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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>School Evacuated</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/vN6GK-K67C0?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“Actually, I had two aunts, so one was working and the other was supposed to take care of me. But she was partially deaf, so when there was an air raid announced, all children were sent home, and parents came – we were in the first grade, so all the parents came to pick them up – but because my aunt couldn’t hear, nobody picked me up. So I went home by myself. But it was only like two blocks, so it wasn’t so bad. And there was another boy on my street, in my school, and also nobody came for him. So we walked together and, you know, it was an eerie feeling because there was nobody, nothing. Only those airplanes overhead. And I remember it until today. And that bad feeling came in ’68 when Russians occupied Czechoslovakia, and I was home again alone because my daughter was born, and again nothing – nobody around, quiet and just those airplanes. And then I forgot about it, and then September 11 here, when they started to guard those cities – airplanes over Chicago – it came again!”</p><h4>Soup and Soap</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/kbnnKDieqDo?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I remember we got, when I was living with my aunts, they bought some beef bones, and we had soup on Sunday, and on Monday they mixed it with some chemicals or whatever and they made soap, because there was a shortage of soap. And it did not smell too good. It was like brown little bricks. We didn’t have to use it for baths but for washing clothes and stuff like that.”<br /><strong><br />
That was an example of making the most of everything you had?</strong></p><p>“Yeah, we ate lots of potatoes and plums. We made plum jam, it was <em>povidla</em> in Czech. And stuff like that. Actually I was malnourished; I had those bumps behind my ears. But it was mainly because I didn’t want to eat.”</p><h4>Happy Times</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Qie37YiM-hw?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Sixty-eight – I said it was the last time I was quite happy. Because I got my promotion, I was pregnant finally after ten years, between the two of us, we made enough money so that we could get furniture for our apartment. We even had enough money to buy a car. It was exactly ’68 – I remember it because you could not go like here to some place and buy the car, you had to put up the money first, and then wait, and wait and wait. And after years, they ask you if you want your car beige or green. But, another option was to get a used car. And I still remember we went to look at a used white Simca somewhere. And we sent Eva to summer camp, she was ten years old, we went to look at that car and where my parents live, behind them, there are beautiful gardens. Have you ever been in Prague? So they live under Petřín hill, close to that funicular. And we were walking through those gardens, and it was actually really nice, relaxing, beautiful, and I felt so good. And my parents were sitting in the park, so we were talking to them. And it was a Sunday or Saturday, and a few days later, Russians came.”</p><h4>Shortage of Food</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_4BJKz1vgjw?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I remember standing in the line, because suddenly there was… everybody tried to get some supplies, some food, and they sent the Russian Army without any provisions. They told them ‘There is a contra-revolution’, and that they will find food and everything when they went to the town. And there was no food for Russians, nobody wanted to give them anything. And I was standing in the line with my mother to get some potatoes again, and they were in the street, all those tanks going, and I was crying and my brave mum said ‘Don’t cry! Don’t show it to them!’ Then again the next day I was sitting on a bench in the park looking at the bakery, waiting for bread. Because by that time the Russians got smart and they actually ambushed the delivery guys. So it was very important to get there first.”</p><h4>Impressions of America</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2OhzkwhM-3w?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“We came from Vienna, from Europe, where everything was like nice and clean and everybody was dressed-up, civilized. And we ended up at JFK at some time of reconstruction and hippies. And there were hippies all over the floor, all over. And somehow I was still in my mind on vacation, until I saw what was around me. So I started to cry, what did I do?”</p><p><strong>Did you start to have second thoughts about the United States when you saw that?</strong></p><p>“Definitely! I definitely did. Those friends like that [engineer] Hana, they found us an apartment – besides a job for him they found us an apartment in Cicero. And they even found some second hand furniture and everything. They were waiting for us at the airport at O’Hare. So, it was really nice, but when I saw it, it wasn’t the America we knew from movies and books. Those houses and everything in Cicero – it was like, I was deeply, deeply disappointed. To me, America was behind.”</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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Vera Dobrovolny
