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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>Military Service</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/LOek4DrS_RU?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“We were schooled for one year where we learned everything about everything, mainly about tanks because I was a tank driver. And the second year we went to Prachatice. And at the end of that, in August 1968, the Russians came and occupied Czechoslovakia, so we thought that maybe we will stay longer in the Army or something but our activities ended, so… Russian soldiers were behind our barracks and we went to work on farms my last year in the Army. [We were] helping the farmers and they treated us nice. They cooked for us, good food.”</p><h4>Leaving Czechoslovakia</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/TCaJ4ZlCVrY?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“We went on a trip to Austria and my mother said ‘If you have a chance, you should stay there somehow.’ So I got the chance and I stayed. We went [on a work trip] to Austria and we were visiting the Stephansdom [St. Steven’s Cathedral] there. And there were lots of people in the front saying ‘Hey, do you want to go to America?’ They were asking us people, the Czechs and Slovaks, and we went in and checked the Stephansdom inside, and we went to the Praterstrasse and on the [Ferris] wheel. We spent the schillings that we had, a few schillings, and then went to the hotel to sleep. And two fellows from Okres Topol’čany, friends, saw the bus there, they saw the plates on the bus and they came over to my room and said ‘Hey, do you want to go somewhere, to America or somewhere?’ And I went with them and they showed me the Catholic charity and they showed me (at night) where I can register.”</p><h4>Socializing in Cleveland</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/m_YdPZpJ7cI?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“We went to the German Central [Deutsche Zentrale] for dances, it was here on York Road close, or Ceska Sin Sokol on Park Avenue, they had dances or even we played some divadlo – we put on plays. And we had a soccer team, a Slovak soccer team, so we played between the different nationalities; Germans, Hungarians, Serbians and stuff.”</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
Vladimir Cvicela
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Vladimir Cvicela was born in Kl’ačany, Slovakia in 1946. He came from a farming family and says that, after school, he would chase rabbits with dogs and play hockey with the other village children. Growing up, Vladimir wanted to become an electrician, but began working as a repairman on the local collective farm instead. When he was 19 years old, Vladimir was conscripted into the Czechoslovak Army and sent to České Budějovice, where he trained as a tank driver. He says his tank unit was disbanded two years later, however, following the Soviet-led invasion in August 1968.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Vladimir spent his last year of military service helping farmers in the Šumava region of the Czech Republic. Following his time in the military, Vladimir returned to work at the collective farm in Kl’ačany. He left Czechoslovakia in 1969 when he visited Vienna on a bus trip organized by his employer from which he did not return. He says that he was approached by two Slovak emigrants in the Austrian capital who gave him information about how he too could claim asylum. Vladimir spent five months in Austria, where he found a job as a glazier’s assistant and started learning English. He came to Cleveland in March 1970, where he was met at the airport by two of his distant relatives who had also recently arrived in the city.</p><p> </p><p>Vladimir says he almost immediately found a job in Cleveland, at the city’s Sherwin-Williams Paint plant. He worked at the company for 12 years until he was laid off and found employment at Joseph & Feiss tailors. Outside of work, Vladimir was a member of the Cleveland Slovak soccer team, where he played goalkeeper. He met his wife Maria in 1980 when she came to Cleveland from Kolačkov, Slovakia to visit her sister, Ludmila Anderko. The two were married at Sts. Cyril & Methodius Catholic Church in Lakewood, Ohio, later that same year. Vladimir and Maria have two children who were raised understanding Slovak and as members of the Lucina Slovak Folklore Ensemble. Vladimir says it was ‘important’ for him that his children maintained Slovak traditions and the language, and that he is happy his children’s involvement in dance troupe Lucina has taken the family back to Slovakia on several occasions. Today, Vladimir lives with his wife Maria in Parma, Ohio, and is a grandfather. In his retirement, he maintains several rental properties around the city of Cleveland.</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
Asylum
Ceske Budejovice
Community Life
Cultural Traditions
emigrant
Family life
Klacany
Military service
refugee
Rural life
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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>Last of WWII</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ISjHw8Q0KXs?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“For us, it was rather peaceful; we didn’t have too much going on. Some parts of Slovakia had more of a ‘war’ going on, but we didn’t. Actually for us kids, it was a great time. We were running around, our parents were worried, ‘What is going to happen?’ you know, how to feed us, and clothe us, and so on. Us kids, we had a great time.</p><p>“My dad was actually in the army during the War. Slovakia at the time was also a republic, by itself. When the army was disbanded, and was caught by the Germans, he was sent to Germany to work on the farms as forced labor. They needed it; all the German men were in the army, so there was a shortage. So he did work in Germany until the end of the war. Then he came home.”</p><p><em>What sort of years was he away in Germany? One year at the end of the war, or a couple?</em></p><p>“I think it was the last year of the war. I remember him coming home; he got a hold of a bicycle somewhere and peddled home.”</p><h4>Father's Land</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/cUe5v59GwaY?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“In 1950, they came to our village, or town. They wanted to start collective farms. My father was one of the bigger landowners. So they were pressing on him to become a member of the collective farm. He refused, so he ended up being in jail for six months. And then after six months, they sentenced him to a forced labor in a coal mine. It [the farm] was supporting us very nicely. We had no problem, and we also employed people during harvest. That was one of the things that they threw at us. You were an exploiter of the working class.</p><p>Well, I guess it started little by little. Then I guess the early ‘50s were the most brutal. The regime really took hold and completely dominated. You went with them or else and faced the consequences.”</p><h4>Border Crossing</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/PE5KeTulxsk?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“We didn’t take the roads; we went through the fields, and the forest. We walked all night until we came to the border. We knew the border very well because we lived close by. So my dad and my uncle were watching the border guards for a few days to exactly where and when they crossed. And we came to the point where we saw them, they were crossing. And it was on the one at that time they didn’t have the mines yet. They mined the fields, and the one we escaped in had a wire with flares. And we also knew where the flares were so we came to those wires. And they slowly lowered them to the ground. And we walked between them one here and the other there. And my brother, who was only ten at the time, was dragging his feet and he kicked it and the flares went off. And then, night became like day. We were just a couple yards from the border. So we hit the ground and then took off for the border. We came to the border, and the border is divided by a river. We jumped in and crossed into Austria.”</p><p><em>What happened when the flares went off? Did the guards not react?</em></p><p>“We didn’t know. We just hit the ground and we didn’t know. Somebody thought they heard a dog. But later on, somebody else escaped from our hometown. And the captain of the border guard was living in their house. And they told the border guard and they said they saw them, they saw big groups but they didn’t want to engage.”</p><h4>Newspaper</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/tLJSI5xnK3E?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“We had about 18 or 20 suburban newspapers. It was a nice job; actually, it was there where I met… Maybe the name Mr. Murdoch means something to you? [We were his] first acquisition, he was from South Australia, then he came to Sydney, and he bought our string of newspapers. He came to the shop, he talked to us, and I shook his hand. Then a few days later, he bought The Daily Mirror in Sydney. And then, of course, you know where he went from there…”</p><p><em>So, was he a good boss?</em></p><p>“We never saw him, except that one day when he came to introduce himself, so then he was gone!”</p><h4>Return to Slovakia</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/b8nlgjZhHLY?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“The first time I went back was after 15 years, because it was very difficult to go. You know, since we left illegally, you had to apply for a visa and you had to pay and exchange so much money and everybody was watching you. But yeah, we went back quite a few times.”</p><p><em>So the first time was 1967?</em></p><p>“Yes… It was quite an eye-opening experience. I remember growing up as a young boy. In my home town I would get out of the house and I would look the end of the village and I thought that was so far away. And when I came back, Oh my god! That’s like looking at the end of this block! I guess when you are young, and little, everything seems to be a big deal. Especially once you start traveling, and you are exposed to so much in the world, you don’t even realize.”</p><p><em>Had it changed? Or had it remarkably not changed?</em></p><p>“When we were back the first time, it didn’t change that much. It was not a very pleasant experience. It was still under communism, and people were afraid to talk, they would close the doors and put the radio on, and would talk to you so no one would hear you. It wasn’t a very pleasant experience. But it’s different now of course.”</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
Valentin Turansky
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Valentin Turansky was born in Stupava, Slovakia, in 1938. His father, Matuš, worked as a farmer, while his mother, Maria, stayed at home and raised Valentin and his seven siblings, of whom he was the oldest. In 1951, his father was arrested after refusing to incorporate his smallholding into the local co-operative farm. He spent six months in prison, and was then sentenced to a further six months of forced labor, which he spent working in a coal mine. Upon his release in 1952, the Turansky family decided to leave the country. They crossed the Slovak border – as part of a group of 15 people – into Austria. Valentin says the group hit a trip wire on their journey across the border, which detonated a large number of flares but, he says, there was no response from the border guards on duty, which he attributes to the large size of the group.</p><p> </p><p>In Austria, the Turansky family stayed in a refugee camp in Wels for 18 months. Around the time his family immigrated to Australia in 1953, Valentin went to Belgium, where he attended college and gained a qualification in printmaking. A keen soccer player, Valentin played for an amateur team in Brussels upon finishing school and moving to the Belgian capital. He joined his family in Australia at the beginning of 1958 and became an Australian citizen in 1959. There, he started work at the Dunlop shoe factory. He subsequently returned to his trade and worked as a printer for the Cumberland Newspaper Group in Sydney. In 1963, Valentin traveled to America and settled in Chicago. He found a job in a print shop in the city’s Printers Row district. In 1965, he married his wife, Margaret.</p><p> </p><p>Valentin became a U.S. citizen in 1968. He continued to play soccer for the city’s Slovak A.A. (Athletic Association) Soccer Club, which he says enjoyed a good deal of success at that time. Today, Valentin lives with his wife, Margaret, in Prospect Heights, Illinois.</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
