Alex Cech
<p>Alex Cech was born in Kolín in Central Bohemia in 1927. His father Alois was the head of the Board of Civil Engineering in Kolín, while his mother Karolina stayed home and raised Alex and his older brother Vojen. Although there was little entertainment and he often went hungry, Alex says that the years during WWII were a ‘beautiful time’ as he developed very close relationships with his classmates. Alex was also involved in underground activities during the War, which involved sabotaging train tracks and highways used by the Nazi soldiers. He was detained for a short time by the Gestapo because of these activities.</p><p> </p><p>Upon graduating from gymnázium in 1946, Alex spent one month as a tour guide with a group of French students. That fall, he began studying medicine at Charles University in Prague. Following the Communist coup in February 1948, Alex was arrested, but soon released. In 1949, he was expelled from school during a time when the Communist Party undertook a massive review of university students. Alex believes that his expulsion was a result of an incident several months earlier when he was ordered to report to a labor camp, but was able to get a note from a doctor stating that he was not able to do so. In June 1949, Alex and a friend secured jobs at a farm cooperative in the Šumava region with the intention of leaving the country if the opportunity arose. Only a few days after arriving, Alex crossed the border into Germany. He was sent to a processing camp in Amberg, and then to a refugee camp at Ludwigsburg.</p><p> </p><p>In November 1950, Alex’s brother (who had left Czechoslovakia in 1947 and made his way to South America) sponsored him to come to Venezuela. His brother helped him to find his first job as a diesel mechanic in a cement factory. In 1953, Alex moved to Maracaibo and began working as a salesman for a large import company. He met his German-born wife, Katja, in 1957. In December 1958, Alex moved to New York City. Katja, who had returned to Germany, received a visa shortly thereafter. The couple married and settled in Queens. Alex’s first job in the United States was as head waiter at the Golden Door restaurant. In 1961, he worked for one year as a manager for an export agency which saw him traveling through Central and South America for all but two weeks out of the year. In 1964 Alex bought his own export company. He later bought a company that imported steel into the United States. After the fall of communism in his homeland, Alex began working for Pfizer as a liaison between the company and private buyers in Czechoslovakia.</p><p> </p><p>Over the years, Alex was an active member of the Czech community in New York. He was president of the Association of Free Czechoslovak Sportsmen, an organization that sponsored skiing competitions and tennis matches. Alex was also instrumental in the revival of the Bohemian Benevolent and Literary Association, which acts as an umbrella organization for a number of Czech and Slovak heritage groups, and served as president of the association. He lived in Bronxville, New York, with his wife until his death in late 2012.</p>
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Charles Heller
<p>Charles Heller was born in Prague in 1936. His father, Rudolph, was the owner of a clothing manufacturing firm in Kojetice near Prague, which had been started by Charles’ great-grandfather on his mother’s side, Gustav Neumann. Charles’ mother, Ilona, had been born in Vienna and raised in Kojetice – a devout Catholic in what was otherwise a Jewish family. Charles also attended Catholic church in his youth.</p><p> </p><p>With the outbreak of WWII, the clothing factory was seized by the Nazis and handed to an ethnic German called Hollmann. Charles’ great-grandfather Gustav was sent to Terezín and later, it is thought, to Treblinka camp in Poland, from which he did not return. Charles’ father Rudolph, who was also Jewish, fled Czechoslovakia in 1940 and made it to Palestine, where he joined the British Army, and eventually fought as part of the British Army’s Czechoslovak Division. In 1944, Charles’ mother was taken away to a forced labor camp for wives of Jewish men and Charles himself went into hiding. He spent the rest of the War hiding in a closet in a farm belonging to the Tůma family not far from Kojetice. Charles says he was told that this was because his father was fighting the Nazis; it was only as an adult that he was told it was because he was three-quarters Jewish. Charles was reunited with his mother and father in the summer of 1945; he says, however, 15 other members of his family did not return.