Alfonz attended school in his village until fifth grade when he went to a larger school in Michalovce. He recalls his involvement in the Pioneer youth group and says that many of his group’s activities focused on botany. In the summer of 1966, Alfonz and his mother visited his grandparents who had settled in Cleveland. Upon returning home, he says his mother began making plans to emigrate. It took three years before Alfonz and his mother were finally able to leave, as they had to sell their house and receive permission from Alfonz’s father. This permission was never given, and Alfonz left the country under an assumed name. In early summer 1969, Alfonz and his mother crossed the border into Austria. They applied for a visa at the U.S. Embassy, and, while waiting, rented a suite in a guest house. Alfonz’s grandparents sponsored the pair, which facilitated the process and, after five weeks, Alfonz and his mother flew to the United States. They settled in Cleveland where his mother quickly found a job cleaning hotels. On weekends, Alfonz helped his grandmother clean offices at an oil processing plant.
Alfonz went to Hillside Middle School for eighth grade where he says studying was a struggle because he did not speak English. He communicated with a Russian language teacher and a Ukrainian student while learning English from a picture book. He says that biology and math were especially challenging subjects for him. His high school Russian teacher convinced him to study the language in college, and after taking some core courses at Tri-C Community College, Alfonz enrolled at Ohio State University. In 1976, he traveled abroad to Moscow and studied for three months at the Pushkin State Russian Language Institute. On the advice of a professor, Alfonz joined the U.S. Army Reserves as a Russian linguist; he went on active duty in 1981. In the mid-1980s, he was stationed in Munich debriefing Slovak refugees. Alfonz met his wife, Donna, at a Slovak dinner in Lakewood in 1990; the pair married in December 1991. They have three sons together. Alfonz has been involved in the Slovak community in Cleveland, attending dances and picnics and participating in organizations such as Bratislava-Cleveland Sister Cities. Today, Alfonz lives in Parma, Ohio, with his wife and children.
]]>Alfonz Sokol was born in Michalovce, eastern Slovakia, in 1956. He grew up in the village of Vel’ké Zálužie with his parents, Alfonz and Milena. His father worked in the office of a grain collection and processing facility while his mother stayed at home and raised him. Alfonz’s maternal grandfather had immigrated to the United States for economic reasons prior to WWII; his wife joined him after the War. When Alfonz was in fourth grade, his parents divorced.
Alfonz attended school in his village until fifth grade when he went to a larger school in Michalovce. He recalls his involvement in the Pioneer youth group and says that many of his group’s activities focused on botany. In the summer of 1966, Alfonz and his mother visited his grandparents who had settled in Cleveland. Upon returning home, he says his mother began making plans to emigrate. It took three years before Alfonz and his mother were finally able to leave, as they had to sell their house and receive permission from Alfonz’s father. This permission was never given, and Alfonz left the country under an assumed name. In early summer 1969, Alfonz and his mother crossed the border into Austria. They applied for a visa at the U.S. Embassy, and, while waiting, rented a suite in a guest house. Alfonz’s grandparents sponsored the pair, which facilitated the process and, after five weeks, Alfonz and his mother flew to the United States. They settled in Cleveland where his mother quickly found a job cleaning hotels. On weekends, Alfonz helped his grandmother clean offices at an oil processing plant.
Alfonz went to Hillside Middle School for eighth grade where he says studying was a struggle because he did not speak English. He communicated with a Russian language teacher and a Ukrainian student while learning English from a picture book. He says that biology and math were especially challenging subjects for him. His high school Russian teacher convinced him to study the language in college, and after taking some core courses at Tri-C Community College, Alfonz enrolled at Ohio State University. In 1976, he traveled abroad to Moscow and studied for three months at the Pushkin State Russian Language Institute. On the advice of a professor, Alfonz joined the U.S. Army Reserves as a Russian linguist; he went on active duty in 1981. In the mid-1980s, he was stationed in Munich debriefing Slovak refugees. Alfonz met his wife, Donna, at a Slovak dinner in Lakewood in 1990; the pair married in December 1991. They have three sons together. Alfonz has been involved in the Slovak community in Cleveland, attending dances and picnics and participating in organizations such as Bratislava-Cleveland Sister Cities. Today, Alfonz lives in Parma, Ohio, with his wife and children.
“My mother had to sell the house and then my father – since the divorce was pretty nasty – he didn’t want to sign papers, he needed to sign papers for me to leave Slovakia. So he actually didn’t sign the papers; I traveled to Austria and I traveled under an assumed name. Relatives lived in Bratislava, and they had already emigrated. Part of the family emigrated to Canada when, after ’68, the Canadians were taking a lot of Slovaks and Czechs. So part of the family was already in Canada, and they were related to my mother, so I guess they got the idea [for me] to assume one of their names, and we lived with them for about two weeks until I got my story straight.
And how did this make your move easier?
“Well, I don’t think it made it easier; it made it possible to travel with my mother. She traveled under her name and I traveled with my aunt.”
“You do because you need to survive. You need to be able to talk to people, and if you just speak Slovak all the time, they don’t speak Slovak in the store or Czech or Russian – now they speak Spanish – so you have to assimilate. You assimilate language-wise, but cultural-wise, that comes with the system. As you live there, you start doing what other people are doing. For my mother, she had to assimilate to the system once she bought a house, you have to cut the lawn, you have to take care of the shrubs and all that stuff. That was part of life, and with the same saying, ‘If you go Rome, you do as Romans do,’ and ‘If you go to Greece, you do as Greeks do.’ You left that life in Slovakia, and you’re surrounded by English speaking people. You still have the cultural things and you still get together with Slovaks in different organizations, but at the same time you have to live life and you have to work and make a living so you have to assimilate.”
“[We were] trying to discern – let’s say they served in the military – once we learned they served in the military, then we pursued that angle. They were already refugees at that point. If they were able to provide us with valuable information, then we could help them with getting their German visa or permit to stay in Germany, or wherever they wanted to go. If they came to us and they wanted to go to the United States, then we would debrief them and find out, and if we could help them, of course we would help them. We really weren’t interested in how they lived. What we were interested in was if they worked for the police, then we wanted to know how the police operated. If they were in the military, which most of them were, which units they served in and how did that operate. Where were the training sites and stuff like that.”
“I’m not forgetting the language, but I haven’t been there to be able to develop the language, to grow the language. Language grows and it develops. I owned a translation service for awhile, but I had to look through dictionaries all the time because I haven’t been there to develop the vocabulary. I left as a 13-year old and because I speak basic Slovak, so to speak, I can’t translate. Some people can translate, they look at it and write it down and it’s done. So it’s not a realistic goal for me to have a translation service.”
“My life in Slovakia was relatively short, so I’m more culturally developed American-wise than Slovak-wise at this point. For me, I maintain my roots so to speak by listening to Slovenské ľudové piesne [Slovak folk songs]. Now I have sons that I have dancing [with the Slovak dance troupe Lucina], so I associate with that. I was in Bratislava-Cleveland Sister Cities, but I’m an American now. I’m more American than I’m Slovak at this point.”
Gabriel was traveling from Žilina to Humenné when he heard about the Warsaw Pact invasion in August 1968. On arriving in Humenné, he had an altercation with Soviet soldiers; the next day, he participated in protests against the invasion. Soon after the invasion, Gabriel says, a friend warned him that the secret police were looking for him, and he decided to leave the country. Using a friend’s passport, he crossed the border, made his way to Vienna, and then went to Israel. One year later, he returned to Czechoslovakia as part of an amnesty granted to those who left following the invasion in 1968. Gabriel moved to Bratislava and held a series of jobs including editor for the publishing house Obzor, mailman, and technical assistant in an art gallery. He was involved in the underground cultural movement, drew cartoons and wrote poetry.
His anti-establishment activities were noticed by authorities and he says he was constantly harassed and interrogated by the secret police. The situation deteriorated further when he signed Charter 77. He says he decided to leave for a second time in 1979 when the ŠtB asked him for money. Gabriel and a co-worker left the country with little money and no food or water. He says the two-week journey to Italy, which took them through Hungary, Romania, and Yugoslavia, was a ‘miracle,’ as they were helped by several strangers along the way. Gabriel hitchhiked to Rome where he stayed for several months while waiting for papers to immigrate to the United States.
In July 1979, Gabriel arrived in Cleveland, Ohio, where he lived with an aunt for a short time before moving to New York City and then settling in San Francisco. In 1996, Gabriel worked in Prague as deputy editor-in-chief for the Czech newspaper Mosty. When he returned to the U.S., he settled in New York where he still lives today. Gabriel is a translator, tour guide, and cartoonist, and he has published several volumes of poetry.
]]>Gabriel Levicky was born in Humenné, eastern Slovakia, in 1948. His parents, Hungarian-speaking Slovak Jews, both survived concentration camps during WWII; his mother was in Auschwitz and his father in Sachsenhausen. Gabriel says that they were not forthcoming with their experiences of the Holocaust. Gabriel’s father, a member of the Communist Party, was the director of the Dom kultúry (municipal cultural center) in Humenné. Gabriel says his teenage years were heavily influenced by Western culture, most notably music and literature. He was in a band called The Towers and subscribed to Svetová literatúra, a periodical devoted to world literature. Gabriel’s lifestyle and his involvement in the hippie movement in Czechoslovakia led to conflicts with his father; following his schooling, he left home and traveled around the country.
Gabriel was traveling from Žilina to Humenné when he heard about the Warsaw Pact invasion in August 1968. On arriving in Humenné, he had an altercation with Soviet soldiers; the next day, he participated in protests against the invasion. Soon after the invasion, Gabriel says, a friend warned him that the secret police were looking for him, and he decided to leave the country. Using a friend’s passport, he crossed the border, made his way to Vienna, and then went to Israel. One year later, he returned to Czechoslovakia as part of an amnesty granted to those who left following the invasion in 1968. Gabriel moved to Bratislava and held a series of jobs including editor for the publishing house Obzor, mailman, and technical assistant in an art gallery. He was involved in the underground cultural movement, drew cartoons and wrote poetry.