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Vera Dobrovolny was born in Prague in 1938. Her father Jan worked as a quality controller for Škoda during WWII and then as a technician at Správa spojů (the state-owned telecommunications company). Her mother Aloisie, meanwhile, worked as a supervisor at a dorm for student nurses in the capital. Vera spent a part of WWII being raised by her aunts, as her mother was hospitalized following the birth of her younger brother. He was named Vladimír, which was (like Věra) deliberately Russian-sounding, as both of her parents were, she says, ardent Pan-Slavists. Towards the end of WWII, Vera’s family moved out of Prague to live in their summer house near Mokropsy, where she remembers attending school in the corner of a local pub, as the village schoolhouse was occupied by German troops.</p><p> </p><p>Vera attended commercial academy in Prague and then worked for Ferromet, a steel export company. In 1955, she met her husband, <a href="/web/20170609083217/http://www.ncsml.org/exhibits/pierre-dobrovolny/">Pierre Dobrovolny</a>, at a dance. The pair were married in 1958 and have two children, Eva and Lucie. Vera had been raised by parents who strongly believed in building socialism, but says her relationship with Pierre ‘spoiled her’ ideologically. She was repeatedly denied promotion in her job, which she says was most likely due to her relationship with Pierre. In 1968, Vera was finally promoted and says her family enjoyed a degree of financial stability. She refers to this time as one of the happiest in her life.</p><p> </p><p>Following the Warsaw Pact Invasion, in 1969, Vera and Pierre decided to leave Czechoslovakia. They traveled to Vienna in the summer, where they applied for visas to the United States and registered at the American Fund for Czechoslovak Refugees. Their youngest child Lucie, however, fell extremely ill after a couple of days, and so the family decided to return to Prague and seek medical assistance. After a couple of months, on August 21, 1969, Vera and Pierre again left Czechoslovakia. They traveled with their children to Yugoslavia from which they crossed into Austria without the correct paperwork; Pierre says the border guards did not care. The family spent about one month in Traiskirchen refugee camp near Vienna before being sent to stay in Bad Kreuzen. They arrived in America in December 1969. Vera says her first impressions of the United States were less than flattering and did not live up to the expectations she had formed from films and books. The family first lived in a rented apartment in Cicero before settling in Hawthorn Woods, Illinois. Vera worked as an accountant for CSA Fraternal Life before taking a job at Bosch, where she remained for 26 years. She has played active roles in the Czechoslovak National Council of America (CNCA) and the Society of Arts and Sciences (SVU) in Chicago. She makes frequent trips to the Czech Republic and has taken her grandchildren to Prague to show them where she was raised.</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
Community Life
emigrant
Family life
German occupation
marriage
refugee
Refugee camp
Skoda
Sprava spoju
Women workers
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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>Elementary </h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/6JC_kreNgis?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“I was two years in the elementary school and my recollections of that time are not happy ones. I was being punished by my teacher constantly for being able to read when I came to first grade.”</p><p>So that was out of line for the times?</p><p>“Today that would be something a teacher would welcome probably. I was reading already Greek mythology and all sorts of things and I was bored with the primitive things that you learn if you are learning to read. I already was reading quite well.”</p><p>And how had you learned to read? Did anyone teach you, or did you just pick it up yourself?</p><p>“Well, I had an uncle who was a teacher – a first grade teacher – and he said, ‘Don’t let her learn to read because she will have problems.’ So I asked the maid to teach me. And I learned to read from tabloids.”</p><h4>American School</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/h9nSsuNTQwo?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“This school was just really outstanding. It was a Presbyterian missionary school, and it was such an outstanding [school]. We learned things that, well, we learned about democracy. We learned about getting together and having relationships – good relationships – with people of other nationalities or religions. In that school, when I was graduating, we had 200 students, 20 different nationalities, and eight different religions. Tolerance was one of the things we learned, above all. And the principal [Commodore Fisher] was the best man I ever knew.”</p><h4>Vet Dreams</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/iyC0DKFrgKc?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“My favorite uncle was a veterinarian. Since I was a little kid, he would take me around when he was making his rounds all over the country, and I wanted so badly to be a veterinarian like him. There weren’t many veterinary school and they really didn’t want women either, and I said ‘I want to go to that university in Brno that you went to.’ And he said ‘What do you think you are? Look at yourself, you’re too [small].’ I was littler then. And he said, ‘You don’t have the strength to be a veterinarian. Come with me.’ And he took me out and he showed me how he was pulling out a calf, how he was pulling out a colt. And he said ‘Can you do that? That’s what a veterinarian has to do. No, you go to the philosophical school in Prague and do something else.’ So I went and I did English studies and then later I was lured into Oriental studies because of my living in Iran and knowing something about Persian literature.”