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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>Father</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/wThk50Uw7Cs?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“My father came from a little village in the mountains, about ten miles away from our village, there was an opal mine there, his father worked in the opal mine and almost everybody out of this village emigrated to the United States. My father, [his] two brothers beside him, almost three quarters of the village ended up here. He worked in an Iowan mine and after… Like at that time there was a system that people from a poor country come and make some money, so he could save and come home and buy a farm and a house and marry some Slovak girl and start a family. That’s what happened in my father’s case. So he married my mother, and I have three brothers and one sister, and we lived in a little village as farmers. My father was a very progressive farmer because he gained a lot of experience in America about life. In a little village, in the mountains, you don’t know nothing about it. For example, we had one of the best orchards in town – fruit orchards – and we had about 120 bee houses, which he made good money out of selling honey.”</p><h4>Growing Up</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/hlc6G8nDwAY?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“There was another American down there living. His name was Mr. Mišík. And he was sitting on the front of his house, on a bench, and wore American jeans pants and an American jeans jacket, like a typical American. And all those kids around him, around there, asked him how things are in America [compared to] how things are in Slovakia. And Mr. Mišík says ‘Ha! In America, they put the bull at one end of the factory and at the other end come the sausages. And they taste the sausage and if its good, fine, if it’s no good then they throw it back and the bull comes back out.’ And we kids [said] ‘Oh yeah?’ And he said ‘Oh yeah!’ So we got up in the morning and ran to see Mr. Mišík for a story.”</p><h4>Slovak Community</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/bejiZMEDyj8?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I was amazingly surprised by the activities of the Slovaks in Cleveland. My father about three days later took me here to the Slovak Benedictine Abbey, because also he was a good Catholic. And I met Father Andrew Pier, who was in the same job as I have right now. And my uncle took me to the lodge, the Jednota lodge, and you know, about three or four months later I became a secretary because they were looking for some young blood looking to work. And then there was… In school, okay, at night school, I saw a lot of Slovak people – almost three quarters of the class were Slovak kids, boys and girls, so I figured well, I must do something. So I founded the Slovak Catholic Federation in America. We had about 80 members – it even still exists now, it changed its name to the Slovak Dramatic Club. We did Slovak plays, I can show you some pictures, Slovak dances, and sponsored the Slovak celebration on March 14 and the Tiso celebration, the Slovak day. And the Štefánik monument, we went down there to sing. So, our generation, us – the Slovak Republic generation – prolonged the life of the Slovaks in America for another 50 years. Because sure there were old Slovaks, but that was old, and that was dying, that was tired, you know. So we prolonged its life for 50 years.”</p><h4>Cleveland</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Sqj_6crNksM?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Saturday morning, my aunt took me out shopping, okay. She put $350 on the table and she said ‘We’re going to go shopping, and when you get a job, you’re going to pay the money back.’ So we went shopping and I came back with a brand new suit. But she burned up everything I brought from Slovakia, she burned it up! Because you are going to bring some flies or something. Anyhow, so she bought me the suit, we came back from shopping and I thought, ‘Hmm, I’m in America two days and I owe $1,500 already!’ – at that time! So I got a job in White Sewing. He happened to give me a good job. After about six months, he gave me [the job of] timekeeper, and every time he needed help, he asked me, ‘Andy, you know any Slovak boys?’ And I got him maybe… one time there was working maybe about 40 Slovak boys at the White Sewing Machine Corporation down there. You know I got, I ended up being a timekeeper.”</p><h4>Slovak Garden</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qjOyog0vL6Q?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Before I became the president, there were about 120 people coming to the Slovak Day in Florida. When I was president, for 14.5 years, the highest amount I had one time was 1,200, and never less than 600, okay – people coming to the Slovak Day. So it was very successful, and the next thing you know, they are coming to [celebrate] the liberation of Slovakia. So, the people from Slovakia, they don’t really want to come to Cleveland, you know, Florida was a nice attractive thing, by the sun, by the beaches; they started coming to Florida, the ministers, the mayors and so forth. And so then I organized some groups coming to Florida and here to Cleveland. It was very successful. Then I finally one day, everything was hunky-dory, straight, I decided in 1997 to quit.”</p><h4>Slovak Institute</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qvkbePeYV04?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I keep things up the same way as it was originally founded – to preserve, protect, all the materials concerning Slovaks in America. When I come here with Joe – I appointed Joe as my assistant here, Joe Hornack, maybe one tenth of what you see was here. Everything else was in boxes, like this pile, and unsorted. So we created a lot of systems, a good filing system, we created a personality file; we have a list of maybe 600 personalities, everything, whatever was said about them, we’ve got it in a special file. Same thing on the organizations – if they’re not found in that file, I’ve got them in a big box, that’s what I’m doing right now. So now my question is here how long this can survive here as is. The abbot is here is no longer a Slovak. We have a couple of Slovaks in here, but they are not that interested in things up here. I personally believe that all this precious material belongs to Slovakia, because that’s the history of the Slovak nation is here in America, or the Slovak people. Now I’m in the process of negotiating with the Matica Slovenska, which is a cultural organization, to move some of the stuff to Slovakia, and also with the Catholic University of Ružomberok, to move some stuff. So we are in the process of that thing. They have invited me sometime in the summer time for a final meeting, so I think we are talking between now and five years that we’d start moving some of the stuff. We’ve got an okay from the abbey to move it, the only thing is finances.”</p><h4>Thanks to America</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/vAvo8_vf0hI?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I know that I could not have accomplished one tenth in Slovakia what I have accomplished in America. Because when I compare myself to my friends, with the same education – don’t forget, it’s a smaller country, smaller opportunity. This is a big country, if you have the guts and know how, you can move as far as you want. It’s a beautiful country. I love 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
Andrew Hudak
Description
An account of the resource
<p> </p><p>Andrew Hudak was born in Kecerovské Pekl’any, in the Šariš region of Slovakia, in 1928. His father (also called Andrew) owned a farm, which he had purchased after returning to Slovakia from the United States, where he had raised money working in an Iowa mine. Andrew says that growing up, he and his family ‘produced everything they ate’ and that the farm his family lived on employed ‘progressive’ agricultural methods, which his father had learned in the United States. Andrew attended elementary school in his village before being sent to Nitra to study at the Mission of the Society of the Divine Word. He returned to Kecerovské Pekl’any at the end of 1944 when the seminary was closed because of WWII. He says it was at this time that he decided not to become a priest. Following liberation, Andrew moved to the Czech border town of Aš, where he says many hundreds of Slovaks settled following the expulsion of Sudeten Germans under the Beneš Decrees. There, he helped establish The Slovak Catholic Youth Association and had a radio broadcast, called <em>Hlas Slovenska</em> [<em>Voice of Slovakia</em>]. He moved back to Podbrezová, Slovakia, after a short time having lost his job, for what Andrew says were political reasons. Again unemployed in the fall of 1947, Andrew decided to move to the United States and join his father, who had been working in Cleveland for a year already.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Andrew arrived in Cleveland on January 8, 1948. He quickly found a job at the White Sewing Machine Corporation. He says he was pleasantly surprised by the amount of Slovak activity he found in the city and subsequently established the Slovak Catholic Youth Club (later the Slovak Dramatic Club) with some of the new immigrants he met at English-language night classes. After two and a half years in his first job, Andrew bought a restaurant called the Lorain Square Lunch Room, where he worked as a chef. He became involved in property development and construction and eventually established his own travel agency, Adventure International Travel Service, which he opened a branch of in Bratislava in 1992. Andrew remained extremely active in the American Slovak community, as president of the Lakewood Slovak Civic Club for ten years and founder of two branches of the Slovak League of America, in Parma and Strongsville, Ohio. In 1982, he became president of the Slovak Garden retirement community in Florida – a position he held for fourteen and a half years. In 2002, he became head of the Cleveland Slovak Institute, an organization which aims to preserve and protect the history of Slovaks in America. Andrew is married to Sophia Beno Hudak and the couple have three children, Andrew, Paul and Steven. In 1993, Andrew became a dual citizen of Slovakia and the United States.</p><p> </p><p><a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20170609120152/http://www.slovakinstitute.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Link to the Slovak Institute’s web pages</a></p><p><a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20170609120152/http://ncsml.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/e-Hudak_-_FINAL.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Full transcript of Andrew Hudak’s interview</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
