1
10
3
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/2548e71a7935ae21d1452e7c9020c8ab.jpg?Expires=1779321600&Signature=Bn-9vuSdY79ktj91U5NaIYFxS8W2UHzYRfxXKuup44mWBOhmarlUBwLLZEixNajQQFLqymHhLlOe-XkZ9fl6QPRZpjCmVf%7ESH1b4XxFywoPw-0dtBzGx3JVHU1CXF9NnN0wybTJjy9J-mVh%7EHv4IOKCeI0dBMHLE6%7E2p3-74W4FMGo5cPf4vGNNCmZedUYXt%7EAtPFv0juHUmGbnFtySMWLqYJywIEJr-3pkpBIbey0tspMNS%7EGmgeV54DUJyLA6NXeW8ocbq3h5YJdKQAu62LGcYGBgBqOky2ZVemmCsnxIFnRM0kZV1C6dT1jyAFhraxsuszgqTtmQwRz19mwkYAg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
015b33d7a29757b5bb3092322b39b70f
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/66aa0cb93194794ba61de802a6be69e2.jpg?Expires=1779321600&Signature=g52GawS04SDy2lAVrWzGofvXCBwKivMRdsED39zGRsXkPq7fubdoQ33-SK8ld2t8Oz0hpwd7wSgLT2iYXJbXJ%7EvszxoNe2Bet-iEdJQ8X5dcyxYv6NOp4EcXFGIixC1JKG4JBz6D8GXGjlRez1w5Crr7FARAfKuicgE5ZmZuVzYAZ6F3ehJnyOzKU7kp09DPt4zWXwVEOpuX5XmonAqEFxKk83RXJEXSOXXoQvQ6yJ9Z2r2nwwPjNP3x%7Ew8u2YwrckWPfeMhi06CivY3pU%7EfSE4Gnv79pTgVOYHEif6wZ3W-i-Rwwt%7EflvbzHuI2kMvFW-wxUoVinQpVVFjAhFAIlw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
78f5da8a5009d3ef02039980208c8c78
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/ea54b0f6947661a130a910b190122873.jpg?Expires=1779321600&Signature=Dx6bM5oN4Yr7pVrajM-QC5mPIkdW4IU4DmOZ60gLQqYKm5NaJjx4SZZtqucbcISr1YPsEKZUyWswibsj4m541XZHqm5REw5vRSrSkBohtJYLDUvnKNxdeKGvoeiUAGZ3oeITzj4bi53iB1OqNJSPWMJ-khXQd-Vwz5Uq1yiPyPkCgrtkKt%7Exly7XHV6nFScLxtil%7Eci0OaLWt2OENJl49srsc%7EuZJsr6CjD-PsMpA57BnfkA5ihtCPt9%7Eehwu4FUXD8Y3IUKjtbqguNbsKxZZAfdAIt54Vc9b9h1UsikGfa8-H1xMranS-SEamw3gdjnY6Stm7Ew7thC8y5vATDrqw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
ed939e1670d2a6ed9e3234a2fb467a57
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/9f67a7a618b915e1b0b10fd87facbf8b.jpg?Expires=1779321600&Signature=mIeILTW6nosUGSgr0WdOLUULXRVZW5yAPIai-AfNzFwElQe8jZIBPint6Vt--HkwyqWyRKxlvUYFP-%7E2fVp8KNKaSWS2qiSDRHf18Uh6MjMHTG%7ELUXeelmF7NqBVJMkvovJYNXIfmcKfjIXf%7EporjRBW3SVPWPas1v8fXa113hfSCdhGr%7Edp1NC56k1QxlU-focoBmbZCbfDZrBqm5wviD8%7Es3W4pQpKhWafWxvfV-opN6PKwfrZ20cqTiifjRmw2lauECeR5Wo6qiai5X9L5YGUPAs7H4ITcY1t2rSwAcwtWUPETeJTHcq2WzVnK1QdcD9dycGHjE3UtoidQYmBhg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
10ac777f56028dd4508f96834ce67599
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans
Subject
The topic of the resource
Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans was an oral history project launched by the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library in 2009. The project captured and preserved the stories of Czechs and Slovaks who left their homeland during the Cold War and settled in New York City, Washington, D.C., Cleveland, Chicago and the San Francisco Bay Area. During the second phase of the project, the NCSML recorded the stories of immigrants who came to the United States after the fall of communism in 1989 as well. By the conclusion of the project in August 2013, the NCSML had collected more than 300 oral histories. <br /><br />Both phases of the project were made possible by grants from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. <br /><br />On the project’s website, you can read biographies of Czechs and Slovaks who began a new life in the United States, watch video clips from their interviews, and view photos and other archival materials they shared with us. <br /><br />Full length interviews are available for further research at the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library. For more information, contact Dave Muhlena, Library Director, at dmuhlena@ncsml.org.