</p><h4>How We Met</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/7IZyJIjUJpA?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Then one day he [my boss, František Slabý] said, ‘Věruška, I have to find you a nice husband. I have just the man in mind. He’s in Ludwigsburg [refugee camp], and I will call him and he can be our accountant here.’ And guess who arrived? Sasha Borkovec. When he arrived I thought ‘Good looking enough, but he seems so aloof and so stand-offish.’ I wasn’t particularly interested. But then, František, my boss, invited us to a party and I went there with my sister, and Sasha was playing the guitar and singing beautiful songs. That was it. And then at that party, I think that’s what sort of started things going, he asked me if I would teach him English. And I said yes, and we would take walks and I would teach him English, spoken English, and I guess that brought us together.”</p><h4>Immigrating</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/nB7bbzruyuw?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“We thought we would stay in Bolivia. It was a beautiful country. I was working for Braniff Airways and Sasha was working for a pharmaceutical company; we were quite comfortable and everything. But then they had another revolution. We lived through three different revolutions during the year and a half that we lived in Bolivia, but the last one was socialist. They were going to nationalize everything, and so again we said, ‘This is not for us.’ Because I was working for Braniff Airways, I could get Sasha a ticket for five dollars to go to Brazil to find out what Brazil looked like, and to Uruguay. And he went on this expedition to find out where we could move to. And then he came back very happy from Brazil. He had been to Uruguay as well and to Paraguay. But he came back from Brazil and said, in front of a gathering of Czechs, ‘So we are moving to Brazil. Brazil is a fine place and we can find work.’ And I said ‘No we’re not. We’re not going to Brazil, we’re going to the United States because we received immigration visas to the USA.’”</p><h4>PhD</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/66bT-_lNEgg?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“In 1968 when we were in Prague, my relatives and friends would say ‘You poor thing, how can you teach that awful language, that awful Russian literature?’ And I would say ‘The Russian language is a beautiful language and Russian literature is really world-class literature. I don’t teach socialist realism. I teach the classics, which have nothing to do with communism.’”</p><h4>Czech Playwright</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/BZUGIuSLZdg?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Recently, two or three years ago, I published a book on Josef Topol and his various plays. But I wanted to meet the man, and I knew people here at the embassy who knew him and they said ‘Oh, you will not have a chance to meet him because he’s very shy and he doesn’t want to meet other people.’ So I asked people in Prague and everybody said the same thing, that you just can’t get close to this guy, that he doesn’t want to meet anybody. And then finally, the former cultural counselor came very happy to me and he said ‘I have found a way and Mr. Topol is willing to accept you. He’s inviting you to his home.’</p><p>“And he took me inside, brought the dog inside, he put me on the sofa and asked if I wanted coffee. I said ‘Yes, please, thank you.’ And so he went to the kitchen to make some coffee and the dog and I were sitting there together. And you know I told you that I wanted to be a veterinarian and how much I love animals and dogs especially. I called Zorinka – her name was Zorinka – I called her over and she came, sniffed me, and then she sat in my lap. And the playwright comes out of the kitchen with the coffee, he nearly dropped it and he said ‘My god! She’s sitting in your lap. Zorinka sat in your lap!’ And I said ‘Well she knows, she knows I like dogs.’ Well that did it. He started talking, he was telling me his whole life story, his love stories, whom he was going to marry, whom he married, how he worked with [Václav] Havel. He didn’t want to let me go home. And we have seen each other ever since. Every year when I go to Prague we see each other, in Café Slavia usually.”</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
Vera Borkovec
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Vera Borkovec was born in Brno in 1926. She grew up in Prague with her parents and younger sister until 1934, when her father became the director of Škoda Works in Tehran, Iran. Vera remembers Tehran as a progressive city, and the schooling she received there was an important influence on her. After graduating from the American Community School, she began teaching sixth and seventh grades there, and the principal encouraged her to continue with her education. Vera moved to Beirut where she attended a French school for one year. After WWII, Vera and her family returned to Czechoslovakia; she says they were very happy to be back. Vera majored in English and Oriental studies at Charles University and received her degree in 1949. That same year, she left the country with her family. Through an uncle (who had been involved in the resistance during WWII) Vera’s family was introduced to a guide who helped them across the border into West Germany on July 4, 1949.