His anti-establishment activities were noticed by authorities and he says he was constantly harassed and interrogated by the secret police. The situation deteriorated further when he signed Charter 77. He says he decided to leave for a second time in 1979 when the ŠtB asked him for money. Gabriel and a co-worker left the country with little money and no food or water. He says the two-week journey to Italy, which took them through Hungary, Romania, and Yugoslavia, was a ‘miracle,’ as they were helped by several strangers along the way. Gabriel hitchhiked to Rome where he stayed for several months while waiting for papers to immigrate to the United States.
In July 1979, Gabriel arrived in Cleveland, Ohio, where he lived with an aunt for a short time before moving to New York City and then settling in San Francisco. In 1996, Gabriel worked in Prague as deputy editor-in-chief for the Czech newspaper Mosty. When he returned to the U.S., he settled in New York where he still lives today. Gabriel is a translator, tour guide, and cartoonist, and he has published several volumes of poetry.
“It’s the supreme example of highly sophisticated survival skills. You don’t want to jeopardize anything. You don’t want to jeopardize your family; you don’t want to jeopardize the future; you will say everything to everybody just to leave you alone. That was the whole principle. In other words, yes, I disagree maybe inside, but I openly say ‘Yes, of course, you are right.”
“I think that the most incredible period for me personally, for us as a young generation at that time, was the invasion of rock and roll. The music. Rock and roll culture. Radio Luxembourg. For us it was a fascinating world because we thought that if this is possible, something over there must be right. And it’s very difficult to explain to people who don’t understand the impact of culture on young minds or a young outlook. And rock and roll really changed a lot in Czechoslovakia. Bands mushroomed almost instantly. Right after a show on Czechoslovak TV, ‘the decadent West’ and they showed a picture of the Beatles running on the street from A Hard Day’s Night, and that day, those idiots created a mass movement. From day one to the next day, everybody started to look, or attempted to look like the Beatles and play the music.”
“I managed to arrive [in Humenné] late night; it was already martial law declared, and I didn’t know of course. So I was coming from the train and I’m walking towards my parents’ house, and boom. I come to the square. All these Russian tanks, lorries, trucks, they had this white paint through the body for identification. Every Russian vehicle was painted with a white stripe in the middle. So all I could see were these white stripes in the middle of the night, and here comes the patrol. A Russian officer with two soldiers. In Russian – I understand and speak Russian – he says ‘What are you doing here?’ and I said ‘What are you doing here?’ So this dialogue was happening in the middle of the night, and these two guys are holding their guns against me and he’s holding a handgun. And I start to shout ‘You mother f*****s’ – I was 20 – ‘Wait until the… you will see you are going to be kicked out of here when the Germans and Americans come and kick your ass outta here!’ And when they heard the ‘German’ and ‘American’ because it was ‘Ruskii, Amerikanskii, Nemetskii,’ they unlocked the guns, aimed at me, all three of them aimed their guns at me, and they said ‘Run.’ And I realized that’s it. So I said ‘Please don’t shoot,’ and I was running backwards like this, to the passage – there was a passage in the building which my parents lived around the corner – ‘Please don’t shoot, don’t shoot,’ and they let me go. But it was a second. A split second. They could kill me, nobody would find anything about me, they could discard my body, nothing could be done about it, because I was the only one on the square.
“And the next day, I woke up and I went out, collected money and went to the Czechoslovak-Soviet Friendship House, I bought Soviet flags. I got all these kids with matches and they were walking around burning Soviet flags walking around the square around the Soviet tanks. I thought ‘Hey, they’re not going to shoot the little kids; they’re going to shoot us, but they’re not going to shoot the kids.”
“I was young. I was 20, I didn’t know what I was doing. It was my first time in the West. I wasn’t really ready for Israel. I was young, I was naïve. I was also sentimental, I was not ready. I was emotionally drained, I was physically drained.”
“The police essentially attacked my office. They came to do a search. Plainclothes police. They raided the place with Volgas, [Tatra] 603s and all these other cars and then they left. They took the samples from my type machine. Then my boss, this guy who hired me – he passed away; he was an alcoholic, died a few years ago; he was a very interesting guy – and he came to me and said ‘What was it, a ticket? A speeding ticket?’ And I said ‘No, no, no.’ ‘So what it is it? What happened here?’ ‘Well, nothing really, I just signed Charter 77.’ And he looked at me and said ‘You asshole, now I can’t protect you. Now you are out.’ And in one month I was pink, I was out.”
So, why did you sign Charter 77?
“For me, it was a moral imperative. I might sound like an idealist, but the moral imperative was very clear. I’m not supporting the regime. I have a lot to lose – some people had more to lose than me of course – but I’m not going to anymore do it halfway. I’m not going to compromise anymore. I’m just going to make a statement because it’s my responsibility as a citizen of Czechoslovakia to bring up these issues that are destroying the country. That was essentially my argument.”
“I asked them for my files; they brought it to me, and I was going through all the interrogation they did with my relatives, my friends, my ex-girlfriend, my ex-wife, including my letter I sent to Charter 77 reporting on abuses in Slovakia, which never arrived there because they confiscated it. Then I found an interesting section that said ‘350 pages erased’ or destroyed. And I said, ‘What the f*** is that?’ So I asked the guy who worked there, he said ‘Well, that’s what they did in ’89.’ Can you imagine? December 1989, they destroyed 350 pages. Some of them are referring to people who are actually spying on me, but it’s missing, it’s gone. So I asked them ‘What happened to my file? Somebody can access my file?’ Can you imagine, people can actually, for study purposes, can access your file which I think is totally absurd. This is your private file. The police could do anything, they could even imitate the signatures if they wanted, they could manipulate anything they wanted.
“So what’s the big deal, you can’t bring it back, you can do nothing about it, so what are you gonna do? I don’t dwell on it anymore. I mean, it’s my file ok, of course it’s disturbing, it’s mentally disturbing, and very very threatening because you see how they manipulated people and manipulated interviews.”
Upon graduating, Jana says that she had trouble finding employment and worked a series of temporary jobs. She worked for a construction firm for one year under the auspices of starting a company magazine; however, she says that she did very little actual work as she was given the job by a friend and the company did not actually have money for the project. She then found a job at a publishing house translating Czech language books into English. She quit her position when she was offered promotion with the stipulation that she join the Communist Party. With the help of her uncle, Jana began teaching at a language school. She married Jiří Fraňek, a journalist, and had two children, Jakub and Ruth. Jana says that although many of her friends signed Charter 77, she declined because of the effect she believed it would have on her husband’s job. Instead, she helped the cause by translating various documents relating to the Charter into English, including the Charter itself. Jana says that her dissident activities and refusal to join the Communist Party led to conflict with the headmistress of the language school at which she taught. She was questioned by the secret police, and eventually resigned. She then began working as a freelance translator and interpreter. She was in this position during the Velvet Revolution, when both she and her 15 year old son worked as interpreters for foreign journalists. In more recent years, Jana has accompanied Czech politicians such as Václav Havel and Václav Klaus on foreign visits to English-speaking countries, where she has been their interpreter. She lives in Prague.
]]>Jana Fraňková was born in Prague just after WWII in 1946. Her Slovak-Jewish mother had been in hiding in southern Bohemia during the War, and her cousin (who lived with Jana and her mother) had spent two years in Ravensbrück concentration camp. Jana says that she did not learn of her Jewish heritage until she went to school, as her mother did not bring up the subject. Jana’s mother, who joined the Communist Party, worked in telecommunications for the government. As a result, Jana says that her home had the first television set in the neighborhood. As a young girl, Jana was active in sports and joined a competitive gymnastics club. She attended gymnázium and became interested in philosophy and politics; she began studying philosophy and English literature at Charles University. Jana says that the time of the Prague Spring was very exciting and that she and her friends ‘all believed in it.’ While working as an au pair in Britain during the summer of 1968, Warsaw Pact troops invaded Czechoslovakia. Her mother convinced her to stay in Britain where she landed an interview at Oxford University and was admitted to Saint Hilda’s College. She received permission from the Czechoslovak government to commence studies there, and graduated with a degree in philosophy and English. Jana returned to Czechoslovakia after three years and finished her degree at Charles University.
Upon graduating, Jana says that she had trouble finding employment and worked a series of temporary jobs. She worked for a construction firm for one year under the auspices of starting a company magazine; however, she says that she did very little actual work as she was given the job by a friend and the company did not actually have money for the project. She then found a job at a publishing house translating Czech language books into English. She quit her position when she was offered promotion with the stipulation that she join the Communist Party. With the help of her uncle, Jana began teaching at a language school. She married Jiří Fraňek, a journalist, and had two children, Jakub and Ruth. Jana says that although many of her friends signed Charter 77, she declined because of the effect she believed it would have on her husband’s job. Instead, she helped the cause by translating various documents relating to the Charter into English, including the Charter itself. Jana says that her dissident activities and refusal to join the Communist Party led to conflict with the headmistress of the language school at which she taught. She was questioned by the secret police, and eventually resigned. She then began working as a freelance translator and interpreter. She was in this position during the Velvet Revolution, when both she and her 15 year old son worked as interpreters for foreign journalists. In more recent years, Jana has accompanied Czech politicians such as Václav Havel and Václav Klaus on foreign visits to English-speaking countries, where she has been their interpreter. She lives in Prague.
“She was telling me that she lived there. They didn’t tell me we were Jews for a long time, because Jewish parents just didn’t usually tell their children because they were afraid; they just didn’t want to have anything to do with it. But she was telling me about the people and, actually, I knew them because we used to go to their place during the summer holidays, so they became like a part of our family – family that we didn’t have anymore because very, very few members of the family survived, and most of those who survived left not only this country, but Europe. They just wanted to be away from Europe, so they went to Canada, to Israel, to Australia. But I knew these people and I thought my mom had a beautiful time because she was telling me only about lovely things.