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
<h4>Father Arrested</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/OCNPVgxHRts?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“This Gestapo guy came and arrested him, and he said to him – my father’s blonde, my mother was dark-haired, but my dad was blonde – and he said to him, ‘You can’t be Jewish.’ And my father said, ‘Yes I am.’ And oddly enough, and this is just one of those crazy things because I’m not one to find redeeming features about Nazis, but apparently, this man developed some sort of respect for my father because of what he said. So then my mother told me many years after the fact, she told me she would go daily up to Pankrác prison to see if she could see him or bring him something or something like that, and I don’t know to what extent she got to see him, but she was talking to the Gestapo guy one time and she said, ‘Would it be possible for me to bring my husband some clothes?’ And as she told it, and my mother was a bit of a raconteur, but as she told it, the man said something like this: ‘Clothes? What are you thinking? You think this is a hotel? I’ve never heard of such a thing! Clothes? If you come tomorrow at 3:00 in the afternoon, I’ll see what I can do for you.’ So apparently there was some little bit of humanity in this guy. And that’s always a story I’ve remembered.”</p><h4>Background</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/klXmHfYrYGg?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I didn’t want anybody to think I was any German-speaking Czechoslovak. Probably more than anybody else I know, I felt that way. It’s kind of strange, because many of the German-speaking Czechoslovaks were Jewish and certainly were not Nazis, but I didn’t want to have anything to do with it. I didn’t want anything to do with it, I wanted to be a Czech Czech. Czechoslovak Czechoslovak. Many of my friends came from German-speaking families, and probably objectively, many people would say I come from a German-speaking family, but I wanted to be a Czechoslovak Czech and that remains. A lot of people with a similar background to mine identify with Israel more than with Czechoslovakia, now it never occurred to me that I was more Israeli than Czechoslovak; I was always more Czechoslovak than Israeli.”</p><h4>No Return</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/YaYEn5Dic2M?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“He made it clear to me that he didn’t want me to grow up in an undemocratic country. That one of the reasons was he didn’t want me to grow up in an undemocratic country. My parents were social democrats and all that. The liberties of the citizen were terribly important to them, as they are to me, which generated the career I chose in this country, and so I was very disappointed [that his family ultimately did not return to Czechoslovakia]. Now my father did go back for a visit, either in late 1945 or early 1946, and he came back desolated, sort of, that it wasn’t the same. There was a strong revenge feeling in Czechoslovakia against the Sudeten Germans, and it’s understandable because many of the Sudeten Germans followed Henlein and Hitler, and the so-called Beneš Decrees removed them collectively, took their homes and removed them collectively. And my father, who had served in President Beneš’ cabinet and who was certainly not sympathetic to Henlein and the Nazis and all that, he said that you cannot have a legal democratic state if you have collective punishment of a group of people without distinguishing individual guilt from individual innocence. And the fact that this was done made him even more distrustful of the possibility of democracy.”</p><h4>Coup Reaction</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Q8HAGY5Ql3o?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“You know, it was such a terrible thing to happen to my country. I’d always grown up with a memory of the Nazis coming in and killing part of my family and all that, and then we were so looking forward to a peaceful, democratic world after the War was going to be over and we weren’t going to have any, ‘There’ll be bluebirds over/The white cliffs of Dover/Tomorrow just you wait and see/There’ll be love and laughter/And peace ever after/Tomorrow when the world is free’ and what do you get. You get a dictatorial one-party regime coming after two and a half years of quasi-democracy. So I was very devastated as a boy.”</p><h4>Mississippi</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/twEzZcELyC8?