Americanization
Catholics
Community leadership
Community Life
Education
Journalism
Kecerovske Peklany
Podebrazova
Religion
Ruzomberok
Saris
Stefanik
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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>Moravia</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/PpDpAeEaNV4?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“We were always very poor, due to political reasons, so basically my grandparents played a big part in my life. They gave us a place to stay; they supported us, giving us… If the pig was slaughtered we got some of that and otherwise we were just supporting ourselves by planting fruits and vegetables and having the animals at home so we can survive.”</p><h4>Brother Leaving</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/D446A1mz_xo?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“My brother is very spontaneous. He decides; he goes. So he very spontaneously on the way to the train, which is a 15 minute walk, he tells me ‘Come with me.’ He’s already packed, he’s going to the train, and he says ‘Come with me.’ I said ‘What do you mean? Like, right now, this minute?’ He says ‘Yeah, why not?’ I said ‘Yeah, but I’m just going to be a burden to you because I don’t know anything. I wouldn’t know how to take care of myself. I’d be just dependent on you; I don’t want to do it. But I am certainly going to try to get out when I become something, when I have a profession to fall back on.’ So he just went. I guess I was quite reasonable then. I’m pretty much down-to-earth, so I was thinking logically that it’s not practical to leave right now, and I should at least finish my studies in the<em>gymnázium</em>.</p><p>“But it certainly planted a bug in my head that I should follow him, and I was certain I could get out. And then I thought ‘Ok, I’ll still try to do the university’ and university didn’t work out; then I really purposefully became a nurse, figuring that I speak German, I’m surrounded by German-speaking countries, Germany and Austria, so I’m going to try to get there and I could work as a nurse. I found out also later on that in Germany there was a shortage of nurses so it would have been great. But there was no way to get out. Absolutely no way for me because we were considered such high-risk that we were not even allowed to go to Yugoslavia, which was the route that many people fled – and I admit, I would be the first one.”</p><p><em>You couldn’t even go on vacation to Yugoslavia?</em></p><p>“No, no.” </p><h4>Voting</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/rNa-7lojaqs?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“The voting I went through in Czechoslovakia was absolutely ridiculous. With the age of 18 you had the ‘right’ to vote, and it consisted of you being forced to go and vote. You were handed a paper filled out with the Communist candidates, which you folded and threw in some container. That was the extent of the voting. Absolutely absurd stuff. I don’t know if they were putting up some image for the Western countries because there was no real free election.”<br /></p><h4>Staying in America</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/21D2DFIwfKQ?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“With my family, with my husband, with the properties, and emotionally, much more invested here. I love this country, very much so, because it gave me freedom. I was so fascinated when I came here in ’76, switched on the TV and people were bad-mouthing the president, for example. They were saying bad things about him or people high in the government. This was absolutely a no-no in Czechoslovakia. The freedom of speech was just, to me, so refreshing and so amazing. After ’89, I went there almost every year; I still do, so I saw the changes and all that. But you grow apart from these people. You become different, and I don’t think I would be accepted 100 percent back because I am different already.”</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
Anna Balev
Description
An account of the resource
<p><img class="alignleft wp-image-2339 size-full" src="http://web.archive.org/web/20170609072058im_/http://ncsml.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/SQ-Anna-Balev.png" alt="" width="235" height="235" /></p><p>Anna Balev was born in Olomouc, in Moravia, in 1950. She grew up outside the city in the small village of Březce with her parents, three siblings and grandparents. Prior to the Communist coup, Anna’s father, Jaroslav, was a language professor at a nearby <em>gymnázium</em>. Anna describes him as an ‘avid Catholic’ who ‘went out of his way to provoke’ the communist authorities. He was arrested and sent to prison for two years. Anna’s mother, Blažena, returned to school to become a nurse in order to support the family once her father ran into trouble. Anna says that she was the only one in her class who was not a Pioneer and was instead sent to religion classes. Each year Anna spent the summer with her maternal uncle and aunt in Krnov, times she fondly recalls. Following the 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion, Anna’s brother left the country and settled in Canada.</p><p> </p><p>Anna attended <em>gymnázium</em> in Šternberk and hoped to study languages at Charles University (she was taught French, German and Latin by her father), but was not accepted. She instead decided to study nursing, recognizing that a practical profession would make it easier to start a life elsewhere if she left the country. Anna studied for two years in Olomouc and moved to Prague where she worked at a psychiatric hospital. She then took a job in Karlovy Vary, where she was hired because of her German language skills. In 1975 Anna reconnected with her future husband, an American who had emigrated from Ukraine. The pair had met while she was living in Prague and he was visiting the capital city. They decided to marry in order for Anna to legally leave the country. After getting married in Karlovy Vary, Anna immediately set about getting permission to immigrate to the United States. She arrived in New York City in May 1976 and was handed her green card at the airport.</p><p> </p><p>Anna says that she ‘fell in love immediately’ with the city and was astonished at the freedom she now enjoyed. While studying for her RN exam, Anna found a job at a women’s clinic. She subsequently worked at Roosevelt Hospital and for a plastic surgeon. Anna stopped practicing nursing when her first daughter was born in 1980. Her second daughter was born two years later. Anna also attended Hunter College part-time from her first year in New York. In 1985 she received degrees in English and theatre arts. Today Anna is the owner of a rental company and owns property in the Czech Republic as well as New York.</p><p> </p><p>Anna has returned to the Czech Republic nearly every year since she left and has recently become a dual citizen of the Czech Republic and the United States. She is active in the Czech community in New York as a member of Sokol and the local chapter of SVU (Czechoslovak Academy of Arts and Sciences). Today, Anna lives in New York City with her husband.</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
Catholicism
Community Life
Education
Family life
gymnazium
Healthcare professionals
Machova
marriage
Religion
Sternberk
Warsaw Pact invasion
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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
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b675dac4a9fe11b1ca22beff55b00eda
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>Schooling</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ISZsvP2FGSg?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“We were never told the right history, for example, the history of the First Slovak Republic. That was completely wiped out from history. I never knew that we had a Slovak flag, Slovak emblem, Slovak national anthem and all that until I came to Canada. So that was kind of blocked out from the younger generation. And I think that’s sad, because history is history and should be taught as history was and is going and so forth. Because you cannot wipe that out. Sooner or later that registers somewhere.</p><p>“But as I kid I did not [notice this], the only thing at times that I would here was if a young man or a woman wanted to go to study university and have a good position, then they had to deny their religion. If they didn’t, then they were not allowed to go to those schools. Or in one case that I know, one of my cousins, he finished his university in ten years, by [studying] in the evenings or something like that, and in some cases even grandparents would have to deny the religion, not only the parents. So, that would be the oppression, I would say. Sometimes that would come up from the kids, like when there was the feast of St Nicholas, Svätého Mikuláša, they usually had their shoes out, clean and all that but you didn’t talk with the teacher about it. Nothing about religion. If something came up, it was like ‘stop talking about it.’”