</p><p> </p><p>Vera stayed in refugee camps in Germany for one year and a half. She and her sister were able to get secretarial jobs at the International Refugee Organization in Munich, where she met her husband, Alexej (Sasha) Bořkovec. Through an acquaintance of her father’s, Vera’s family received permission to immigrate to Bolivia in the spring of 1951. While there, Vera and Sasha married, and Vera worked for Braniff Airlines. Vera and Sasha obtained U.S. visas in the spring of 1952 and they moved to Blacksburg, Virginia, where Sasha was able to accept a fellowship at Virginia Tech that he had been offered five years earlier. Vera worked as secretary for the head of the university’s Department of Dairy Science and also became involved in the theater on campus. She says they became good friends with the faculty and even the president of the university. After short stays in Texas (where they became U.S. citizens) and Roanoke, Virginia (where Vera obtained an M.A. in French at Hollins College), the couple moved to the Washington, D.C. area when Sasha got a job at the Department of Agriculture. In D.C., Vera gained a second masters degree, in Russian, from American University and received her doctorate in Russian literature from Georgetown University. She became a professor at American University, and taught in the Language and Foreign Studies Department for more than 30 years.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Vera and Sasha were instrumental in the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Science (SVU) at both a local and international level. Vera became a member in 1965 and sat on several committees before being elected Secretary General of the organization in 1977. She was Chairman of the Washington, D.C. chapter, and also started a student essay contest to promote interest in SVU and Czech and Slovak culture among younger generations. In her retirement, Vera has worked as a translator and published several books. In 2003, she received the Artis Bohemiae Amicis award from the Czech Ministry of Culture for her translations. She lives in Silver Spring, Maryland.</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
Community leader
Community Life
Education
emigrant
Ethnic diversity
interpreter
marriage
refugee
Refugee camp
Russian studies
school
Skoda
speaker
Teachers
Translator
Vera Zandova
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans
Subject
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>Schooldays</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/-VVi2fLpFOQ?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“I loved school, a lot of learning, dancing. I have a lot of fond memories of growing up in Slovakia – I think because I left when I was so young. I didn’t get to experience what would be the negative aspects of communism, what the adults had to deal with. For me, I was just a kid, I was growing up so… we left when I was only seven.”</p><h4>Surprise Emigrating</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/IpPRDhMYM-k?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“No, unfortunately, me and my brother were both not told – we were little. I was notorious for having a big mouth and I would talk, and my dad could have got into a lot of trouble if anyone were to find out we were defecting. As a matter of fact, my dad started remodeling the apartment we were living in, it seemed like everything was normal and we were just told we were going on vacation to Yugoslavia. So we packed up the car one day and like ‘Oh, we’re going on vacation,’ and I don’t think my parents actually told us until we were in Yugoslavia that we weren’t coming back home.”</p><h4>9 Months</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/81prH_PykMs?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“The saddest part about it is that in Austria, the camp Traiskirchen, it was literally 40 minutes away from the border with Slovakia. So our family was right there, and we couldn’t go and see them or talk to them. We were political, you know, in political asylum and we were even told, once we were in the gates of the camp that we were safe, but if we wanted to venture outside the camp in the city, we weren’t necessarily safe – they could come and get us if they wanted to so, it was just really strange.</p><p>“When we first got there, we stayed in a building with multiple families in one room – I can’t tell you exactly the number, but it had to be more than 40 people, lots of bunk beds. So once you got there and you were processed, you were then assigned maybe an apartment to live in. So we ended up living in an apartment for quite some time, because I think we were there for about eight to nine months. And so we had our own apartment and I made a lot of friends with different children from around the world, I was with Turkish kids and Hungarian kids and Romanians and at one point, my parents said I was speaking about four or five different languages. I lost that soon after we left there, but when you are a kid, you have the capacity, I guess, to learn that many different languages, so…”</p><h4>Why They Left</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/BPlxJVvPdkA?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“My dad simply put it that it’s for me and my brother, not so much for my mum and my dad, but he knew… because we left right before the fall of communism. I think the fall of communism happened about a year after we left the country. So, when we got here, I don’t think my dad ever looked back at that and regretted it, because even now, today, all these years later, it’s still hard for all the people who are living there, economically. It’s a new democracy, starting from the beginning and coming here; my dad saw that as a big opportunity for our education, for our work, for our futures.”