“My cousin was actually telling me about the concentration camp and only much, much later I found out that I was probably the only person she told, and I suppose she told only me because she thought I didn’t understand – I was little. I knew the word ‘camp’ for summer camps, because bigger children spoke about summer camps, so I thought she went to one of these. And when she was telling me about things that happened, I thought they were games. It was only later, when I went to school and I started hearing about Jews and about concentration camps, I realized what happened, and I realized we were Jews. Even though I didn’t know what it meant, I knew it meant something strange, but that was about all.”
“Imagine something that you really believe in is happening. You are 21. You feel that you, just by going into the street and signing various petitions, can change something. Can you imagine something more exciting? It was fabulous. And we all believed in it. Even though, I remember my mother and her friends talking and sort of worrying that it wouldn’t work which, in the end, it didn’t. But for us it was incredibly exciting. And it was very difficult then to stay in England, especially at the beginning, to stay in England, when you felt that you ought to come and help the country – we didn’t know at that time we actually couldn’t help the country.”
“In the end, I got stuck here. I knew it would be difficult, but I didn’t know what it would feel like, getting suddenly stuck. So I finished school, then I couldn’t find a job whatsoever for three years. And at that time there was a law that anyone who was not in school anymore and who was not a married woman had to work. It was an obligation, and if you didn’t work and they found you out, they would charge you with ‘leading a parasitical way of life.’ I don’t know who I would be a parasite to but… So I had to take various odd jobs on temporary contracts.
“Then, a nice good Commie, who was a friend of my mom, was a director of a big firm that built roads, gave me a job. It was the most terrible year of my life because I didn’t have anything to do there. I had to come there every day, spend eight and a half hours there, and there was no job. So I used to help people in other departments. They had to think that I was preparing something like the company magazine, which he told me ‘Look, we really don’t have money for that magazine; we’re not going to produce it, but you are here to get it going.’ So I had to pretend.”
“Charter 77 came. At the time of Charter 77, I was on maternity leave with my daughter, and lots of my friends were involved and they said ‘Come and sign it.’ I said ‘Look, if it were only my own decision, I would immediately. But my husband – and the father of my children – is a journalist. He would lose his job. I can’t do it. We are in it together.’ So in the end, we agreed that I would do the work for the Charter, but would not be a signatory. So I did lots of translations. I translated the Charter; I translated various texts that went abroad.”
“This IOJ had a lovely house which they used for these purposes. So I come there and the students asked me ‘What’s happening?’ And I said ‘Well, history is happening here. The regime is obviously getting dismantled.’ They said ‘Tell us, what’s going on?’ So I told them about hundreds of thousands of people in Prague and they said ‘What should we do?’ I said ‘I can’t tell you what to do, but if I were a journalist and I was at a place where history is in the making, for God’s sake, I wouldn’t sit in a classroom being lectured by the representatives of the regime that is going down the drain!’ They said ‘Do you think so?’ I said ‘Look, so many journalists are trying to get to Prague, trying to gather pictures, trying to gather news. You are here.’ Most of them already worked; they were active journalists – young ones. Okay, the next day I come there, because I had to come there and they said ‘You know, something’s happened. The students just didn’t come to class.’ I said ‘Oh dear. What could have happened to them? I hope they didn’t run into problems.’ ‘Well, we don’t know, but fortunately it’s the end [of the seminar]. Do you think we should report them?’ I said ‘Let it be. They’re probably curious.’ In the evening they rang me up and said ‘The IOJ is going, of course, to pay for the interpreters as agreed in the contract, but we’re afraid we won’t need you anymore.’ So I was paid for going to the demonstrations by the IOJ, and the students all followed my advice. So I thought it was good that I actually managed my last-moment revenge.”
“It was always very difficult to explain – let’s say in the ‘70s or even the ‘60s – to explain to Western Europeans what it is to live in a ‘socialist’ country. Because on one hand, they expected entering almost a prison when they came here, and then they were shocked that people lived normal lives, because they didn’t see underneath. The power the regime exerted on the people was much more subtle. It was through allowing you to go to school, or to study at university or not, to get this or that job, to travel somewhere or not, and that’s not what the visitors see. They can’t see this. And this was difficult to understand for Western Europeans, not to speak about Americans. It must be very difficult to understand for the Americans. It was just life that was seemingly normal, but only seemingly.”
Jitka studied linguistics at Charles University, focusing on English and Russian languages. After graduating, she taught at a high school for one year and then began teaching English to university students studying engineering. Jitka says this job was ‘great’ as it gave her time to train for tennis and compete internationally. In 1967, Jitka and her husband moved to London for one year where she taught English at an elementary school. They returned in the fall of 1967, a time which Jitka calls ‘wonderful’ because of the reforms that marked the Prague Spring. Immediately after the Warsaw Pact invasion in August 1968, Jitka and her husband left Czechoslovakia. While waiting for permission to immigrate to the United States, Jitka lived in Munich where she learned German and worked as a nanny. In March 1969, the pair moved to New York City. For one year Jitka worked as a Russian interpreter for the United Nations. She then began teaching lessons at a tennis club in Manhattan where her clients included Robert Redford and Walter Cronkite. Jitka says that her first years in the United States were ‘lonely’ and that she sought out Czech connections. She joined the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences (SVU) in the 1970s and is currently the president of the New York chapter. In 1973, Jitka had her daughter Nicole and moved to Long Island where she continued to teach tennis. She became the tennis director at Cold Spring Harbor Beach Club and worked there until the late 1990s. For a short time she also worked for Christie’s interpreting for Russian art dealers.
Since moving to the United States, Jitka has become an art collector and has exhibited the work of Czech artists. She has been involved in charity work and often uses the connections she has made from tennis and with her fellow Czech émigrés for fundraisers and other events. Jitka has also hosted Czech students and opened her home to newly-arrived Czech immigrants. Although she loves to visit Prague, Jitka says that she ‘feels more American than Czech.’ She lives in Manhattan with her second husband, Pavel.
]]>Jitka Volavka-Illner was born in Prague in 1939. Her father, Václav, was a successful businessman who owned two coal mines while her mother, Věra, who had studied law, stayed home to raise Jitka and her three siblings. Jitka’s parents were avid art collectors and she remembers walking to museums and galleries with her father each week. Her family often went skiing in the Krkonoše mountains and, at the age of 14, Jitka won the junior national championships in giant slalom and downhill. That same year, Jitka was the national singles champion in tennis and she says that she had to decide between the two sports. Her father eventually steered her towards tennis and she went on to have a successful career on the international circuit; she first played at Wimbledon at age 16 and several times was ranked in the top 20 in the world.
Jitka studied linguistics at Charles University, focusing on English and Russian languages. After graduating, she taught at a high school for one year and then began teaching English to university students studying engineering. Jitka says this job was ‘great’ as it gave her time to train for tennis and compete internationally. In 1967, Jitka and her husband moved to London for one year where she taught English at an elementary school. They returned in the fall of 1967, a time which Jitka calls ‘wonderful’ because of the reforms that marked the Prague Spring. Immediately after the Warsaw Pact invasion in August 1968, Jitka and her husband left Czechoslovakia. While waiting for permission to immigrate to the United States, Jitka lived in Munich where she learned German and worked as a nanny. In March 1969, the pair moved to New York City. For one year Jitka worked as a Russian interpreter for the United Nations. She then began teaching lessons at a tennis club in Manhattan where her clients included Robert Redford and Walter Cronkite. Jitka says that her first years in the United States were ‘lonely’ and that she sought out Czech connections. She joined the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences (SVU) in the 1970s and is currently the president of the New York chapter. In 1973, Jitka had her daughter Nicole and moved to Long Island where she continued to teach tennis. She became the tennis director at Cold Spring Harbor Beach Club and worked there until the late 1990s. For a short time she also worked for Christie’s interpreting for Russian art dealers.
Since moving to the United States, Jitka has become an art collector and has exhibited the work of Czech artists. She has been involved in charity work and often uses the connections she has made from tennis and with her fellow Czech émigrés for fundraisers and other events. Jitka has also hosted Czech students and opened her home to newly-arrived Czech immigrants. Although she loves to visit Prague, Jitka says that she ‘feels more American than Czech.’ She lives in Manhattan with her second husband, Pavel.
“He really loved languages and he spoke about three, and my mother two. They all spoke, of course, German, and my father actually learned Russian because he loved Russian literature. So he read Tolstoy and Pushkin in Russian. So he always wanted us to learn languages. My brothers were not really oriented, but I liked it very, very much. He loved poetry. He recited poems and, as a little kid, I learned all the poems by heart. So when we went for a walk, which was usually on Sunday to the museums because he was a big art collector, we would recite poems on the way.�?
“After I graduated high school, I applied to Charles University to study languages, and I was probably the most nervous because I kind of had to lie in my resume. I could never be truthful about my father’s past. Of course I said he was from a family of 14 and that kind of thing, but I never really talked about his business success. After the communists actually nationalized his business, he worked for quite a while at some business ministry because the communists didn’t know how to run things, so they needed people like my father, so he had a pretty good job. That was all in my resume and to my greatest relief I did get [admitted] to the faculty of philosophy to study linguistics. I wanted to study English and German or English and French, but they wouldn’t allow you to study two Western languages; you had to have one Slavic language. So I took Russian because we had Russian probably since the fifth grade, so it was no big deal. I was fluent already in Russian, so it was at least easy.�?
“That was awesome. I won the gold medal, and we were a very small Czech team. We only had one tennis player – that was me – and we had a men’s volleyball team and a runner, and we won most of the medals and the Brazilian government decided to give us a special prize and invited us for nine days to Rio de Janeiro. It was fantastic, and all the Czech immigrants who left before the War, after the War, they all looked us up; we were all over the newspaper. They celebrated us so much and we were not used to it. With the communists, you won and they never said a word of praise. They would almost say ‘Oh she won because the other one played so badly.’ That was their usual approach, and there, when I won, they lifted me up and carried me through the town and there were big billboards with a photo double my size. Wherever we came, they said ‘Oh my god, are you the tennis champion? Would you like some coffee?’ So that’s something I will never forget. The most precious victory.�?