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I was driving along the street and I saw a woman; I was looking for the Harmony community in Free Trade, Mississippi. I saw this woman picking cotton in a cotton field, which is something new to me anyway, but I wanted some directions so I walked up to her and I said, ‘Excuse me, but I wonder if you could tell me how to find…’ and I gave her the address, and she pointed out and whatnot. And I thought, ‘What the heck.’ So I said, ‘Ma’am,’ and I don’t think anybody had ever called her ma’am before, but I said ‘Have you ever tried to register to vote?’ And she looked at me and said, ‘Vote! You isn’t from around here, is you? Vote! Why we can’t vote. That man over there, the owner, he’d skin me alive. My skin is black, and I know my place. Vote! We can’t vote.’ And sort of retreated into the distance. She also mentioned something about a guy being chased; something about a black guy being chased down the street in Carthage by a white gang, and that’s what she said. This was the free world, the lead country in the free world in December of 1962.”</p><h4>Meaning of Freedom</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/SPy_FNnYtxc?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“Oh boy. Well, first of all, I was more concerned in those days as to what it doesn’t mean. And what I’ve told you about Czechoslovakia, it doesn’t mean the Nazis coming in and locking up my father for representing people or for being Jewish. It doesn’t mean the communists coming in there and hanging Mr. Clementis and so on. It doesn’t mean having one party ruling. And it doesn’t mean subjugating people on account of their race or color.”</p>
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Frank Schwelb
Description
An account of the resource
<p><img class="alignleft wp-image-4027 size-full" src="http://web.archive.org/web/20170808051429im_/http://ncsml.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Handler94.jpg" alt="Frank in 1988" width="228" height="320" /></p><p>Frank Schwelb was born in Prague in 1932. He and his parents, Caroline and Egon, lived in the center of Prague, and Frank remembers the Nazi troops marching through the city. Caroline was a language teacher and translator, and Egon worked as an attorney. In March 1939, shortly after the German occupation, Egon was arrested and sent to Pankrác prison. Frank says that his father’s clients included German anti-Nazi refugees living in Prague and believes that this, along with his Jewish background, led to his arrest. He was released after two months. Following his release, they were able to secure exit visas, and, in August 1939, took a train through Germany and the Netherlands where they boarded a ship to England. Frank says that most of his family who were unable to leave the country, including his mother’s sister, died in concentration camps.</p><p> </p><p>Frank’s family settled in London where he attended several different schools, including the Czechoslovak State School of Great Britain in Wales; he maintains contact with many of his classmates from there. His father became a member of the legal counsel of the Czechoslovak government-in-exile and served in that capacity from 1940 to 1945. Frank says that his parents initially hoped to return to Czechoslovakia following WWII; however, because of his job, his father understood that the country would likely fall under communist rule and decided not to go back. In 1947, Egon was offered the position of the Deputy Director of the UN Human Rights Division; the family moved to New York City to join him several months after he accepted the post. Frank attended Yale University where he played soccer and joined the NAACP. He began Harvard Law School in 1954, but volunteered to serve in the U.S. Army in 1955 to gain military naturalization. He served for two years before returning to Harvard and graduating in 1958. Eager to participate in President John F. Kennedy’s “New Frontier,” Frank began working as a lawyer for the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice in October 1962; his work with voter registration discrimination exposed him to the segregated South. He was named to the Superior Court of the District of Columbia by President Jimmy Carter in 1979, and was later appointed (by President Reagan) to the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, where he served as a Senior Judge.</p><p> </p><p>Frank enjoyed speaking Czech whenever he got the chance, rooted for Slavia Praha (a Czech soccer team) and returned to the Czech Republic many times. He was involved in the Czech and Slovak legal community, meeting with visiting lawyers, judges, and students, and he presented the inaugural Rosa Parks Memorial Lecture (in Czech) at Charles University in Prague. Frank lived with his wife, Taffy, in Washington, D.C., until his death in 2014.</p>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
NCSML Archive
Anti-communist
Arrest
Benes
Communist coup
Czech language
Education