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>The Heller family moved to Prague shortly after the War so that Charles could attend school in the capital. In 1948, the clothing factory the family owned in Kojetice was nationalized and one floor of their apartment building they owned in Prague was turned into the local Communist Party headquarters. The family decided to leave and planned their escape to coincide with the funeral of Jan Masaryk, held in the capital in March 1948. They crossed the border by foot at night into the American zone of Germany near Rossbach (a town in West Bohemia today known as Hranice). Charles and his family spent one year and a half in refugee camps in Germany (including Schwabach and Ludwigsburg) before coming to America in May 1949. They settled in Morristown, New Jersey, and Charles’ father again got involved in the clothing business, starting as a pattern cutter and rising to a top management position at McGregor Sportswear. Charles attended Morristown High School and then Oklahoma State University on a basketball scholarship. An engineer by profession, Charles moved to Maryland to work for Bell Labs in the 1960s and has remained in the ‘Old Line State’ ever since. In recent years he has become involved in venture capitalism and conducts seminars for new managers, both in the Czech Republic and the United States. Charles published a book of his memoirs recently, and he lives in Arnold, Maryland, with his wife Sue.</p><p>Related Items:</p>
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Dagmar Benedik
<p>Dagmar Benedik was born in Kladno, Central Bohemia, in 1952. Her mother, Jarmila, taught at an after-school program and her father, Jiří, was a hockey coach. Dagmar recalls her childhood in Kladno as ‘fantastic.’ She says that many of her friends played on her father’s hockey team and she enjoyed traveling to Prague each week for French lessons and swimming practice and competitions. In the summer of 1968, Dagmar’s family planned to travel to Germany where her younger sister, Zuzana, was going to spend a few weeks with a family studying German. Because of a delay in processing, they received visas just a few days prior to the Warsaw Pact invasion on August 21, and Dagmar says her father made the decision to leave Czechoslovakia for good immediately following the invasion. Dagmar’s family drove toward the border at Rozvadov; because they entered the town through a local route instead of the main road from Plzeň, they avoided the barricade that had been set up to prevent travelers from crossing the border. Once across the border, they stayed with Dagmar’s sister’s host family for two weeks before spending six more weeks at Karlsruhe refugee camp.</p><p> </p><p><img class="alignright wp-image-2609" src="http://web.archive.org/web/20170609053007im_/http://ncsml.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/dagmar-dad.png" alt="" width="250" height="371" /></p><p>In October 1968, Dagmar moved with her family to Toronto. She says that her parents chose to immigrate to Canada because it was a neutral country. Her mother started working as a housekeeper and nanny, and her father found employment as a watch-maker – a trade he had learned in Kladno. Dagmar attended high school and took English lessons in the mornings before school. She continued to swim and, in 1969, won the Toronto Championships. After graduating from high school, Dagmar began working at a bank and married her first husband, Josef Benedík, who was also a Czech émigré. In the late 1970s, then divorced, Dagmar traveled around the United States and says she ‘fell in love’ with the country. In 1986, she had a business opportunity there and moved to Tampa, Florida. She received American citizenship when she married her second husband. In 1995, Dagmar went to Prague with the intention of working as a translator for one month; she stayed in the Czech Republic for six years, where she ran her own business and then worked for Strojexport and Adamovské strojírny.</p><p> </p><p><img class="alignleft wp-image-2610" src="http://web.archive.org/web/20170609053007im_/http://ncsml.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Handler-53.jpg" alt="Handler-5" width="400" height="254" /></p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Dagmar says that she continues to keep Czech traditions at home and has learned several Czech crafts. She refers to herself as a ‘citizen of the world’ and exercises her voting rights in the countries of her citizenship. Today, Dagmar lives in Richmond Hill near Toronto, but is planning on moving back to Tampa, which she considers home.</p><p> </p>
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Doris Drost
<p>Doris Drost was born in Olomouc, central Moravia, in 1920. Her parents had met in Poland during WWI, as her mother Jana was from there, and her father Vojtěch was a Czechoslovak legionnaire stationed in the country. Doris grew up in Rohatec where her father was the vice president of a chocolate factory; she attended elementary school there until fourth grade, and then transferred to a larger school in Hodonín. Doris moved with her family to Brno a few years later when her father found a new job, and so she finished her schooling there. She remembers spending a few summers in Poland with her grandparents and being very active in Sokol.</p><p> </p><p>Doris attended a teacher’s institute and taught kindergarten for one year before marrying John Drost in 1940. Doris and John had two children, Rudy and <a href="/web/20170609111847/http://www.ncsml.org/exhibits/george-drost/">George</a>. After the Communist coup in 1948, John left the country and Doris and Rudy followed a few months later, leaving George with John’s mother. With help from a guide, Doris crossed the border into Austria and then made her way to Vienna where she joined her husband. The family made plans to move to the United States once they were reunited with George. While in Austria, they lived in Kranebitten, a suburb of Innsbruck, where John found a job. With the help of a family friend and John’s sister, George rejoined the family in January 1950. The Drosts arrived in New York City in July of that year and settled in Chicago, where their sponsor, Ravenswood Presbyterian Church, was located.