</p><h4>Gardening</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/r4AbjHqoyXY?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p><span style="line-height:1.5;">“As a kid, I always was in the garden, and then when my mother, God rest her soul, was able to come here for the first time, then she even told me that the neighbors, the ladies, when they used to go to the forest to get some sticks for the stove to burn, she says that I was always in the garden weeding out. And the ladies were surprised, they said ‘How come you leave him in the garden, doesn’t he pull out the good with the bad?’ But I seemed to know what to leave and what to pull out. And the lady across the street, she used to bring her pot, soil and cuttings and she said ‘You plant that for me, because it looks like it will grow for you but not for me.’ I always liked to make bouquets and decorations for some reason, so…” </span></p><p></p><h4>Canada</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/XZTGJhAzdbI?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p><span style="line-height:1.5;">“Once we tasted life in Canada and saw everything in the stores, and the cars and you name it… Of course, for an 18-year-old, the cars were a big thing. The first thing I thought was ‘I will never learn how to drive here!’ Because there were so many cars, big roads, the number of lanes on the highways and stuff. And I said ‘oh my God!’ You know, back home, when I left as an 18 year old, I think there were maybe two cars or three cars, everybody else had bicycles. But it wasn’t that… we always had food back home, and clothes. We were not rich, but we were living.” </span></p><p></p><h4>Staying in Canada</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/99jxVEnbVZ4?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I think when we came in, in ’67, and got busy with going to English school, then came ’68 and Dubček and a little bit more freedom, and more people were coming, younger, you know. Our age or a little bit older maybe, and so forth. So you had a good number of people who came to Toronto for example. So you got involved with them trying to help them out. There were different organizations, so we used to go almost every Saturday to dances for example. In summertime after mass we went to a farm, soccer, singing and stuff. So we kind of didn’t think about anything at that point. We were just enjoying the freedom and the new way of living. That’s what I would say.”</p><h4>Becoming a Monk</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/DMVZWRBBkX0?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“The monks were singing their vespers and it just came out from me, I have no clue why – I said ‘This would be something for me!’ Crazy! So monsignor said ‘Well, we’ve got the Slovak monks in Cleveland. And I have a number of priests that I know.’ And, he said ‘We can go and visit.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, yeah, okay.’ And that was the end of that. But his friends used to come to Toronto, because he had a cottage and they used to spend some vacations there, so I used to join them the last week of their vacation. And then one of them from Cleveland for some reason said… and he brought me an application to the monastery here one year, and I looked at it and I just threw it in the garbage. So the following year he said ‘What’s the matter? You chicken?’ He said ‘You can come and visit at least?’ So I said ‘Okay.’ So that year we came and I spent about three days with the monks here. And I said ‘Gee! I think I would like it, maybe.’ And so, they told me to come again for a visit and so I came again for a visit, and that’s how I came actually to the monastery in 1980.”</p><h4>Return to Slovakia</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/OGtDUJm8cp8?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I would say as you are staying longer in a country, you grow more into the country you are living in. But, in your heart, when it is Christmas, Easter, or some other doings, obviously, you miss your parents and your brothers, especially when you are not able to go back. The first time I went back was after the collapse of communism. That was my first time going back. So by that time, both parents were gone, two of my brothers were deceased, even our parents’ house was sold because my brothers were living in other villages. And so when I came, it wasn’t home. I fell in love with my sister-in-law, whom I met for the first time and their kids. And [they were] of course very welcoming, and I felt like I was back at home again, but it’s not the family home in which you’ve grown up. So, we went there to visit the family that bought it, but they were in the process of remodeling, so they had windows where all the doors had been and it looked like after the War!”</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
Brother Gabriel Balazovic
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Brother Gabriel Balazovic was born Julián Balažovič in Dolná Krupá, Slovakia, in 1949. His father worked as a forest ranger and then in a facility for the mentally ill, while his mother stayed at home and raised Julián and his six siblings. Upon finishing school in Dolná Krupá, Julián attended Pol’nohospodárska záhradnícka škola (where he trained to become a gardener) in Rakovice. In 1967, he was invited alongside two of his cousins to visit his aunt Mary who lived in Toronto. He accepted her invitation and came to Canada, where he was impressed by the standard of living and decided to stay. Brother Gabriel says he was handed a ten-month prison sentence in absentia for failing to return to Czechoslovakia. In Toronto, he became a very active member of Sts. Cyril & Methodius Slovak Roman Catholic Church, to which his aunt belonged. He says that he enjoyed a busy social life as a member of the parish, attending dances and soccer matches which were organized by the predominantly Slovak congregation. He began to do a lot of singing and reading within the parish, and he met one nun in particular who spoke with him about the possibility of joining a monastic order. At this time, Brother Gabriel says he also subscribed to the Slovak-American magazine Ave Maria, which was published in Cleveland.</p><p> </p><p>It was during a trip to the United States in the late 1970s that Brother Gabriel says he first thought seriously about becoming a monk. He was traveling to a conference when he stopped at the Czech monastery in Lisle, Illinois. There, he says, he heard the monks sing vespers which had a profound effect on him. He was told by a priest traveling with him that there was a Slovak monastery in Cleveland which he may be able to join. After a number of discussions with members of the Benedictine Monastery at St. Andrew Abbey in Cleveland, Ohio, Brother Gabriel did indeed begin the process of taking his vows in 1980. He has lived there and been a member of the order ever since. He returned to Slovakia for the first time to see his family after the fall of communism in 1989. In more recent years, he has traveled to Slovakia to help with the opening of the Benedictine Transfiguration Monastery in Sampor in 2010. Brother Gabriel still travels on a Canadian passport, but became a dual citizen of Canada and Slovakia following the Velvet Revolution.</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
Catholicism
Catholics
Community Life
Dolna Krupa
Education
Julian Balazovic
Pol'nohospodarska zahradnicka skola
Religion
school
Svaheto Mikulasa
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82461508b419a53e449654112ee151d1
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>Growing Up</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2eiBM4GdVg4?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“Because it’s not far away from the German border, there was a huge Czech Army station and Sušice was just the first city outside of what used to be the Sudetenland. So historically, Sušice was a diverse place. There was always a Czech, German and Jewish community. But it wasn’t in the German zone, so it was considered a Czech town and it was not affected by a Sudeten history, but there was the Army base. So when I grew up, there was always a strong sense of the communist regime’s presence, in the sense that the people who were army people were always coming and going and privileged. They had a lot more money that the rest of the people and, especially through my mother’s profession, I was very aware of that because any time there would be a new army family coming, wives would always be privileged by getting jobs very easily in schools or anywhere, and the children were privileged. My mother as a schoolteacher was always tense when children from these families were evaluated badly in school.</p><p>“So there was a strong sense of awareness of that and I grew up in a family that was always very clearly on the other side, meaning that if Havel, for example, talks about a certain schizophrenia in a society, which I write about in my book, I was strongly aware of this as a child, where when you talk about it at home, history is one way, and different history is told in school, and different things you can’t say or act in school. The city was liberated by the American Army and my grandfather, who was a photographer and also a musician, was friendly with American soldiers, so we always had in our family albums pictures of my father and American soldiers in my grandfather’s studio. So I grew up knowing that the city was liberated by the American Army while other kids who didn’t have this connection through visuals were living in the world of imagining that we were liberated by the Soviet Army only.”</p><h4>Education</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/v8IYyGh2GjY?