Jews
Military service
Pankrac
Prison
Sense of identity
Sudeten Germans
World War II
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/f49994902c8f78f36aeebd760f6b7476.jpg?Expires=1779321600&Signature=qphA5bB8WlbTmGTsQN67ZCpskMBIJlb-2eMkJb7qMkBdpP4G6m6aRVxq95NtRpxU0FnlN8OTN4TKA-AgfOxHv-S7MQjCVBO%7EzJAOeGkOaHAmuDh187oU1aLD2HI16AjqC4zikIYDIvYFKhbgnCCjLhihMqkSsS3lsbntL0hIFeqzxEflK%7Ekjb8nx6Up4ioE5MYuq9WOOY0MfO1wM8caJ%7E0IsKSYzWSViqaGm92LHDP1A378fcXLT1M5HCQj608eAYRSXvHiVH0Nu9HJkZvuHHSjJ-UcRM1WBbyfdCGghhKlkfFfhEBH6t-spP9-GObwZHJmenTeJZC8Ppl5iiv6rGg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
11967f3ee919ae14eab5449c70844b55
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans
Subject
The topic of the resource
Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans was an oral history project launched by the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library in 2009. The project captured and preserved the stories of Czechs and Slovaks who left their homeland during the Cold War and settled in New York City, Washington, D.C., Cleveland, Chicago and the San Francisco Bay Area. During the second phase of the project, the NCSML recorded the stories of immigrants who came to the United States after the fall of communism in 1989 as well. By the conclusion of the project in August 2013, the NCSML had collected more than 300 oral histories. <br /><br />Both phases of the project were made possible by grants from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. <br /><br />On the project’s website, you can read biographies of Czechs and Slovaks who began a new life in the United States, watch video clips from their interviews, and view photos and other archival materials they shared with us. <br /><br />Full length interviews are available for further research at the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library. For more information, contact Dave Muhlena, Library Director, at dmuhlena@ncsml.org.
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
<h4>Before WWII</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/5FXMN0z8x04?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“At home we spoke Czech, of course, if we went to Vimperk to the dentist we spoke German. But the family doctor was Czech, but you know, it depended what store you went to. And I think it was always who had the biggest selection or whatever which decided how one shopped. I spent one month, four times, during the summer, in a German family learning German, and these German kids – during that time, one of their kids was with my family. We met in Pilsen at the second class or first class restaurant and there was me and my father, this judge with his son or his daughter – we switched the children and that was it! And we did it again one month later, that’s how people trusted each other!”</p><h4>Liberated</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/hMWUzit4FLk?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“We would hear bombing from whatever was the nearest German town, and all of a sudden one Sunday ‘Americans! They’re coming!’ you know, and so we went to the road, it was a state road which went between Vimperk and Strakonice, and we waved and there were kids, you know, that’s what you see in Afghanistan, that’s what the kids did. And then they actually occupied the village where we lived, and the house which we rented was one of the nicest houses, and so the Americans took it over. For example, they occupied our bedroom. So, in the morning we would ask for a dress and they would bring something from the closet or say ‘Come on in’ or something. And this went on for about ten days, and of course, they gave us coffee, and whatever, some crackers.”</p><h4>Sokol</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/SbfZQ_ilg_A?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“As a child in Boubská, I went twice a week to a Sokol in Vimperk. And so this stayed with me a little bit, and so then when I was in New York City, I joined Sokol Fugner and then nothing, and then about ten years ago, I joined a Sokol group in one of the suburbs [Sokol Spirit, formerly Sokol Brookfield] but simply this later years’ business means sending the membership fee and when they have basement sales helping with that, but no gymnastics!”</p><h4>Communism</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/0V9MoTL_Rvc?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“I had such luck that I left the way I did in 1949, I am sure that I would have been involved in somebody trying to get across the border and I would have been in jail – number one. Then this business of pretending I am something I’m not? See, all these people were not in the heart communists, they pretended, they pretended! And then, with my background, to teach philosophy? I would have had to have taught Marxism – it just was not for me.</p><p>“I have to say though, that coming from that poor region, these poor people were pulled up, and so that you have there now what you have here. The middle class is much, much bigger. And so in the village you see a car. My father died because the doctor didn’t want to drive to that village, right? And when the doctor would come, kids would run after that car – it was something new! What was more common when somebody was sick was that the priest came and prayed, and of course that was the end – that person died, you know. People were dying like that.”</p>
