Ája signed a contract with the Ice Follies, moved to the United States, and skated with the tour for three years. She then joined the Ice Capades. During her 15 years with the Ice Capades, Ája was known as Ája Zanová. Ája’s mother, who had accompanied her on the Ice Follies tour, settled in Los Angeles where she became a voice and music teacher. Ája spent her breaks from the tour with her mother in California. In the late 1960s, Ája met her future Czech-born husband, Paul (Pavel) Steindler on a blind date. She married him in 1969, after leaving the Ice Capades. The couple lived in New York City where Paul owned several restaurants. Ája says that many Czechs congregated at their restaurants, which began her lifelong activity in the New York Czech community. After Paul’s death, Ája returned to the skating world, working as a judge, consultant and rink manager. She is a trustee of the Bohemian Benevolent and Literary Assocation (BBLA) and involved in the Association of Free Czechoslovak Sportsmen. In 2012, Ája received the Gratias Agit award from the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs, given to her for her “promotion of the good name of the Czech Republic abroad.” She was also awarded the Medal of Merit in Sports by the Czech president Václav Klaus in 2004. Ája has also been inducted into the World Figure Skating Hall of Fame. Today, Ája lives in Manhattan and frequently visits the Czech Republic.
]]>Ája Vrzáňová-Steindler was born in Prague in 1931. She began ice skating as a young girl and recalls training during WWII with little light due to blackouts. She says she felt a ‘whole new attitude’ that accompanied the end of WWII, as many international figure skaters came to Prague. In 1947, Ája moved to London to be coached by Arnold Gerschwiler. She lived and trained in London for six months of the year, and spent the rest of her time in Prague and Davos, Switzerland. Ája held the title of Czechoslovak national champion from 1947 to 1950 and competed in the 1948 Olympics. She won the World Championships in 1949 and, although Soviet authorities wanted her to travel to the Soviet Union to teach and coach figure skating, her mother convinced them to allow Ája to go to London in March 1950 to defend her title. Ája says that her parents encouraged her not to return to Czechoslovakia and so, after winning the championships, Ája stayed on with her coach in London. She says that after receiving threatening phone calls, she did not leave the house until receiving political asylum ten days later. Ája’s mother was able to leave the country as well; she was a passenger on an airplane that was hijacked en route to Prague and landed in Erding, Germany at a U.S. Army base. Ája’s father lost his job in the Ministry of Finance and ultimately decided not to leave Czechoslovakia permanently. It would be 13 years before Ája saw her father again.
Ája signed a contract with the Ice Follies, moved to the United States, and skated with the tour for three years. She then joined the Ice Capades. During her 15 years with the Ice Capades, Ája was known as Ája Zanová. Ája’s mother, who had accompanied her on the Ice Follies tour, settled in Los Angeles where she became a voice and music teacher. Ája spent her breaks from the tour with her mother in California. In the late 1960s, Ája met her future Czech-born husband, Paul (Pavel) Steindler on a blind date. She married him in 1969, after leaving the Ice Capades. The couple lived in New York City where Paul owned several restaurants. Ája says that many Czechs congregated at their restaurants, which began her lifelong activity in the New York Czech community. After Paul’s death, Ája returned to the skating world, working as a judge, consultant and rink manager. She is a trustee of the Bohemian Benevolent and Literary Assocation (BBLA) and involved in the Association of Free Czechoslovak Sportsmen. In 2012, Ája received the Gratias Agit award from the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs, given to her for her “promotion of the good name of the Czech Republic abroad.” She was also awarded the Medal of Merit in Sports by the Czech president Václav Klaus in 2004. Ája has also been inducted into the World Figure Skating Hall of Fame. Today, Ája lives in Manhattan and frequently visits the Czech Republic.
“My training was very difficult because it was the War. I was very young, but I remember the SS soldiers coming into Prague with the goosestep and all of that. I was standing, holding on to my dad’s hand and we were all sort of amazed and watching and [thinking] what’s going to happen and all that. I’m the only child so I must say I was protected from a lot that was going on; of course, many things I saw and heard. But the training was very difficult because of the blackout during the War and we had only an outdoor ice rink. There was only one lamp in the middle of the rink and whoever got there first could take the better spot under the lamp. And we did figure eights and all that, very quiet, no music, just the figure eights following the patterns.
“I loved skating. I really loved jumping and I was not afraid. And it was cold. It was cold as could be. Mami [mom] used to wake me up at 5:00 [and I’d be] on the ice at 6:30. I remember she used to wrap my feet with newspapers, because newspapers are warm. I never knew that, but she wrapped my feet in newspaper before she put them in the boot, and that helped a lot but the boots were not that good either and I had so many corns and so many bloody toes. I don’t know how we did it, but we did.”
“Mami and Dad told me not to come back. They said ‘Don’t worry about it;’ they didn’t say that I’ll never see Dad for 13 years; they never did tell me that it’s going to be difficult and all that. They said ‘We’ll see you soon and just concentrate on defending the world title,’ because I think if they would have told me what actually happened, I would never have gone because I would never leave them alone to go through what they went through, but I didn’t know. I said ‘Ok!’ and I left them. I said goodbye and they said ‘Good luck’ and all that and I said ‘Ok, we’ll be talking’ and that’s how I left. There was no drama leaving because I never, never thought that it would come to what it came to.”
“We had threatening phone calls [saying] they’re going to shoot my mother – it was from the [Czechoslovak] Consulate from somewhere, from England; I would think it was the consulate – and ‘You’ll never see your parents again’ and all of the sudden I said ‘My god! What have I done?’ So my coach said ‘From now on, you’re not going out,’ so for ten days I was in the house. We were in a very quiet street in Richmond and Twickenham in London, and the car was going back and forth and back and forth and we knew that they were watching me, waiting for me to come out, and there were people coming into the house saying ‘Where is Ája? Can we see her?’ I was never home for anybody. I was either in the attic or in the cellar but for anybody, I was not home.
“After ten days, Arnold said ‘I’m leaving and I’ll be back in about half hour and don’t leave. Don’t go away. Don’t go out of the house,’ and I said ‘Ok, ok.’ So he left. We thought he went to teach, to the rink. ‘Mrs. Gerschwiler,’ I said. ‘Please let me go to the corner drugstore, just to buy a couple of things. I have cabin fever.’ And she said ‘No, you’re not supposed to go, but if you hurry, I mean, really hurry…’ I said ‘Yes, yes.’ Well, on the way back, I’ve got a bag of something and I hear the car and I turn around and they speed up and I recognize. I started running and I get to the picket fence and the little gate that I opened so many times. The latch wouldn’t open, and I’m yelling; I’m holding on to the picket fence. They come and they were trying to pull me off that. It was a terrible scene and then, at that moment, I mean, if it was ten minutes later it would have been too late, but at that moment, Arnold Gerschwiler and two men came out of the house and ran towards me, and they were from the British Home Office. He didn’t go teach; he went to the Home Office. I couldn’t go out, so he brought the two men into the Richmond Twickenham house to give me my political asylum. And that was a huge, huge thing that they did for me. One was still holding on to me, the other went into the car and they were saying ‘You’re going to ruin the sport of Czechoslovakia,’ and I was beside myself. I thought a thing like that would never come to anything like that, and I came to the house and I broke down. I really cried. I said ‘What have I done? What are they going to do to Mami and Dad?’ and then I couldn’t find them on the phone. It was the most difficult time of my life, I think.”
“I’m so proud to be a part of our Czech community here. I was always somehow connected with the Czech community, even when I was with Ice Follies or Ice Capades, because they used to do… It helped them because they advertised me as defected from behind the Iron Curtain, and they did Ája Vrzanova Night at the Ice Follies [sic.] The first three years, every city had Ája Vrzanova Evening and you’d be surprised how many Czechs came to the show. It was so heart-warming; it was really wonderful. In Ice Capades, I always visited the Czech community in every city. They didn’t do Ája Zanova – by then I had the shorter name – Ája Zanova Evening. They didn’t do that, but I myself went and looked up the Czech community. Chicago, Omaha, I had lots of wonderful friends that I visited every year.
“And then, of course, Paul was a very big Czech. He had no accent; he defected in 1948. When the communists came in, he left the Czech Republic and first he went to Vienna and then he made his way to America and was a renowned chef. When I met him he had three restaurants and then he built me a restaurant called The Duck Joint and I worked there, because I loved it. It was like my stage. I had my own restaurant; I loved every minute of it. We had a lot of Czech people coming to the restaurant, like Milos Forman; we had Ivan Passer, Martina Navratilova, Ivan Lendl, whoever was here. The ice show came through and they came to the restaurant, so it really was a great 15, 18 years.”
With the outbreak of WWII, the clothing factory was seized by the Nazis and handed to an ethnic German called Hollmann. Charles’ great-grandfather Gustav was sent to Terezín and later, it is thought, to Treblinka camp in Poland, from which he did not return. Charles’ father Rudolph, who was also Jewish, fled Czechoslovakia in 1940 and made it to Palestine, where he joined the British Army, and eventually fought as part of the British Army’s Czechoslovak Division. In 1944, Charles’ mother was taken away to a forced labor camp for wives of Jewish men and Charles himself went into hiding. He spent the rest of the War hiding in a closet in a farm belonging to the Tůma family not far from Kojetice. Charles says he was told that this was because his father was fighting the Nazis; it was only as an adult that he was told it was because he was three-quarters Jewish. Charles was reunited with his mother and father in the summer of 1945; he says, however, 15 other members of his family did not return.