</p><h4>Nostalgia</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/jup97GhukD4?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I see where they’re coming from, my nostalgia comes from being a kid, growing up there, drinking Kofola, watching Matko a Kubko, being kids – we were kids at a time when you saw cartoons one hour a week, on the three stations that were available in Bratislava at the time! You come here and kids have so many more opportunities and things to rot their brain and their teeth and everything. So, in a way, I can see it. And I would be lying if I said that it didn’t fascinate me, you know – anything communist related, or movies of anything, because deep down inside, I know that was a part of history that I was a part of, even though it was towards the real last part of it. I can’t say that it doesn’t intrigue me. I don’t know what I’d tell those people. I know a lot of them thought it was better during communist times, and who am I to tell them whether or not it was or not, because now it is harder – it is hard for people out there who are struggling.”</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
Petra Sith
Description
An account of the resource
<p> </p><p>Petra Sith was born in Bratislava in September 1979, in Kramáre Hospital where her mother, Anna, worked as a nurse. Her mother married her stepfather, Peter Sith (a mechanical engineer for carmaker Škoda), when Petra was four years old. In 1983, Petra’s brother, <a href="/web/20170609122012/http://www.ncsml.org/exhibits/karol-sith/">Karol Sith</a>, was born.Petra started grade school in Bratislava, of which she says she still has ‘fond memories.’ She did not stay there too long, however, before her family left the country. The Siths went on holiday to Yugoslavia in 1986 and it was there that Petra’s parents told her and her brother they had no intention of returning home.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>The family spent about one year in refugee camps in Yugoslavia before moving to Traiskirchen camp in Austria. The Sith family spent another nine months in Traiskirchen before being sponsored by a distant relative in Illinois to come to the United States. They settled first in Chicago before moving to Fox Lake, Illinois, where Petra lived up until three years ago.</p><p> </p><p>Petra says her parents were not able to find jobs at first in the U.S. which reflected their qualifications; her father started sweeping floors at a factory, while her mother worked in a laundromat. Eventually, Petra’s mother became a nursing assistant, while her father became a factory technician. Petra says her parents impressed the value of education upon her; she graduated from Chicago’s Roosevelt University in 2007. She currently works as a billing processor at Robert Half International and is studying for her master’s degree. Petra plays bass in a band called Losing Scarlet, which she describes as making ‘user-friendly, heavier rock music.’ She has a U.S. green card, but still travels on a Slovak passport. She has returned to Slovakia to see her family twice since coming to America; in 1994 and 2007. Today, Petra lives in Ingleside, Illinois, with her husband, Brad.</p><p><a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20170609122012/http://www.myspace.com/losingscarlet" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Petra’s band Losing Scarlet on Myspace</a></p>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library
Source
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NCSML Archive
Arts
Child emigre
Education
Family life
Refugee camp
Skoda
Suchankova
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74f6246c177652b1271d4522359460f1
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>Depression</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/GST28mHKmBc?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“Yes, very much so, because that was in the ‘30s, the high ‘30s, and I remember that at that time my grandmother died, my grandfather died, work became less and less and the firm had to be sold, and my father went to work at the Škodové závody in the woodworking department, and that life was quite different afterwards. He never complained, but of course it was different work than what he was used to and what he liked. And it was shortly before the war, I remember that in ’37, ’38 especially, people were talking and afraid of the war. We in school for instance, as little girls – I was 12 years old – we were learning about first aid, and the Morse alphabet even. It was sort of a preparation for the war. And then it of course happened in ’38 that Czechoslovakia was stripped of the border areas, of the <em>Sudety</em>, and in ’39 we were occupied by the Nazis and became a Protektorat of the German Reich. That was bad.</p><p>“I remember my father, who was a member of the Czechoslovak legions during WWI and worshiped President Masaryk, volunteered to go and defend Czechoslovakia in 1938. I saw him, he was past 50 years old. But he volunteered, I remember him marching in Hradec with other people going to the borders. Of course, the Munich Dictate changed everything. Czechoslovakia was stripped of this part. My father, he returned, and then I saw him cry. It was bad.”</p><h4>Theatre Group</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/vdluSpDyqlE?