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Jarmila Hruban
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Jarmila Hruban was born in Radešov, on the Czechoslovak border with Bavaria, in 1926. Her father was the mayor of nearby Boubská, the principal of the local school, and a regional administrator of a national cooperative bank called Kampelička. After attending elementary school in Boubská, Jarmila traveled to nearby Strakonice every day to attend <em>gymnázium</em>. When the Sudetenland was annexed by the Nazis in 1938, she found herself passing through Nazi Germany on her daily train ride to school. Jarmila’s schooling was disrupted by the war; in 1944, she was sent to work in a box-making factory in Bohumilice for a year, and so finished <em>gymnázium</em> one year late, in 1946.</p><p> </p><p>She then started a degree in philosophy and English at Charles University in Prague, but was expelled following the Communist takeover in 1948 when she failed her <em>prověrka</em> – a test asking each student about his/her political views. She decided to leave the country and, in March 1949, a relative who worked as a border guard helped her cross into Germany near Kvilda, not far from where Jarmila grew up. Jarmila spent a year and a half in Murnau refugee camp in Bavaria before being granted a visa to Canada. She lived there for one year until some of her relatives who were already in the United States successfully petitioned for her to come to New York City. In New York, Jarmila attended Hunter College, before receiving a scholarship to study at the University of Chicago. It was there she met her husband, <a href="/web/20170609123103/http://www.ncsml.org/exhibits/zdenek-hruban/">Zdenek Hruban</a>. She became an American citizen in 1957. Now widowed, Jarmila lives in Chicago’s Hyde Park district and is particularly active in the local Unitarian Church.</p>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
NCSML Archive
1948
American citizenship
Communist coup
Czech-German relations
Education
emigrant
German
German language
gymnazium
Kampelicka
marriage
Marxism
Munich Crisis
Nazis
Occupation
refugee
Refugee camp
school
Sense of identity
Stankova
Sudeten Germans
Unitarians
World War II
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/24397/archive/files/d666425122983c032325a8575803f726.png?Expires=1779321600&Signature=n-IOUZvoKC6uRMf9w1MBYBQy7L2zL%7EdZWMtLJeaWh-X1xuSBx-WCA8yhm7%7EApGNWZGc1AtmHP4kKPT-4dKmBsf5JjKc56lygtI6EcpTy-LoMlspVb7-l91qf31x2iTME0IGoc9guEAy7B2pYERBV%7ElalelPIckLafdV8cGgopkV7mIRXjr5oEzPFZmfpclZKTv8NU82CAUIjJagjXvIJPeeF0YOmYviHMupbPE7esm0VaxYXwQviHhyKRh1ST59xq8hyDKCLCAYdAOo2E%7Eb6Wi1TDNcQ-EQY0hZF4dfpYRTukOr26vpiZAAZlAWAm3fJuO1oQmuudDXmKwrQgtJs8g__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
4f230680b0a0a61d01ec4737afc94dbd
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans
Subject
The topic of the resource
Recording Voices & Documenting Memories of Czech & Slovak Americans was an oral history project launched by the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library in 2009. The project captured and preserved the stories of Czechs and Slovaks who left their homeland during the Cold War and settled in New York City, Washington, D.C., Cleveland, Chicago and the San Francisco Bay Area. During the second phase of the project, the NCSML recorded the stories of immigrants who came to the United States after the fall of communism in 1989 as well. By the conclusion of the project in August 2013, the NCSML had collected more than 300 oral histories. <br /><br />Both phases of the project were made possible by grants from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. <br /><br />On the project’s website, you can read biographies of Czechs and Slovaks who began a new life in the United States, watch video clips from their interviews, and view photos and other archival materials they shared with us. <br /><br />Full length interviews are available for further research at the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library. For more information, contact Dave Muhlena, Library Director, at dmuhlena@ncsml.org.