“I started teaching on a university level. First I had to learn all the expressions for mechanical engineering, because that was something I never knew much about. So I studied the scripts and learned words in Czech and then in English. The great advantage was that at the university level, you only taught eight to ten hours a week and that was all, which was wonderful because I had all the time in the world for training for tennis. I had a special deal that I taught double the amount in the winter semester and I took off for tennis tournaments in spring. We started usually on the French Riviera, and then it was Italy, and then it was Paris, then it was London – Wimbledon – and then it was all in Germany and Austria, and then we always had some special trip, like to China. So I traveled, and then in September I resumed my teaching again. So that was wonderful.
“The other was, in the ‘60s, things were getting looser and looser so we were not feeling the communist oppression that much. People started traveling and the deans of the technical faculties in Czechoslovakia started traveling and they were very smart guys, engineers, but they were totally at a loss when they were traveling. They didn’t even know what “entrance�? and “exit�? were. They didn’t understand. So they were looking for somebody who could teach them English and they hired me. I had five deans from various faculty [and I was] teaching practical English to these guys, which was great fun, because I made my own vocabulary for them, and I taught them through jokes. It was just wonderful and they loved me to death. And then, I taught only four hours a week and just one class of students, so that was great.�?
“He wanted a lesson and I said ‘I’m sorry, I can’t give you a lesson.’ He said ‘What is so important?’ I had no idea [who he was]; I never ask people what they do. I said ‘Well, they have a painting at Christie’s at auction which I want to bid for,’ and he said ‘Christie’s? Did you know that I’m the head of Christie’s?’ He was the chairman of Christie’s! I had no idea. So I went and I got the piece and we became kind of more personal, and then they offered me a job at Christie’s at the Russian department, because they said ‘There are Russians who come from Russia and they have lots of art and they bring it to Christie’s and nobody really speaks Russian. So you could actually accept that art and stuff.’ And that was a very interesting part of my life and I said ‘Yes, I will do it, but only if I can do it only in wintertime, because in summer I want to keep that job on Long Island.’ And that’s what I did for a few years. I worked at Christie’s and I learned more. It was fantastic because there was so much art every day. I would learn about antique furniture and paintings which you never saw because they went into auction, so that enriched my life too.�?
Juraj Slavik was born in Prague in October 1929, son of the then-minister of the interior, Juraj Slávik. In 1936, Juraj’s father was sent to head the Czechoslovak diplomatic mission in Poland, with whom relations were strained because of both countries’ claims to parts of Upper Silesia. Juraj attended the Lycée Français de Varsovie [the French School in Warsaw] but, in light of heightening tensions, was sent to school in Switzerland just before the outbreak of WWII. After a brief spell in Belgium, Juraj spent the War in Britain, first with his parents in London (where his father was a member of the Czechoslovak government-in-exile) and then as a boarder at Magdalen College School in Oxford and the Czechoslovak State School of Great Britain in Llanwrtyd Wells, Wales.
Juraj returned with his parents to Czechoslovakia in 1945. One year later, however, Juraj’s father was appointed Czechoslovak ambassador to the United States and so the family left for America. Following the Communist coup in Czechoslovakia in 1948, Juraj’s father resigned from his post and the family decided to stay in the United States. Juraj’s siblings Dušan and Taňa remained in Czechoslovakia, where Dušan was subsequently arrested and spent 11 years in jail.
Juraj studied philosophy at Dartmouth College and then volunteered for the draft, serving in the U.S. Army between 1953 and 1956 as a translator debriefing Czech and Slovak refugees after they crossed the border into West Germany. In 1960, Juraj married his wife, Julie Bres Slavik. The couple have two children. After a successful career working for the U.S. government’s cultural exchange Program, Juraj, now retired, devotes much of his time to Slovak and Czech organizations, including Friends of Slovakia and the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences (SVU). In 1990, Juraj returned his father’s ashes to his native Slovakia. He has worked with Slovak and Czech historians to have his father’s letters published. In 2006, a book about Juraj’s father, titled Juraj Slávik Neresnický: od politiky cez diplomaciu po exil 1890-1969, was published in Bratislava by Slovak historian Slavomír Michálek.
Juraj Slavik was born in Prague in October 1929, son of the then-minister of the interior, Juraj Slávik. In 1936, Juraj’s father was sent to head the Czechoslovak diplomatic mission in Poland, with whom relations were strained because of both countries’ claims to parts of Upper Silesia. Juraj attended the Lycée Français de Varsovie [the French School in Warsaw] but, in light of heightening tensions, was sent to school in Switzerland just before the outbreak of WWII. After a brief spell in Belgium, Juraj spent the War in Britain, first with his parents in London (where his father was a member of the Czechoslovak government-in-exile) and then as a boarder at Magdalen College School in Oxford and the Czechoslovak State School of Great Britain in Llanwrtyd Wells, Wales.
Juraj returned with his parents to Czechoslovakia in 1945. One year later, however, Juraj’s father was appointed Czechoslovak ambassador to the United States and so the family left for America. Following the Communist coup in Czechoslovakia in 1948, Juraj’s father resigned from his post and the family decided to stay in the United States. Juraj’s siblings Dušan and Taňa remained in Czechoslovakia, where Dušan was subsequently arrested and spent 11 years in jail.
Juraj studied philosophy at Dartmouth College and then volunteered for the draft, serving in the U.S. Army between 1953 and 1956 as a translator debriefing Czech and Slovak refugees after they crossed the border into West Germany. In 1960, Juraj married his wife, Julie Bres Slavik. The couple have two children. After a successful career working for the U.S. government’s cultural exchange Program, Juraj, now retired, devotes much of his time to Slovak and Czech organizations, including Friends of Slovakia and the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences (SVU). In 1990, Juraj returned his father’s ashes to his native Slovakia. He has worked with Slovak and Czech historians to have his father’s letters published. In 2006, a book about Juraj’s father, titled Juraj Slávik Neresnický: od politiky cez diplomaciu po exil 1890-1969, was published in Bratislava by Slovak historian Slavomír Michálek.
“Being minister of the interior, he was in charge of police issues. And the commissioner of police for Prague was, I don’t remember his title, but it was Doležal. And Doležal came to my father and said that they had a report that there was going to be an attempt to assassinate the president, Masaryk, but that they had no real solid information about it, it was just hearsay. But what should they do? Masaryk was supposed to speak at the Obecní dům in Prague…
“The bottom line was that they decided to flood the place with secret police, or tajní, as they used to call them – mufti – in civilian clothes. And the way they identified where they were was to put potted palms in this meeting hall so, beside every potted palm was a policeman out of uniform. And the guy who came to assassinate Masaryk must have sensed this police presence and decided he wasn’t going to try it, it was too much of a chance… So the president was saved and so this guy, whose name was Gorguloff, a Russian terrorist – today, you would call him a terrorist – decided who was to blame and he said ‘Slávik’s to blame, because he is the head of the police system!’ So he came after my father in Schnirchova – that was the name of the street in Prague.
“And he came to our apartment in Schnirchova on the pretext of presenting a book to my father. And so my father – in those days you didn’t think about these things or security – so he agreed that he would meet. It was easier to meet at the apartment than at the office. So, this man Gorguloff came to the apartment. It was fairly recently after my birth. My mother didn’t know that he had a guest. In the deposition that came out later, he said that he had this book for my father to initial or sign, and under the book he had the pistol. And he was going to wait until my father looked down into the book to sign, and he was going to shoot him. And at that point my mother happened to, not knowing that there was a guest, open the sliding doors, somehow she had me in her arms. The guy took one look at her and ran out. Later he said that he had seen the Madonna – so that became a family joke, because they said ‘Who do you think you are?’ And I said ‘I don’t know!’ The bottom line was that later he settled in France and shot the French president, Paul Doumer.”
“The instructions came from the minister of foreign affairs, Chvalkovský, to the embassy – to the mission, because it was not an embassy, it was the mission, the legation, or whatever its titles were – to turn over the legation to the Germans, since they were now the new Protectorate and they had the right… With the exception, probably, of one individual, the embassy staff said no. It was decided that it would not be turned over. The Poles by this time were beginning to be a little worried. They said, you know, it’s an extra-territorial problem, we really can’t get involved in the middle of this. My father at one point had a phone call, which he says was a muffled voice, which he thought he recognized as being Ambassador von Moltke, who was the German ambassador, who was a good friend.
“The warning was that the German Gestapo had gained keys to the Czechoslovak legation and were coming to take over. Do something about the locks… so they put sand and paper and junk into the locks and so the German keys did not work and the Poles had insisted that the takeover be without violence. So the German Gestapo departed the scene, you know, and left without the embassy. And it was used as a focal point for all the Czechoslovaks who were escaping across the border from Czechoslovakia and Slovakia into Poland and where perhaps the nucleus of this potential legion, which took a while to get approved, and so by the time they were approved, it was too late.”
“Tony Mach packed up some papers of my father’s and took them back to his father’s farm in Volhynia, including a suitcase full of my father’s dressier things like the smoking, the dinner jacket, the white tie, tails, you know – the formal dresses, his decorations, his sashes – you know, ambassadors used to wear these formal decorations. And he took them all to his father and mother’s farm in Volhynia, where he spent the war working in a German factory, going back to his parents on weekends, taking out the clothes, brushing them to get rid of the moths, cleaning them up, and keeping them safe, including the papers. Had the Germans found the papers on that farm, it would have been the death of all of them, I mean, it was just that kind of situation.
“Many years later, my father has just learned that he is going to be ambassador to the United States, and about a day or so later, there was this movement of the Volhynian Czechs – they had been brought back into the German Sudeten areas. And the people in Volhynia were told ‘You can opt, you can stay here and become a citizen of the Soviet Union,’ which was expanding into Poland, ‘or you can go back to Czechoslovakia which is no longer subject to counter-reformation practices.’ So, they opted to go back to Czechoslovakia after 300-odd years of emigration.