Arrest
Border patrol
Community Life
Forced labor
Refugee camp
Rural life
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>Russian Refugee</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_4ebUPypCHI?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“We were in the woods gathering firewood and a stranger approached us, and he was an escaped Russian major – NKVD political officer – and he wanted to get out to the West. And my father hid him until the war was over, gave him one of his suits and everything, because he was really taken in by the man, and then in May ’45 he delivered him across Czechoslovakia to the American lines and, somehow, he wanted to get to the OSS section and that’s where he ended up, and that’s how my father got the OSS connection with Donovan. And as soon as the Iron Curtain fell he automatically worked for the Americans.”</p><h4>Cheb</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/jqvc0C0YwO8?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“For Czechs right after the war, to go live in the former Sudeten area was like moving to the Wild West.”</p><p><em>Why do you say it was like the Wild West?</em></p><p>“Well, because the inland was more peaceful. Over there, with kids, we go out hiking or something, we find an anti-aircraft machine gun, we find piles of ammunition and rifles. I remember we found an abandoned Tiger tank and about 15 of us started carrying ammunition and just dumping it in the open hatch – this was deep in the woods – and then we emptied out big shell casings and made a long path of gunpowder that went about half mile away, and lit it. What a bang. That was the entertainment for after the war for kids.”</p><h4>Crossing the Boarder</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/9XxI3uXsyo0?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“When the Iron Curtain fell in ’48, I got to be real good friends with them because I was the only Czech in town that spoke Yugo, and they knew my political views too, because a lot of them were not Communist. Three of them asked me how to get across the border to Germany. So I said, ‘Well, I’ll take you.’ And I did, and one of them had a change of heart, came back, and turned me in. I was 15 then, and I’m going to school and a couple of my friends said ‘The state secret police is waiting for you. You better not go to school.’ I did go back home. There was nobody at home. I left a note that I’m leaving, that I have to leave. I didn’t have time to go into detail because I was really, really shook up. I had a gold coin collection. I taped it to the soles of my feet with some kind of tape. I took all the money that I had saved up with me, and I took my little briefcase with school books and everything, just in case I got stopped by the border patrol – ‘I’m visiting my friend that lives down over there…’</p><h4>French Foreign Legion</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/0KoYyyCP2cs?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“So they shanghaied me on a ship. Two days later we’re going through the Suez Canal to Hai Phong. Well, that was French Indochina then. And from Hai Phong we were put on a train to Hanoi to pick up French wounded. I was assigned to one wounded guy that I had to take care of. Back on a train, back to the harbor, back to the ship, and all the way to Marseille, and then I just walked away from it. So my stint, it was a good adventure, because, just stop and think, not 18, I’d seen Africa, North Africa, I’d seen Indochina.”</p><h4>New York</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/aVXdlg-yOp4?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“And they were poor. I thought I lived much better in Czechoslovakia then he did in America, and once I got there, I knew I did. First thing he says, ‘We got electricity six months ago.’ Outside toilet, phone on the wall with a crank. My uncle, they looked at going to the movies as the devil’s work. They wouldn’t let me listen to popular music, I had to listen to gospel, or…They were fanatical religious.”</p>
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Savoy Horvath
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Savoy Horvath was born in 1933 in Brno, Moravia. Six years later, his family moved to Hradec Králové where his father worked at a German airport as an interpreter and accountant for the Nazis. Savoy’s father was also the leader of a Czech resistance group called 777. Immediately following the War, Savoy’s father was given management of an ESKA bicycle factory in Cheb, a city in the Sudeten region close to the German border. Savoy remembers being active in politics as a young teenager and, as a supporter of the Czech National Socialist (or Beneš) Party, clashing with his peers who held communist views. Savoy went to trade school and began an apprenticeship at his father’s factory, where he became friends with a number of Yugoslav workers. In 1948, he helped a couple of them across the border illegally and, after one escapee changed his mind, Savoy says he was in danger of arrest. Convinced that he must leave the country immediately, Savoy crossed the border into Germany in April 1948.</p><p> </p><p><img class="alignright wp-image-3499" src="http://web.archive.org/web/20170609044934im_/http://ncsml.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Handler-211.jpg" alt="Savoy Horvath" width="300" height="333" /></p><p>After time spent in a series of refugee and holding camps, Savoy joined the French Foreign Legion. Because he was only 15, he lied about his age. As a legionnaire, he traveled to North Africa for training and then to French Indochina, before deciding to leave the service. He returned to Germany where he was sent to Aglasterhausen Children’s Center and then to Bad Aibling Children’s Village. Savoy recalls the 10 months he spent at Bad Aibling as extremely enjoyable; he started a Scout troop, made many lifelong friends, and met his wife, Nadia. Savoy’s uncle signed an affidavit which allowed him to come to the United States in December 1949. He lived on his uncle’s farm in upstate New York until settling down in the Chicago area with his parents, who had escaped from Czechoslovakia in the fall of 1949 (his father had been working for the OSS, collecting information and escorting Czechs across the border). Savoy and Nadia married in 1953 and they had four daughters. He became an American citizen in 1956. He worked as a sheet metal fabricator for the Ford Motor Company for 32 years, and spent 12 years in the Illinois National Guard.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Savoy is a member of the Society for Czechoslovak Philately and has traveled back to the Czech Republic several times in this capacity. He also has one of the largest collection of letters sent to and from Czechoslovak labor camps during the 1950s, and was interviewed for an exhibit at the Museum of Exile in Brno. Upon retirement, Savoy built a house in Readstown, Wisconsin, where he now lives with his second wife.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
NCSML Archive
1948
Anti-communist
emigrant
Hradec Kralove
local
marriage
Military service
Politics
refugee
Refugee camp
Rural life
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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>WWII Memories</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/vNbHAz2Ymh8?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“I remember the War. Where we lived, the Americans used to fly over and drop their bombs on Plzeň, the Škoda factories, and they were flying right over us. I remember one New Year’s Eve, my parents were somewhere and they were coming back, and I think he [a military pilot] was shot or something, so he unloaded his bombs right in the forest by us, there was a big bang. My parents came running home; they thought we got bombed and all that, but no, they dumped them in the forest there.”</p><h4>Escape Arrest</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/T6jDSpNs-K0?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“In the winter time when there wasn’t that much work on the farm, we took the horses to Železná Ruda, right on the border, to work in the woods, to pull the logs. My father was there with two pairs of horses, and they came to arrest him – the Communists took over and they were going to arrest him. But this friend of his got on his motorcycle, went to Železná Ruda, and told him ‘Don’t come home, because they’re waiting for you. Don’t come home.’ So he took a pair of horses and went to Germany. Nobody touched him or anything, everybody thought he was coming home from the fields. So he made it all the way to Munich, and then he had to sell the horses because he couldn’t feed them. And me and my brother and my mother stayed behind, and later on he sent for us.”</p><h4>Refugee Camp</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2sZOSD5NGiw?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“There were a lot of people, a lot of friends. We had a Boy Scout troop and a Boy Scout camp. This was in the mountains, in the Alps and we used to go hiking in the Alps and we had a lot of fun. There wasn’t a whole lot of food, but there was enough to keep you going. I thought I had a good time there. I made a lot of good friends there.”</p><h4>Farming</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/rMEJXIK4rbA?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“In the late ‘50s my parents bought a farm in Michigan. My father had to have a farm because that’s what he left and he wanted to have a farm. So as soon as he had some money, he bought a farm in Michigan, and he was farming on the weekends until he retired and then they moved out there. First there was corn, which was something new. Then he decided to start an orchard, apple orchard. So he stopped doing the corn and put the apple orchard in, which was a lot less work.”</p><p><em>And why did he want to farm here?</em></p><p>“Because he was a farmer. They took his farm, the Communists took his farm and he’s going to get one again.”</p><h4>Visiting Czech Republic</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4H89Nr8YspY?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“People are not used to the idea that this is a free country. Americans know this is a free country, I’m going to do what I want, nobody’s going to tell me what to do. They’re not used to it yet. They have to dress the same, they’re not used to the idea that it’s a free country. I’m going down Václavské náměstí [Wenceslas Square in Prague] and two people stop me and talk German to me. And I said to my cousin, ‘How do they know I don’t belong here?’ He said, ‘Because you’re dressed differently, you’ve got a different shirt than they have.’ I said, ‘Well, this a free country, if I want to dress this way, don’t want to dress, that’s the way it is.’”</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
Rudy Solfronk
Description
An account of the resource