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I think it was more well-rounded and cohesive. We had a lot of gym, we had art and I also think we had wiggle-room for people with different gifts. I remember I was good in visual arts and it was seen as a plus. It was seen as a talent that’s good to groom and it is okay if you do well in arts or music and you maybe don’t do so well in other subjects. I felt that art education, music, creativity was overall more valued. Math was good; I think science, not so. Given the ideological [constraints] I think history was good, but I think overall there was more stress on trying to find your skills or your niche or talent and pursuing that and supporting you on that.”</p><h4>Mother</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/CxmWWHSeSbY?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I think that in Czech[oslovakia] there were situations where people sometimes were able to hide in certain places, like I know that the school where she taught had a president who was sympathetic and a nice person and an interesting personality who was somehow able to survive, and he would hide some people and I think that happened to my mother. By the time the 1980s came, when I could see that there were strict divisions between teachers who were in the Party and who were not, it was almost like an agreement. People sort of lived next to each other with this agreement: ‘We’re not crossing these boundaries; we’ll just take you for what you are, communist, and we’re here.’ And they co-existed with certain parameters, like you don’t cross over certain lines. You had to go to certain meetings. They had an organization for teachers that was, of course, a communist-affiliated organization. It wasn’t the Party, but it was a union, the teacher’s union, which, in a socialist state, was a socialist organization. So my mother was in that, but it was just like a union.”</p><h4>High School</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/uYDZADM9yHI?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I got very involved in the Catholic religion at that time. There was a huge revival; the people in my generation were very interested in spirituality as a form of looking for a place of truth, looking for different, alternative environment. It was very ecumenic. Ecumenic in a sense that Catholic and Protestant was very mixed, there were no boundaries, and it was more about being a teenager and looking for the meaning of life and a place where you can trust people. There was a sense that you could trust religion after it was suppressed. There was a lot of this happening underground and there were a lot of things that, because my parents were secular, I had no idea about, so it was also newness to it. So I got very involved in a Catholic, not so much a church, but various underground activities that united people. You met a lot of intellectual people through the Catholic underground, so I was very involved in that.”</p><p><em>So how did you get involved in that and what sort of activities were you doing?</em></p><p>“There were certain parishes in Prague that would be popular to go to for young people, meaning that there would be certain priests who would have Mass and homily for young people. They would be more provocative, more modern – within its limits – but then also certain groups organized after church groups where people would get together and talk, sing, become a community, sometimes read from the Bible and had theological readings. I wouldn’t call that Catholicism; it was more spiritual and theological interest in reading the Bible. So that was one thing. The other, being in Prague, young people would often travel outside [the city] on weekends and summers, so there would be parishes around the country where you would go for weekend retreats, where you go and spend time together. You may sing; you may pray. It was social, but with a religious program.</p><p>“Now this is so different from here. I would want this to be really clearly distinct from here because that kind of activity was spiritual. It was not important that it was the Catholic Church, in other words. It happened to be for me, but it could have been Protestant. I had friends in my classroom from both Catholic and Protestant [churches] and we would often, as a gesture of solidarity, go back and forth to churches. There was no animosity or competition between churches.”</p><h4>Kicked Out</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Mue4cahwgsc?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I was, through my friend, recommended to a woman named Miloslava Holubová who lived in Malá Strana in a beautiful apartment overlooking Malostranské náměstí and she was a Czech intellectual who signed [Charter 77]. She was a writer intellectual who was connected and, in fact, her apartment was often a place for meetings of various groups, like theological groups, and when books were brought to Czech[oslovakia] secretly from Britain or Germany they were often delivered to her place then sent around. Literary people, underground Charter people often met in her apartment and so the fact that I was expelled for my religious activity and found this room in this woman’s apartment changed my life again in a major way because I became close friends with her, but also she was sort of my mentor and my aunt and my grandmother and my everything. We had an amazing couple of years together. From her, not only was I exposed to all these underground, literary circles and religious circles and literature that I normally wouldn’t have access to, because she was my mentor, we would spend a lot of time together and she would often talk about her life before WWII, during and after, and so I would learn through her about Czech history and the history of experience.”</p><h4>Leaving the Country</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/OxbzZ0d1CWk?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“When I was in FAMU, my last two years or year, I witnessed a number of people coming back home from the West after the Revolution. A number of immigrants who decided they would like to come back and try, and I saw how Czech people in their professions were not supportive; were jealous and actually quite evil and nasty to them, and anything that they came with. There were mutual tensions between people who came from outside and wanted to contribute their knowledge from outside; there was real hatred, sort of this insecurity – ‘Don’t come back and tell us now’ – and the real serious sort of animosity. It was very sad for me for me to see that because I felt that, as a young person, I wanted to see other… what was coming from elsewhere, other ideas. I was open and to see that these older guys in charge are frightened by that and afraid to let go, and not accepting people who were Czech people coming back. It was depressing. Of course, now I made myself to be in the position where if I ever want to go back, I know I would never be accepted, for the very same reasons. But, that was really the reason I left. I was in love with my husband and wanted to be with him, but he would have probably stayed. If I said ‘I’m not going, stay here, make it happen’ he would probably stay; I wanted to go, and I would have gone anywhere in the West. I really wanted to study more.”</p><h4>Research</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/zVeoOdTcGAk?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I noticed a group of older men sitting at a table, Sunday morning at 9:00 or 9:30 and they were having coffee or a little glass of wine and, as a photographer, I was intrigued and sort of curious. What was bringing them to this café that was mostly a younger crowd or foreigners? So I walked up to them and introduced myself as a photographer and asked them if I could photograph them or talk to them, and they sort of looked at each other and said ‘Sure.’ So it turned out that they were men who were political prisoners from the ‘50s and they were a group that would gather every Sunday. So I met them, and we talked, and I asked if I could photograph them, so I set up my tripod and my camera and I did an interview about their lives. I interviewed six or seven people and after that I came back the next summer and decided to meet more of them and I also decided to find women and see if women had different experiences or not.</p><p>“In 1995, I began this project where I would interview former political prisoners, people who were arrested in 1948 and spent many years, ten or more years in what were Czech labor camps, equivalent to what Solzhenitsyn writes about in <em>The Gulag Archipelago</em>. I first started with life histories and these portraits and then, as I was progressing towards my dissertation, I started to ask questions, not so much about their individual lives, but more about their life as a community. I discovered that they have this community that has political aspirations, that has social aspirations. So I started to hang out with them more. Not with all, but some of them I met with individually, some of them through the community and some of them I stayed friends with and visited, like this man for example. We were very close friends. So really, until 2004, I was going every summer regularly, meeting, if not interviewing, individuals or their spouses or children. I would participate in their annual gatherings and celebrations. They would often return to these places or camps and I would join them and photograph them, and I wrote a journal and records and that all became my data for my doctoral dissertation.”</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
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Jana Kopelentova-Rehak