“And so Tony… they put everything onto horse carts and ox carts and whatever, and the doorkeeper at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Černín Palace, comes up to my father’s office and says ‘Mr. Minister, umm, there’s a man here with a horse cart, and he says he knows you, he’s got some things of yours.’ And so my father says ‘Oh my God!’ So he goes downstairs and there’s Tony Mach, our butler, with all these things of my father’s! And he had brought them on his way from Poland to wherever they were going in the Sudeten area. And so, of course, the irony of it was that my father’s shape had changed over time. Most of the things didn’t fit anymore. But the papers… so half the papers were saved this way – that’s why my father was able to write his memoirs!”
“Rosslyn House had a phenomenal view of London. So of course we watched the Battle of Britain from our windows, when we were not in the air-raid shelter. Although I tended to sneak out and try and watch, because I could see the fires and the German bombers, you know, illuminated in the searchlights. That was real heady stuff, you know! Later, or actually not later – earlier – there was one day that I remember I was in the garden, and there was this roar, and I looked up and a German Heinkel was coming and I could see the pilot with his goggles and his head, looking out, and he was obviously trying to get his bearings, because I thought he was going to hit the hill, I mean, it was just round… And about 30, no it couldn’t have been 30, about 10 or 15 seconds later, two Spitfires were barreling exactly on the same path! That was all the noise! And of course they started, I could hear them shooting, and eventually there was a plume of smoke, so you know they got him. So this would go on, you know, and it was watching the dog fights during the day, because you were wondering, was it one of ours or one of theirs? You know, they’d come plummeting down with smoke trailing and stuff like that. And that was, as I say, very heady stuff.
“And then going to school was fascinating, because there was a lot of shrapnel on the road, and it was suggested that it would be helpful to collect the shrapnel, so we had bags or buckets or whatever, putting the pieces of shells in to collect so that they could melt it and shoot it back. And the prize collection was always the fuse – the shell fuse, which was the settings for the explosion at a certain altitude – so that was, those were real collector’s items, those you could trade, and so it was great fun collecting. Of course it also meant, because the air-raids would come in the morning, we always hoped it would be in time to slow us down on going to school! Because then we could do the collecting of the shells, the ammunition, the spent shells, the shrapnel and be late at school, so that was a benefit – and do a good deed by turning it in, and then in the evening, we’d spend the night in the shelters, because they would do some bombing at night.”
“There were some cases that were pretty horrendous. I don’t think it’s a classified one – one border guard shot the other border guard who was patrolling with him, they were covering the border security, you know the mined area and stuff like that, the barbed-wire fences and the machine gun sectors and stuff like that. And this guy was on the border, was on a patrol with his buddy, and he shot him in the back, killed him, and then escaped. He said the reason he shot him was it was the only way he could feel secure to effect his own escape; the Czech authorities said he was a murderer and had escaped in order to escape punishment for his crime. Two different stories – one the government’s, one this ordinary border, pohraniční stráž guy’s – we were hard put, because obviously, if it was murder and escape from the penalties of murder, he should be returned. If he had in effect gotten out because he had killed a guy in order to effectuate a successful escape, that was another question. The question of course immediately comes to mind ‘Why didn’t he just knock him in the head and pass him out, and then make his way out?’ The question there was ‘How long would it have taken him to get out?’ He had no way of knowing how long it would take to effect his escape, whether the guy would recover and call the alarm before he could… you know, so there was a real judgment… I had to take him to Frankfurt for a lie-detector test that we did, and the lie-detector operator said ‘I believe his story checks out, his escape rationale, however, I would not like to be his mother and tell him no about having a cookie!’ So, we sort of knew how amoral this individual was.”
“At one point he says he was visited by a couple of secrets, tajní, you know, and they said ‘Would you write a letter to your father to tell him it’s okay to come back to this country?’ You know, ‘Everything will be forgiven’, and Dušan said ‘What do you mean, forgiven?’ And they sort of negotiated this. And he said ‘Look, I can’t see my wife, I can’t see my child, I don’t have anything to read, I can’t write, everything is forbidden. Forget it!’ And they said, ‘Well, if we were to give you some of these benefits, would you consider writing a letter?’ And he said ‘Consider? Of course! Sure!’ And so of course then he did write a letter, and he obviously put in little references which they didn’t like. So they never sent the letter, but they did give him the freedom, and they asked him what did he want to read? And he said ‘I want to read Karl Marx, Das Kapital.’ They said, ‘Why do you want to read that?’ And he says ‘To learn how you think so I know how to fight you!’ So, he said ‘I figured I was in for a beating’, but he said they only tried to do it once. He was big, much bigger than I am, heftier, and he said the interrogator came at him, and he said he took the chair he was sitting on and pinned the guy against the wall and he said ‘You try and do that again and I’ll kill you, I have nothing to lose!’ And they never beat him after that.”
In 1989, Katya was in Bratislava at the start of the Velvet Revolution. She returned to Prague where her brother was involved in the student leadership of the Revolution and told her about a job opening. Katya succeeded Rita Klímová (who left the position to became ambassador to the United States) as interpreter for the press office of the Civic Forum. She held that job until the first elections took place in June 1990 and then returned to the United States. Katya subsequently lived in Seattle where she held interpreting and translating jobs, and worked in several art galleries. In 1999 she moved to New York City and married her second husband, Doug Heller. Today, Katya is the director of the Heller Gallery, which showcases glass sculpture. She also serves on the board of directors of the Czech Center in New York.
]]>Katya Heller was born in Prague in 1960 to an American mother and Czech father. Her mother, Joy, had left the United States in 1947 to travel to Europe with hopes of going to the Soviet Union, but decided to stay in Prague. She then met Katya’s father, Jiří, while they were studying Russian at Charles University. Both of her parents held communist beliefs (her mother was denied membership in the Communist Party because she was American); however, Katya says that following the Warsaw Pact invasion in August 1968, they both lost their jobs and her father became disillusioned with the Party. Katya says she first began having thoughts of leaving the country when she was having difficulty getting accepted to the high school of her choice because of her parents’ backgrounds. She was admitted to Charles University’s Philosophical Faculty where she studied English and Spanish and enrolled in the school’s translating and interpreting program. While in school, Katya had several freelance interpreting jobs which she says put her in contact with the secret police who hoped that she would pass on information she gathered about the West. In 1985, Katya married her first husband, an American who was teaching in Prague at the time. The couple left Czechoslovakia in 1986 and went to Barcelona, as Katya’s husband had received a one-year fellowship. Their daughter was born the same year and, the following year, Katya and her family moved to the United States and settled in Seattle.
In 1989, Katya was in Bratislava at the start of the Velvet Revolution. She returned to Prague where her brother was involved in the student leadership of the Revolution and told her about a job opening. Katya succeeded Rita Klímová (who left the position to became ambassador to the United States) as interpreter for the press office of the Civic Forum. She held that job until the first elections took place in June 1990 and then returned to the United States. Katya subsequently lived in Seattle where she held interpreting and translating jobs, and worked in several art galleries. In 1999 she moved to New York City and married her second husband, Doug Heller. Today, Katya is the director of the Heller Gallery, which showcases glass sculpture. She also serves on the board of directors of the Czech Center in New York.
“My mother was never able to join the Communist Party because, even though she was leftist, she was suspected by the Czech communists of being a U.S. informer, which was a very awkward situation because she was in fact suspected by the U.S. government also of being a leftist-leaning communist – not suspect – they knew she was a leftist-leaning communist. So she was caught kind of in a catch-22. But because of her own beliefs, and I think because, interestingly enough, I think that the American communists were in some ways the most fervent, but the most naïve at the same time. And also I think because she had given up a lot. She left her home in the United States and as she went through the 1950s in communist Czechoslovakia she also had to give up her U.S. citizenship under duress, and so she, at that point, had to make the decision that she would possibly never return here, and I think in making that decision, she kind of went wholeheartedly for her beliefs over her country.
“Whereas my father was in a different situation because he was at home. So whatever happened there, there was nowhere else to go. There was no possible fallback position; this was the ultimate position and he chose to be much more of a dissident, in a way, than my mother because my mother couldn’t give up the hope. I think communism became almost like a religion to her. She really couldn’t give it up. And so we were brought up in this slightly bipolar household. Not completely, because my mother was very intelligent and of course she understood the subtleties, but she would always be genuinely questioning ‘If you are being so critical, are you actually trying to do things that would improve things?’ Whereas my father was much more cynical in the Czech way and he really, I think, stopped believing after 1968.”
“Because I was at school and I had opportunity to do some interpreting, I did that, but of course that got me into further trouble – not really trouble, but further conflict – with the regime. The communist government always worried about the people that were on the forefront of the contact between the West and the East and of course they were the people they could either use or abuse, or different things could happen in those situations. There were not that many of those people and they tried it with everyone, I assume. So they kind of came to me. A secret policeman showed up one day. The first time it happened I was completely in shock because I didn’t even understand what was happening. I was working at a summer job in a little chicken rotisserie place off of Wenceslas Square and I got this job interpreting for a European basketball championship where some amateur American team was going to come in and I was going to be an interpreter for them, but also for everybody else. And this guy comes into this store where I was working with the chickens and he basically said ‘Look, I am from the secret police and I need to talk to you after you finish work today. So I tried to think about what would be the best thing for me to do and I thought ‘Ok, I’ll just be quiet and I’ll say that I’m willing to listen but I’m not willing to say anything right now.’ They tried to be kind of jovial, which was also very strange, and we went to this little café called The Mouse and it was right near the place where I was working, and I remember sitting there in this t-shirt and the sweat running down my arms but I didn’t want to let on, so I kept trying to smile and be polite but not say anything.
“That was the first encounter, but I had several more of them because they would come after me asking me would I work with them? Would I just tell them; they didn’t want anything really bad; they just wanted basic information, where people were and when they were coming and going and things like that. And I said ‘Look, I don’t really feel comfortable. I would prefer not to do this, this is not something I want to do.’ And then they would always start saying, ‘Well, we know that your father is in a precarious job at the State Pedagogical Publishing House and we know that your brother is trying to get into the school of architecture and we can help…or not.’ So it became very difficult.”