The Heller family moved to Prague shortly after the War so that Charles could attend school in the capital. In 1948, the clothing factory the family owned in Kojetice was nationalized and one floor of their apartment building they owned in Prague was turned into the local Communist Party headquarters. The family decided to leave and planned their escape to coincide with the funeral of Jan Masaryk, held in the capital in March 1948. They crossed the border by foot at night into the American zone of Germany near Rossbach (a town in West Bohemia today known as Hranice). Charles and his family spent one year and a half in refugee camps in Germany (including Schwabach and Ludwigsburg) before coming to America in May 1949. They settled in Morristown, New Jersey, and Charles’ father again got involved in the clothing business, starting as a pattern cutter and rising to a top management position at McGregor Sportswear. Charles attended Morristown High School and then Oklahoma State University on a basketball scholarship. An engineer by profession, Charles moved to Maryland to work for Bell Labs in the 1960s and has remained in the ‘Old Line State’ ever since. In recent years he has become involved in venture capitalism and conducts seminars for new managers, both in the Czech Republic and the United States. Charles published a book of his memoirs recently, and he lives in Arnold, Maryland, with his wife Sue.
Related Items:
]]>Charles Heller was born in Prague in 1936. His father, Rudolph, was the owner of a clothing manufacturing firm in Kojetice near Prague, which had been started by Charles’ great-grandfather on his mother’s side, Gustav Neumann. Charles’ mother, Ilona, had been born in Vienna and raised in Kojetice – a devout Catholic in what was otherwise a Jewish family. Charles also attended Catholic church in his youth.
With the outbreak of WWII, the clothing factory was seized by the Nazis and handed to an ethnic German called Hollmann. Charles’ great-grandfather Gustav was sent to Terezín and later, it is thought, to Treblinka camp in Poland, from which he did not return. Charles’ father Rudolph, who was also Jewish, fled Czechoslovakia in 1940 and made it to Palestine, where he joined the British Army, and eventually fought as part of the British Army’s Czechoslovak Division. In 1944, Charles’ mother was taken away to a forced labor camp for wives of Jewish men and Charles himself went into hiding. He spent the rest of the War hiding in a closet in a farm belonging to the Tůma family not far from Kojetice. Charles says he was told that this was because his father was fighting the Nazis; it was only as an adult that he was told it was because he was three-quarters Jewish. Charles was reunited with his mother and father in the summer of 1945; he says, however, 15 other members of his family did not return.
The Heller family moved to Prague shortly after the War so that Charles could attend school in the capital. In 1948, the clothing factory the family owned in Kojetice was nationalized and one floor of their apartment building they owned in Prague was turned into the local Communist Party headquarters. The family decided to leave and planned their escape to coincide with the funeral of Jan Masaryk, held in the capital in March 1948. They crossed the border by foot at night into the American zone of Germany near Rossbach (a town in West Bohemia today known as Hranice). Charles and his family spent one year and a half in refugee camps in Germany (including Schwabach and Ludwigsburg) before coming to America in May 1949. They settled in Morristown, New Jersey, and Charles’ father again got involved in the clothing business, starting as a pattern cutter and rising to a top management position at McGregor Sportswear. Charles attended Morristown High School and then Oklahoma State University on a basketball scholarship. An engineer by profession, Charles moved to Maryland to work for Bell Labs in the 1960s and has remained in the ‘Old Line State’ ever since. In recent years he has become involved in venture capitalism and conducts seminars for new managers, both in the Czech Republic and the United States. Charles published a book of his memoirs recently, and he lives in Arnold, Maryland, with his wife Sue.
Related Items:
“I was there all the time playing hide and seek among the stacks of cloth. And with my friends, playing cowboys and Indians and everything else, yeah. But it started out as a very small store, by my great-grandfather, around 1910 or so, and he actually ran a general store, and then clothing store, and he was the first man in the country to import Singer sewing machines. And he hired three ladies in the area to start sewing for him, and eventually grew it into the largest company of its type, for that type of clothing, in Central Europe.”
“My mother finally told me one day that my father was fighting against the Germans. That’s all I knew, in fact, that became my mantra because all the slights that took place during the War – I wasn’t allowed to go to school, eventually I had to be hidden, my mother hid me on a farm when she was taken away to a slave labor camp for Christian wives of Jewish men, and so she hid me, she hid me away – and I always wanted to know why, why were we being picked out, you know, having to suffer, and me not being about to go to school, not being able to play with my friends for all those years, having to hide out? And the answer always was ‘Because your father is fighting against the Germans.’ And I thought, to me, I was so proud of that that it didn’t bother me that all these things were happening to me. I was never told the real truth, I never found out the real truth until really not too many years ago, when I was an adult. I didn’t know that all these things were really happening because I was actually three quarters Jewish.”
“In 1944, the Germans started taking away women who were, and who had been, married to Jewish men. And they had a camp, a slave labor camp, in Prague. And in that camp they manufactured windshields for German fighter airplanes. So my mother was taken to that camp. And before she left she hid me with some friends, actually farmers, that we had been living with after the Germans expelled us from our home. And they in the meantime had lost their farm, because the Germans had taken their farm away from them, and they became farmhands on a big farm in the same village. So I lived with them and they actually hid me in a closet. And I’d come out occasionally at night and as the War came to an end I started coming out more and more because it was obvious that the Germans were going to lose the War and a lot of people were losing their fear of the Germans.”
“Every radio that you saw during the War in Czechoslovakia – or in the Protectorate, there was no Czechoslovakia – had a paper tag on the front, attached to one of the buttons, which meant that it had been inspected and checked and gutted, gutted such that it could not get any international broadcasts. And every Czech was smart enough, almost every Czech was smart enough, to be able to fix it. They had this little bug, it had a name – I can’t remember what it was called, this little thing that they made – it was like a two-dollar item that you would buy at Radio Shack today, that they stuck in the radio so that they could all listen. And everybody listened to the BBC, in Czech. And every night at a particular time, I can’t remember, it was like 8:00 or 9:00, there was a broadcast, and it would start out with Beethoven’s symphony. It went ‘boom boom boom, boom!’ – it would start out like that, and it would say, the first two words would be ‘vola Londyn,’ – ‘London is calling.’ And I would, at first I would sneak behind the door and I would listen to these broadcasts, because it was the only truth we got about what was going on in the War. Because otherwise it was all propaganda and the Germans were always winning, whether it was on the Russian front or, you know, anywhere else. But this was the true story about the War – so that’s how I knew. Eventually, after about a year or so, they knew that I had been listening, so they just let me sit in the room with them each evening. So that’s how I knew what was going on in the War, and you know, even though I was a kid I could comprehend it, pretty well.”
“A farmer came riding up on a horse-drawn wagon, and told us to pile in with our three suitcases and a bundle of blankets that I was carrying. [He] took us out to his farm, and told us to sit tight until midnight. They fed us dinner and we sat there just watching the clock and midnight came, the farmer says ‘Okay, it’s time to go,’ and the next thing I heard was my father screaming at the farmer. The farmer had stolen one of our suitcases, and that was about one third of all of the belongings we had in the world at that point. The guy stole one of the suitcases. So, my father gave up, because the guy just wouldn’t admit that he had stolen it, even though we came into his house with three suitcases but now we went out with two. So my mother carried a suitcase, my father carried a suitcase and I carried a bundle of blankets which turned out had jewelry inside, which I wasn’t aware of. I was carrying the biggest asset we owned. And the farmer took us to the edge of the woods at the back of his farm and he said, because it was a beautiful night, it was a clear, clear night, but it was dark – there was no moon, but stars – this was in [March] of 1948, and the farmer says to us ‘That’s the direction to the US zone of Germany, just keep walking in that direction and, in about three hours, if they don’t shoot you first, that’s where you’ll end up.’”
“Very deliberately no. They wanted to put as much space between themselves and the immigrant community as possible, because – they had friends who were immigrants, I don’t mean to say that they completely forgot all their friends, they had friends in New York, we’d go and visit them over the weekend and so forth – but, they also saw in these immigrants what they didn’t want to be: people who are always complaining about how difficult things are in America, and how wonderful things would have been if we had stayed, and you know, all the things that they, that they didn’t do. They wanted to have nothing to do with the immigrant community – I mean outside of going to a Czech restaurant in New York, because the one thing that all three of us missed more than anything else was Czech food!”
“One thing that was drummed into me by my parents, from the moment we arrived here, was ‘Forget everything that happened to you on the other side of the ocean. Remember nothing. We’re starting a new life.’ And they really believed that I did, you know, and I guess, I think that I believed that I did, somehow, subconsciously. I never talked to my friends; you know, when people would ask ‘Where are you from?’ I would say ‘Oh, I’m from Czechoslovakia,’ but that was it, I would never give them any details, I would never say ‘Well, you know, during the War, I was one of the hidden children.’ None of that stuff, I never discussed it with anybody, or people would say – because I’d played soccer before soccer was very popular here and I was much better than anybody else they’d say ‘Where did you learn to play soccer like that?’ ‘Oh, in Czechoslovakia.’ But that was the extent of any conversation I would have, because I was bound and determined, by God, I was an American – as far as I was concerned, that never even happened. So, I didn’t pay any attention until 1968. When Prague Spring came, it was like a different world, I suddenly, suddenly I felt like I was a Czech. I started listening on… I had this transatlantic Zenith radio, shortwave, and I started listening to Radio Prague. And I heard all these beautiful things, and I heard Dubček speak, you know. All of a sudden, I felt like I was both an American and a Czech. Not for very long. And then after the invasion I put the curtain down again.”