<p> </p><p>Rudy Solfronk was born in Žinkovy in southern Bohemia in 1935. He lived with his parents and his brother, Václav, in a house on the edge of town until his father bought a farm elsewhere in the same region. Rudy attended school in Hartmanice. He has early memories of WWII, in particular, of American planes flying over the region and, towards the end of the War, interacting with American and Czech soldiers. In December 1948, officials arrived at Rudy’s house to arrest his father who, Rudy says, was reluctant to give up his farm. Rudy’s father was in the woods near the border, and after being warned by a friend not to return home, he crossed into Germany and made his way to Murnau refugee camp. The following summer, Rudy and his mother and brother also joined him there. Rudy remembers having ‘a lot of fun’ in the camp, as he joined a Boy Scout troop and made a lot of friends. Although most children at the camp were taught by Czech and Slovak teachers, Rudy’s father insisted upon him attending a German school to learn the language.</p><p> </p><p>In January 1951, Rudy and his family arrived at Ellis Island. Although they had been sponsored by a Catholic convent in Pennsylvania, Rudy says his family was released from their obligation to the convent and stayed in New York City. His father began working in a sausage factory and his mother found work as a seamstress, while Rudy and his brother attended school. He remembers receiving help from a German teacher, as he did not know English very well. After about six months, Rudy’s father was offered a job in Cicero, Illinois, maintaining a building owned by the CSA (Czechoslovak Society of America). They moved into an apartment in this building, which also had a movie theater, shops, offices, and a meeting hall. Rudy finished high school in Cicero and went to community college for one year before starting a career in printing. He worked in a print shop part-time for the last two years of school and, because of this experience, was able to secure an apprenticeship. After working at several different places, he got a job at the <em>Chicago Sun-Times</em>, where became a foreman in the print shop; he stayed there for over 30 years. Rudy also served for eight years in the Army Reserves and received U.S. citizenship through this service.</p><p> </p><p>Rudy and his wife are active in the Czech community around Chicago, regularly attending events, picnics, and dances. He has been back to the Czech Republic several times. Today, he lives in Downers Grove, Illinois.</p>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
NCSML Archive
1948 emigrant/refugee
Community Life
English language
German language
Military service
Rural life
World War II
Zincovy
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c514e22196f254ca1bb486eb9a99bf36
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>Fascinated</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/dUVD3cOI42s?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“I was always dreaming about being a cowboy. And I wanted to be in America, because my dad was always talking about being in America and he was singing songs… My dad played guitar and he was singing songs and we used to go out camping, sleeping under the sky and we’d go camping for a vacation and so I was always dreaming of America, and of course the romantic parts about cowboys and Indians, which we read about in the books of Karl May and others, about Winnetou and others – this was really intriguing me. I always wanted to be a cowboy. But because we were living in the town, there was no place to have a horse, and eventually when I got married and had children, we moved to southern Bohemia and I started working on a government farm (JZD) and that gave me a chance to actually purchase a horse, so we had a horse over there and for two years prior to my defection I was living my dream; I was riding a horse across the countryside.”</p><h4>Corral OK</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Bp7wGLxYyrs?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Tramping to us was really special, of course you know I was thinking about that when I came to America because the name ‘tramp’ in Czech was somebody who was noble, it was a noble name; it was somebody who was good, a right person, a true patriot, a person who knows nature and loves nature. Of course, in America, tramp is a degrading word, and I didn’t know that until we came over here but the tramping movement was very strong and very big, and like I said, my dad was involved in it, you know, since WWII pretty much. And then of course he lead us that way also.</p><p>“The OK Corral was a group which was my brother, myself and a friend of ours. Of course, we read about the battle of the OK Corral and the shoot out at the OK Corral – again that was a part of American history which we really ate up, which we admired and thought was very interesting. So, we named our group the OK Corral, of course we didn’t do it right, we named our group Corral OK, but that was all that we knew at the time. We didn’t speak English.”</p><h4>Herding</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/sAcU9IFhK94?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“No actually it didn’t. It was totally different. The cattle – I was feeling sorry for the animals – because they were chained to the troughs all the time. They were not grazing outside. They grew up chained to the trough until they died. But of course when the calves were young and little, they were separated from their mothers and put in the one building, and when they came to a certain age they moved into different buildings, and when the cows became another age, when they were impregnated for the first time and started having milk, then they were moved to a different place where they were milked. So it wasn’t really the way I was picturing it – the romantic way. There was one time, there was one occasion, when some calves, actually some steer – it was steer – broke out and they ran out. And now somebody has to go and find them. That was my chance, I jumped on my horse and I ran across the countryside until I found them. And I was trying to push them back in, and it didn’t work because they were scared themselves, because they had never been outside. I was trying to push them back in and soon I realized that they were actually trying to follow me. When I was trying to push them they were trying to get behind me, so I ended up just trying to ride my horse back to the village and they actually came with me, they were actually following me all the way to the building. But it was the one occasion when I actually did some cattle herding.”</p><h4>Intercepted</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/rMJV4uo8k44?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“We left that letter in our living room on the coffee table. And we were thinking that if we do defect, if we find a way, we’re going to call them and tell them to go to our apartment, because we gave them keys, and that way they’re going to find more. We didn’t want the government to hear our conversation, so we just told them ‘Go to our apartment and you’re going to find more.’ And if we don’t find a way across the border, we’re going to come back, burn the letter and it’s going to be done and over with. Well, unfortunately what happened is my wife – she had plants, and she was afraid the plants were going to die. So she put the plants in the bathtub and talked to our neighbor, because the apartment was set up that when you open the front door, you walk into the hallway, and when you are in the hallway, you can go into the kitchen, the bathroom, the living room and a bedroom. So, she put all the plants in the bathtub, and we locked all the other inside doors and we told her ‘Can you water the plants twice a week’ or whatever they needed. She [my wife] said ‘You don’t need to go anywhere else, I put everything in the bathtub, and all the other doors are locked, so you don’t need to go anywhere else.’</p><p>“Well, the nosy neighbor came in, and she tried the inside keys from her apartment on our apartment doors and of course, they opened. So she walked in the living room and she saw the letter. And she had the news that nobody else had. She felt like a big shot – we were living in a small village – so now she’s walking through the village telling everybody ‘Don’t say anything, but the Vodenkas defected, they are going to America.’ Well, we hadn’t, we were probably just barely across the border. Of course, it came to our employer and our employer had to report it to the police. They immediately called the border crossing and said ‘Arrest these people, stop these people with this license plate, with these passports and with these names.’ Well, luckily for us, we were across the border in Hungary by then, so it didn’t stop us but, again, if we didn’t find our way and we just came back acting like nothing happened, we would have been arrested and sent to prison immediately, so…”</p><h4>Settling</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/V5b0ojGRG5I?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“We were not really seeking Czech people, and we also heard in the refugee camp, there were some people who had friends who had actually been sponsored to come to Boston, and they were telling – they were sending letters back to their friends back in Austria and they were saying ‘There’s a Czech community, you don’t even need to speak English over here. There are stores, owners of stores speak Czech, and in the church they speak Czech and in the houses and everywhere, they speak Czech.’ I was actually afraid that we were going to get sent to a place like that, because I wanted to be in America. Because I want to learn English, and the sooner, the better. I knew the sooner we spoke the language, the sooner we could get on with our lives.”</p><h4>NY City 1983</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/6LZHndOFdxk?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Everybody’s changing their watch to the local time, everybody takes their watch and changes it to the local time. And I took my watch and I want to change it to the local time and I realize, I have the time on my watch already. For the last eight years, my brother one time figured out that in America (of course in America there are a different four zones, time zones, but we didn’t know it then) in America – because America to people who don’t know too much is New York City and pretty much the East Coast – so in America the time is six hours behind our homeland. So he and I changed our watches to the American time. For eight years we had that time on our watches. It kind of helped us get closer to America, because if you look at your watch and know that in America it is 7:00 in the morning, you kind of can picture what people are doing at that time. And if you know that it is 5:00 in the evening, you kind of know that people are coming home, eating dinner and you get a little bit closer a feeling. There were times actually when we celebrated our new years, and then we would wait until 6:00 in the morning in Czech time to celebrate the new year in America, New York City. And we’d celebrate a second new year coming six hours later. So while I was standing over there with those people I just automatically grabbed my watch and I wanted to change it to the time, and I had had that time on it for eight years. And again, I became really emotional because I realized that with my life I had finally caught… I had finally arrived at that right time in which I wanted to be all my life.”</p><h4>Writing a Book</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/CnLzajeMbms?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Our American friends for 20 years were telling me ‘You need to write a book, you need to write a book. This is an interesting story, people in America need to hear that, they need to know how some people come over here.’ And this is recent also, this is not 100 years ago. People picture this stuff like it was happening decades or maybe even centuries ago. But it’s not, it’s 1983 and people go ‘Oh yeah! My second son was born’ or ‘I got my new job’ or ‘I graduated from high school then.’ So people can relate to it because it’s not a long time ago. And so people were telling me ‘You need to write a book.’ And for 20 years I was saying sure, sure, you know… how am I going to write a book when I don’t even speak proper English? So I was just ignoring it. I didn’t even want to talk about that, I was even getting tired when someone asked me where I was from. Because it was asking too much because of our accent. But then 9/11 came, and suddenly I felt and I was told it was my obligation to talk to people and tell this story. And the idea of the book was brewing in my head. And of course people were pushing us all the time, telling us that. It took 20 years before it actually crystallized, but about two and a half years ago, in the middle of 2007, I started writing that book. I had a helper with me – a lady friend of ours who was doing the grammatical corrections – and I started the book and finished it, so the book is written.”</p>
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Title
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Peter Vodenka
Description
An account of the resource