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Well, we had a group of friends in Hradec which was very nice, which sort of saved us all. And one thing which we did – well, we were for instance reading poetry or singing – but then the most interesting thing which we liked very much, and I liked very much, was amateur theatre. The group of us formed this amateur theatre group, we were reading lots of plays and rehearsing very, very, very sincerely and carefully, making our own sets. And we staged or produced [in] several theatres several performances, first on a little stage in Slezské předměstí – that was the part of Hradec where I was living – and then even in the famed Klicperovo divadlo in the Old Town of Hradec. And that was very nice, that was really wonderful. We enjoyed that very much. We were doing that for a long time.”</p><h4>Reporter in Prague</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/LfhPgQC1Il8?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“In Louny, I experienced some awful thing. Well, of course, the news was fine, but it was a terrible experience. There were so-called <em>Lidové soudy</em> – a <em>soud</em> [court] which didn’t have an elected judge or a prosecutor with a law degree, or a jury, or defending lawyers. It was people, this so-called <em>soud</em>, normal people selected by the communists in Louny to judge, the defendant usually was a farmer. It was a farming area around Louny. [They] judged and sentenced the farmer immediately for so-called ‘crime against the republic,’ meaning they were accused, for instance, of having for example just an extra goose more than they were supposed to have, or that they didn’t return the proper amount of grain which they were supposed to give to the state, to this supply office. It didn’t need to be true. It was strictly political abuse, and a political way of making the people afraid. And the judgment was swift and fast, and the sentences were harsh and immediate. Even prison terms, the confiscation of property, or at least harsh fines. I could not believe that something like that, that such abuse of power, is possible! And abuse of people! So, of course, I wrote article after article about that, and that didn’t please the communists very well at all. To this day, I think that was something that was terribly hard to take.”<br /><strong><br /></strong><em>Were the Communists in power in the local government?</em></p><p>“Yes. That’s why it was possible for these things to go on. Well, in ’48 of course everything changed. I was still in Louny on February 25, ’48, when the Communists staged a putsch in Prague. I was told by the city to leave immediately and never to return. So I went to Prague to the newspaper, where it was very gloomy, nobody knew what was happening, what will be happening. And in a few days I received a notification that I was expelled from the association of journalists, that I couldn’t be a reporter anymore.”</p><h4>Crossing the Border</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/kEWvRPpnOPE?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“We walked for several hours and came to a meadow where there were huts with hay, you know, just for hay. And there we hid for the rest of the night and the whole day. I was very afraid, I couldn’t understand that, I thought that we would be surely discovered, hiding there for the whole day. But the guide said ‘No, don’t worry, nobody comes. I do it always the same, it’s alright.’ Well it was, nobody came. So then in the evening, at night, we were supposed to continue and cross the border that same night. The moon was shining and this big meadow in front of us which we had to cross to the woods – the woods were on the other side. So we waited until the clouds came, little clouds which would make it not so clear to see. And we quickly ran across the meadow and into the woods and started to walk and walk, and walked and walked. It’s mountains, so we went up the hill. And I was very glad that I don’t have a heavier suitcase to carry. And I know it was late at night, but all of a sudden we heard dogs barking, and some voices yelling in the direction that we were going, ahead of us.</p><p>“So we stopped and turned around and went sideways and walked away from that until we knew that we were in the distance; we didn’t hear any more barking or any voices. So we walked and walked and at one point we rested. We sat down under a tree and I know that I fell asleep and when I woke up it was raining and raining and pitch dark. So we walked, but in the morning we found out that we are hopelessly lost. The woods were terribly deep. And it still was raining and raining and an absolutely dark sky – you couldn’t even see which way is west, because we knew we have to go west, but which was the west? So I remember from nature studies we knew that lichen grows on the north side of the trees, but lichen grew all around the trees because it was such an old, old woods. So we were simply lost, and the guide didn’t have a compass because he was so sure about it – he always was doing the same route so he knew that. And he didn’t have a compass, and of course we didn’t have a compass. So we didn’t know where the west is. The whole day it rained, the evening it rained, we walked a bit, we rested a bit hoping that we will somehow find the way, which we didn’t. But then at night the stars came out. And the Big Dipper came out, with the North Star. And we knew where is the west.”</p><h4>America</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/OLPgXNzkViY?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“We were extremely lucky. My husband met in ’48, in Frankfurt, an American officer – Army officer – of Slovak origin who was very kind and very good, and he took care of Slovaks and so on. And he offered us an affidavit of support, because without that assurance you couldn’t get to the United States. And that was an extremely valuable and kind thing to do, because the sponsor – he – was assuring the United States that we won’t become a burden on the States. Well, you know, what did he know? It was an extremely kind thing to do. But he did that. He and his wife did that, so we had this assurance and then through the process we emigrated in May, we left Germany in May 1950.”