In October 1968, Dagmar moved with her family to Toronto. She says that her parents chose to immigrate to Canada because it was a neutral country. Her mother started working as a housekeeper and nanny, and her father found employment as a watch-maker – a trade he had learned in Kladno. Dagmar attended high school and took English lessons in the mornings before school. She continued to swim and, in 1969, won the Toronto Championships. After graduating from high school, Dagmar began working at a bank and married her first husband, Josef Benedík, who was also a Czech émigré. In the late 1970s, then divorced, Dagmar traveled around the United States and says she ‘fell in love’ with the country. In 1986, she had a business opportunity there and moved to Tampa, Florida. She received American citizenship when she married her second husband. In 1995, Dagmar went to Prague with the intention of working as a translator for one month; she stayed in the Czech Republic for six years, where she ran her own business and then worked for Strojexport and Adamovské strojírny.
Dagmar says that she continues to keep Czech traditions at home and has learned several Czech crafts. She refers to herself as a ‘citizen of the world’ and exercises her voting rights in the countries of her citizenship. Today, Dagmar lives in Richmond Hill near Toronto, but is planning on moving back to Tampa, which she considers home.
]]>
Dagmar Benedik was born in Kladno, Central Bohemia, in 1952. Her mother, Jarmila, taught at an after-school program and her father, Jiří, was a hockey coach. Dagmar recalls her childhood in Kladno as ‘fantastic.’ She says that many of her friends played on her father’s hockey team and she enjoyed traveling to Prague each week for French lessons and swimming practice and competitions. In the summer of 1968, Dagmar’s family planned to travel to Germany where her younger sister, Zuzana, was going to spend a few weeks with a family studying German. Because of a delay in processing, they received visas just a few days prior to the Warsaw Pact invasion on August 21, and Dagmar says her father made the decision to leave Czechoslovakia for good immediately following the invasion. Dagmar’s family drove toward the border at Rozvadov; because they entered the town through a local route instead of the main road from Plzeň, they avoided the barricade that had been set up to prevent travelers from crossing the border. Once across the border, they stayed with Dagmar’s sister’s host family for two weeks before spending six more weeks at Karlsruhe refugee camp.
In October 1968, Dagmar moved with her family to Toronto. She says that her parents chose to immigrate to Canada because it was a neutral country. Her mother started working as a housekeeper and nanny, and her father found employment as a watch-maker – a trade he had learned in Kladno. Dagmar attended high school and took English lessons in the mornings before school. She continued to swim and, in 1969, won the Toronto Championships. After graduating from high school, Dagmar began working at a bank and married her first husband, Josef Benedík, who was also a Czech émigré. In the late 1970s, then divorced, Dagmar traveled around the United States and says she ‘fell in love’ with the country. In 1986, she had a business opportunity there and moved to Tampa, Florida. She received American citizenship when she married her second husband. In 1995, Dagmar went to Prague with the intention of working as a translator for one month; she stayed in the Czech Republic for six years, where she ran her own business and then worked for Strojexport and Adamovské strojírny.
Dagmar says that she continues to keep Czech traditions at home and has learned several Czech crafts. She refers to herself as a ‘citizen of the world’ and exercises her voting rights in the countries of her citizenship. Today, Dagmar lives in Richmond Hill near Toronto, but is planning on moving back to Tampa, which she considers home.
“When I was probably 13, they built a team and I started swimming, and that of course, took all of my time. I went to school and we had practice eight, nine times a week, so we went before school. In Kladno we did not have – and this is probably interesting for people, especially these days when they have everything – Kladno didn’t have a pool. They had a ‘city bath’ it was called, where all the people after work, all the steel mill workers and all the coal miners, went to soak themselves. So the water was very thick sometimes. Our pool in there was six by nine meters. It was very, very small. And the water was only – I would have to say, I am 5’8” and I have not grown since grade seven, so I’ve been this tall for a long time – and it was about to here [four feet], was the water. There was no deep end, there was nothing. So when I say thick, [it was] thick. And when people talk about chlorine this and chlorine that, we had a woman that took care of the water come with a bucket of chlorine, powdered chlorine, and just chuck it into the water over our heads.”
“We got into a convoy of Army cars, and then my mother started freaking out, and we of course too, because we didn’t know what was happening. You could look into the woods and there were soldiers dug into dirty, filthy… because they were there for a couple of days. You were getting closer to the border so the woods were there, but they were everywhere. So you could see them and that was a very scary thing. Probably not very much conversation going on in the car, not that I remember. I remember holding a doll and just sitting there, not knowing what was happening.”
“My parents got a job at Siemens so they started working, and I went to gymnázium. I went to school; the weirdest school I ever went to was in Germany. My sister and I both went to school. The school was – for Germans, when you really think how structured they were and how strict – the school was like a zoo. I remember having a class and having a teacher, and somebody in the first row would start reading a book, tear the page out and send it through the class. They were throwing sneezing powder around so everybody would sneeze. We had an all-girls school across the yard, so the guys had binoculars and they were looking at the girls across the yard during class! Nobody stopped them. It was the weirdest zoo, I have to tell you.”
“In those days, you would go to the movies and there was a newsreel. There were still newsreels before the movie in the late ‘60s. A lot of the things, I had to get out, because a lot of it was about the occupation of Czechoslovakia and I couldn’t take it. To this day for example, if I watch, from time to time, The Unbearable Lightness of Being and the part of the occupation, I have to leave the room because I start crying. And it’s not a bad cry anymore and I don’t know if it ever was, but what I did not realize then and what I realized it much later when I was here and I was older, that it was a death of life, because the life that we knew was gone.”
“What changes is, I think, the need to do something with it and to leave something behind and have the younger generation continue with that. But it’s always been important for me. That’s why I learned a lot of the crafts and the specific crafts. When I was in Czech [Republic], I learned the wire work and doing those things. I did the blueprint, the fabric, I made my own clothes. When I was in Tampa, of all places, I did a lot of that because I was part of a program the city had called ‘Artist in the School,’ and they paid people to go and teach underprivileged kids. And that was one of the most satisfying things is to see these little kids and you teach them to weave and they leave you a note and write thank you, you were part of their Thanksgiving Day or whatever. I think that’s what I feel is important. As I grow older, I wish I could teach. As is popular, ‘nobody is really interested in doing this,’ that’s not true. You have to find the ways and teach the old ways.”
Following the War, Dusan’s stepfather was arrested on charges of collaborating with the Germans, but was released, says Dusan, when such charges could not be proved. In 1949, a family friend who worked for the local police tipped Dusan’s stepfather off that a warrant was again out for his arrest, prompting Dusan’s family to flee the country that very evening. Dusan says he and his family crossed the Morava River into the Soviet Zone of Austria, from which the challenge was still to make it to Vienna and the American Zone of the country. Dusan’s family successfully did so when the truck they were riding in was stopped by a Soviet soldier, who traveled with the family and shouted at his colleagues at the border checkpoint to hurry up and let them through.
From Vienna, the family was sent to Wegsheid refugee camp in Linz where they spent just over eight months. Dusan and his family arrived in Canada in 1950; they were sent first to Lethbridge, Alberta, to pick sugar beets before moving to Toronto, where Dusan and his brothers Emil and Milan played for the local Hungarian football club – Pannonia – and through this found work assembling scooters at Simpson manufacturers. Dusan moved with his family to Chicago in 1952, settling first on the city’s North Side. He quickly found work at the city’s Continental Can Company, where he rose through the ranks to work in the firm’s master plate department, designing and producing labels. Dusan says he made some extra money at this time by playing violin at Chicago Slovak and Czech events. He attended art classes at the Chicago Academy and then the American Academy of Art in Chicago. Together with artist Charles Vickery, Dusan founded the Oil Painters of America club, which to this day attracts a large membership. Dusan currently lives in Cicero, Illinois, with his second wife Anna.
]]>Dusan Ciran was born in Brezová pod Bradlom, western Slovakia, in 1929. His father Martin died when he was only a few months old and his mother, Darina, subsequently remarried a widower called Emil Sarvady. Around the time that Dusan started school, the family moved to the nearby town of Senica, where his stepfather took over a restaurant which the whole family helped run. Dusan says that WWII was a particularly profitable time for the restaurant with the establishment proving popular amongst the 2,000 German soldiers stationed at the local barracks.
Following the War, Dusan’s stepfather was arrested on charges of collaborating with the Germans, but was released, says Dusan, when such charges could not be proved. In 1949, a family friend who worked for the local police tipped Dusan’s stepfather off that a warrant was again out for his arrest, prompting Dusan’s family to flee the country that very evening. Dusan says he and his family crossed the Morava River into the Soviet Zone of Austria, from which the challenge was still to make it to Vienna and the American Zone of the country. Dusan’s family successfully did so when the truck they were riding in was stopped by a Soviet soldier, who traveled with the family and shouted at his colleagues at the border checkpoint to hurry up and let them through.