<p> </p><p>Peter Vodenka was born in Prague in August 1955, but raised in Mníšek pod Brdy where his father, Stanislav, worked as an industrial designer at an iron ore processing plant. Peter’s mother, Jarmila, worked in the same processing factory. In 1970, Peter moved to Prague to attend trade school, where he trained to become a plumber. He graduated in 1973 and remained in Prague, living in the city’s Vinohrady district. Unhappy with his job three years later, Peter moved back to Mníšek pod Brdy and quit plumbing to become a lumberjack. It was at this time that he met his future wife, Ludmila – the sister-in-law of one of his colleagues. The couple were married at Karlštejn Castle in 1978. A lover of nature and an avid ‘<a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20170612093725/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czech_Tramping" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">tramp</a>,’ Peter moved to rural southern Bohemia to work on a collective farm. It was there, in Hrejkovice, that he and Ludmila started raising their two children. Peter says he moved to southern Bohemia, among other reasons, so that he could have his own horse; he bought a mare and called it Nelly Gray, after an American song he had heard.</p><p> </p><p>Peter says that he has always been fascinated by America: while still living in Czechoslovakia he and his brother Stanislav owned a U.S. military Jeep dating from WWII, set their watches to reflect American Eastern Time and formed a horse-riding, tramping group called the Corral OK. In 1983, Peter decided to immigrate to America with his family. He drove with his wife and two children first to Hungary and then to Yugoslavia, where they left their car at the border and made their way into Austria by foot in the middle of the night. According to Peter, the crossing attracted the attention of patrolling Yugoslav border guards and the family was pursued. They made it, however, into Austria where one of Peter’s cousins, who had emigrated some months previously, picked them up and escorted them to Traiskirchen refugee camp. Peter and his family were there for three days until they were moved to Ramsau. In September 1983, the Vodenkas arrived in America. Peter and his family were sponsored by the First Lutheran Church in Beach, North Dakota, where they settled for a couple of years. Today, the Vodenkas live in Scandia, Minnesota. Peter regularly speaks publicly about coming to America and, in 2007, he wrote a book about his experiences called <em>Journey for Freedom</em>. Today, he runs a construction company and still enjoys outdoor pursuits, such as hunting in the Black Hills.</p><p><a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20170612093725/http://www.journeyforfreedom.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Peter’s website</a></p>
Creator
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National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library
Source
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NCSML Archive
Americanization
Border patrol
Family life
Karlstejn Castle
Mnisek pod Brdy
Refugee camp
Rural life
Tramping
Western/Pop culture
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68b07c30cae3b80c99a3d3217398da56
Dublin Core
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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>Childhood</h4>
<p>“My childhood was delightful. It was wonderful, even though my parents left to go to Sweden and they left me behind with my maternal grandmother, and that happened when I was three years old and that happened during the Russian invasion in 1968. So my parents got on a motorcycle and they escaped across the border to Austria, like many other people were doing at the time, and I suppose this was quite a dangerous trip so they didn’t want to take a three year old on a motorcycle between them, so they left me with my grandmother. I wasn’t going to see them again, my mother for three years and my father for six years.</p>
<p>“During this time I lived with my grandmother and, I think even before my parents left I was [part of] the old Czech family where grandma takes care of the grandchildren and the aunt takes care of you. You know, it takes a village to raise a family, so we were always either at grandmother’s house or in the country with our great-aunts, so I didn’t feel the loss of my parents too much because I was really used to my grandmother. I also had my other set of grandparents that lived two streets away – my paternal grandparents that were lovely and that I spent a lot of time with as well – so I was a very protected and happy child that felt no deprivation at that time. I do remember babička going and waiting in line for milk for me from 4:00 in the morning and all that. When I speak about my childhood here in America, people are sort of slightly horrified: ‘Really? You didn’t have a bathtub until you were eight years old?’ We had a toilet inside our house, but we didn’t have a bathtub for a long time, and my grandmother cooked on a coal stove; there was no central heating. It was very much turn of the century living.”</p>
<h4>Indoctrination</h4>
<p>“We were taught a lot of Russian propaganda, a lot of Russian songs. We left when I was in third grade, just at the end of third grade, but already by that time I had won a contest in which I recited a Russian poem; I won a Russian pen that never worked. My aspiration of my life was to be a Pioneer and to go and see Lenin’s grave. I thought that was just… That was it. That would have been it for my life. Fortunately that didn’t happen.”</p>
<p><em>You really felt that you wanted to do this?</em></p>
<p>“Yes, yes. It was very real to me. The Russians were our best friends. Everything Russian was… It was like a protective older brother. Things red were very good. The sickle and the star were symbols of goodness. Lenin was like a nice old uncle that you wanted to hang out with. I was a child; I believed all this stuff. You didn’t know any better. I was completely indoctrinated. I was a little communist from head to toe.”</p>
<h4>Sweden</h4>
<p>“They were sent a letter, somehow, from the Czech government saying that since they had abandoned me, I should be adopted to a suitable Czech family for the proper communist upbringing unless they returned to claim me – which was a bit of a problem since if they returned to claim me they would be put in jail since they were criminals for leaving in the first place, and if they didn’t then I was going to be taken away from my grandmother and given to somebody else, so this was not a good situation in any way. At this point, they had become sort of celebrities in Sweden and they put together this plan, I think with some Swedish journalists that were going to have rights to the story and pictures and they were going to do a documentary and all this stuff, and so they got together two Swedish adventure pilots that were going to fly a plane into the Czech Republic. One of the pilots’ wives sort of looked like my mother, so my mother took her passport, and she had a wig and she glasses to look like this lady. So they decided they were going to fly into Czechoslovakia. They were going to fly into Brno, which was the closest big city to where I lived, they were going to get a car, and they were going to drive to Prostějov; they were going to kidnap me on my from school; they weren’t going to tell anybody, grandparents or anybody, because the grandparents might try to stop them or delay them or something. This was very important that it was all happening very quickly. They were going to kidnap me on my way to or from school, take me to the airport and leave. That was the plan and, like all well-laid plans, it didn’t quite work out that way.</p>
<p>“What happened was they landed fine in Brno, they rented a car, and they were driving on the highway from Brno to Prostějov, and they got caught for speeding. So they were taken to a police station; they started getting interrogated; things weren’t looking right – maybe they’re not who they claim they are, and there was also maybe a question of a possible anonymous letter that had reached the Czechoslovakian police or authorities that said my mother was coming to the country in order to kidnap me. I’m not too sure about this part of the story and I think my parents aren’t either, but I remember it mentioned that it could have been a possibility because it was very quick they way they sort of nabbed them in the car, brought them to the police station and all of the sudden started bringing in my mother’s friends: ‘Do you recognize this woman?’ And most of my mother’s friends looked at my mother and said ‘Never seen her before,’ which screwed them in the long run, but good for them as people. And then of course there’s that one odd uncle that’s like ‘Anna, what are you doing back?!’ So they all got put in jail.”</p>
<h4>House Arrest</h4>
<p>“Then my mother was under house arrest for a year or more, possibly the entire time she was in the Czech Republic. I’m not sure. I do remember we had police renting an apartment across the street with guys hanging out the windows with binoculars, taking the names of everybody that walked into our house. My mother didn’t have any friends at first for a long time because nobody dared to visit her; they would all lose their jobs. My father this whole time is in Sweden, fueling the fire in Sweden [playing] the devastated father: ‘Oh my god, my wife, my children.’ It worked out well that way; he was stoking the fires in Sweden and my mother was trapped in the Czech Republic with me, and now my baby brother. That took three years of nothing happening. It was sort of a stand-off. My mother there in the house, always being watched, my father over in Sweden, and the Swedes were just going at it. There were journalists coming to the Czech Republic. Of course this is all very illegal, so it had to be very hush-hush that there were Swedish journalists coming over and they would take all these pictures of us.</p>
<p>“For three years, my father kept fighting his battle over there in Sweden, and the Swedes were on-board. God bless all of them; the entire nation of Sweden. I owe it all to them really because the people kept writing letters; the Swedish hockey team wouldn’t play the Czechs in the Olympics because of us. The Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme was supposed to make a state visit and refused to make a state visit because of us. You know, we were cause célèbre. After three years, I guess the Czechs just went ‘This is more trouble than it’s worth. Passports here. Bye. Don’t come back. You’re no longer Czech; we want nothing to do with you.’ They actually kicked us out.”</p>
<h4>Grandparents</h4>
<p>“I wasn’t allowed to go back to Czechoslovakia. When we got kicked out, in ’73, we got kicked out. We were not allowed in ever. As long as the communists were in power, that was completely off-limits to us. This means the woman that brought me up, really, was my babička and I wasn’t allowed to see her because now it was the situation that we were in Sweden and, to me, what felt like my real family was in Czechoslovakia and we had no way of seeing each other. Those were some very, very bad years for me, some very sad years, because I felt like I was taken away from my home and I wanted to go back. I’d much rather have been in the Czech Republic because I didn’t know. So, about once a year, my mother would save up enough money and we would go to Poland or Yugoslavia or Romania or Hungary, one of the communist countries, and my relatives would go there, like my mother’s sister and my cousins, my grandmother, and we would meet up with them. For a week or two we would have a holiday together in one of the communist countries to get to see each other.”</p>
<h4>NYC</h4>
<p>“First of all, it wasn’t very pretty. But I was not shown the pretty parts. I was stuck somewhere in Midtown on 56th Street, just concrete buildings all around, all the people. Everything was so rushed and so money-oriented. If you lived in Paris and you don’t know where to go in New York, the food wasn’t overwhelmingly good. To me, it was anti-culture. Nobody cared about books here; nobody cared about classical music; nobody cared about art. It was all money. It just felt like it was not a world that made any sense to me. But of course, being young and arrogant, I just didn’t really want to explore it. I took it at face value of what I saw when I was here, I was having a terrible time, and I thought ‘This place sucks. I can’t wait to get back to Paris.’ So later on, when I started considering actually moving here because of the money – because I wasn’t modeling to get pictures out of it; I was modeling to make money and the proposition was just undownturnable – I started searching out the different areas. The ones that wouldn’t be so what I thought New York was, but that I thought would feel right for me. And I did, of course. New York is a city of all cities. It has a little bit of everything. You can find Tokyo here; you can find France.”</p>