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
<h4>Work & Success</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/jD5XL5R9FQo?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" id="undefined"></iframe><p>“You have to check the blueprint for them, talk with them, you have to order materials all the time – order windows, doors, ceilings, and everything – and in advance you have to order trucks and cranes. And everything was too much pressure. Communist members didn’t like this kind of job because of all this responsibility. But they checked my job all the time because you know you cannot be against the government. And when I went one step up and had the 41 guys, this was really too much of a headache for them, because you have to have the knowledge and bricklayers – they can fool you, they can do something on purpose and you can be in trouble. And this knowledge I had from the base, because I was a bricklayer, then a foreman, then a supervisor. They don’t like this kind of stuff, they like easy jobs. But I still had to be careful, I could not be over the line and say something that was bad against the government, because you can stop in the office one day and have no chair and have no desk. They can say you have to go back and be a brick layer. But I was not afraid, because I finished up at my desk at 3:00 and then I always worked a second job as a bricklayer because I needed extra money.”</p><h4>Jail & Mother-in-Laws</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Hp8FpGMoQbk?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“She was living at this time 20 miles from Liberec and one day she received a paper saying ‘can we talk to you?’ And what happened was she told a neighbor ‘can you watch my children?’ My wife, she was four years old and her brother was six. ‘Can you watch them?’ she said, ‘I’m leaving the city at eight o’clock and I’ll be back on the bus at four o’clock’. And she was back four years later. What happened was they charged her with talking with someone who crossed the border, the judge said ‘you are a traitor. I’ll give you 25 years’. She was in Rakovník, the city of Rakovník. They made tiles, which was a very rough time, they did everything – the ceramic tiles, they even made them in the factory at this time, which was the 1950s, and they even put them on the train. With her in jail were a lot of famous ladies, like movie stars who did something against the government, but, who she said were really the best in there with them were the prostitutes. They were living with them, of course, because they put everyone in the one room. But she had respect for them because if the political prisoners messed up something, the prostitutes – they took the blame, because they knew somebody else could be more punished. So a lot of those ladies said ‘I did it!’ because they knew the prisoners in there against the government would be treated worse and that’s why they took this stuff on and said ‘I did it’, and they were not punished.”<br /></p><h4>Liberation</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/CUADGKGZ_SU?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“We had some history books in the school always, and on the front of the history books was a tank, a Russian tank, with a flower and it said ‘we liberated you’. And I found out in 1968, which was the Prague Spring, I bought every week a Slovakian magazine called Expres, and they started to put a lot of stuff in, and I found out the southwest of our country was liberated by General Patton! For 23 years I never knew it because, why? My father told me just this stuff about the Communists, but my mum, she was so scared she never… she knew it, but she was so scared I could talk and she would be punished! That’s why I had to find out when I was 23 years old, in 1968 I found out our country was liberated by General Patton! That’s why when I came to the United States I saw the General Patton movie about five times!”<br /></p><h4>Liverec Invasion</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_45gA55tY1Y?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“When I saw the blood and everything, I had a motorcycle, I drove home and I visited my mother in law and said ‘What do we do now? The situation is bad.’ She said, ‘You know what, go buy the main things’ – like milk, bread and this stuff, we had to support ourselves because nobody knew what would happen. So I went to the grocery store for this stuff and when I stood in the line I heard a gunshot and a lot of noise. And after I went back to the city (I brought the groceries home and said ‘Can you stay with my daughter?’), and I came back to the downtown, and what had happened was that they were still going the wrong way. Streetcars have steel tracks on the ground, and a tank had slipped on these and there was an underpass, where you walk under a building. There was a pillar and the tank had hit this pillar and the whole section fell down. And a lot of guys standing under this were killed. But we saw how people can really use their hands, they started pulling the bricks out and pulling people out. And the tank started moving out, the idiot who was leader of the tank said ‘Move out!’ And people said ‘Stay! Stay!’ because behind were the emergency ambulances. They said ‘Stop!’ and they almost killed a nurse and people there were mad. And they guy used a gun and shot in the air and said ‘Move, move, move!’ He was so scared too, and he started moving the tank finally out and there was big damage. And at this place there was another nine people killed. We had, they said, about 16-18 people killed and a lot of people injured.”<br /></p><h4>Child Left Behind</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/0Wu6m_XKAk0?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“At this time she was 14 and a half, and I even told her… I said ‘Honey, I’ll tell you one thing very serious – we are going to the United States, if the situation there is a little bit better, we’ll stay over there. But don’t listen to the people around – we haven’t forgotten you. You won’t be forgotten. We care about you. Stay here, we’ll do everything that we can to move you over there.’ She says ‘Okay Dad, okay, I trust you.’ And two years later, when I received a green card, I visited the Czech Embassy in Washington and it was Mr. Safka or whatever, he smelt of alcohol. But we visited him, we showed him the green card. They said ‘Write down everything about your daughter’. And we wrote where she went to kindergarten, when she was six and a half what kind of school she went to. They checked our papers and Mr. Safka said, because we asked him how long she can be over there, what kind of chance we have to see her, and he said ‘We signed the Helsinki Agreement, and when we talk about putting families together, we have to stick with that.’ We were really pretty surprised because really six months later we saw our daughter.</p><p>“Those two years were very tough. Mostly for my wife because she said ‘Did we do wrong, did we do right?’ And I said ‘No, no! It’s the United States and I think this is good we have to just be tough. But we have to look to the future, we have to look to the future!’ It was a tough two years, but, you know, everything is a risk and we are here.”</p><h4>Cleveland Spy</h4><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/dz04muEvgeM?wmode=transparent" frameborder="0"></iframe><p>“When [Joe] was in 1987 at the police station, they told him, ‘We’ll treat you very nicely and fairly, but tell us where you go – two days there, three days here, and everything – but we’ll give you some advice, we don’t want any problems.’ He says, ‘I won’t give you any problems’, and the guy who was in charge, some major or someone in some pretty nice position, says ‘Mr. Joe Kocab, we know about you very well, more than you think!’ He says ‘What? I haven’t said anything!’ The major says ‘You know what? You want to hear something? Come on over here.’ He says ‘Come on, follow me into this room’. He went to another room and he pushed the button and his speech was on the tape! This was 1987, the speech was made two years before. The major said ‘Whose voice is this?’ Joe said ‘That’s my voice; I had a speech ’85 or ’86 in the Czech Hall.’ And the major told him ‘Your speech is not for the Communist government, it is against us. Watch yourself, we don’t need problems, that’s why we know about you more than you think.’</p><p>“When Joe Kocab told us, our people here, what’s going on, we told the ambassador and Martin [Palouš] ‘Can you do us a favor, can you find out – somebody from our Czech environs has to be a black sheep who taped this stuff! Somebody amongst us had to have taped it, because it was all Czech people here at the speech. Somebody had to make the tape and donate the tape to the Czech Republic, to the Communists! Can you find out who is the guy, because he can’t be with us any more! Because we cannot do this to the United States government, especially with this Reagan stuff, you know, we owe them, with the FBI, the CIA, we can’t play this sort of trick.’ And they told us; ‘Oh, we have a problem, they are destroying all of the documentation that they can.’ This was a big shock for us, because we thought, finally, they cannot punish somebody, but we can punish somebody who worked with them. Because we thought this would be our duty to punish somebody who worked with them, because this was terrible, what they did. But we still don’t know, who was the guy!”</p>
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Ludvik Barta
Description
An account of the resource
<p><img class="wp-image-2516 size-full alignleft" src="http://web.archive.org/web/20170609104815im_/http://ncsml.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/ludvik-barta-SQ.png" alt="" width="240" height="240" /></p><p>Ludvik Barta was born in the town of Liberec, northern Bohemia, in May 1945. His mother, Anna (maiden name Biedermann), was a Sudeten German, while his father, Ludvík, was a Czech who narrowly escaped execution after working for the Nazis as a translator during WWII. Ludvik’s father became a member of the Communist Party in 1936, but changed his views completely in the early 1950s in light of the high-profile political trials taking place at the time. Shortly before his father’s death, when Ludvik was 12, he says his father urged him never to join the Communist Party. Later on in life, Ludvik followed this advice.</p><p> </p><p>When Ludvik was 17, he went to the local technical school to train to be a bricklayer. After two years he put his studies on hold to do his military service. Just before leaving for military training in Turnov, Ludvik married his wife Lenka in June 1964. The couple soon had a daughter, also named Lenka. Upon return from military service, Ludvik became a successful builder, and constructed the family’s own apartment. In August 1968, his wife Lenka finally had a chance to visit her father – who had left Czechoslovakia in 1948 – in his new home in Cleveland. When Lenka returned home, shortly after the Soviet-led invasion, the family decided to move to the United States. However, while arrangements were being made, the Czechoslovak government changed its passport requirements, which nullified the family’s existing travel documents. It subsequently took Ludvik and his wife 11 years to come to the United States. When they did, they had to leave their daughter behind. Two years later, having established residency in the United States, Ludvik and Lenka petitioned the Czechoslovak government to allow their daughter to come to America. The family was reunited in 1981.</p><p> </p><p>Today, the Bartas still live in the Cleveland area and are owners of ‘Hubcap Heaven’ – an emporium of wheel covers for automobiles.</p><p><a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20170609104815/http://www.wkyc.com/news/local/news_article.aspx?storyid=117360&catid=3" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">A link to Ludvik’s star appearance on WKYC’s program ‘What Works’</a></p>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
NCSML Archive
1968
emigrant
Family life
Forced labor
Military service
Prague Spring
Prison
refugee
Sudeten Germans
Warsaw Pact invasion