From Vienna, the family was sent to Wegsheid refugee camp in Linz where they spent just over eight months. Dusan and his family arrived in Canada in 1950; they were sent first to Lethbridge, Alberta, to pick sugar beets before moving to Toronto, where Dusan and his brothers Emil and Milan played for the local Hungarian football club – Pannonia – and through this found work assembling scooters at Simpson manufacturers. Dusan moved with his family to Chicago in 1952, settling first on the city’s North Side. He quickly found work at the city’s Continental Can Company, where he rose through the ranks to work in the firm’s master plate department, designing and producing labels. Dusan says he made some extra money at this time by playing violin at Chicago Slovak and Czech events. He attended art classes at the Chicago Academy and then the American Academy of Art in Chicago. Together with artist Charles Vickery, Dusan founded the Oil Painters of America club, which to this day attracts a large membership. Dusan currently lives in Cicero, Illinois, with his second wife Anna.
“Up to a certain time, I think 8:00 or 9:00 in the evening, the regular soldiers could come in and eat, okay? By 10:00 they had to be in the camp. And after10:00 or 11:00 the big echelons with the stars [came]… And those are the ones, I remember how they used to, how could I say, enjoy themselves. They were dancing on the table and drinking from the glasses, and then they took those glasses and threw them into the corner, there was a pile of glass like this in the morning, you know? Honest to god, I’m telling you! Not only that but some of these guys, they had those long sabers on their side. And so when they got a little tipsy, a little drunk, you know, they’d pull out their sword and there were chairs and this guy, he’d start cutting the chairs and said ‘this is what we’re going to do to the Russians.’ And chips were flying all over the floor. But they didn’t hurt anybody, our people or anything, except they were against the Russians. But these incidents [happened] and when they were going to the washroom outside, the outhouse, my mother had wash-lines stretched across the yard and they were so – poor guys – they were so stupid with alcohol, there was one guy who was hanging his head over the wash-line and vomiting, you know.
“But they just had a good time, these people knew how to enjoy themselves. Next day, they came in, two of them and ‘Mr Sarvady, how much? What’s the damage that we did?’ And my father, he knew what to do, if it was $300, he said $600 or $700, a chair is so much or so much. And not even one word was said about it. Everything was undercover, undercover, yeah.”
“Anybody who sided with the Germans, they rounded them up and they locked them up. My stepfather was locked up for 117 days. But they couldn’t find anything against him. Because he was strictly a businessman and had nothing to do with politics, you know. He never cared for it. So, after 117, they finally released him. But that wasn’t enough, it was a few months later and one of the gendarmes we knew, who used to be in our town, they had to turn Communist too, but they still were friends and one day he came over to our house and told may father, he says ‘Emil, we have orders to lock you up tomorrow.’ He says, ‘it would be the best thing if we wouldn’t find you here, if you know what I mean.’”
“We were going with this guy who picked us up, and we were going in this small paneled truck to Vienna, all four of us. So we were traveling, maybe half an hour, 45 minutes, it wasn’t too far from Vienna, where we were, and all of a sudden, right in the middle of the road, there was a soldier, a Russian soldier with an automatic [weapon] on his side – a brbka they call it, you know, with the bullets, you know. So anyway, the driver had to stop, because he was right in the middle of the road. So anyway, the way it turned out was actually our luck, you know, that this guy came with us, because he just wanted to get a ride. So he got up on the back of the truck with us and was riding with us all the way to Vienna. So we come into Vienna and they’ve got the whole set-up out there, they’re checking credential and Ausweis and everything, you know. And I say ‘Oh my god! Which way to run?’ you know? ‘What are we going to do?’ you know? And there were about five or seven cars and a couple of trucks, and these guys, they took their time, you know, these Russians checking this and checking this. And so it was only about two or three vehicles ahead of us and this guy who was sitting with us started swearing and saying ‘What the hell is the matter with you? What’s the hold up here?’ And he [the guard] says ‘Okay, davaj! Davaj! Davaj!’ So he let us go without checking our credentials or anything!”
“He says ‘All three of you are soccer players and I’ve got a place for you, for all three of you to play soccer on the Hungarian team.’ So I remember, it was the Pannonia team and my two brothers and I, we joined them. There were 11 soccer players and seven of them were Slovak. So [there were] only four Hungarians, but they were a Hungarian team. But we were good. We played about a year or so. And then they got us jobs, I found a job working for Simpson, putting little scooters together, and little baby buggies and so on. They came with a shipment from overseas in little boxes and we put them together you know, and so on.”
“I took the Slovak bible and the English bible and said ‘Well this word is this and this is this, and this word is this’ because the bible is usually word for word the same. And then I started reading newspapers and books and got interested in art and went to art schools and academies and other academies; the Chicago Academy, the American Academy and then the Palette and Chisel… And then I became a studio chairman at the Palette and Chisel, and these are my accomplishments right here – a silver medal, another one is a gold medal, another one is a diamond medal. I was judged by fellow artists, not by the public, by fellow artists – those are the tough ones. And then I started, with another friend of mine, he was a famous seascape artist, Charles Vickery, we started another club, I approached him if he would help me, because my problem was that I was foreign, I didn’t know that much English, I said ‘You’re established, you’re one of the top seascape artists and painters,’ I say ‘Would you help me?’ He says ‘Yeah, we will start it, okay.’ So that’s how we started the club Oil Painters of America; I was the original founder right here.”
Dusan Schejbal was born in Prague in 1934. He spent most of his childhood, however, in Moravia – in Brno and then the village of Vranov during WWII. His father, Josef, was an officer in the Czechoslovak Air Force who fled to Britain to become an RAF pilot following the Nazi invasion. Dusan’s mother, Dobruška, meanwhile, was sent to a Nazi internment camp in Svatobořice between 1941 and 1943. Dusan and his mother spent the final years of the War together in Vranov, hiding in the woods, says Dusan, during the last few days of the conflict. They were reunited with Dusan’s father upon liberation in Prague in May 1945.
Dusan’s father had risen to prominence in the RAF during the War, achieving the rank of group captain and receiving an honorary award for his service from King George VI. Upon his return to Czechoslovakia in 1945, he became the commander of České Budějovice airfield. In 1947, he was appointed Czechoslovak military attaché to the United States and moved to Washington, D.C. to serve alongside Ambassador Juraj Slávik. Dusan and his mother followed in 1948.
Following the Communist takeover in 1948, Josef resigned from his post and the family moved to the suburbs of Maryland. Dusan says his father took a job as a gas station attendant, while his mother went to work as a sales lady at Garfinckel’s department store. Dusan attended Northwestern High School in Hyattsville and then the University of Maryland, where he majored in history and studied Russian as a minor. In 1957, Dusan was drafted into the U.S. Army and spent two years in Zweibruecken, Germany. Upon his return, he worked for the IRS and the Navy as a civilian employee. He married in 1962 and has three children. Today, Dusan lives in University Park, Maryland, with his wife, Krista. The pair travel extensively and Dusan says he still audits Russian classes at the University of Maryland.
]]>
Dusan Schejbal was born in Prague in 1934. He spent most of his childhood, however, in Moravia – in Brno and then the village of Vranov during WWII. His father, Josef, was an officer in the Czechoslovak Air Force who fled to Britain to become an RAF pilot following the Nazi invasion. Dusan’s mother, Dobruška, meanwhile, was sent to a Nazi internment camp in Svatobořice between 1941 and 1943. Dusan and his mother spent the final years of the War together in Vranov, hiding in the woods, says Dusan, during the last few days of the conflict. They were reunited with Dusan’s father upon liberation in Prague in May 1945.
Dusan’s father had risen to prominence in the RAF during the War, achieving the rank of group captain and receiving an honorary award for his service from King George VI. Upon his return to Czechoslovakia in 1945, he became the commander of České Budějovice airfield. In 1947, he was appointed Czechoslovak military attaché to the United States and moved to Washington, D.C. to serve alongside Ambassador Juraj Slávik. Dusan and his mother followed in 1948.
Following the Communist takeover in 1948, Josef resigned from his post and the family moved to the suburbs of Maryland. Dusan says his father took a job as a gas station attendant, while his mother went to work as a sales lady at Garfinckel’s department store. Dusan attended Northwestern High School in Hyattsville and then the University of Maryland, where he majored in history and studied Russian as a minor. In 1957, Dusan was drafted into the U.S. Army and spent two years in Zweibruecken, Germany. Upon his return, he worked for the IRS and the Navy as a civilian employee. He married in 1962 and has three children. Today, Dusan lives in University Park, Maryland, with his wife, Krista. The pair travel extensively and Dusan says he still audits Russian classes at the University of Maryland.
“When the Germans came looking for my dad, mother told them that he was on a business trip to Prague and that he was going to return shortly. So for about a week, we had two Gestapo men staying in our apartment 24 hours a day, waiting for my father’s return. We had a large apartment but we had no heat except in the kitchen there was a large belly stove, so we all basically stayed in the kitchen – the Gestapo men, my mom and I, except when we went to bed. Now they really didn’t bother me except one who I think enjoyed seeing me cry, and when I cried, he’d get angry and he threatened to make me kneel on thumb tacks. Now, it wasn’t until my mom died in ’78 that I found through my wife that one of the Gestapo men raped my mother.
“Mother actually pressed charges, and the trail went all the way to court, to the High Court in Vienna, and the man was found guilty. And I believe he was sent to the eastern front. I think it was a very brave thing of mom to do and I was very proud of her because, had she lost, the consequences would have been very dire.”