</p><h4>Chicago</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/dWBjkfgtDQg?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I thought after Vienna… You know, Chicago was quite different in 1968. But I grew to love Chicago. It became a beautiful, beautiful city. Do you know Chicago? The [lakefront] is beautiful. You could bicycle for miles, to Wisconsin practically, on the flat land. The architecture was wonderful there. Of course, Frank Lloyd Wright to start with, but then Helmut Jahn built these fabulous buildings on Wacker Drive. It was beautiful!</p><p>“When we came the lake was not clean, but they cleaned it up and it was absolutely gorgeous. The architecture on the lake and the beaches – it looked like you could be in Rio de Janeiro! It was just marvelous, and then underground, it simply was just a very beautiful city. I liked it there very much, and I liked the theaters. And we were going a lot to the theater, also to the little theaters – Steppenwolf I remember, of course Goodman but also Steppenwolf which became very famous. We started to go to Steppenwolf theater when they were playing in a church in Highland Park, you know, in the suburbs. Well they were wonderful. Northern Lights was another one, there were a lot of small theaters which we liked very, very much. Museums, and I used to go on Fridays to the concerts, to the Chicago Symphony. The Art Institute was an excellent, excellent place to be, and the opera. I liked it there very much. So then we came to Washington and I said ‘well, Washington is a nice city.’ And I came to love Washington too – again theaters, operas, the symphony. I continue doing that.”</p>
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Helena Fabry
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Helena Fabry was born in Hradec Králové, Bohemia, in 1925. Her father was a cabinet maker who, among other commissions, restored the interior of the town’s cathedral, while her mother stayed at home and raised Helena and her younger sister Věra. Helena says that around the time of the Depression, business dried up for her father and so he went to work in the carpentry department of the local Škoda factory. Helena graduated from business school in Hradec Králové during WWII and was assigned a job at the local <em>zásobovací úřad </em>[supplies bureau]. She remembers WWII as being ‘uneasy’ and ‘disquieting’ and says that it was her involvement in amateur theatre in Hradec Králové which helped her during this time. Following the end of the War in 1945, Helena moved to Prague to learn English, which she did for one year before taking a job at<em>Svobodné slovo</em>, a newspaper allied with the Beneš Party. She says she loved working as a reporter in the capital. In 1947, Helena was posted to Louny to gain more experience as a local reporter for the newspaper. There, she reported on the trials of local farmers before <em>lidové soudy</em> [people’s courts], which she refers to as ‘a terrible experience.’ She says her reports sparked the ire of the local Communist administration, and when the coup took place in Prague on February 25, 1948, she was told to leave Louny immediately, and expelled from the association of journalists.</p><p> </p><p>Helena stayed on at <em>Svobodné slovo,</em> though was no longer able to write. She became involved in underground efforts to destabilize the new Communist government, encrypting and deciphering messages. In the summer of 1948, she was told that one accomplice had been arrested and that she should leave the country immediately. A guide told her to pack one suitcase with clothes meant for a week on a farm and meet him at a designated place in Prague at a certain time. Helena traveled with a small group and this guide to Sušice by train; from Sušice, they walked until they crossed the border, which in this instance took several days. The group got ‘hopelessly lost’ on their journey but, says Helena, they were able to find their way west eventually by using the stars to navigate.</p><p> </p><p>Helena spent just under two years in Germany, primarily in refugee camps in Dieburg and Ludwigsburg. There, she met and married her husband, Milan Fabry (a Slovak economist who had been the political secretary of Transport Minister Ivan Pietor prior to the coup). The couple sailed to America on the <em>General Blatchford</em> in May 1950. Their first job was helping an elderly couple cook and maintain their summer home in Heath, Massachusetts. Later that year, the Fabrys moved to Washington, D.C., where they stayed for a short time before Milan found civilian employment with the U.S. Army, leading the couple to move back to Germany. In 1958, Helena’s husband took a job at Sears Roebuck and so the couple lived briefly in Chicago, before moving to Vienna, Austria, where he established a buying office for the firm. There, the couple’s son was born. The Fabrys returned to Chicago in 1968 and lived there for a further 15 years until Milan was transferred to Washington, D.C. There, Helena found a job at the Center for Hellenic Studies and played an active role in Czech and Slovak organizations such as the SVU (Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences). Today, Helena lives in Bethesda, Maryland.</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
Arts
Communist coup
emigrant
Fabianova
Hradec Kralove
Jan
Journalism
Masaryk
refugee
Refugee camp
Skoda
Susice
Svobodne slovo
Women workers