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Jana Kopelentova-Rehak was born in Sušice in southern Bohemia in 1968. Her mother Jana was a teacher while her father Jaroslav was a photographer for the city. Jana’s paternal grandparents had owned a photography studio in Sušice which was nationalized after the Communist coup in 1948; her father has since reclaimed the property and works with some original family equipment. Jana says that her parents both held anti-communist views and that she was aware of history that wasn’t taught in schools; for example, the liberation of Plzeň and Sušice by the American Army. Exposed to photography from an early age, Jana was accepted to the art school Střední průmyslová škola grafická in Prague. While living in a dormitory, Jana became interested in religion and attended retreats with fellow classmates. When a Bible was found in her room, Jana says that she was expelled from school housing and had to find her own accommodations in the city. She finished high school living with Miloslava Holubová, a writer and signatory of Charter 77 whom Jana says was a big influence. After graduating from high school, Jana worked for three years as a photographer for an art restoration company. In 1990, she began studying fine art photography at FAMU (the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague). While at FAMU, Jana studied abroad in Norway and Glasgow and says that she learned English thanks to the international makeup of the FAMU students.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>In 1994, eager to continue her studies in the West and with plans to marry Frank Rehak, an American who was in Prague on a Fulbright scholarship, Jana moved to the United States. She settled in Baltimore, Maryland, and married Frank a few months later. To adjust to the move, Jana says that she spent some time taking photographs of Baltimore neighborhoods. She completed her MFA in photography from the University of Delaware in 1997 and was accepted to a doctoral program in anthropology at American University. Jana’s research focused on 1950s political prisoners in Prague. For several summers, Jana and Frank returned to the Czech Republic and taught a summer photography school for international students. Jana is an assistant professor of anthropology at Loyola University in Baltimore and Towson University in Towson, Maryland. She also teaches Czech language classes for the local Sokol group. A dual citizen, Jana received her American citizenship two years ago, which she says was an ‘emotional decision.’ She lives with her husband and two daughters in Baltimore.</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
Education
Holubova
Plzen
Post-1989 emigrant
Religion
school
Stredni prumyslova skola graficka
Susice
Teachers
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9602af14c77be2f341d3fbaab8b1b343
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
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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>Growing Up</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/C5-Kc6lC1V4?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“We grew up on a very traditional farm, in a very traditional way. Most of the villagers were farmers; however, the village was self-sustained because there was a cluster of villages and every village had someone who did something. There was a dressmaker and a shoemaker and a cabinet maker and a baker, and there was a little church nearby and there was a priest and there was a school in the village, which was the grammar school, [grades] one to five. For middle school, [grades] six to nine, we had to go to the little town where the church was and the castle and the school. The only things we were buying were sugar, salt, yeast, and that’s about it. When the supply of meat ran out, then we sometimes went to the butcher in town and bought the meat for Sundays. Matter of fact, we were eating meat basically only on Sundays.”<br /></p><h4>Collectiveness and Religion</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ankZIbWsLL0?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Until then, it was very traditional that people from the village were going to church, but when the so-called JZD [Jednotné zemědělské družstvo], collectivism, took place, the officials started to put pressure on people not to go to church, and if you went to church on Sundays they were threatening you that you won’t be allowed to study. So the people got threatened and so maybe the children stayed at home and the parents went only, or the children only who were planning to stay on the farm or go to vocational school, they were allowed to go. I was going until the eighth grade and then the communists came with a different idea of how to ruin the church and they relocated the local priests. They sent them to the communities where they were not known and new priests came, and it had a horrible impact on the whole church going and the church community, because people didn’t warm up to him. He was a stranger, he was different, he had different ideas of how to do things; he was a little prudish. He started to say what people should do; the other one was nicer. And at that time, I stopped going every Sunday. I was going on Easter and Christmas, but not often.”<br /></p><h4>Moving to Munich</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/RTHMNn-_2aA?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“It was the best year of our lives. It was like a honeymoon, because we didn’t have any responsibility towards the family. We thought we had money. We lived as we lived very modestly, in a very tiny apartment. I mean, very tiny. It was a studio. But we were young, we made friends. I knew German, so I quickly made connections. I’m good at that. There were people there for 20 years and they said ‘We don’t have any German friends. We socialize with only Czech immigrants.’ I couldn’t believe it because the Germans were so friendly; so nice and polite and interesting. I loved Munich.</p><p>“Our son Jan was born there, and we were very happy because he was a healthy child, and I wanted to stay there. I nested. It was close to home. All of the sudden you see how close Munich is to Prague. From Prague under communism, Munich seems like thousands of miles away. When you are in Munich, you look at the map and you finally realize ‘Oh my goodness!’ From Bratislava to Prague, it’s closer to Munich. I just loved it there, because I felt comfortable. Probably, I have some German genes. You know, being orderly and being organized, I felt like at home. It didn’t bother me. Some Czech people were saying ‘Oh, the Germans are so picky and you have to do everything in order and you have to comply with the order.’ I don’t have any problems with that. I loved that. And the city was clean and full of nice things. I couldn’t buy anything, but it didn’t matter. I was window shopping every Sunday. We lived in the center of Munich and there was a farmer’s market there. I loved their folk costumes and I thought ‘When I save the money, I will buy one and I will be dressing like them.’”<br /></p><h4>California</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Mu7bqamYeyk?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p></p><h4>Czech Connection</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/n7wj_Dk7LjI?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I didn’t want to push on them the Czech culture, because I’ve seen in other Czech families with older children that they hated it. There was a group of Czech friends down on the peninsula and they were actually trying to do dancing lessons for their teenagers and they of course hated the idea that they will be forced to dance. So I thought I’m not going to do it. They will figure out where they are from. Which they did actually pretty soon, because in 1990 we started to return to Czech Republic every summer, and they absolutely adore my old farm. They thought that grandpa, whom they met when they were six and eight for about two years before he died, they thought he was the coolest guy ever, because he did things like he mowed the grass with a scythe, and he was doing all kinds of stuff, like mechanically and technically, repairing stuff. Metal, wood, whatever it was. They thought that he was a god because he knew how to make everything and repair everything.”</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
Jana Pochop
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Jana Pochop was born in Hořic v Podkrkonoší in northeastern Bohemia in 1947. She grew up on a farm in the village of Bukinova u Pecky with her parents, Jaroslava and Josef, and her two brothers and one sister. Jana says that her village was self-sustaining, but that after the farms were collectivized she remembers shortages of food and other goods. Because her father was in the hospital for several weeks, her farm was one of the last in the area to be collectivized. Jana attended elementary school in her village, but after fifth grade she had to travel to nearby towns. She says that high school was an especially difficult time as she struggled to balance travel, homework, and housework, and her mother was in the hospital. Her mother died when Jana was 16. After graduating high school, Jana attended the Institute of Chemical Technology in Prague for one year. She returned home to help take care of the farm for one year and then moved to Hradec Králové where she worked in the accounting office of a company that brought entertainment from Prague to the city. In 1970, Jana married Vladimir Pochop, whom she had known since she was 16, and moved to Prague.</p><p> </p><p>Jana received a degree in physical therapy from a vocational school and, in 1975, began studying psychology at Charles University. Jana says that in order to be accepted, she applied for membership in the Communist Party; however, her application was not processed. She received her degree in 1979 and, in January 1980, she and Vladimir traveled to London for two weeks. When they were not granted asylum there, on the way home, the pair got off the train in Munich and went to the American Embassy. Jana and Vladimir were granted asylum and found an apartment; Jana says that she loved their time in Munich. When they received permission to immigrate to the United States, Jana was eight months pregnant. Their son Jan was born in September 1981. Eight months later in April 1982, the Pochops flew to Atlanta, Georgia. Jana stayed with Jan in Atlanta for six weeks while Vladimir found a job and a place to live in California. Once settled in Mountain View, California, Jana says that the language barrier was very difficult for her. She took many ESL classes and raised her sons (Martin was born in 1984) speaking English in order to improve her own language skills. In 1990, the Pochops returned to Czechoslovakia for the first time and Jana was able to retrieve her transcript from the vocational school she had attended for physical therapy. A few years later, she began working as a physical therapist at a hospital. In 2011, Jana completed a program in psychology at St. Mary’s College. As both of their sons now live in Prague, Jana and Vladimir have considered returning to the Czech Republic. Today, they live in Concord, California.</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