<h4>Roots</h4>
<p>“When you live in a country, when you plant your roots in a country, it’s really about that. It’s about roots. It’s about soaking up the nourishment of your environment. This is children’s songs, children’s stories, pop culture going on around you, and when you move as an adult, as a fully-formed person, to another country to settle, you’re missing all this roots stuff. You’re missing all this basic stuff that everybody else grew up with, all these references that you don’t have. So I got my Czech ones, then I moved to Sweden and I had to re-root my roots and go to the Swedish ones, and then I had to do it in France and then I had to do it in America. Because I did it so early, I think I was conscious that this is what you have to do to live in that country. You can’t just live on the country. You can’t just sit on the surface of a country and pretend you live there. You have to learn everything from the beginning, and I’m the richer person for it, actually having learned four different countries from the ground up. It gets a little confusing sometimes.”</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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Paulina Porizkova
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Paulina Porizkova was born in Olomouc in 1965 and grew up in the Moravian town of Prostějov. Her parents, Anna and Jiří, left Czechoslovakia in the wake of the 1968 Soviet-led invasion and settled in Sweden. Paulina remained with her maternal grandparents in Prostějov and says that her time with them was ‘delightful.’ Paulina’s parents, meanwhile, were attempting to reunite their family and gained attention in Sweden for their actions. After three years had gone by, they planned to ‘kidnap’ Paulina after flying into Czechoslovakia with the help of Swedish pilots. On her way to Prostějov, Paulina’s mother (who was traveling on a fake passport) was detained for speeding and arrested when her identity was revealed. Because she was several months pregnant, Paulina’s mother was released to her parents’ house and remained under house arrest. Paulina says that her father, who had remained in Sweden, had managed to keep their case in the media, which put pressure on the Czechoslovak government. In 1973, Paulina, her mother, and her brother were allowed to leave the country.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Paulina says that her parents divorced shortly after returning to Sweden and her mother worked as a midwife. Because they were not allowed to return to Czechoslovakia, Paulina’s family would travel to an Eastern bloc country each year to meet up with her relatives who remained behind. At age 15, Paulina signed with Elite Models and moved to Paris by herself to begin her modeling career. By 1983, Paulina had become ‘very in demand’ in the United States and moved to New York to continue her career. She says that her first impressions of New York were less than favorable and that she did not become ‘settled’ there until she met her husband, Rick Ocasek, and decided to stay permanently.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Paulina’s first trip back to Czechoslovakia was in 1991, after the fall of communism. She has returned several times for visits, although much of her family is now in the United States, including her mother and brother. Paulina has made a point to continue Czech traditions and celebrate Czech holidays. Her sons, Jonathan and Oliver, are connected to their Czech heritage, and her younger son especially enjoys Czech history and culture. After a successful modeling and acting career, Paulina has turned to writing in recent years. She has written a children’s book and a novel and produces a column for the Huffington Post. Today, Paulina lives in Manhattan with her husband and sons.</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
Cultural Traditions
Family life
Prostejov
Rural life
school
Secret police
Sense of identity
Warsaw Pact invasion
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d1805ab3ff30b4bfbf3566e21df48e3d
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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>Horse Cart</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/EZropicbPkU?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“In those days, even though cars were already in existence and trucks, we did not use them. We used just horses to pull the wagons with flour. We went as far as Mladá Boleslav, I don’t remember how many kilometers it was, but we had to go to Mnichovo hradiště – that was seven kilometers – and then normally you would take a train. So I don’t know, it must have been about three hours, I would say. So, we would go as far as that, but we had one person who was handling the horse and he had a sort of system whereby, at every village, his wagon would stop in front of a pub and he would go to get a beer. I remember this. I was quite young then, but it was sort of curious.”</p><p><em>And you would go along as well?</em></p><p>“Oh yeah. I was frequently… not frequently, but sometimes I went along. It was just interesting, you know? At the time when I didn’t go to school, obviously, in summer time. It was an interesting experience.”</p><h4>Illegal Food</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/c3RAyJwH76I?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Under the Nazi era, I think the farmers in a way, I would say quite often illegally, supported people in the cities. And I know that for instance in our mill, my father had a reputation that he would give flour to even people that he did not know that came from Prague. And he would give them, as I recall – I remember even the number – five kilos of flour, which was at that time quite sizable for the period. Because otherwise you had to purchase four using tickets – you had special tickets. But my father made this flour available to them for good prices. He didn’t ever overcharge them. And I did not know about this, I learned only about it in the last maybe 30 years. When I established some contact [with the Czech Republic] people started coming to me and saying ‘I remember your father from WWII, this is what he did.’ So, I know that this was not unique, because people in the countryside were very helpful.”</p><h4>Escape</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/8viCQjPK0JQ?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I was not doing it on my own, but somebody was helping. I did not even know the person, nothing, because we called him ‘mister engineer,’ and I don’t know what he was.”</p><p><em>Was he a colleague of your father?</em></p><p>“Yeah, he was a friend of him. Anyhow, then there were problems of some sort, and he was supposed to take me over the border, and he didn’t. At the last minute he sent me on my own. And I was in the middle of nowhere. I ended up – he just pointed me in one direction, and I ended up in a house which was still on the Czech side. And they called the police and whatever else, so I ended up in jail where I was actually, according to the Czech laws, I was quite young. I was below the age or whatever. I was never tried, I don’t know how many months they kept me there. And then they let me go because of my age, because the newly-elected president, Gottwald, issued an amnesty for young people. And I sort of fell under that category and they released me. And fortunately at the time… prior to that I was going to gymnázium, and fortunately, the gymnázium let me come back, although, for a price as I found out later. I received for my effort to escape; they gave me a so-called dvojka z mravů, which meant, in Czechoslovakia you got a grade for behavior, either good behavior or bad behavior. And so for good behavior you got one, and for bad behavior you got two. So I got two; I got dvojka z mravů. And that was pretty bad, you know, to have dvojka z mravů, that didn’t look good on your record. But nevertheless, I have a feeling that maybe this was some kind of a compromise some of my professor friends were able to do so that I could get back. This was maybe one way of doing it – they gave me a dvojka z mravů and I was able to come back.”</p><h4>6 yrs in Prison</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/uYNfKs479no?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I made efforts lately to clear her name. And I went through the process, [sent the request to] the Ministry of Justice or whatever it was called, and they wrote me an official letter telling me that according to then-existing laws, she committed a crime. According to then-existing laws. So they still, unfortunately, recognize communist laws today. To date, I have not been able to clear her name. It is incredible. And, I mean, she is not the only one. There are many people who are in the same category, for instance, let’s say people that crossed the border and didn’t go to the armed services. That was considered a crime. This still, on their books, is considered a criminal offense. Even these people could not clear their name, because according to the laws that existed at that time, this was a criminal act. So, this is one bitter thing I have against even the current Czech Republic – they cannot rid themselves of the past and get rid of these communist laws. It is incredible to me, absolutely incredible to me.”</p><h4>State Dept.</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/MgeOOMdrNYc?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I was hired initially as a senior nutrition adviser. And then I was there a few months and they said ‘Well’… They offered me a job to be the chief of a research division which, in a way, had responsibility for handling and the research sponsored by AID in various developing countries in different fields. And eventually from this job I was elevated up to a director of whatever else. And my job had a number of facets, because we were responsible for not only research but we were also responsible for supporting institutional grants to various universities in a given field in our area. And this covered a number of fields, and interestingly, my background was very helpful to me in as much as I was involved in agriculture initially, and in the medical field at NIH. That gave me a fantastic background, because AID was supporting projects in agriculture; they were supporting projects in medicine and health, and of course they were supporting projects in education.”</p><h4>SVU in D.C.</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/vBZkcL5Y3qw?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“After I came to Washington I became… They established a Washington chapter at that time. And they made Dr, Feierabend, whom you probably know, Ladislav Feierabend, became the chairman of the local chapter. And I was elected the secretary of the chapter. So that was my first entrance into the society, which eventually grew into more and more responsible positions. And I was, from the very beginning, I was in constant contact with Dr. Nemec, Dr. Jaroslav Nemec, who worked for the National Library of Medicine, which in the meantime was transferred to NIH, and I worked at NIH, so we used to meet quite regularly for lunch. I don’t know, once a week or whatever, we met for lunch. So we talked and talked and talked. So, in the process I obviously learned quite a bit about it. And I had some ideas of my own. And eventually, I guess, it must have been within two years, I came up with the idea of the society holding these conferences, which we then renamed congresses. So actually, originally, it was my idea. And I sold Dr. Nemec about it, and he sold others, and we indeed proceeded and had the first congress. The first congress – I ended up being the person who was responsible for the program. So I prepared the program for the first congress, and I ended up being responsible for the second congress, and so I was the one who was inviting all of these people and the first congress was quite decisive. It was an important milestone because it, in some ways, put the society on the map, because then people took it more seriously and then… In the first congress I know we had 60 speakers, which was unheard of at the time. And these people came from different universities or whatever. And again, my contribution at the time was an insistence upon English. I said it has to be in English, because until that time it was all in Czech.”</p><h4>SVU Founded</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/AAmknUA8CaE?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Many people don’t realize why the SVU actually started and under what conditions. The reason was that at the time, there were lots of political disputes in the Czechoslovak community. And there were numerous organizations and clubs. And the politicians, if they belonged to one particular group; they wouldn’t talk to politicians in another group. They just wouldn’t talk to each other. And it was sometimes quite nasty, you might say. And at this time, the situation in Czechoslovakia was going from bad to worse. So this was the time when the intellectuals of Czech or Slovak descent and Czech or Slovak intellectuals decided ‘Enough! Let’s focus on something positive which unites us instead of dividing us!’ That was the society. We created a society where anybody can talk who wishes and explore different issues and what have you. And from the very beginning, it was meant to be a non-political organization.”</p>