“I had a lot of bad memories during the War, but I also had some good memories. And my favorite memories were Christmas time in Brno. Before Christmas, there’s a tradition – we call it Mikuláš, anděl a čert, it’s Saint Nick, an angel and a devil [that] come calling on the children. And of course, Saint Nick would be dressed in a priestly robe with a high hat and a staff. The angel would be dressed in white, and the devil was all in black; his face was black and he carried a potato sack or something, and chains. And you could hear him coming because he rattled his chains and made a lot of noise and, of course, that would petrify me! And when they came in the apartment the devil would say ‘Well, I understand you were bad and you’ve got to be punished,’ and sometimes he would pull out a lump of coal or a carrot. And the angel always played interference and said ‘No, no, no, no!’ And Saint Nick would pull out some sweets, bonbons, and all was forgiven and it was good for another year.
“And then the Czechs, the Czechoslovaks – the Christmas Eve meals always consist of, usually consist of fish and potato salad. That was a favorite food on Christmas Eve. And my mother would, a few days before Christmas Eve, she would go and get a, buy a fish, which was a carp. And she had to go early because if you wait too late then there would be nothing left. And she would bring it alive, wrapped in a wet newspaper. Then she would place it in a tub full of water, because there was no refrigeration or anything, and there the fish would stay for several days until Christmas Eve. And that was, I think, my favorite. I watched that fish for I think hours and hours – because it was a big fish, you know, imagine it floating in the tub and I was right next to it. I just loved it!”
“When we arrived in Washington, I remember, I think it was the very first day in Washington, D.C. My father went to work and then it was just my mother, the domestic lady and I in the house and then, all of a sudden, we heard sirens. So we all went down to the basement waiting for the all clear. We were puzzled that Americans still had air raids when the War is long over. Well, after a while, we crept up, because we didn’t get the all clear, but we went up and later we found out that they were the fire engines. I never… in Europe they don’t use [such] sirens.”
“When I arrived, the town was still split in half; there was the Saarland which was controlled by the French and then of course the other side which was controlled by the Americans. The town was like in a little valley and one side there was the Americans and the other side were the Germans, the third side there were the French and the fourth side were the Canadians. And I remember the Canadians… there was an Air Force base. And the Canadians of course had an ice rink there and played hockey, and we would go and watch the hockey games. And the Canadians tend to be quite rough and they would play mostly German teams and the Germans didn’t like that very well! They always would cry ‘Fuj! Fuj!’ when the Canadians played rough.
“When I arrived, my sergeant said ‘Well, you’re the teletype operator’ and I had never seen a teletype in my life. I was taught by I think the WAGs, the women [who] were about in another town called Pirmasens. The other teletypists taught me how to work the teletype. I became quite good at it and I became the operator for the base. That was fun duty, I must say. It was some of the best times of my life. We had quite a lot of money in those days, and after hours we didn’t have that much responsibility once we were on our own and I did a lot of traveling. I made sure… We had a, a friend of mine and I, we owned a ’49 Volkswagen, and we traveled whenever we got a chance. We went through the Alps, we… all the way to Denmark, we had to two big jerry cans in the back full of gasoline (which now that I think about it was rather stupid!) We made it all the way to Denmark never buying gas.”
“I remember dad was telling me one time that he was in the Olympics. I think it was in Amsterdam, before the War, I’m not sure when exactly. I remember he was in five events. I think it was like a military thing, it was horseback riding, pistol shooting, swimming, I imagine running and something else, I don’t know what the events were. But I never sort of paid much attention to it – so I mentioned it to my son-in-law one day and sure enough, he looked it up and gave me the website. I sent… I’m not sure where the headquarters is, but they sent me a lot of information about my dad! Where he placed, how many points he got, they even said that he fell off his horse! So it was just wonderful! I still have it, it was great!”
Frank attended a technical school in Valašské Meziříčí and, upon graduating, began serving his two-year military service. After the Warsaw Pact invasion on August 21, 1968, Frank was unexpectedly discharged from the army at the request of his father. Shortly after, he left the country with his parents and two younger brothers. The family settled in Switzerland where, coincidently, Frank’s uncle and his family had traveled just days earlier. Frank attended the Swiss Federal Institute of Sport and received a degree in teaching and coaching sports. After graduating he joined a semipro hockey team.
In 1976, Frank traveled with a friend to the United States. They spent several months driving around the country and visiting Hawaii, and they ultimately traveled to Montreal where they attended the Olympics. Although Frank returned to Switzerland, he hoped to move to the United States. Two years later, after attending a conference in Texas, Frank visited his friend, Arnošt Lustig, who lived in Washington, D.C., and taught at American University. Arnošt helped him to secure a job at American as the women’s volleyball coach, assistant athletic trainer, and assistant physical education professor. Frank says that his first classes were taught with the help of a German translator, as he did not know English.
Frank met his wife, Victoria, while at American University. The couple had a daughter and moved to Michigan when Frank became the head volleyball coach at Eastern Michigan University. When Frank’s father fell ill, he and his family returned to Switzerland for what he thought would be a short time. They remained in Switzerland for nine years, and their two younger children were born there. Frank and his family moved to Durango, Colorado, in 1996. Today, Frank is a personal trainer and fitness consultant. He also runs a tour company that specializes in travel to central Europe. Frank is extremely proud of his Czechoslovak heritage and has taken a particular interest in his family history. He recently organized a Fristensky family reunion, which was held at Bohemian National Hall in New York.
]]>Frank Fristensky was born in Olomouc in Moravia in 1948. He lived with his parents on his paternal grandparents’ farm outside of the city until 1953, when the Frištenskýs moved to Rožnov pod Radhoštěm, close to the Slovak and Polish borders. Frank’s mother was originally from Prague, where her Jewish family was quite wealthy. During the Nazi occupation, her entire family was sent to Terezín. Although she and her brother survived, the rest of her family was deported to Auschwitz and killed in the gas chambers. Frank’s paternal great-uncle, Gustav Frištenský, was a world-famous Greco-Roman wrestler. Frank’s grandfather accompanied Gustav on his tour of the United States in 1913 and 1914, and Frank recalls hearing of his admiration for the country. Many of Frank’s family members were keen sportsmen – and to this day, Frank carries on that tradition.
Frank attended a technical school in Valašské Meziříčí and, upon graduating, began serving his two-year military service. After the Warsaw Pact invasion on August 21, 1968, Frank was unexpectedly discharged from the army at the request of his father. Shortly after, he left the country with his parents and two younger brothers. The family settled in Switzerland where, coincidently, Frank’s uncle and his family had traveled just days earlier. Frank attended the Swiss Federal Institute of Sport and received a degree in teaching and coaching sports. After graduating he joined a semipro hockey team.
In 1976, Frank traveled with a friend to the United States. They spent several months driving around the country and visiting Hawaii, and they ultimately traveled to Montreal where they attended the Olympics. Although Frank returned to Switzerland, he hoped to move to the United States. Two years later, after attending a conference in Texas, Frank visited his friend, Arnošt Lustig, who lived in Washington, D.C., and taught at American University. Arnošt helped him to secure a job at American as the women’s volleyball coach, assistant athletic trainer, and assistant physical education professor. Frank says that his first classes were taught with the help of a German translator, as he did not know English.
Frank met his wife, Victoria, while at American University. The couple had a daughter and moved to Michigan when Frank became the head volleyball coach at Eastern Michigan University. When Frank’s father fell ill, he and his family returned to Switzerland for what he thought would be a short time. They remained in Switzerland for nine years, and their two younger children were born there. Frank and his family moved to Durango, Colorado, in 1996. Today, Frank is a personal trainer and fitness consultant. He also runs a tour company that specializes in travel to central Europe. Frank is extremely proud of his Czechoslovak heritage and has taken a particular interest in his family history. He recently organized a Fristensky family reunion, which was held at Bohemian National Hall in New York.
“When the Nazi occupation came, in 1942 or 1941 they all had to vacate their premises, their house – they had a beautiful house in one of the nicest parts of Prague – and they were deported to Terezín, where most of the Jews from the Czech Republic, some from other countries as well, lived there. My mom basically survived Terezín, one of just a couple hundred kids, but her entire family, which means parents – my grandparents – her brother, her uncles and aunts and everybody, was deported to Auschwitz almost to the end of the WWII, and upon arrival in Auschwitz they were put right in the chambers. So nobody survived. My mom’s brother was about 18, 19 years old and, according to the German perception, he was still healthy and young, so he was deported and sent on a train from Auschwitz to the east side of Germany to a labor camp. But the train was bombed by the Allied Forces and as the train stopped he jumped out and with friends – this was about February of 1945, so very close to the end of WWII – and they were more or less crawling and walking and freezing through Poland and made it all the way to Prague. From the entire mom’s family, just her and her brother survived.”
“I was in the military in 1968. Right after I graduated from technical school, I went to the military. On August 21, when the Soviets came around, I don’t know how it even happened, but my dad said I had to come home and so one of the officers called me to his office and said ‘There is a letter from your dad, and you need to come home,’ which under normal circumstances was absolutely unheard of. You know, as a young man you have to go to two years in the military. So he’s reading the letter from my dad to me and then he takes his big stamp and he just puts a stamp on it and says ‘Just go.’ Today I think he probably knew what was happening because it was about two weeks after August 21. Maybe he left too; I don’t know. But I went back to my home town. It took us two days; we packed. One car, five people with five sleeping bags and five pillows and maybe 20 dollars in our pockets, and we left for Austria.”