“We were living in this house that was called ‘The Hotel House’ [hotelový dům] I guess, and it was basically a building that was designed and built for foreigners to live in. That of course meant that it was thoroughly bugged. It had a doorman downstairs. There were no phones in any of the apartments that had an outside line; there was only a buzzer downstairs to the door and to the doorman, and the doorman had the only phone. It wasn’t even a public pay phone; it was just a phone. There was a public pay phone in the vestibule, but you could only call locally. For example, if my in-laws were calling from the United States, they had to call the downstairs of thehotelový dům and the doorman, who spoke no English – which I always marvel at how they were watching us if these people didn’t speak a foreign language; they spoke a little German, I think – and that person would buzz you upstairs to say you had a phone call and you had to go downstairs eight floors to get the phone. Of course, ‘yes’ in Czech is ano and for short people say ano, no, no, no, and so the doorman would get on the phone and he would say, ‘Yes, Stephen Garrow, ano, no, no, no’ and the Americans thought they were saying ‘No,’ so they hung up. So by the time you got downstairs they would have hung up. It was like a comedy of errors.”
“There was a lot of rather humiliating paperwork. Some of it was just paperwork and some of it was stupid paperwork, like the government required that you make a list of all your possessions that you take out and you tell them how much they were worth when you purchased them and how much they are worth now, and that included everything including your underwear and all personal items. And they sent somebody to examine that and to close your suitcases for you and to seal them, and you couldn’t leave the country with those suitcases unless they were still sealed. For example, when we were leaving, I was pregnant and some of our friends gave us baby clothes and I couldn’t take that with me because they said I had no baby so I couldn’t bring the clothing. It was all really a kind of harassment I suppose.
“We drove out of the country through southern Bohemia and into Austria. That was a little bit weird. It was difficult. Everything seemed so finite at the time. It’s very hard to even think about it now because it is so different now and it is so easy to go back and forth and there isn’t any sense that something can be so finite. There was a gate – I don’t know what it’s called in English. It’s like what they used to have at the railroad crossing; they used to be made out of poles and they would just go down – and that’s what they had the border and it would close and you drove out and you felt like I just left everything I knew behind me. There was no easy way to go back and that was very difficult. You had to apply for paperwork with the same idiots that you just got paperwork to get out from, and that was the toughest time, I think, for me.”
“I have to say that there are some things I look at today with hindsight and I think to myself that we had certain privileges that we didn’t understand. We were completely shielded from a media culture. We were taught to question almost every message that we received from the outside which, while exhausting to live like that, it can also be very rewarding and I think it breeds a greater curiosity about the world around you. It was also easier somehow to become more involved because there was a greater cause; there seemed to be a greater need. It was like, ‘Ok, if we don’t get rid of this government, nobody will.’ Or, ‘If we don’t get rid of it or if we don’t vote with our feet and leave, it will not happen.’ Whereas here, when I look at my daughter’s generation and I think how relatively few of those young people that I knew were involved politically, compared to my generation. I always question what are all the benefits? It’s a much more complex situation. It becomes a much more complex situation.”
“The transition was not easy. It was such a time of trying to figure out how do you make a new government with people who were very educated and everything, but who were not necessarily prepared for these jobs. It was an interesting time to be around. I remember, for example, one of the people that I interpreted for, when Lithuania became its own country, separating from the Soviet Union which actually happened while we were, in Czechoslovakia, running up towards our first free elections in June of 1990, and they elected the first president and his name was Vytautas Landsbergis, and he was a musicologist and he was like Havel who was a playwright, and he was not necessarily being groomed for years to be president; he was a dissident musicologist. He came to Prague and you were talking to these people who still had one foot in a different world and one foot about to step on the world stage. It was very emotionally charged in a way. You were kind of operating on this raw energy, and I knew many of these people because they were friends of my family or friends of friends of my family, and we knew them from this underground, dissident environment where we were in the opposition, and all of the sudden the opposition becomes the ruling party. It’s a little difficult, and not everybody can make that transition.
“I will never forget that one of the smartest people who I think is in that group has never really emerged to be any great political figure in Czechoslovakia, Jan Urban, and I remember very early on thinking ‘Why didn’t he run for president?’ I was working with my friend Peter Green and we were together having a beer with Jan Urban and a couple other people, and somebody said to Urban ‘Why aren’t you running’ for something, and he said ‘I don’t do well in those jobs. I think I have a disposition to the opposition and I don’t feel like I can change.’ So it was very interesting.”
“My dream was always to work in the arts. I originally thought that I really wanted to work in the theatre. That I wanted to combine my ability to speak both languages and be a translator but, specifically, also a dramaturg who adapts texts for the theatre. That avenue, it became clear, was not available to me in Czechoslovakia, and when I got to the States, I really didn’t pursue it further because I needed to make a living and I became interested in finding out how I could best do that. The easiest way for me, it seemed, was to find a connection through my ability to speak another language or understand the communist world and the United States and speak two languages that gave me the greatest earning power and the most interesting jobs.”
Paula Moss was born in Prague in 1925. Her father, Josef Hubka, served as a senator for the Czechoslovak National Socialist Party for three terms until Parliament was dissolved before the outbreak of WWII. Her mother, Anna, was a housewife. Paula attended Jan Masaryk Elementary School in the Prague district of Vinohrady and then the Akademie obchodní Dr. Edvarda Beneše [Beneš Business School], where she specialized in languages. Paula says her father wanted her to focus on studying French, but her first choice of foreign language was English, which she learned, she says, to improve her comprehension of Walt Disney films. Paula remembers food shortages in Prague during the War and says she would travel to the countryside to buy items such as pork illegally, until she came too close to being exposed, and so abandoned such activities.
Upon liberation in 1945, Paula traveled to Plzeň to visit one of her cousins, where her English-language skills were discovered by a member of General George Patton’s American Third Army during a victory parade. She was immediately taken on as a translator for the troops and followed the Third Army to the spa town of Mariánské Lázně when they withdrew to western Bohemia shortly after the end of the War. Paula says part of her work in Mariánské Lázně was with local authorities implementing the Beneš Decrees, which displaced thousands of ethnic Germans from the Czechoslovak border regions.
Paula moved to Germany with the troops about six months later and remained in Heidelberg when they left, working for the Seventh Army (which replaced them) instead. It was then that Paula met her husband, Captain Richard Moss. The pair were married in Prague in June 1947 and moved to his native Chicago upon his discharge the following year. They first lived with Paula’s in-laws on Lakewood Avenue before moving to the Rogers Park district of the city. The couple had three children. Richard worked in a number of roles for NBC Chicago for 35 years, while Paula worked as a librarian and in real estate. She became a U.S. citizen in 1956. Now widowed, Paula lives in Highland Park, Illinois. A long-term member of the Czechoslovak National Council of America, Paula has donated several historic garments originally belonging to her grandmother to the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library.
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Paula Moss was born in Prague in 1925. Her father, Josef Hubka, served as a senator for the Czechoslovak National Socialist Party for three terms until Parliament was dissolved before the outbreak of WWII. Her mother, Anna, was a housewife. Paula attended Jan Masaryk Elementary School in the Prague district of Vinohrady and then the Akademie obchodní Dr. Edvarda Beneše [Beneš Business School], where she specialized in languages. Paula says her father wanted her to focus on studying French, but her first choice of foreign language was English, which she learned, she says, to improve her comprehension of Walt Disney films. Paula remembers food shortages in Prague during the War and says she would travel to the countryside to buy items such as pork illegally, until she came too close to being exposed, and so abandoned such activities.
Upon liberation in 1945, Paula traveled to Plzeň to visit one of her cousins, where her English-language skills were discovered by a member of General George Patton’s American Third Army during a victory parade. She was immediately taken on as a translator for the troops and followed the Third Army to the spa town of Mariánské Lázně when they withdrew to western Bohemia shortly after the end of the War. Paula says part of her work in Mariánské Lázně was with local authorities implementing the Beneš Decrees, which displaced thousands of ethnic Germans from the Czechoslovak border regions.
Paula moved to Germany with the troops about six months later and remained in Heidelberg when they left, working for the Seventh Army (which replaced them) instead. It was then that Paula met her husband, Captain Richard Moss. The pair were married in Prague in June 1947 and moved to his native Chicago upon his discharge the following year. They first lived with Paula’s in-laws on Lakewood Avenue before moving to the Rogers Park district of the city. The couple had three children. Richard worked in a number of roles for NBC Chicago for 35 years, while Paula worked as a librarian and in real estate. She became a U.S. citizen in 1956. Now widowed, Paula lives in Highland Park, Illinois. A long-term member of the Czechoslovak National Council of America, Paula has donated several historic garments originally belonging to her grandmother to the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library.
“I think I was mostly inconvenienced, being a teenager, by the restrictions on our lives – social lives – and curfews at night. I tried to go to ballet school and I couldn’t go because you had to be home before dark. Everything was all closed up without lights, because they worried about the Allied planes going over and bombing.”
“It sort of goes with you, I think all these people that you might talk to and who spent their childhood and young adulthood through those time, those difficult times… I can’t throw any food away and I always am looking for something to save, and how would I do if I can’t go to the store? Because we would go out in the country and buy illegally on the black market food so that we could survive. But then, when you went through the train station, we would carry, let’s say, five pounds of pork, or something somebody in the country would sell us. And the Germans had German shepherds, and I remember one instance – and I think after that I didn’t do it, I didn’t want to go anymore – they caught the people before us. They were involved with whoever it was, I don’t remember, and they just sort of descended on them and we just sneaked by, it was another friend of mine.”
“I remember being on the town square, the beautiful town square, where there was a big parade for General Eisenhower and Bradley, Omar Bradley, and I was there with my cousin. We went down to see the parade. And I was trying to peek over the tops of the people in front of us and I couldn’t quite see. And an American soldier brought me a chair from somebody’s house, and I said ‘Well, thank you very much!’ And he said ‘Oh! There is a fräulein who speaks English!’ Well, I right away got involved in that and I was working as a translator for… that was the Third Army that went through Plzeň. And then they had to leave Plzeň, pull back, and they stopped in a town which is a beautiful resort town called Mariánské Lázně, Marienbad. And they offered me a job. I was, I think, 17 years old.”
So you became a translator for the American Third Army when they were in Plzeň, and when they withdrew to Marienbad you went too?