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Mila Rechcigl
Description
An account of the resource
<p> </p><p>Mila Rechcigl was born in Mladá Boleslav in 1930. His father (also named Miloslav) was a miller who became the youngest member of parliament in Czechoslovakia when he was elected as a representative of the Agrarian Party in 1935. Mila was raised in and around the family mill in Chocnějovice and remembers traveling by horse and cart to nearby Mladá Boleslav in order to sell flour in town. During WWII, Mila says his father was unable to continue his political work, but became president of the Czech Millers Association and was active in the resistance group Obrana národa [Defense of the Nation]. Mila himself remembers people traveling to the mill from Prague to buy flour there on the black market.</p><p> </p><p>Between 1945 and 1948, a period which he refers to as a time of ‘illusionary democracy,’ Mila attended <em>gymnázium</em> in Mladá Boleslav. Following the Communist coup in 1948, his father escaped Czechoslovakia when a warrant was issued for his arrest. Mila also tried to leave the country, but was caught at the border and jailed for a number of months. Mila says he was released as there was an amnesty announced which affected those legally considered to be minors, and he was allowed to return to <em>gymnázium</em>, though he received a <em>dvojka z mravů</em> – a poor grade for personal conduct. In 1949, Mila tried again to leave Czechoslovakia and this time succeeded. He was reunited with his father at Ludwigsburg refugee camp in West Germany, where he stayed until February 1950. Mila says he never saw his mother, Marie, again. In the late 1950s, she was imprisoned for taking grain from the Rechcigl mill (which had been nationalized) and feeding it to her chickens. She received a prison sentence of ten years, though was released after six. Mila came to New York City with his father in 1950. The pair’s first job was at a small jewelry factory, making earrings and bracelets using Czech glass beads. After a couple of years, Mila’s father started working for Radio Free Europe in the city, while Mila himself received a Free Europe scholarship to attend Cornell University. He gained his BS, MNS, and PhD degrees there, specializing in biochemistry, nutrition, physiology and food science.</p><p> </p><p>Mila worked for the National Institute of Health, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and then the State Department, where he became chief of the Research and Institutional Grants division. His involvement with the Czechoslovak Society of Arts & Sciences (SVU) dates back to 1960 when he became the secretary of the society’s Washington, D.C. chapter. He was president of the international organization between 1974 and 1978 and again between 1994 and 2006. One of his proudest achievements was the establishment of the biannual SVU World Congress, which began in Washington, D.C. in 1962 and continues to this day. Today, Mila lives with his wife of 58 years, Eva, in Rockville, Maryland.</p><p><a href="/web/20170609150111/http://www.ncsml.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/e-Rechcigl_Final.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Full transcript of Mila Rechcigl’s interview</a></p><p><a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20170609150111/http://www.authorhouse.com/Bookstore/BookDetail.aspx?BookId=SKU-000419564" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">A link to Mila’s personal memoir ‘Czechmate: From Bohemian Paradise to American Haven’</a></p><p><a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20170609150111/http://www.rozhlas.cz/svobodne/kdobylkdo/_zprava/miloslav-rechcigl-1904-1973--866956" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">A profile of Mila’s father Miloslav (in Czech)</a></p>
Creator
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National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
NCSML Archive
1948 emigrant/refugee
Arrest
Chocnejovice
Community leadership
Community Life
Education
gymnazium
Journalism
Mlada Boleslav
Mnichovo hradiste
Obrana naroda
Political prisoner
Resistance
Rural life
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3b26543ac0a5da6c3d7797e3f81cb597
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>Hobbies</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/TQylLannx0w?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“Sport – that was really my hobby. Skiing, and later on I did windsurfing. I built by myself the whole board, so we were doing some windsurfing on the lakes. Other than that, sport was the big escape for people. Camping, going out to the forest, because everybody was leaving the city and going to – they called it a chalupa [cottage]– and going to villages and escaping from the city.”</p><h4>Vacation</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qckidbNWAIA?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“In 1962 we went to Vienna and I was nine years old, and when you crossed the border – everything in Czechoslovakia was kind of drab, gray and brown – we went to Austria and it was like a different world. The gas stations with the colorful flags and colors everywhere and new cars. I think that left a huge impression on me. [I thought] ‘I want to live here,’ you know? And Coca-Cola and fries! Eating fries was like ‘Wow.’ It was amazing. That definitely had a big impression on me. It was just once. The funny thing was we had really little pocket money, so we were traveling in Austria by hitchhiking on the highway. It was pretty cool. My dad, he spoke German fluently, because he was born there. Some people let us sleep in their houses. It was great. It was so special.”</p><h4>Prague Spring</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/s7t7NuUKM18?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“It was amazing. Suddenly you can read. There were new magazines, every month, coming out; new information. People were talking on the radio and on TV about what happened in the ‘50s in the Czech Republic, when they executed any opposition and [had] the show trials. I was 15 years old, but it had a great impression on me; I just hated communists. Then the Russians came in August, and it took like two years to break everybody, and that’s my disappointment with the Czech nation, that we gave up way too easily I think. I’m not saying that we should fight, because we didn’t have a chance, but what happened was people renounced their opinion really quickly. And I think it was much worse in the ‘70s maybe than in the ‘50s, although there were no executions or anything like that. But it was like the dark ages, culturally and morally. Yeah, I think the ‘70s was a really bad time, and when we saw the movie about Milos Forman [What doesn’t kill you…], he was talking about it and he said ‘There was no hope; it will be there forever.’ But 1968 was just amazing. It was so refreshing and everything.”</p><h4>Yugoslavia Trip</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/bEzQCZxyRuw?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“We boarded the ship to Venice and we had a big luggage – for a one-day trip to Venice! And everyone was looking at us and, honestly, I was scared. I was really scared. Because you don’t know what to expect, you are leaving everything behind you, and so I didn’t enjoy this sailing across the sea too much. We got to Venice and they said ‘You from Czechoslovakia, there’s one gate and everybody else goes to the other gate,’ and they don’t even open the [other] passports, like Dutch and German; they just went through. And I felt like ‘That’s the reason I have to leave’ because it was so humiliating. I felt justification, like ‘I have to leave this.’ But the Italians told me, ‘You don’t need, for a one-day trip, this huge luggage, so put it back on the ship.’ Another thing, they left our passports on the ship. So I said ‘Ok’ and I took the bag with money and laminated [documents] inside and I went to the toilet, and I had a little pocket knife and I was ripping this bag to get the money and stuff out. I was so scared, but I got it out.</p><p>“So we went to Venice and we asked for asylum, and they said ‘No, don’t do it now. Come back when you are coming back and then you can do it.’ So we are wandering across Venice and we went to St. Mark’s Piazza and there were all these tourists having a great time, and we were kind of desperate. So we went back, but we didn’t have our passports, so one Italian guy offered to go to the ship to pick up the passports and some luggage, but he brought the luggage of some other person, so it was a mess; it was complicated. And after that, the Italians took us to the police station, they did a short interview with us, and they gave us tickets to Latina, which was a refugee camp close to Rome.”</p><h4>N. Carolina</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/G6ZoXshtyeg?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Our sponsors were a group of people from the United Methodist Church in North Carolina, in Raleigh, and it was just a group of fantastic people. Me and Zuzana, my ex, we are not religious people. I wouldn’t say we are atheist; I believe in something spiritual, but I am not necessarily Catholic or Baptist. But these people, they saw one paper with a really bad photo of us, and they decided ‘We want to sponsor these people.’ When we got to the airport, one of them took us to his home; we stayed there for two days; they found an apartment for us. They paid for an apartment for us for six months, they paid for our insurance, they gave us a car, they provided furniture for our whole apartment. Everything. The furniture, every piece was different, but who cares? And when we told this to our friends and relatives in Czechoslovakia, they couldn’t believe it. They said ‘What do you they want for it?’ I said ‘Nothing. They want to help.’”</p><h4>Return?</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/fzPFBu_SYow?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I know people that went back right away, but I never had any intention to go back because I was so impressed with Americans, with their hospitality, and how they accepted us. That’s the major difference, I feel. And I’ve had big arguments with Czech people about like ‘Be proud that you are Czech,’ and I said ‘You know what, this is my homeland.’ I was treated so well here and when I go back I just don’t feel it. So no, I never had any desire to go back.”</p>
Dublin Core
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Title
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Michal Tuavinkl