“In Vienna we were led into the sports dome, a large sports athletic complex. There were thousands of Czechs and Slovaks, sleeping on the floor and on the bleachers. I mean, thousands. It was a mess. I remember like it was yesterday. And as my mom walks in – again, I see it just like it’s happening right now – she said ‘No other concentration camp.’ And she turned around and walked out. So we were all walking behind her, and I noticed that she was crying, because she didn’t expect that. So we really didn’t know where to go, and then as we were walking out to our car, some people said ‘Go to the Swiss embassy. They are taking Czechs. Go there and they are going to take care of you. I couldn’t speak any German, but both my parents could speak German so I guess they understood what was happening, so that’s where we went. The Swiss just took our information from us and then they found out that my dad’s youngest brother, with his family, already defected a couple says before us to Switzerland.”
And your dad didn’t know?
“I don’t know. But when I recollect all these events and what was happening, I think he really didn’t know, because that’s where we would have gone first. Why even bother to go to the sports hall in Vienna with my mom crying and finding out what’s going to be next? So I assume that he really didn’t know.”
“My friend and I played semi-professional ice hockey, and it was between the seasons and he said ‘Why don’t we go to America?’ It was [1976 sic.], there were the Olympics in Montreal and, since we were in the Olympic center, we knew many of the Swiss athletes and they said ‘Well, come and visit us. We’ll have a good time.’ It was not as tight security as today. You could walk in the Olympic village and go for a beer with the athletes; today it’s impossible. We said ‘Well, why not?’ Both of us couldn’t speak a word of English. It was in April of ’76.
“So we flew to New York and in the Bronx we bought a 1968 Cadillac, because we loved this big ship. I mean, gosh, I’d never seen anything that big. You could play ping-pong on the hood. And each of us had a hockey bag with our stuff – you could out four hockey bags in the trunk! I thought that was really cool. So we bought this for 800 dollars, a 1968 Cadillac, and we traveled all around the country. We probably have seen all of the national parks, and we zigzagged the country all over. When we got to Los Angeles, some of my mom’s family was there, so we were with them and there was a lady who could speak Czech, so after several months I could speak Czech; that was great too.
“And our hockey club president lived in Hawaii in the off-season. So he said ‘When you guys are in Los Angeles, just call me and I’ll buy a ticket for you and I’ll pick you up.’ And we got our tickets and flew to Hawaii and we were his guests for two weeks. We didn’t spend a penny! He fed us; he lived in Waikiki Beach in a penthouse on the top. Especially for me, I was still kind of fresh coming from Czechoslovakia. So it was wonderful. We went to Canada, almost to Alaska, just to the bottom of Alaska. And then on Highway 1 we went all the way to Montreal and were there right when the Olympics started and mingled with the Swiss.”
Although Frank had been thinking about spending some time abroad, he says that, following the Warsaw Pact invasion in August 1968, the decision to emigrate was ‘very quick.’ He and Otakara received exit permits and, ten days after the invasion, took the train to Vienna. Frank was encouraged to stay in Austria and even interviewed for a job at IBM, but ultimately, he and Otakara decided to move to Canada. They arrived in Toronto in October 1968, where Frank began taking English classes and became in involved in the Czech theatre group Nové Divadlo with his wife. While working for Hughes Network Systems, Frank lived in Saudi Arabia for four years and Prague for three years (following the Velvet Revolution). In 1998, his employer transferred him to Maryland. While living in the Washington, D.C. area, Frank has been active in the Czech community. He served as the secretary-general of Czechoslovak Society of Arts & Sciences (SVU) for six years and helped organize numerous congresses. Today, he is a consultant for the U.S. Trade and Development Agency and lives in Bethesda, Maryland, with his wife.
]]>Frank Safertal was born in the Holešovice district of Prague in 1942. His father, also named František, had been arrested shortly before Frank’s birth because of his participation in an underground resistance group. Frank’s father was sent to a labor camp in Krems an der Donau in Austria for the remainder of WWII and only saw his son for the first time after the War ended in 1945. During the War, Frank and his mother, Milena, lived with her parents in Holešovice. Upon returning home, František became a manager of a dental sales company, but when the business was nationalized in 1948, the family moved to Jablonec nad Nisou in northern Bohemia where he became the quality control manager of a factory. Four years later, the family returned to Prague. Frank says that his father was passionate about sports and passed the hobby on to him. From a young age, he skied and played tennis and soccer. Influenced by one of his teachers, Frank became interested in music and learned to play piano. After grade school, Frank attended an industrial school, and then enrolled at the University of Economics, Prague (VŠE) for industrial engineering. He says that his time at university was ‘eye-opening,’ both intellectually and politically, and that he began to realize ‘how bad the regime was.’ Frank started a jazz band at this time, and was jailed for advertising dances. He says he was also influenced by Western artists in Prague (such as Gene Deitch and Allen Ginsburg), from whom he heard about life in the United States. Frank graduated from university in 1966 and served one year in the military near the German border in Klatovy. In 1967, he began working as a computer engineer at ‘the nationalized IBM.’ The same year, he met and married his wife, Otakara Safertal.
Although Frank had been thinking about spending some time abroad, he says that, following the Warsaw Pact invasion in August 1968, the decision to emigrate was ‘very quick.’ He and Otakara received exit permits and, ten days after the invasion, took the train to Vienna. Frank was encouraged to stay in Austria and even interviewed for a job at IBM, but ultimately, he and Otakara decided to move to Canada. They arrived in Toronto in October 1968, where Frank began taking English classes and became in involved in the Czech theatre group Nové Divadlo with his wife. While working for Hughes Network Systems, Frank lived in Saudi Arabia for four years and Prague for three years (following the Velvet Revolution). In 1998, his employer transferred him to Maryland. While living in the Washington, D.C. area, Frank has been active in the Czech community. He served as the secretary-general of Czechoslovak Society of Arts & Sciences (SVU) for six years and helped organize numerous congresses. Today, he is a consultant for the U.S. Trade and Development Agency and lives in Bethesda, Maryland, with his wife.
“My family had a very positive view of the Soviets. Number one, when I was born, my father was already in jail. He was jailed in 1942 – in the spring of 1942 – and he was in a labor/concentration camp called Krems an der Donau in Austria until 1945. And the camp, which was a mix between a labor camp and a concentration camp, was actually liberated by the Red Army. So my father had a very favorable view of the Soviets and the Russians because he was liberated by them, and he, quite frankly, escaped with his life. He was lucky to get home in 1945 and he saw me when I was three years old.”
“I think that it was a very good system, because in this industrial school one day week you actually had to work in a factory. Prague in those days had a lot of industrial productions, basic factories, basic Class A factories manufacturing trucks and railroad cars and streetcars and airplanes. So one day a week we have to go to a factory and physically work with the workers. That, I think, was a great experience to learn what really happens in manufacturing, what really happens in a factory, and I think it was a great experience. Whether it was in a metal working shop or whether it was in a tool making shop, whatever it was, you all of the sudden had an experience with the real world.”
“If you had an orchestra or a club – any kind of a social gathering – you had to have, under the communist law, something called provozovatel in the Czech language, meaning like a sponsor. You couldn’t just simply have a knitting club, just people getting together and knit, you couldn’t do that. You could knit, but you had to have a sponsor. And it would have to be an organization approved by the system. So we found a couple places where the organization – a youth organization or municipal organization – would allow us to practice and play under their logo. So one of our logos was Youth Group of Fidel Castro. My orchestra was known as the Storyville Jazz Band – Storyville was a part of New Orleans, we studied New Orleans in detail, including the maps – but we were playing as the Storyville Jazz Band, part of the Youth Group of Fidel Castro. So I have a photograph here somewhere where we’re playing, and above us is a big picture of Fidel Castro.”
“One of the laws in Czechoslovakia was you couldn’t put up a poster, because the police immediately figured out ‘If he puts up a poster, he’s organizing something,’ and that was a no-no. Of course, how do you advertise something all of the dances and all of the stuff, you have to have posters. I was one of the guys who made posters, and in known places in Prague I would go and post the posters. And so twice they basically arrested me for the posters, twice they interrogated me, twice I was in jail because of this poster business. But it wasn’t just the poster, because they always suspected something much more sinister. We weren’t really all that sinister. We just wanted to play jazz and have a good time, but the police and the secret police, they thought ‘Hmm poster.’ So I was in jail. And then I was in jail because I had a gun, which I inherited from my grandfather, and in those days in Czechoslovakia you couldn’t have a gun. I showed it to somebody and he reported it and so they came and jailed me.”
How long were you kept in jail?
“With the gun I was there for two days. In interrogation if you will. You know ‘Where did you get the gun? Who gave you the gun? Is there somebody else who has a gun?’ and that kind of thing.”
“There were limits on exports and imports of technology. For example, we were not allowed to import Western technology. Czechoslovakia couldn’t do that. So we were relying on Russian computers, Minsk, which were manufactured in Minsk which is today Belarus. That was the main center of the Russian computer industry. So these computers were decimal computers, and we had access already to magazines from the West and literature from the West. We knew that we were ten years behind in technology. So we worked on them, we did our work, but we knew that this was ridiculous, ‘What are we doing here? We’re working with something which is…’ So absolutely it was stifling. You couldn’t really do much. You had to do what you were told, but you couldn’t really innovate. You couldn’t come up with a better idea. The best people who were in the technology business in those days left or emigrated way before me. It was a nice job, put it this way. I got the salary and I had a nice office and I did interesting things. In those days, we wore white coats. The computer guys and gals wore white coats; we looked like physicians. But it wasn’t really motivating.”