“Right. I had a lovely apartment in a hotel and every morning a Jeep would come and pick me up, and then at noon I would have one lunch in the enlisted men’s mess hall, and then I would be asked by somebody to have a lunch with some upper officers. Pineapple, bacon or coffee, it was just fantastic. So, I was for I guess six or seven months in Marienbad and I love that town.”
“In this town Marienbad where we were – our headquarters – there were people, older Germans, who lived there for x number of years and all of a sudden they were told ‘Pack your suitcase and go.’ And some of them, when they were elderly or ill, they would commit suicide. So, I was involved in finding out what was happening and then the American Army was working with the Czech police, so, some of it was not very pleasant. And I think I was doing it for only five or six months, and then they got some men to take over.”
In March 1997, Rasto arrived in Cleveland where he studied for one year at Cuyahoga Community College. He then received a scholarship from Cleveland State University, from which he graduated with a masters degree in music. In Cleveland, Rasto became involved with the Slovak community. He translated Jan Pankuch’s History of Slovaks in Cleveland and Lakewood into English, and assisted with the creation a cataloging system at the Slovak Institute. In 2000, he decided to stop pursing a professional music career and found employment at a residential real estate firm. In September 2007, he moved to Chicago, where he found a job selling commercial real estate.
Rasto knew as soon as he arrived in America that he did not want to return to Slovakia to live. He tried several approaches to gaining American citizenship. He says he was able to gain permanent resident status in Canada because his translating skills were considered valuable; however, in 2000, he also entered the U.S. green card lottery, which he won. In 2006, Rasto became an American citizen, an event he calls “one of the best days of his life.” He has been back to Slovakia several times to visit family and friends. Today, Rasto lives in Chicago.
]]>Rasto Gallo was born in Lučenec, Slovakia in 1970. His father, Zdenko, was a bank manager, and his mother, Eva (an ethnic Hungarian), was a teacher. When Rasto was four years old, his father received a promotion and the family moved to Banská Bystrica. The Gallos had a piano in their home that Rasto enjoyed playing; he later took music lessons. He remembers skiing and hiking in the nearby mountains. Rasto attendedgymnázium in Banská Bystrica where he began learning English. He says that he became interested in popular Western music, and that the only way to listen was from bootlegged cassette tapes because records were not readily available in Czechoslovakia at the time. Following gymnázium, Rasto enrolled at Matej Bel University (which was then a teacher’s college) to study music education. His first year there was marked by the Velvet Revolution. Rasto says he was out in the streets “almost every day” during these protests. He also says that the revolution had a “huge effect” on his life, as he was able to start studying English at university and was influenced by the Western culture that subsequently crossed the border. At university, Rasto became interested in jazz music and began playing the saxophone. He was admitted to study music at the conservatory in Bratislava, where he subsequently won a scholarship to the United States.
In March 1997, Rasto arrived in Cleveland where he studied for one year at Cuyahoga Community College. He then received a scholarship from Cleveland State University, from which he graduated with a masters degree in music. In Cleveland, Rasto became involved with the Slovak community. He translated Jan Pankuch’s History of Slovaks in Cleveland and Lakewood into English, and assisted with the creation a cataloging system at the Slovak Institute. In 2000, he decided to stop pursing a professional music career and found employment at a residential real estate firm. In September 2007, he moved to Chicago, where he found a job selling commercial real estate.
Rasto knew as soon as he arrived in America that he did not want to return to Slovakia to live. He tried several approaches to gaining American citizenship. He says he was able to gain permanent resident status in Canada because his translating skills were considered valuable; however, in 2000, he also entered the U.S. green card lottery, which he won. In 2006, Rasto became an American citizen, an event he calls “one of the best days of his life.” He has been back to Slovakia several times to visit family and friends. Today, Rasto lives in Chicago.
“My father especially, was very careful not to – back then, you didn’t know who you could trust and if you mentioned something in front of your kids, then they go to school and they talk to their friends and you can get your parents in trouble that way – so he was very careful not to show his opinions one way or another, so I don’t know what his views were. But I can tell you he was one of the few people who transitioned successfully [following the Velvet Revolution], he remained in his position, actually improved. Not because he was a Communist, but because he was a very capable guy and fair to everybody and never really got involved with the Communists, so people weren’t after him trying to get his head. It worked out well for him, not expressing his opinions, publicly anyway.”
“At that point I got into music, and I was listening to a British heavy metal band, Iron Maiden – they were my gods – so what helped me was I wanted to know what they were singing about, so I translated all their lyrics, and that’s how I really got much better at English. They were using different words than you’d usually find in high school textbooks and my level of interest was obviously much higher, so that always came very easy.”
“Well, we were there almost every day, but I was just in the crowd. I didn’t want to get involved, and not because I was against or for any of it, but I really didn’t know what was going on, and I’m the type of person that I’m not going to get involved unless I know what’s going on because what I don’t want to do is cause harm to somebody not knowing why. So I knew that I didn’t like communism and we wanted to get rid of that, but beyond that point, I really wasn’t going to get involved on a larger scale and get into the frontline, because it was unclear what the intentions were. And a lot of shady people come to the surface when something like that happens, because they recognize the opportunity to be in the spotlight or to better themselves, and people can quickly switch sides, and that’s what happened in a lot of cases back then. So I was just basically there to support, but as part of the masses and not in any sort of leading position.”
“Oh, I loved it right away. It’s one of those weird things I cannot explain. I felt like I was away from home for 27 years. Right away I liked it and I wanted to stay. I love Americans. They’re the most wonderful people in the world. They’re very friendly, funny, easy-going. I like them much more than Europeans, that’s why I would not go back. So, I liked it right away. When I came here, I knew I wanted to live here.”
“I always made a conscious effort to assimilate. I don’t want to stand out – it’s not that I don’t like to stand out – I don’t want to stand out as an immigrant. Because it always carries a little bit of a negative connotation, no matter what. You’re just not local, you’re not one of us, in a way. Although I’ve never felt that way, nobody ever made me feel that way. Americans are very open and liberal when it comes to that. After all, this country was established on those principles. I’m not afraid of telling people that I’m Slovak, it doesn’t bother me. But actually I feel much better when people tell me that ‘Oh you hardly have any accent.’ I like to hear that, not ‘Oh, are you from Slovakia? Where are you from?’ I don’t want people to pick up on that. Of course they do, but you know what I mean.”
Because of her knowledge of Russian, Suzanna quickly found a job filing newspaper articles at the Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics. She enrolled in SCPS filmmaking class at New York University (NYU) while working as a secretary for an art director at Walt Disney NY. In 1980, she left her job to travel and during that time worked as a hostess for the Polish team at the Winter Olympics in Lake Placid. Suzanna returned to New York City and did freelance film and video editing; she later worked for OMNI magazine. In April 1990, Suzanna organized a multimedia event at Manhattan’s Symphony Space called Prague Spring 1990, celebrating the Velvet Revolution and Czechoslovakia’s newfound freedom. Later, she organized several other events focused on Czech culture and literature. Today, Suzanna teaches Czech language courses privately and at NYU. She is also a freelance translator, interpreter and Czech diction coach for theater and opera. In 1995, she was invited to become the administrator of the Friends of Czech Greenways, an organization in New York that promotes cultural and environmental preservation along the Prague-Vienna Greenways. Suzanna is on the board of the New York chapter of the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences (SVU) and organizes events and programs. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and son.
]]>Suzanna Halsey was born in Karlovy Vary in western Bohemia in 1951. Her father, Alois Pakeš, was a grandson of the mayor of Písek. He studied law, but Suzanna says that his bourgeois background prevented him from practicing after the Communist coup in 1948 and, instead, he worked in an office job. Her mother Ruth was originally from Polish Silesia and worked as an office manager. Today Suzanna’s mother lives in Germany. Suzanna says that she was lucky to have been raised in Karlovy Vary as it was a rather cosmopolitan town, thanks to its world-famous spas and its international film festival. She moved to Prague in 1969 to study Latin and philosophy at Charles University. Upon graduating, Suzanna worked for a publishing house editing philosophy textbooks. It was here that Suzanna witnessed the public humiliation of one of her colleagues who attended the funeral of the philosopher Jan Patočka which, she says, led to her decision to emigrate. In 1977, Suzanna managed to get permission to travel to West Germany for three days. She extended her stay abroad for one month and traveled on to France and England, where she met her American husband. Suzanna returned to Czechoslovakia and the following year, after all the arrangements were made, moved to New York City.
Because of her knowledge of Russian, Suzanna quickly found a job filing newspaper articles at the Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics. She enrolled in SCPS filmmaking class at New York University (NYU) while working as a secretary for an art director at Walt Disney NY. In 1980, she left her job to travel and during that time worked as a hostess for the Polish team at the Winter Olympics in Lake Placid. Suzanna returned to New York City and did freelance film and video editing; she later worked for OMNI magazine. In April 1990, Suzanna organized a multimedia event at Manhattan’s Symphony Space called Prague Spring 1990, celebrating the Velvet Revolution and Czechoslovakia’s newfound freedom. Later, she organized several other events focused on Czech culture and literature. Today, Suzanna teaches Czech language courses privately and at NYU. She is also a freelance translator, interpreter and Czech diction coach for theater and opera. In 1995, she was invited to become the administrator of the Friends of Czech Greenways, an organization in New York that promotes cultural and environmental preservation along the Prague-Vienna Greenways. Suzanna is on the board of the New York chapter of the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences (SVU) and organizes events and programs. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and son.
“I would say that Karlovy Vary was a great town to live in, because it was not too Czech. It was kind of cosmopolitan, because every two years we had an international film festival and, because it was a spa [town], we had international guests. Many Russians, but also some foreigners. And why it was also wonderful was because it was a small town, international, and yet, you walked just ten minutes out and you were in the woods. So I’m actually very blessed that I was growing up there.”