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Michal Tauvinkl was born in Brno in 1953. He grew up living with his mother who worked as an accountant, his father who taught physical education and geography at a vocational school, and his older sister. In his youth, Michal enjoyed hiking with his parents and playing sports. He also loved to read. When he was nine years old, Michal and his family visited relatives in Vienna – a trip that Michal says had a ‘big impression’ on him. After graduating from <em>gymnázium</em>, Michal worked one year in construction and then enrolled at VUT (University of Technology) in Brno. He graduated with a degree in civil engineering and began working in this field.</p><p> </p><p>In June 1987, Michal and his then-girlfriend Zuzana bought a trip to Yugoslavia which included a one-day boat ride to Venice, Italy. In anticipation of this event, Michal smuggled some foreign currency and documents in his luggage. They successfully made it to Venice with their passports and claimed asylum and were sent to a refugee camp near Rome. Michal says the conditions in the camp were ‘awful’ and the pair decided to leave. They took the train to Austria (but crossed the border on foot as they did not have permission to enter the country) where they were sent to Traiskirchen refugee camp. After a few days there, they moved to a guesthouse where they lived for 15 months with other refugees.</p><p> </p><p>In September 1988, Michal and Zuzana traveled to the United States. They were sponsored by a church group in Raleigh, North Carolina, who helped them secure an apartment and a car. After a few months, Michal found a job as a draftsman at an engineering company. He took English language lessons and completed a professional degree in civil engineering from a local college. After five years, Michal and Zuzana moved to Wilmington where they stayed for another five years. They had a daughter and moved to Detroit. Michal worked at an engineering firm for a few years and, in 2005, moved to the Chicago area. Today he enjoys attending and photographing events put on by the Czech Consulate in Chicago. He received his American citizenship in 1995 and calls America ‘my homeland.’ Michal lives in Harwood Heights, Illinois.</p>
Creator
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National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
NCSML Archive
1968
Americanization
Engineers
gymnazium
Prague Spring
Refugee camp
Rural life
Sense of identity
Sports
Tours
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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>Prague 1970s</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/6y9m7I_ieb0?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“It was a subdivision of a bunch of condos and then we had a forest preserve behind the house, so I would love to go out there and ride a bike and go fishing and cause trouble and run around. It was a good place. I guess we spent a lot of time in the country as well. My parents had a cottage, and it was an old, old 1600s inn that was converted to a house, so it was very historic. It was two stories, maybe six rooms. You burnt coal in the bottom and you went out in the back and they had the cellar, so you could go down into this big hill that was dug out where the cellar was and you pumped the water by hand. My parents were remodeling it and rehabbing, so they put in all new hardwood floors and all that kind of stuff but when we escaped it was neglected, so when we came back to visit it was ransacked. We used to have a suit of armor in there; apparently somebody broke in and stole that, which is so sad. I remember when we went there last time, they had a thing that you pump the water with and I took the handle off and brought it home as a souvenir, so I have something from my old house.”</p><h4>Better Life</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/tpxPFZ3VeuQ?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“What she really wanted to do or accomplish when she left the Czech Republic, is she wanted freedom. She wanted to be able to live her life and to do the job she wants to do to be able to provide a better life for me and my brother, and I think that was the biggest choice in her deciding to leave – to provide a better life for me and Andy because she just felt like we were stifled there, both in the schooling aspect of things and political. Just how the country was run, it was like you don’t have any ambition, you don’t have any drive to become a better person, a wiser, more mature individual. It’s so difficult out there to be able to make something of yourself, to be able to stand out and live your life, and she thought the freedom allowed in America would be a great, great asset for he and I to be a part of.”</p><h4>Asylum</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Qe-locbk8Jg?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“We got sent to Austria. So we had to go to Austria and we stayed there for three months at a little village, a very small tiny town, just very picturesque and beautiful. You had rolling hills; you had the meadows; you had the big trees in the back. It was so pristinely kept that people actually mowed the lawn inside the forest. It was just so bizarre. It was a little German cottage resort town we were in and there was a whole bunch of other immigrants there, a lot of them from the Czech Republic. So my mom knew a little bit of English before she left, so she was teaching the other people how to speak English, or at least to the best of her ability, so that was pretty cool and everyone enjoyed having her there. The government sponsored and paid for the lodging and food, but, as far as clothes and necessities like that, we didn’t have any additional funds for that, so people donated old chairs and they were made out of canvas, and so my would take the canvases and cut them down, she’d make her own frames, she’d buy some paints and then she’d go out in the countryside and she’d paint pictures of the countryside – cows, rolling hills, meadows, old farmhouses and just beautiful scenery, and then she would sell them locally at art fairs and to people that lived down there. She’d make a few extra bucks to provide to her family. So it was kind of an adventure.”</p><h4>Refugee</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/MU4v5HrQ7vM?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I guess I didn’t grasp the concept of what a refugee means. Nowadays, when you look at refugees, they have refugee camps and they have tents and they have tens of thousands of people that are fleeing war-torn, disastrous areas, and I feel like we got so lucky not to be a part of that kind of refugee evacuation. We left the country for political reasons, and that’s not to say that bad things weren’t happening there, but we didn’t have bombs blowing up around us; we didn’t have the threat of hazardous biochemical weapons; we didn’t have people running in with AK-47s and shooting at us and things like that. So to be able to spend three or so months in Austria in a little quiet quaint village… I mean, we went to school there. I got to learn how speak a little bit of German; I used to be able to count to ten in German from what I remember. It was almost like a little mini-vacation for us because we didn’t really know what was expected or what would be going on in our life. But I wouldn’t say it was a negative experience by any means. I would say it was definitely positive and something that helped us grow and see a little different part of the world and enjoy what we had and also where we’re going and what we’re going to have because, like I said, if you see the worst in the world then you can really learn to appreciate what you have. Happiness isn’t about what you have; it’s about valuing what you have.”</p><h4>1993 Return</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/10URzhl5sMs?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Once I got out of college was the first time I went back to the Czech Republic. It was a gift from my stepdad to be able to go down and visit, so my mom and I went down there for about two, two and a half weeks. That’s the first time I went back and it was just majestic to be able to be in a place that was so absolutely gorgeous with the stained glass and the cathedrals and the castles and the armor and the knights and the winding streets leading to nowhere. The signage on there and the cobbled streets. It was just historically and aesthetically and architecturally a phenomenal place to visit.”</p><h4>Blessing</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/BrCMILIzcPU?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I would like to say how much of a blessing it has been to be able to move to the U.S., to have that opportunity, because I think my parents, my mom especially at the time, took a huge risk leaving a country that she wouldn’t be allowed back in or, if she were to come back, she would be thrown in jail. To take a risk of the unknown, to move to a place that you don’t know the language of and you know two people in the whole country – it’s so strong, so adventurous, so kind-hearted for her to want to do that for us. I think that she’s an extremely intelligent, very strong woman to be able to pick up and leave and go to a country where everything is new, from the language to social interactions to work to habits – the driving is different out here, the locations, everything. And I think for her to sacrifice comfort and complacency and her friends, who she never got to see again, is just amazing.”</p><h4>American</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/JxvJLt4C79o?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“What I would like to think it feels like to be an American would be that you are here and you are reliant on yourself and you are available to make whatever life you would like to make for yourself. I feel that if you work hard, if you make the right decisions and you’re disciplined, if you strive for a goal, you have an opportunity here – pretty much more than any other country in the world – to be able to achieve that goal. The things in your way, typically, here are very minimal. And that’s not to say everybody can achieve a goal; I don’t think a lot of people here, unfortunately, have a goal to strive for. I don’t think a lot of people here have dreams. A common thing in immigrants, but an uncommon thing in regular Americans, is to be able to appreciate the freedom and the opportunity that you have to make something of yourself, to make a good life for yourself, to make some kind of a mark, to make your life count for something for yourself, for your family, for the next generation and for society in general. I guess I would like to see more of that; I would like to see people appreciate what they have an opportunity to be able to do here.”</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
Luke Vanis
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Luke Vanis was born in Prague in 1971. His mother, Dagmar, was a high school math and art teacher and a freelance designer, and his father, Leo, was an art professor at Charles University. Luke’s parents divorced when he was young and his mother remarried shortly thereafter. Luke’s earliest memories are of walking to his grandmother’s house with his younger brother, Andy (born Ondřej). He also remembers enjoying time spent at his family’s country house. In 1980, Luke’s mother arranged a vacation for the family in Yugoslavia; once they were there, however, she immediately went to the U.S. Embassy in Belgrade and asked for asylum. Luke, his brother, mother and stepfather were sent to Austria, where they spent three months in a small village with other refugees. In November 1980, sponsored by family friends who lived in the Chicago suburbs, Luke moved with his family to the United States. After a short time living with their sponsors, Luke’s mother and stepfather found jobs restoring furniture and moved to Berwyn where they rented a basement apartment from another Czech family. Luke says that the Czech community of Berwyn helped his mother feel settled and helped the family a great deal.</p><p> </p><p>Luke started fourth grade and says that he was a good student despite the language barrier; he became fluent within one year. After graduating from high school (one year early), Luke began work as a free-lance designer and photographer. He received an associate degree in art from the College of DuPage and a BFA from Northern Illinois University. Luke has had a successful career free-lancing for, among other clients, Enesco Corporation. He also works in real estate and as a photographer. Luke’s mother has also become a successful artist and designer during her years in the United States. In 1993, Luke returned to the Czech Republic for the first time. He calls this experience ‘phenomenal’ and is especially interested in medieval Czech history and architecture, and collects artifact replicas and antiques on his travels. Luke says, in recent years, he has made more of an effort to ‘deepen [his] roots’ and has been spending more time with the Chicago Czech community and keeping up his language skills. He calls his mother’s decision to move to the United States a ‘blessing’ and, today, lives in Naperville, Illinois.</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