“Most of the regiments came from Central Asia. Most of these guys couldn’t speak Czech or Russian. A lot of these guys were Asian folks. I don’t know what they told them, but I think they told them ‘You’re in Germany or some other Western country defending socialism.’ These guys were crazy. Well, they were not only crazy, they were kind of puzzled, they had a puzzled look on them, like ‘Where am I? What’s going on here?’ but many of them were crazy, shooting guns. All of the sudden in the middle of the city you had tanks and guys with the machine guns and bullets flying. It was terrible.”
Did you have any personal encounters with the soldiers?
“Many, many.”
Did you try to talk to them?
“Tried to talk to them. Well, that’s what we did for days and days. We would walk the city, we would sit there with flags and we would try to talk to them, because most of us spoke Russian. So we would approach them, and they were approachable. Not that they were not approachable, because they were village boys from Kazakhstan and they had no idea, so many of them were approachable, and many of them kind of talked. But they really didn’t know where they were. Well, I don’t think they had an idea. The officers did, but I think the staff, I don’t think so.”
“I was also applying for work at IBM in Austria, and it turns out that in the same building where the main headquarters of IBM in Austria was the Canadian Consulate. One day I was up with IBM, and I’m on the elevator from the IBM office and some people get on the elevator speaking Czech and they say that they just came from the Canadian Consulate and the Canadian Consulate said they can go to Canada. I’d tried, early on, to get to the United States, but the U.S. Embassy told us that it would be a year and a half in a refugee camp, and I thought ‘Well, what am I going to do in a refugee camp? I mean, I don’t want to be in a refugee camp,’ and Ota, my wife, thought the same thing. So we went to the Canadian Embassy the same day. She was sitting down in the café on the sidewalk and I said ‘Hey listen, let’s go back to the Canadian Consulate,’ filled out the form, and the rest is history. Ten days later we were on the plane.”
Georgina says that she wanted to ‘re-establish’ herself and her family, due to her imprisonment and her husband’s position working the mines (he was not allowed to finish his university studies because of family connections to the Beneš Party). Active in Sokol through the years, Georgina began coaching gymnastics with the local sports organization, Baník, and, in 1955, directed 2000 women from the Ostrava region in the first Spartakiáda. She also traveled to the Soviet Union in 1960 for a Spartakiáda there. Georgina also worked in the ASO department store for several years. In 1969, Georgina was able to secure a visa to visit her sister in New York, who had moved to the United States a few years earlier. She arrived in New York by herself and got a job running the coat check in the Czechoslovak restaurant Praha, and taught herself English with the help of a dictionary. After working as a sales representative for a Czechoslovak gift company, Georgina opened a souvenir shop of her own. She then started Midtown Candy Company, eventually owning three stores. In 1985, Georgina married Dr. Herman Sager, an eye doctor.
Immediately after moving to the United States, Georgina became involved with the Czechoslovak community in New York. She served as treasurer of the Bohemian Benevolent Literary Association (BBLA) for over 20 years and was instrumental in the restoration of the Bohemian National Hall. She has been a member of the Association of Free Czechoslovak Sportsmen for many years and is currently a trustee of the BBLA. Georgina says that the leadership of BBLA is ‘great’ and is pleased to see the success of the organization. She also volunteers for the Visiting Nurse Service of New York. Georgina returns to the Czech Republic every year to visit her family, which still lives in the villa her parents built in Ostrava. Now widowed, she lives in Manhattan.
]]>Georgina Šilhánová-Sager was born in Ostrava in 1931. Her mother owned a business in the city while her father, an electrical engineer, was building a power plant for Škoda Works. In 1939, Georgina moved with her family to Prague and, two years later, she moved to Třebíč with her mother and two sisters to live with her mother’s parents for the remainder of WWII. Georgina says that during liberation 45 Russian soldiers camped on her grandparents’ property. Georgina attended a business school in Třebíč and, although she hoped to study at university, she was denied admission because of her family’s ‘bourgeois’ position. While working in a factory, Georgina, along with her sister, was arrested for saying that the Soviets had been taking uranium from Czechoslovakia for years. She spent three months in prison in Opava and three months on a farm outside Ostrava. Georgina then returned to Ostrava where she married her first husband and had a son.
Georgina says that she wanted to ‘re-establish’ herself and her family, due to her imprisonment and her husband’s position working the mines (he was not allowed to finish his university studies because of family connections to the Beneš Party). Active in Sokol through the years, Georgina began coaching gymnastics with the local sports organization, Baník, and, in 1955, directed 2000 women from the Ostrava region in the first Spartakiáda. She also traveled to the Soviet Union in 1960 for a Spartakiáda there. Georgina also worked in the ASO department store for several years. In 1969, Georgina was able to secure a visa to visit her sister in New York, who had moved to the United States a few years earlier. She arrived in New York by herself and got a job running the coat check in the Czechoslovak restaurant Praha, and taught herself English with the help of a dictionary. After working as a sales representative for a Czechoslovak gift company, Georgina opened a souvenir shop of her own. She then started Midtown Candy Company, eventually owning three stores. In 1985, Georgina married Dr. Herman Sager, an eye doctor.
Immediately after moving to the United States, Georgina became involved with the Czechoslovak community in New York. She served as treasurer of the Bohemian Benevolent Literary Association (BBLA) for over 20 years and was instrumental in the restoration of the Bohemian National Hall. She has been a member of the Association of Free Czechoslovak Sportsmen for many years and is currently a trustee of the BBLA. Georgina says that the leadership of BBLA is ‘great’ and is pleased to see the success of the organization. She also volunteers for the Visiting Nurse Service of New York. Georgina returns to the Czech Republic every year to visit her family, which still lives in the villa her parents built in Ostrava. Now widowed, she lives in Manhattan.
“One time they were bringing through the town soldiers which they had captured – and when I remember that, this was absolute horror. They needed water and they needed bread; they were asking. I ran home and brought all the bread and all the water and I was running to them, and the Nazi [said] ‘Halt! Halt, halt!’ and he had the revolver ready to shoot. And I said to myself ‘What can I do now, because if I turn and run, he will shoot me in the back?’ and I said ‘No’ and I looked at his eyes, straight to his eyes – he was a tall fellow, in a Nazi uniform – and then I started to see that the hand with the revolver was slowly going down. Perhaps he had some daughter or something like that. And after the revolver came down, I very slowly turned and walked away.”
“Because I was a big gymnast and swimmer as a young girl, I said to myself ‘I have to go back because somehow we have to establish ourselves [again]’ – I already had my son – and I went to Baník, which was a sports group in Ostrava and they took me. At that time I was living in Radvanice, and I was a leader for the Spartakiad, which was in 1955. From the Ostrava region, all the Baník, I got 2000 girls exercising in Prague in the Spartakiad.”
And you had been a gymnast for many years?
“Well, I was a gymnast in Sokol in Třebíč and I also went to the Tyršův school for Sokol, which means that I know what it is all about and I was also established to be a leader of the camps, and I got all the certificates from the Tyršův dům, Tyrš House, in Prague. Then I said to myself ‘I have to do something with it,’ because my husband still worked in the mines, and then I started to learn the piece for the ladies and go twice a week to exercising groups, and traveled also because it wasn’t only Radvanice; it was all kraj [region] of Ostrava. All of the little villages had people who I had to test.”
“Because this was right in the middle of all immigrants, I met a lot of Czech people and I met the owner of the Amerix company, which also had a little office on 73rd Street and they were bringing a gift line from the Czech Republic. I started to work for them as a representative of the gift line and started to sell the things to the gift store in Manhattan and in Long Island – I bought a car already – and then I also opened Georgina’s Gift Shop on 73rd Street.”
Igor Mikolaska was born in Trenčín, western Slovakia in 1978 and grew up nearby in Nové Mesto nad Váhom. His father, also named Igor, worked for a company that made air conditioners until the business was privatized following the fall of communism. He now works for an insurance company. Igor’s mother, Helena, worked as a government lawyer specializing in land disputes. Igor attended elementary school and technical high school in Nové Mesto nad Váhom, where he studied English for four years. He played competitive volleyball with the national junior team and traveled throughout Slovakia for tournaments.
Although he considered playing volleyball professionally, Igor decided to study English at university in Trenčín and says that six months of intensive study greatly improved his language skills. In 1999, Igor traveled to the United States for the first time to work at a summer day camp in Fox Lake, Illinois. He settled in Chicago permanently in 2004. Igor received a bachelor’s degree in management and a master’s degree in human resources, both from Roosevelt University. While studying, he met fellow Slovaks and saw there was a need for an organization to promote activities for young Slovak émigrés. He founded Slovak USA, an organization which has put on concerts, film festivals, holiday parties, folk festivals, and other activities. Igor says that he now has to turn down some of the artists approaching him, due to the number of interested groups. He has plans to open a Slovak and Czech cultural center in Chicago. Additionally, Igor works a reporter for Slovak newspaper Pravdacovering the Chicago Blackhawks.
Igor says that he was proud to receive his American citizenship in 2008, as he feels at home in the U.S. and is happy to contribute to American society. He frequently travels back to Slovakia, both to visit friends and family and to scout talent for events. He lives in Chicago.
The website for Igor’s organization, Slovak USA
]]>
Igor Mikolaska was born in Trenčín, western Slovakia in 1978 and grew up nearby in Nové Mesto nad Váhom. His father, also named Igor, worked for a company that made air conditioners until the business was privatized following the fall of communism. He now works for an insurance company. Igor’s mother, Helena, worked as a government lawyer specializing in land disputes. Igor attended elementary school and technical high school in Nové Mesto nad Váhom, where he studied English for four years. He played competitive volleyball with the national junior team and traveled throughout Slovakia for tournaments.