Education
English language
Family life
Healthcare professionals
Horic v Podkrkonosi
Hradec Kralove
Religion
Rural life
Triebenekrova
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554c1cad2ec1ee8a98904b62d13cbe6b
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>Unitarian Church</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ahocaD4qvLE?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“I was once walking from the Charles Bridge through the street where the Unitaria is and it was raining, and so I wanted to be somewhere to prevent me from getting wet, and so I went to the Unitaria and there was this little man speaking so persuasively, with such a pathos and with so much depth in terms of the thoughts that he was expressing that I was pretty much taken by that. And that’s how I started to go to the Unitaria, and they introduced me then to philosophy and psychology so that when I was about 17 or 18 I was already able, as a cultural secretary of the Unitarian youth, to deliver a speech on the interpretation of dreams by Sigmund Freud at that age. So I was an early speaker.”</p><h4>To Palestine</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/q0THtR79JUQ?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I experienced the first ripples of the Holocaust. I lived under Hitler six months so I saw what was going on and I understood the evil of the Nazi regime, but I saved my life by leaving with the last transport. If I wouldn’t have done that I would be dead by now and I couldn’t do this interview.”</p><p><em>And how was that arranged?</em></p><p>“There were about 1,000 to 2,000 people who bribed the Germans – they had to pay – and the Germans were very strictly organized. They put us on a steamship on the Donau [the Danube] in Bratislava, and the Nazis were standing with guns on the ship until we went to the Black Sea, all the way through Europe. Once we arrived in the Black Sea they disappeared and we were on our own. And that’s how I saved my life.”</p><h4>Returning to Prague</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Cxh_nL1s3DM?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I was there about three times under the Communists, in the late ‘70s or ‘80s. As a matter of fact, I even participated in one of the demonstrations on Václavské náměstí [Wenceslaus Square] when they came with the water cannons. When Havel and five other dissidents were sentenced to years in jail, I read about it in the New York Times. I decided we had to do something, so the Church of Humanism elected them as Humanists of the Year, and it was the second award amongst these hundreds of awards that he got – the Church of Humanism. You can see it on the internet; we are there. So in connection with that I was also visiting Prague, and the first time when I went there the minister of the Prague congregation was telling me: ‘Don’t give it to me. You will get in trouble; they will never let you back and you are not doing anything good to him by giving him an award.’”</p><p><em>Did you meet any dissidents?</em></p><p>“I attended the last meeting of Charter 77. It was the last meeting, and I have actually a photograph with them.”</p><p><em>Where was that held?</em></p><p>“I don’t know; in some hotel or something. After that the Charter was dissolved and turned into a political party. But they didn’t want to accept that award because they were not sure what the Church of Humanism is and so on. But after I appeared at that meeting, I convinced them and they became so enthusiastic that when we were giving the award in the Unitarian Church it was packed. And five of these dissidents, including Uhl, were there and spoke, and I have pictures and I think even a video of that meeting.”</p>
Dublin Core
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Title
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Joseph Ben-David
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Joseph Ben-David was born in Prague in 1920. He lived with his parents and his younger brother in the center of the Czechoslovak capital. His father owned a printing ink factory and, when Joseph left high school, he joined his father at work and learned the trade. As a teenager, Joseph became aware of the Unitarian church in Prague and became a speaker and activist for social causes. He was also a youth leader for the Zionist Youth Movement. Joseph’s father died shortly after the Nazis occupied Prague in 1939 and, in the fall of that year, Joseph took a transport to Palestine. His mother intended to follow on the next transport; however, it did not leave as scheduled and she was deported to a concentration camp where she died.</p><p> </p><p>Joseph arrived in Palestine in 1940 and settled in Tel Aviv. He established a lab where he produced printing media – ink, cement, glue and printing rollers. As a conscientious objector during the Arab-Israeli War in 1948, Joseph worked as a hygiene officer and later became a sanitary officer in Jerusalem. He also continued his activist efforts in social justice.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Joseph moved to New York City in 1954 and shortly thereafter became involved in the American Humanist Association in New York, first as a speaker and later as chapter president. Joseph also created a publication reporting on smoking and health which appeared in Reader’s Digest. In the early 1970s, Joseph founded the Church of Humanism, an organization with which he is still instrumental as senior minister. He has traveled back to Prague several times, mostly in the capacity of social activism. In 1979, his Church of Humanism named six dissidents (including Václav Havel) in Czechoslovakia as Humanists of the Year. In more recent years, Joseph has become involved in the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences (SVU). Today he lives in Manhattan with his wife Alyson.</p>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library
Source
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NCSML Archive
Community Life
Jews
Religion
-
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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>Police Officer</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/jWKsFmlEVE4?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“We were drafted into the Army. Three of us [two friends and I] were eligible so we went to the Army. And we went to the Army, which didn’t have any guns, any uniforms or nothing, it was just a joke. There was one sergeant up there, who woke us up in the morning and we ran around – but that was just for one week. Then they told us that they are forming some police force in Prague, and that we would be eligible to join that. So I says ‘okay,’ so I offered to join. But we had to go to Prague and I was the one who passed, the other two didn’t pass, I had the highest education.”</p><h4>Leaving Czechoslovakia</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/76L4Wf80-7U?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I – as the officer of a unit – I was immediately suspended and put down among the troops. And there was a new guy who took my place, Fred Kužel, who didn’t know how to write a služební lístek [office memo], if you know what that is. I did all the administrative jobs myself. So, we went around and around, and everything continues. And then one day, one day I got a telephone call from I don’t know where, and a voice says ‘Pepík, is that you?’ I said yes. He said ‘Tomorrow morning at 8 they’re coming to arrest you.’ So that sort of jerked me up a little bit, you know?”</p><h4>Guarding the Border</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/533qT7G88xw?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“At night we went on duty. And there was a little hill, and down at the bottom there was a creek and a flour mill. And so I says ‘You know, you guys, I want to go down and see if there is somebody, if I can catch somebody, down by the mill.’ So I went back there, nobody followed me, nobody looked where I was going. Well, I came to the mill, I looked around, nobody was following me, nobody was calling. So I just – being a good Christian – I made my cross on my forehead and crossed the border.”</p><h4>Ski Event</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/PmMviCqxBeE?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“When I was in the Army, I also joined the ski troops and I wound up in the 1953 Olympics [sic. International Ski Championships in Garmisch Partenkirchen]. I was not that good, you know. Because I went down the hill, in Garmisch Partenkirchen, and something came into my ski and I flipped over and they carried me out of there.”</p><p><em>So while you were in the Army, you also went to the Olympics?</em></p><p>“Oh yeah, that was in the Army. I was representing the Army there. So they took me to the hospital and there wasn’t anything broken, just a sprain. So they took me in and patched me up, and the next day, there were games going on, so they took me in an ambulance and drove me right to the field where they have the exercises for the Olympics. So, I had a beautiful, beautiful view up there.”</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
Joseph Pritasil