Arts
Child emigre
Community Life
Refugee camp
Rural life
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dcb7b9b7a506df4b9bc4b6a04235f7f9
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>Challenges</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WYBRyYrpZfM?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“I was young. I was probably ten or even less, and times sometimes were really tough. And I remember there were days, for example, there was a real shortage of milk and then when milk arrived, the kids would run in front of the block and they would yell ‘Mom, milk arrived!’ and everybody kind of looked and then everybody just grabbed the reusable shopping bag and all went down and stood in line for milk. It was the same thing for oil, like cooking oil, or butter, I remember, or there was the winter season before Christmas and it was any tropical fruit like bananas and oranges or, my goodness, if there was a pineapple, it was like ‘Wow!’ So as a child, I pretty much used to stand in line for food, which I really dislike. If there’s anything going on, like a picnic, and there’s food involved, I really refuse to stand in line for food.”</p><h4>City Farming</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/IPEhpJvEhT0?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Yes, we did have a chata, or summer home, or záhrada [garden] and we pretty much spend almost the entire summer there. There was always something to do. My dad was very much an avid gardener and we grew everything. I didn’t know such a thing as to go to a store and purchase potatoes or carrots or even things like jam or ketchup or anything. My mom pretty much made everything from scratch at home and in our apartment building, downstairs, there was a place where everybody had a teeny storage space. We called it a pivničný priestor or pivnica, and everybody just had this little nook with a door and you open it and it looked like a pantry. It was a pantry of everything like a large bag of potatoes, sauerkraut that was made in this huge barrel, jams, and syrups, and preserved fruit. I mean, it was just like living goodness down there. I very much clearly remember Sundays mom would make traditionally rezne, or schnitzels, with potatoes and then would say ‘Oh we are out of pickled cucumbers,’ or she said ‘What do you want? Do you want cucumbers or peaches in syrup?’ And when we were out of it at home, we had to take the elevator all the way downstairs. Sometimes we were really lazy and we’d just say ‘I’ll just stick with pickles,’ because I was just too lazy to go down and get it.”</p><h4>Western Music</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4_JiFtThrvw?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“My dad was the person who had a lot of friends. He was very outgoing and he knew a lot of people. I remember one day he came home with this huge suitcase and it was quite late in the evening and he said ‘Ok, are you up for it?’ and I said ‘Dad, what are you talking about?’ and he opened this suitcase and it was filled with these LPs of all these Western artists. So I remember holding the Madonna LP in my hand, Material Girl. I would read it and I had no idea what it meant, but I was just so excited. I said ‘Dad, where did you get this?’ He said ‘Don’t ask any questions. We have until morning to go through all these LPs and to record them on cassettes. So whatever you want, just go for it, girl.’ I was up with my dad listening to all these LPs and I remember Falco; I remember Nana, Bananarama, Rick Astley, Aha – all these bands from the ‘80s. Later on I learned that dad had to schmooze up this local DJ to be able to bring these LPs home, and it was literally just for several hours we had them and then he had to return it.”</p><h4>Bulgaria</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/MLGMT99UFuk?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I remember my very first trip when I was ten. My sister and my grandmother, we traveled to Bulgaria. We were very excited because we were finally going to see the Black Sea. So traveling, it was quite a journey. It took us pretty much two and a half days on the bus, and I remember clearly crossing the borders. It was terrifying. It was standing in a long line, being afraid that they might send you back for whatever reason. There were policemen or soldiers with guns. There were dogs. There was nowhere to go; there were no restrooms at all, so you had to really hold or just go out there wherever. It was usually just a field, like open fields. Yeah, it was kind of terrifying for us as kids. We didn’t know what’s going to happen, and we could just see all the adults, the way they reacted to it, and that was terrifying because, as a child, you depend on the adult being able to help you.</p><p>“The Romanian border was probably the worst. There were a lot of small Gypsy children that would come and be knocking on the bus and they would be asking for anything, money or candy. There were so many of them and they would be looking so poor. Sometimes they were not even dressed; dirty little kids. So that was kind of hard to see. But then when we arrived in Bulgaria, we were like ‘Wow!’ It was just like a different world, being able to see the Black Sea and eating different foods and people speaking different languages. That was really nice.”</p><h4>The Fall</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/eX3vbrbZZFU?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I was looking forward to seeing something different and pretty much when they were saying that we are opening borders, all I could think of was ‘Wow, we can actually just go somewhere else than Bulgaria?’ So that was my first thought in my head: travel. Travel and see the world. I don’t know if the seed of coming to America was planted back then, but it might have. I really just wanted to know where the beautiful napkin with Strawberry Shortcake came from. It was something that I think a lot of people my age wanted to do. They wanted to go out West – not necessarily to the United States – but just experience and learn.”</p><h4>Velvet Revolution</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WtfpMls-Iag?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“There were definitely a lot of things happening in Košice. For example, the Východoslovenské železiarne [Eastern Slovakia Iron Works], where my mom worked for many years, all of the sudden they have a new owner. U.S. Steel, from Pennsylvania is coming and taking over. So that was huge. This is a company that has years of history in the metallurgical industry. The import/export business has always been there – and heavy. We’re talking, this company employed thousands and thousands of people, so that was the very, very strong talk.</p><p>“My mom stayed in her current job but then changed positions, and with the U.S. Steel coming as part of the new wave, there were a lot of changes that even for my mom were hard to digest. Because people lived this life day by day for so many years and not everybody is very good with change, and this was very strong. This was very strong. I remember my mom, so many times she would come home really exhausted and she was like ‘You know what these Americans have come up with again?!’ I can’t remember quite exactly what, but she was in charge of – U.S. Steel had internal dry cleaning/laundry because there were a lot of workers who had uniforms and those were the people that the service was for, but then my mom also had clients like local hotels or motels and accommodations for the workers, and so there were a lot of changes in the technology of how the business was run. [It was] much more strict. Not too many coffee breaks; not too much smoking cigarettes and a lot of people didn’t like that. So the capitalism was definitely, slowly but surely, getting in, and a lot of people lost jobs because they were not flexible enough, I would say.”</p><h4>Social Slovaks</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/3HuDfg4SoKE?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“This social group was created purely out of my own curiosity and maybe a little homesickness. I kind of wanted to create a sense of community of Slovaks in this area, to learn who is out there, who may be interested to get together and talk about our upbringing and culture, eat the food and just have a simply good time. And slowly but surely, since 2006 when I started this group, the meet-up has over 230 members. Not everybody is active, which is fine with me, but we do a lot of different things and I have met so many wonderful, wonderful friends through this meet-up. Great friendships; we help each other if we can. So it is almost like my own little family that I have here in D.C.”</p>
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Title
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Ludmila Sujanova
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Ludmila Sujanova was born in Košice in eastern Slovakia in 1972. Her mother, Zlata, worked for a steel company and her father, Vilém, was a manager of manufacturing equipment at a food production company. She has one younger sister. Some of Ludmila’s earliest and strongest memories center around food – she recalls living above a market and standing in line for certain goods like milk and fruit. She also has fond memories of gardening at her family’s <em>chata</em> [summer cottage] outside of Košice where they grew much of their own food. Ludmila says that she was interested in dressmaking from a young age and, after eighth grade, enrolled in a high school in Svidník that focused on fashion design where she lived in a dorm. After graduating in 1991, Ludmila worked at a ski resort for a few months before landing a job as a salesperson in a shop that sold sewing goods and accessories. She worked there for over two years and says that the private business did well in those years following the fall of communism. She also took English lessons at this time and was hoping to travel to the West – something that she had been looking forward to since the Velvet Revolution.</p><p> </p><p>In 1994, one of Ludmila’s friends helped her to get a job as an au pair outside London. After one year in Britain, Ludmila applied to an agency that staffed foreign students at camps in the United States. She was placed at a camp in Connecticut and, in May 1995, flew to New York City. Following her stint at camp, Ludmila moved to Brooklyn where she first worked in a restaurant. After a few jobs as an au pair in Connecticut and New Jersey, she returned to New York and worked as a seamstress in a fashion studio in the garment district of Manhattan. Ludmila then moved to Florida where she took classes at a local community college and worked for a country club. She returned to Slovakia for a visit in 2000. In 2003, Ludmila moved to the Washington, D.C. area where she continued to take classes in interior design and began working at the Container Store. Today, she works in sales and visual merchandising for the company. Ludmila received her American citizenship in 2006, an event which she says was ‘a very big deal.’ That same year, she began a social meet-up group to connect with her fellow Slovaks; she says that through this group she has created her ‘own little family…in D.C.’ Ludmila lives in Germantown, Maryland.</p>
Creator
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National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library
Source
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NCSML Archive
American citizenship
Community Life
Education
Fashion
Kosice
Post-1989 emigrant
Privatization
Rural life
Svidnik
Velvet Revolution
Vychodoslovenske zeleziarne
Western/Pop culture