Although he considered playing volleyball professionally, Igor decided to study English at university in Trenčín and says that six months of intensive study greatly improved his language skills. In 1999, Igor traveled to the United States for the first time to work at a summer day camp in Fox Lake, Illinois. He settled in Chicago permanently in 2004. Igor received a bachelor’s degree in management and a master’s degree in human resources, both from Roosevelt University. While studying, he met fellow Slovaks and saw there was a need for an organization to promote activities for young Slovak émigrés. He founded Slovak USA, an organization which has put on concerts, film festivals, holiday parties, folk festivals, and other activities. Igor says that he now has to turn down some of the artists approaching him, due to the number of interested groups. He has plans to open a Slovak and Czech cultural center in Chicago. Additionally, Igor works a reporter for Slovak newspaper Pravdacovering the Chicago Blackhawks.
Igor says that he was proud to receive his American citizenship in 2008, as he feels at home in the U.S. and is happy to contribute to American society. He frequently travels back to Slovakia, both to visit friends and family and to scout talent for events. He lives in Chicago.
The website for Igor’s organization, Slovak USA
“I was ten at the time, and all I remember is basically I got to the school and I greet the teacher the same way –čest’ práci [hello; literally ‘honor to work’] – and she said ‘No more of this stuff. Now just say ‘Good day.’ I was like ‘Okay,’ but it still took me a month until I basically switched.”
Did any of your classes change? Did any of your textbooks change?
“The only thing that changed was the requirement to learn Russian. Suddenly we are able to learn German, so the first minute I learned that, I dropped Russian language – which I only studied for one year anyway – and I studied German for three years.”
“So basically when I was finishing my MBA studies, I met a few Slovaks, and there was nothing – I felt – there was nothing to do for young people. So I decided, ‘Well, why don’t I just create something,’ and that’s what I did. I created an organization called Slovak USA and we have this website www.slovakchicago.org and what we do is mainly focus on the cultural and educational activities that connect and unite the Slovak community around Chicago. Once you leave your home country, you miss certain aspects of it, so it was really great to meet other Slovaks and Czechs and share the same interests. We have the same problems and we can connect and help each other.”
“Once you grow up somewhere else and you basically go live somewhere else, I think you’ll be kind of living on both sides of the fence for the rest of your life, so it’s kind of difficult to decide where to jump. Sometimes I feel I am home only when I am on the airplane or the ocean; that way I am nowhere.”
“Just recently we [Slovak USA] started to cooperate with the Czech Consulate in Chicago, and we help each other with advertising for concerts, which is very helpful. Trying to bring more the Czech-Slovak community together, especially for the events because I don’t really think we are that much different, especially here in Chicago. Maybe people in Slovakia and Czech Republic think so, but I think here we are very close and united. It’s a similar language, similar habits. Maybe I think we are different when we live back there in Europe, but we come here and we see we are pretty much the same; and that probably includes the Polish people.”
Which is maybe different from previous generations.
“Oh absolutely. They’re very nationalistic, so they actually wanted to work only within their community and I think that’s changing right now.”
Jan took a job as an electrician at the TESLA factory in Bratislava which came with accommodation in the suburb of Karlova Ves. He says that this was an excellent place to raise children, as it was surrounded by forest and provided good conditions for walking and hiking. Jan says that it was in a bid to secure ‘a better future for his son’ that he first thought of emigrating. When he and his first wife divorced, he started making plans to emigrate with his son in earnest, but the secret police confiscated his passport a week before the journey was set to take place. Several years and several attempts later, in September 1989, Jan and his son took a bus trip, ostensibly to watch the soccer team Plastika Nitra play an international match against FC Köln in Cologne, Germany. Jan says that they did not attend the football match, but instead applied for asylum in West Germany. They remained in Germany for 15 months and applied for an U.S. visa, which was rejected on grounds of Czechoslovakia’s newly democratic status (the Velvet Revolution having taken place in November 1989). After one and a half years, the pair had to leave Germany. They returned to Czechoslovakia where they applied for tourist visas to the United States. Jan and Kristian arrived in Chicago, Illinois (where Jan’s brother Lubomir was living) on December 21, 1990. Jan refers to his first days in the United States as ‘great’ – his brother took him to the Slovak Club in Berwyn, where he came to play music on a regular basis. He also performed regularly at the Czech-owned bar U čtyř stehen, and joined the Czechoslovak soccer club Sparta Chicago. Jan’s first job was at Pilsner Restaurant in Berwyn. He stayed there for around one year until he found work as an electrician.
Jan became an American citizen in 1999. Today, he lives in Schaumburg, Illinois, with his second wife Luba. The pair speak Slovak at home, and Jan says he maintains Slovak traditions through the food that he eats and the music he continues to enjoy playing.
]]>Jan Pala was born in Bratislava in 1952. His mother, Paulina, worked as a salesperson, while his father (also called Ján) worked as a clerk in Bratislava’s Carlton Hotel. Jan was the second of three sons – his younger brother, Lubomir, immigrated to the United States several years before Jan. In Brno, Jan trained to become an electrician. He was then conscripted to the Czechoslovak Army, which stationed him in Pardubice for two years from 1973 to 1975. He left the Army as a candidate for Communist Party membership; he says he became a card-bearing member in 1976 so as to secure better housing for his wife and his newly-born son, Kristian. Once the family received a new apartment, Jan left the Party. When Jan and his first wife had a daughter in 1979, again they looked for a new, larger home, but this was more difficult now that Jan was no longer a Communist Party member.
Jan took a job as an electrician at the TESLA factory in Bratislava which came with accommodation in the suburb of Karlova Ves. He says that this was an excellent place to raise children, as it was surrounded by forest and provided good conditions for walking and hiking. Jan says that it was in a bid to secure ‘a better future for his son’ that he first thought of emigrating. When he and his first wife divorced, he started making plans to emigrate with his son in earnest, but the secret police confiscated his passport a week before the journey was set to take place. Several years and several attempts later, in September 1989, Jan and his son took a bus trip, ostensibly to watch the soccer team Plastika Nitra play an international match against FC Köln in Cologne, Germany. Jan says that they did not attend the football match, but instead applied for asylum in West Germany. They remained in Germany for 15 months and applied for an U.S. visa, which was rejected on grounds of Czechoslovakia’s newly democratic status (the Velvet Revolution having taken place in November 1989). After one and a half years, the pair had to leave Germany. They returned to Czechoslovakia where they applied for tourist visas to the United States. Jan and Kristian arrived in Chicago, Illinois (where Jan’s brother Lubomir was living) on December 21, 1990. Jan refers to his first days in the United States as ‘great’ – his brother took him to the Slovak Club in Berwyn, where he came to play music on a regular basis. He also performed regularly at the Czech-owned bar U čtyř stehen, and joined the Czechoslovak soccer club Sparta Chicago. Jan’s first job was at Pilsner Restaurant in Berwyn. He stayed there for around one year until he found work as an electrician.
Jan became an American citizen in 1999. Today, he lives in Schaumburg, Illinois, with his second wife Luba. The pair speak Slovak at home, and Jan says he maintains Slovak traditions through the food that he eats and the music he continues to enjoy playing.
“I was 15 then, and we were curious. I went into town, where they were shooting. Then we went to the airfield. We gave the Russians beer and wine and they gave us gasoline for our motorbikes. We brought them some cigarettes too. Then there was shooting on SNP Square – it looked very dangerous and so after that I didn’t actually go into Bratislava. We met the Russian soldiers at the airfields in Vajnory and Ivanka. In fact, we only went to see them to get gas – we were young boys with Pioneer motorbikes.”
“I got married young and I didn’t want to do military service. My wife had a well-positioned member of the family who got me a so-called modrá knižka [lit. blue book – certificate of exemption from military service]. But then because the Russians had come, the new Czechoslovak government recalled all of these books and we were all re-conscripted – or rather sent to the doctor for another physical. And so when I went to this second physical they realized that I am totally healthy and they sent me for two years to the military. My military service was spent with the pilots in Pardubice at the airfield. It was altogether fine; I got to travel home often.”
“I didn’t work. The other emigrants did work, but it was with the risk that you earn money, but if you got caught, you would be deported from Germany, and I couldn’t let that happen. So I didn’t work, and we lived on the money I received from the German government as support, plus I had my own money, and my brother Lubos [Lubomir] sent me dollars from the United States to help us. So in fact we did pretty well. We were staying in hotels. I wasn’t in any camps, because I was with my son, and so the German government considered us to be a family, and families were placed in hotels.”
“On Fridays, we would play in the bar of the Slovak Club. We had some very good experiences there. People sang, drank, remembered.”
How many people went to the Slovak Club at that time?
“At that time, lots. But the club’s bar was where people hung out. The bar was full until 1am or 2am. We also played events in the bigger hall next door – parties, we played a wedding there and various events. At that time we played quite frequently at picnics in the summer, for Sparta, for the Moravians, for the Slovak Club. So there were a lot of events, which dropped off in time.”
“My reason for emigrating was because I wanted to ensure a better future for my son and – for myself – I wanted to put all the money that I earned into traveling. I was lucky too that I met my wife, who is an air-hostess. She flies for American Airlines on international flights, so she also likes to travel. So you could say that we make the most of it. I’ve already seen a chunk of the world that I would definitely, if I had stayed in Czechoslovakia or Slovakia, never have been able to see.”