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Joseph Pritasil was born in Miřetice, eastern Bohemia, in 1925. He was one of seven children raised on a farm by his father, Antonin, and mother, Anežka. Joseph says he had to walk three and a half miles to school on a daily basis and, on Sunday, the family walked the same path to the nearest town to attend church. After receiving his basic education, Joseph attended metal-working school and, from 1942 until the end of WWII, he worked in a local factory as a machinist.</p><p> </p><p>Immediately after the end of the War in 1945, Joseph was drafted into the Czechoslovak Army, which he says was ‘a joke,’ as there were neither guns nor uniforms for any of the troops. He was told he could train for the police force instead, which he duly went to Prague to do and was accepted into the police academy. He rose through the ranks of until he became a deputy chief of unit, and was sent to Domažlice (on the West German border) to work as a border guard there. Around the time of the Communist coup in 1948, Joseph says he was asked to join the Communist Party, and when he refused he was demoted. He subsequently received an anonymous phone call saying that orders had been issued to arrest him the following day. He escaped while on duty at the border, in April 1948. Joseph spent over a year in refugee camps in West Germany; he was housed in the Goethe Schule in Regensburg before being shipped eventually to Ludwigsburg.</p><p> </p><p>In 1949, he was sponsored by some distant relatives on his father’s side to come to South Dakota and work on their farm. He did that for less than one year before moving to Chicago, where he found work in a factory making fire-proof doors. He was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1951 and sent to Heidelberg, Germany, for two years. During this time, says Joseph, he competed on behalf of his unit (the 62nd Anti-Aircraft Division) at the ski championships at Garmisch Partenkirchen. He says he has ‘fond memories’ of his time in the Army, but was eager to return to Chicago to marry his wife, Rose. He was married in 1954 and has four children, all of whom speak Czech. Joseph worked as a superintendant at a number of factories in the Chicago area until his retirement, and has presided over a number of local and national Czech organizations, such as the Czechoslovak National Council of America and the District Alliance of Czech Catholics. He hopes to visit Europe with his grandson in 2011.</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
Anti-communist
Border patrol
Community Life
Domazlice
Family life
marriage
Military service
Miretice
Refugee camp
Religion
Sports
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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>1st Hearing About U.S.</h4>
<p>States back in the ‘20s. He spent nine or ten years in the coal mines in Pennsylvania and he was trying to get my grandmother to come to America, but she was afraid to make the journey, so he came back. He would speak in Slovak and he would use English words; you know, you spend time in America, you kind of get confused. So he would tell me ‘Syn moj, Ty ked vyrasties len chod do Ameriky, keby si vedel ake tam maju velke buildingy.’ I’d say, ‘Ok, but what is buildingy?’ I had no clue as a child. So he explained what a building is. He just said ‘When you grow, my son, don’t stay here, just go to America. If you only saw what big buildings they have!’ Or another sentence that puzzled me was ‘If you go to America…’ Obviously he was speaking in Slovak: ‘Keby si vedel ake tam maju velke cary.’ I said ‘What the hell is cary?’ Well, he was referring to cars. So that was the idea that stuck in my mind and he kind of injected the temptation in my head. So I was growing up and I was thinking always ‘One day I am going to go there and see what America is all about.”</p>
<h4>Slovakia Farm</h4>
<p>“As a child growing up in a small village, life was very happy, merry. The only thing we had to play with was outside, not like the children of today [with] computers and all that stuff. So we’d run with the ball, we’d play soccer and all kind of playing that kids would do outside as all kinds of after-school activities.”</p>
<p>Did you grow up in a house or an apartment?</p>
<p>“My grandfather, rest in peace, he returned from America as a rich man so he bought a lot of land. He was a big farmer; he had six horses, four cows… It was like owning a Mercedes at the time. He built a house that is still on the same property, which I fixed as a memory to him. Nobody lives there, but my sister spends summers over there and that house is a memory to all of us. I have three siblings, a brother and two sisters, so whenever I come to Slovakia we always gather there and we pull out pictures of our childhood and we’re laughing our tails off.”</p>
<h4>Catholic vs. Communist</h4>
<p>“When I finished my school and started working the state-run construction industry, okresný štátny podnik as they called it. The vice-president comes to me one day and says to me ‘You are a young prospective talent; we want you in the Party,’ and I said ‘I go to church.’ And he’s like ‘So?’ ‘Well, I go to church, so I can’t serve two masters. I believe in God, so I cannot believe in Lenin or whatever.’ He had a smirk on his face. He wouldn’t bother me; he saw that he wouldn’t get me there.”</p>
<p>Weren’t you afraid?</p>
<p>“No. It was my persuasion; it was my belief. I had my education, I had my work, I wasn’t afraid of being in jail because I wasn’t a rebel, I was part of the masses that were part of the regime or ruling party, so I told them straight ‘No. Don’t even bother coming back because I’m not signing. I have no reason.’ There were cases, I know, where there were guys in the Communist Party and they were part of the church as well. So I was laughing. How can you be sitting on two chairs? I didn’t like the idea of somebody forces you into something and watching behind their back. It was just no. My answer was no.”</p>
<h4>Leaving Father</h4>
<p>“I told him ‘I’m not going to settle down here because I know Czechoslovakia, Slovakia, is no place for me,’ and he was kind of upset about it because he saw other guys, 28 years old, settling down. I had a big place to build a house on and I said ‘I’m not going to waste my money and build a house because I don’t fit in here.’ As I said, that injection from my grandfather was always in the back of my mind. I want to see the world, I want to see America, and I came, I saw the light – it wasn’t easy at the beginning, but I saw the light at the end of the tunnel – and thank God I’m here, and I cannot even picture my life over there.”</p>
<h4>Language Barrier</h4>
<p>“We wanted to go to the store and buy blue jeans. So I picked up the phone and I said ‘Hi Pam. Winter is coming; it’s cold outside. Could you come over and pick us up? We would like to buy a Rifle.’ Now, just to get you in the picture, Rifle was a brand of blue jeans in Slovakia and I didn’t know that blue jeans are blue jeans [in the U.S.]. It was a common thing to call blue jeans Rifles. So Pam says ‘What?’ ‘You know, it’s cold outside, we need to go out and we need to buy a Rifle.’ She says ‘Jozef, I don’t think so. It’s Sunday afternoon. I don’t think you can get a license to get a rifle.’ I said ‘A license to get a Rifle?’ She says ‘Jozef, this is America. You have to have a license to get a rifle.’ So I didn’t argue. I hung up and I tell my friend, ‘Listen, either Pam is crazy or I’m crazy. She says we need to get a license to get a Rifle.’ My friend says ‘She’s nuts. Let me see.’ So he looks up the dictionary and he says ‘Rifle. Blue jeans. Oh my God.’ So I’m calling back, ‘Pam, listen. We need to clarify something. Rifle is a brand of blue jeans in Czechoslovakia.’ We had a couple of them: Wildcat, Rifle… And she started cracking up: ‘What kind of language do you guys use in Czechoslovakia that you call blue jeans rifles?’ So whenever I pick up the phone and call her office [she says] ‘Jozef, you want to buy a rifle?’ So the language barrier and all that stuff, we’ve all been through and sometimes it’s funny how people confuse things.”</p>
<h4>Where is Home?</h4>
<p>“Well, they say home is where your heart is and I believe my heart is in America. What proves that is when I’m coming back from Slovakia or travels, on my way from JFK, sitting in a taxi, I feel I am coming home. So I guess my home is here and I feel more Slovak-American because you still have feelings for the country you came from. But this country gave me the opportunity to live a better life and, yes, I’m calling it my home.”</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
Jozef Bil
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Jozef Bil was born in Bartošovce in eastern Slovakia in 1961. He grew up with his grandparents, parents, two older sisters and an older brother. Jozef’s grandfather lived in the United States during the 1920s for about ten years and worked in the coal mines in Pennsylvania. He returned to Slovakia where he bought land and built a large farm. Jozef says that his grandfather’s stories about the United States planted a seed of emigration that stayed with him until he left Czechoslovakia in 1990. Jozef played guitar in a band for many years and says that he and his band mates often played English-language songs, even though they didn’t understand the lyrics. He attended a construction industry high school and served in the military for two years before beginning his career in construction. In 1990, shortly after the Velvet Revolution, Jozef immigrated to the United States with a friend. He lived in Pittsburgh for several years and worked in construction before moving to New York City. He became a construction supervisor and now owns a general contracting company.</p>
