I7cQFFFdU-26jBnbEYf8vHboNWmaTcMLJvJ4iPm1Kt0-S3C30NPofkSS1HTNcfS5zbomujeiSodwzez9NY6q7XXD%7EqSUQu9GA-e6eOqjBshoWw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
511cde5bcb09978f710c89d017f78d3f
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/7eaa2d5d5c09fdf05975949427b861ed.jpg?Expires=1712793600&Signature=jrld1Sblh0FrikgBkdRzIt0jH6cprS7uXRVCFMK2eDii9hN4dvAWTK33SsVFxArtZqd5BZKbQMTq2e9GVQEFhd0IUGC9YOUZaXdnhsyun5uRafR-%7ET0RhGkhe-OnZ%7E-eGzDDedMgjflpFSDZSVk04E1WgKR6W5K00U6auAHvD0BCMxS7-QSkMxV9RyGiCiv-W-vYuBPJ3Y%7E5E5Ze4YvWGNyNDBaylG-3hONAX0jdeISYZXSzx-BdwCLt57ok5DuiiFUJ0VrB%7Ex42mdE0QYyTSsF-R350Uz3WNLLw9GqTRzMkqlKJUnbNuYYnISzQ3VPLRe7prhDCgN1g%7EdYT-t52Sg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
077de1239fa9db6989acf189cdc19463
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>Playing in Rubble</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qqey7pVTWlk?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“We lived, we lived in one room. And I believe, off and on, there were either two or three families sharing one room. It was a relatively large room. The bath was actually down the hall, so that was shared by several other families. It was an old army barracks, it was an old kásarna that had been bombed during the War. And so it was not in the greatest shape. There was a lot of rubble all around it. So it was not a very pleasant place for children to play. I remember parts of it were bombed out and they were just sort of leveled, almost to the ground, except the basements. And playing in those little warrens underground almost – that was awful. I mean it had to be, I guess, tremendously dangerous, you know there could have been bombs down there that hadn’t exploded or something. I mean, I do remember that whole experience and I just found it to be fairly difficult. Sharing the room with other families, I remember… trying to go to sleep, let’s say at 8:00 or whenever a child goes to sleep, but of course the parents and the other families would be up ‘til 10:00, 11:00 or midnight, smoking, probably, I remember my mother smoked quite a bit. And so I remember the smell of smoke, conversation and so on, well, the children are trying to sleep in a little cot in the corner somewhere so, I remember that as being a fairly difficult time.”</p><h4>CARE Packages</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/dPq2wE3JqnM?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I remember very much looking forward to receiving packages from America at that time, and it would be a CARE package. There was an organization called CARE and I think it’s still, I think it’s still… because I have given CARE some money in the past and getting these packages, it was truly like Christmas. It was a very exciting time. I remember getting a package that had some peanut butter in it. And I had never tasted peanut butter and it was so good, I remember my father would keep this jar of peanut butter way up on a high dresser somewhere and only if we were good, if we did something that was very good, we would get one spoonful of peanut butter. And that was a reward, and I don’t know how long that jar of peanut butter lasted, because I wasn’t that good – so it was up there a long time probably but… Anyway, so the food I think was absolutely terrible at the time, because I do recall getting these Care packages and what a great treat they really were.”</p><h4>Chicago</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_YPYitvU0zM?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Well actually I think, I think it was primarily for the children. I think they saw the fact that maybe living in the Czech part… well, I think they wanted sort of more opportunity for us, I mean I, I didn’t know that at the time, I was told that later. That’s why, that’s why they did it, because I had questioned them also, you know, about this years later, and they stated simply that they had been introduced to someone who worked as a domestic servant in the town of Winnetka, which is just north of Chicago. And she had heard that another family was looking for someone who would work as a maid and as a gardener and so I think they thought that this was probably a good opportunity, and I think they did it just because they realized that this would be a good opportunity for us, for the children.”</p><h4>Hubbard Woods</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/O3T0WYUebqE?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I was deposited in the back of the room and I simply sat there. I was introduced of course, ‘Okay class, here we have with us little Eddie Dellin’, and there he is, this weird looking little kid who had some funny clothes on and so… and anyway, so I just kind of sat there and class went on, and people were raising their hands, and the teacher was writing on the blackboard and the kids went up to the blackboard to write things down and I just kind of sat there. Anyway, but sooner or later, I started to realize that I’m kind of catching on, and I remember fairly distinctly the teacher asking a question and she was asking, I guess they were studying history, and she asked the question of who had been the prime minister of England during the War. And… ‘Yes Eddie?’ ‘Veenston Churchill,’ ‘Yes! Ok!’ I remember getting a round of applause the first time that I raised my hand to be able to answer a question. And from there it was relatively simple.”</p><h4>Emotional Return</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/p-g7S3g-45E?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I certainly felt this great desire to go back and it was… the feeling was absolutely incredible. I flew to Frankfurt and rented a car and drove it and as soon as I got to the border I almost started to weep. Oh, I know, I was able to catch a Czech station on the radio and somehow I found this station that was playing some of these songs that I had learned and that I knew and I mean, I got terribly emotional, I started driving and crying and stuff, just as I was driving across the border. Anyway, it was very emotional and very nice.”</p><h4>Changing Identity</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/zmQ9YpBLS6o?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“When I was growing up, I was sort of ashamed of it, I mean, the Czechs were just like any other Eastern European behind the Curtain, behind the Iron Curtain countries, and there was not much to distinguish them – at least from what I could see over here – and in fact they would have… there was a television show here called Saturday Night Live which is still on and they had this skit, with John Belushi or Dan Ackroyd, and it was a comedy, and they had one skit about the two wild and crazy guys from Czechoslovakia. And they were sort of painted to be the buffoons who said silly things and so on. So that was the image of the, of the… and so I never made a point of the fact that I was Czech. It was not until a little bit later that I realized how stupid I was for denying this heritage and then I really started to embrace it entirely, and now I’m just incredibly proud to be a Czech. Because you know, so many people have been to Prague once and I think almost everyone says ‘my goodness, what a wonderful city, and what wonderful people’ and they can’t believe this incredible history that they see. And so, of course, I have become extremely, extremely proud and so I have gotten involved in, you know, quite a few things Czech.”</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
Duke Dellin
Description
An account of the resource
<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>
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
Arrest
Child emigre
Communist coup
Community Life
Education
emigrant
national
Nove Mesto
Politics
refugee
Refugee camp
Sense of identity