“The college life – as any college life – was fun. Although, imagine this. We didn’t have computers; we didn’t have iPhones; we didn’t have televisions in our rooms – we had maybe a little radio in there. So the life for students was actually very interesting. And Prague was very gray and kind of Kafkaesque. If you go to Prague nowadays it’s Disneyland, but at that time it was grayish and broken. But I’m kind of nostalgically thinking about it because we were going… The wine was very cheap – so we spent our time in pubs, in the wine bars. We, even as students, could afford it, and we were discussing things. We were discussing philosophy and books and the meaning of life, and we were going to movies. If a book was published that made it through the censors, [we asked each other] ‘Did you read that?’ It was exciting to get a book! People were standing in line for books. So that part was fun.”
“I was frustrated because the whole setup of life in Czechoslovakia was, in a way, humiliating to people’s minds, because you have to repeat or you have to participate or you opened the newspaper and there were these idiotic statements about harvest and about how we are fighting [Patrice] Lumumba and all that stuff. Not Lumumba – we were friends with Lumumba – but ‘We’re fighting the imperialists’ and stuff like that. And then you were waiting in line for one banana. If you heard ‘Oh there was a banana,’ it was exciting; or if they run out of underwear. Materialistically, it was very frustrating.
“But I think that as far as the mind goes, we were much richer for that because people were gathering around thoughts and ideas rather than around things. So we were not discussing ‘Oh, do you have a camera’ or ‘Do you have this or that?’ It was like ‘Do you have the book? Did you read it? Did you see the film? What did you think?’”
But were you aware that your access to reading matter and media was restricted?
“Of course. People were smuggling magazines from the West and books from the West. But one thing, paradoxically, when I’m looking back at it, is yeah, there was no freedom; there was censorship; the books were censored. There was ridiculous censoring of sentences because there was a word that could mean something to the Communists. But, as far as books go, in a way, the censorship also censored garbage. So what you have now on the market in Czechoslovakia, in the bookstores, all this garbage – the badly translated horror stories and love stories and romances and wellness books – that didn’t exist. They were actually publishing good quality books with illustrations. Book design was actually an art. Now they are manufacturing paperbacks. At that time, there was an art to bookmaking. So yes, you couldn’t get the latest novel by some disputable author, but it was smuggled in one way or another. If you really wanted it, you got it somehow.”
“I interviewed to become a hostess for the Winter Olympics in Lake Placid and I was accepted, and because I spoke Polish and the Polish hostess didn’t show up, I ended up being a hostess for the whole team. And that was very interesting because the Czechoslovak team brought their own hostess, who was Slovak, and it was interesting because they were very, very protective of their contacts. They were not really venturing out to talk to Americans – and especially not to émigrés. At that time, I was already studying film, so one day I get a phone call to my dorm that Miloš Forman called me and that I can call him back at reverse charges. So as a film student, I was excited of course. So I called him back and he asked me if I would help him to get a hotel room because he wants to come to a hockey game in Lake Placid.
“So I thought, ‘Ok I’ll do it.’ I thought he would offer me a job on one of his films, but that didn’t happen. So I did that and then I thought, ‘Wow, Miloš Forman in Lake Placid. I’ll take him to the Czech team. So I talked to the Czech hostess. They didn’t want to. Because he was persona non grata, so they would not accept for him to just come by. So I took him to the Polish team and the Polish team were all excited: ‘Oh yeah, we love you and [One Flew] Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ and vodka here and vodka there. Totally different approach. And I know the Poles were always much better treating their émigrés than the Czechs. Even during communism, they had this Polonia – which is the Polish abroad – and they never had problems communicating with them.”
But rejecting Miloš Forman. That must have been quite striking.
“Yeah. It was embarrassing. It was just pure embarrassment for the country.”
“Our idea in Czech Republic was to help the local economy and bring people out of Prague, because everybody goes to Prague. But there is so much to see elsewhere. And the locals needed to see foreigners because some of the greenway goes near the Austrian border so it was a no man’s land, so they didn’t see many tourists. We are trying to bring tourists there so the penzion [B&B] owners, the restaurants, the hotels, they learn better service. Better nutritious foods, better standards of service, et cetera, and they learn English. We had all kinds of programs and projects in place and cooperating with other people. Now, we are actually sort of picking different projects. Right now, I’m focusing on promoting and helping the new herb garden that we sponsored at the Valtice Chateau in Moravia. We just sponsored two students from Mendel University who work in the garden to go to London to study for a week how it’s done in the Chelsea Physic Garden. They came back with lots of ideas and enthusiasm. I run the Facebook [page], website and network and all that stuff. Moravian Wine Trails, that’s another one. Also a very successful program.”
Tony spent 27 months with his mother, sister and brother in various refugee camps in Germany (including Regensburg, Ludwigsburg and Pforzheim), before the family was allowed to travel to the United States and reunite with Tony’s father. Tony became an American citizen in 1954. He served in the United States Air Force between 1953 and 1957 and later became a Czech teacher at Morton High School, where he was formerly a student. Tony lives in La Grange Park with his Czech-American wife, Carmella, and works as a court interpreter with Czechs in Chicago.
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Tony Jandacek was born in Prague in 1934 and grew up in the city’s Smíchov district. His father, Antonín Jandáček, was a journalist who worked for the Ministry of Information during WWII, while his mother, Marie, worked as a secretary at a glass cutting company during the War. In 1945, Tony’s father was found not guilty on charges of Nazi collaboration and continued to work for the government until the Communist coup. When the Communists took over in February 1948, Tony was away on a ski trip in northeastern Bohemia. By the time he returned from the mountains one week later, his father had fled the country; Tony did not see his father for another three years. The family received no news of Antonín Jandáček until May 1948, when they received a postcard sent from Chicago, bearing no name but clearly in his handwriting. In September 1948, the remaining Jandáčeks crossed the border illegally at Železná Ruda into Germany. They pretended they were hunting for mushrooms, says Tony, who led the expedition.
Tony spent 27 months with his mother, sister and brother in various refugee camps in Germany (including Regensburg, Ludwigsburg and Pforzheim), before the family was allowed to travel to the United States and reunite with Tony’s father. Tony became an American citizen in 1954. He served in the United States Air Force between 1953 and 1957 and later became a Czech teacher at Morton High School, where he was formerly a student. Tony lives in La Grange Park with his Czech-American wife, Carmella, and works as a court interpreter with Czechs in Chicago.
“My father was a journalist, but he had to be very careful about what he said. He worked at the Ministry of Information, and of course everything was very strictly audited and basically controlled by the Germans. He got into some trouble with the Gestapo one time by using a sort of pun. He was forced, because he had a good speaking voice, he was compelled to read the news once a week and, on this one particular occasion, they were talking about the collision of the German troops and the allied troops. And the term used in Czech is srazka, which means collision, and there is also a vulgar word very similar to that which means diarrhea. And, of course, his colleagues – when he was rehearsing – his colleagues were teasing him and said ‘What if you said this?’ When my dad sat before the microphone, he blurted that out, and of course, before he was finished, a couple of Gestapo officers were waiting for him and took him into this infamous Petschkuv Palac. My father wasn’t tortured, but he was interrogated for 24 hours. And then, oddly enough, a high ranking official intervened on his behalf and he was released.”
“It was a difficult job for him, you know. On one to pretend, you know, that he was not against the German occupation and on the other hand still knowing and feeling that the Nazi occupation will not last very long. And during those days of the uprising in Prague, he was also actively involved in broadcasting and running messages from various centers of resistance in Prague.”
“There was a sort of a black market, whereby city dwellers would trade various items. Like my dad traded books and, I think, a bicycle for a goose or a turkey with a farmer that he knew. And of course, you had to be very careful bringing it to Prague during the, usually on weekends, because they would have special civilian officials who would control what was being brought to Prague and quite often it would be confiscated. So yes, for us [children] it was sort of funny, but there was an element of danger, certainly, for the adults.”
“I got a new pair of skis, and this was a two-week stay in the mountains, near where my father was born. And I was very anxious of course to be there, to try my new skis and so forth. My father knew that the crisis was developing in Czechoslovakia so he was very reluctant to let me go, but my mother was on my side. She begged him to allow me to go. And of course, by the time I returned to Prague, a week or so later – two weeks later actually – my father was gone already. He had crossed the border to West Germany successfully. While I was still away from Prague, and my father was gone at this time, the Communist police would come and look for some incriminating documents against my father, trying to punish my mother for the anti-communist work that my dad did. And of course my mother said that she did not share my father’s views and so on and so forth. She said ‘Well, I’m willing to divorce him because he abandoned the family.’ But they didn’t believe her, of course. And we were not directly persecuted, but obviously, there was no pension, there was no money during this time for my mother to have, but we had relatives and friends who supported us financially for a few months until our escape from Czechoslovakia in September 1948.”
“They registered everything. My mother had some valuables, some dollars and some gold rings, I think, that she had sewn into her bra of all places. But they threatened to punish us if we did not turn everything over to them. But be it to the credit of German precision, they recorded everything and it traveled with us from one refugee camp to another and, 27 months later, when we were leaving Germany, all this stuff was returned to my mother!”
“For children, it was not the worst of times. I think a lot of adults suffered from various forms of depression, when it seemed almost hopeless, that they would never get out of these refugee camps. We had to go before an American consul in the occupied zone of Germany – the American zone – and he told us, and various other immigration authorities told us ‘Well, why don’t you go to Australia? You can meet your father there, and, after all, this is not going to last forever! The Iron Curtain is not going to last forever! In a few weeks you will be able to go back to Czechoslovakia.’ Everybody was ignorant of how long the Cold War would last, you know, in those days. Fortunately, we did not give in to that suggestion, but, we had to stay for 27 months, or two years and a quarter, in those refugee camps.
“Children, I think, adjust far better than adults, you know. Even though I had thoughts of perhaps never leaving Germany, I didn’t take it as hard as my mother. But we sort of leaned on one another and, you know, became very close.”
“I’m happy to be an American citizen, but my heart is still in the old country, in many, many ways. You know, I just cannot forget – I have very vivid memories, as you’ll notice, of my childhood and my recent visits to the Czech Republic have always been very pleasant. So, I like to go back, but I wouldn’t want to go there and live permanently. I just became too much of an American over the years.”