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<p>Jozef continues to write and play music; he recently put out a CD of Slovak songs and has performed at festivals. He is active in the Slovak community in New York and especially enjoys the Bohemian Hall and Beer Garden in Astoria, Queens. When Jozef travels back to Slovakia, he often meets with his siblings in the house their grandfather built and which Jozef has renovated. He became an American citizen in 2008 and says that the United States is where his heart is. Today he lives in New York City.</p>
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Creator
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National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
NCSML Archive
Americanization
Arts
Bartosovce
Community Life
English language
Pop culture
Post-1989 emigrant
Religion
Rural life
Western culture
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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
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Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans
Subject
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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>Awareness</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/M0J1AGnvSBE?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“Actually any time things were discussed up to a decent hour I could sit by, be quiet and listen, because [my] parents insisted that I know, as the oldest one in the family, about the situation, the danger and so on. So when they asked us then to go outside and watch, when my father wanted to listen to Radio Free Europe or, you know, to Moscow or London, whatever, if somebody would be, you know, just kind of snooping around, so I was supposed to knock on the window, because the villa was so large and anybody could from any side… So this was one thing that we had to do and then eventually, towards the end of the War, he would say ‘Take this and drop it off there and there.’ And it was obviously for partisans, guerrillas, so you know, he said ‘It’s extremely dangerous and you can do it, as a little boy.’ I had, you know, on one side a milk jar and just said I was going to pick up some milk, which I was going to do, and coincidentally I dropped this at the designated place.”</p><h4>Coup Change</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/m17RjfPSeTM?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“We had too much floor space for that, and so I had to be always registered – even when I lived in Prague I was registered. And then grandparents had to move in. So that we had both grandfathers, both grandmothers, and you know, times were not the greatest and there was not enough coal, not enough money to heat any other rooms, and so we all congregated in a small kitchen. So everything had to happen in this kitchen. And, it was usually so that my father, when he was not in the pub, that means 14 days into the month when he was penniless, because the first week he would pay for everybody and so on, so he would be sitting, feet in the oven, v troubě, to keep warm, and reading one of his books. The ladies would have to jump around him to cook and to do this. Grandparents would be around and we would be doing homework on one table. It was just like you hear about Russian families or gypsies, how they lived, and so on. And so that is how we lived. And then you would go and sleep in a rather cold room, and I just wanted to test myself and so I decided to sleep in a hallway, and so my wish was that one day, you know, I would put a glass of water, and then one day it would freeze. It didn’t happen completely that it would freeze, but it had a faint kind of a cover of ice. So I was very happy that I achieved that.”</p><h4>Army Music</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/OxBeKT7AUp0?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I got moved to more musical things, but I still had to go on rozcvička [training maneuvers] and I had to do the basic things and so on, and horrendous things happened. There was a kid who took his life and then another kid who lost fingers because as you had to very quickly, you know, board the tank and so on, somebody just dropped the lid and I was just really terrified. And the worst time was when they would wake you up at night and take you somewhere and drop you off in the woods, and I was supposed to, you know, I had flags and I was supposed to regulate tanks. And once I was so horribly tired and lonesome in the woods, it was raining and I just decided I will take a nap. And I woke up, this horrendous noise, and the tank – I don’t know how far it was from me – not too far, really, but I just couldn’t believe it. You know, there was a guardian angel there.”</p><h4>Fond Memories</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/k6LXByAa2sA?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Several of us were graduates of Prague Conservatory, so we had a chamber group, and we decided that we would simply look for opportunities out of the barracks and whatever they wanted us to do, and go and play for these workers and talk to them about music. And they just loved it, so we were like, you know, exactly what the Communist Party wanted us to be, and so on. And so, when then later on I was leaving the service, they said ‘Well, what could we do for you?’ And I said, ‘Well, could you write me a recommendation, please? And preferably on stationery of the party.’ And so with this, this was the only thing that saved me and I was able to go out to Iceland, because, I still remember at Pragokoncert, there was a wonderful young woman who said ‘Ale pane Paukerte, vy se vrátíte’ – you will come back. I said, well – I couldn’t look into her eyes – I said ‘Of course.’”</p><h4>Arrested</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/nybIxyIHYUg?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“It was fortunately only one night in that little jail. And I had the most excruciating toothache of my life. I’ve never had toothache like that. And in the morning I slept, maybe, just a little bit, just drowsy – and all of a sudden I hear the Trout Quintet of Schubert. And there was a little window like that. And I knocked on the door, and the chief of the station came and said ‘I heard that you are a musician, I thought you will enjoy this.’ And he said ‘Would you like to have breakfast, do you have money?’ I said yes. ‘Well, go to town, and I expect you in one hour here. You will go to Copenhagen.’ So, I said ‘Oh my god, this is really fancy, because they trust me.’ And, there were two plain-clothed policemen with me, but they were basically guarding a guy who looked like a… I don’t know, I mean, he might have murdered somebody, what do I know? I just have no idea. So, they watched him all the time, on the boat or on the train. And to me they said ‘Do you have money? So go and buy yourself a beer. You have very good beer in Denmark.’ So I could get a beer, and towards the end of the day we came to, I’ve forgotten the name of the street but it was a commissioner for foreign affairs, something like through the police, and I think his name was Dahlhoff or something like that – kind of a very sharp guy, kind of looked at you and pierced you. He said ‘Well, so here is your ticket to Prague. And you want to go to Belgium.’ So, we will help you to get a Belgian visa. He gave me the address, ‘You will go to the Belgian Embassy, you will call them up.’ I said ‘What happens if I don’t get it?’ ‘Well, you have the ticket to Prague. In the meantime get yourself a place to stay, not on the street, you have money. And we will just hope for the best for you.’”</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
Karel Paukert
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Karel Paukert was born in Skuteč, in what is today the center of the Czech Republic, in 1935. His father worked in the local bank, Kampelička, up until the Communist takeover. Following the coup, he was sent to work in the town’s granite mines and then the Semtex factory in Semtín. Karel’s mother, Vlasta, stayed at home to raise Karel and his siblings, but also later got a job as an office clerk at the local shoe factory, Botana. Karel was sent to <em>gymnázium</em> for two years in the nearby town of Chrudím, but was then sent back to the <em>jednotná škola</em> [vocational school] in Skuteč when this <em>gymnázium</em> closed, due to reform of the school system. He started playing oboe when he was 16 years old. In 1951, Karel was accepted at the Prague Conservatory, where he studied organ with Jan Krajs for the next five years. During this time in Prague he also played in the orchestra at the Jiří Wolker Theater (today’s Divadlo Komedie.) After one year at HAMU (the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague) composing music for students of the school’s puppetry section, Karel was conscripted to the Czechoslovak Army in 1957. Because of his oboe playing, he was sent to Písek to become part of the army’s musical division.</p><p> </p><p>Karel says it is through his good references from the army that he was allowed to travel to Iceland in 1961, to become head oboist with the National Symphony Orchestra there. It was during a visit to Norway the following year that Karel says he decided not to return. He set out for Belgium, where he wanted to train with the organist Gabriel Verschraegen, but he was detained in Denmark for traveling without a visa and had to spend months in Copenhagen waiting for an affidavit from the organist. Karel spent two years in Ghent before arriving in America in 1964. He studied for a doctorate in St Louis, Missouri, before accepting a post as professor of organ music at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. In 1972, Karel became an American citizen. He moved to Cleveland in 1974, where he began to work for the city’s Museum of Art. He retired in 2004, but continues to work as choirmaster and organist at St Paul’s Church in Cleveland Heights. He has three children.</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
Communist coup
Czechoslovak resistance during WWII
Education
German
gymnazium
Kampelicka
Military service
Occupation
Pisek
Religion
Resistance
school
Skutec
World War II