</p><p> </p><p>Doris says they were helped by many people when they first arrived and worked very hard to carve out a life in the United States. Doris cleaned houses and John worked in a factory before becoming a caretaker at a church and attending law school at night. He eventually opened his own law practice, and Doris became the lunch manager at Woolworth’s. The family was active in the Czech community, and both boys learned to speak Czech. Doris visited Czechoslovakia for the first time in 1990, an experience she describes as ‘very disappointing’ because of the condition of Brno. Doris lived in Arlington Heights, Illinois, until her death in August 2016.</p><p> </p>
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Duke Dellin
<p>Edward (Duke) Dellin was born in Prague in 1940. His father, Eduard, had studied agricultural engineering and, after a time spent at the helm of the Sugar Beet Growers’ Association, became involved in politics as the Secretary of the Czechoslovak Agrarian Party. Duke lived with his parents and older sister Jane in Prague’s Nové Město (New Town) until he was eight years old, attending a French-language school run by nuns in the center of the city. Following the Communist coup in 1948, a warrant was issued for Duke’s father’s arrest, leading Eduard Dellin to flee Czechoslovakia for Paris, where he joined a number of other former Czechoslovak politicians. Duke says that his mother, Marie, was not sure at first what she should do and, in a bid to curb mounting pressure placed on the family by the authorities, took the first steps towards divorcing Duke’s father. After a short while, however, she was approached by a number of Western agents, says Duke, who gave her instructions on how to get out of Czechoslovakia with her two children. In July 1948, Duke arrived in Regensburg, West Germany with his mother and sister. They remained there for one week before being transferred to Ludwigsburg refugee camp. There, Duke’s father joined the family and the Dellins applied to come to the United States.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p><img class="alignright wp-image-2723" src="http://web.archive.org/web/20170609072243im_/http://ncsml.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Handler-47.jpg" alt="Handler-4" width="310" height="450" />Duke and his family arrived in Chicago in July 1949. They had been sponsored by some of Duke’s mother’s relatives, who had settled in the United States before WWI and owned a Czech bakery in Berwyn. Duke says that the family stayed in Berwyn for less than a month, with his mother and father quickly deciding to take jobs as a maid and a gardener in one household in Winnetka, just north of Chicago. There Duke began his schooling at Hubbard Woods School. He gained his degree at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, and was in the middle of studying at DePaul Law School when a friend told him about the work he was doing in the investment banking sector. Duke was impressed and applied for a job at Hornblower & Weeks, which he got. He has worked in the industry since and is now partner at William Blair & Company, which is based in downtown Chicago. Duke says he is ‘incredibly proud’ of his Czech background. Today, he is active as chairman of the Chicago Prague Sister Cities Committee. He is also on the Czech-North American Chamber of Commerce’s board of directors.</p>
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Dusan Ciran
<p>Dusan Ciran was born in Brezová pod Bradlom, western Slovakia, in 1929. His father Martin died when he was only a few months old and his mother, Darina, subsequently remarried a widower called Emil Sarvady. Around the time that Dusan started school, the family moved to the nearby town of Senica, where his stepfather took over a restaurant which the whole family helped run. Dusan says that WWII was a particularly profitable time for the restaurant with the establishment proving popular amongst the 2,000 German soldiers stationed at the local barracks.</p><p> </p><p>Following the War, Dusan’s stepfather was arrested on charges of collaborating with the Germans, but was released, says Dusan, when such charges could not be proved. In 1949, a family friend who worked for the local police tipped Dusan’s stepfather off that a warrant was again out for his arrest, prompting Dusan’s family to flee the country that very evening. Dusan says he and his family crossed the Morava River into the Soviet Zone of Austria, from which the challenge was still to make it to Vienna and the American Zone of the country. Dusan’s family successfully did so when the truck they were riding in was stopped by a Soviet soldier, who traveled with the family and shouted at his colleagues at the border checkpoint to hurry up and let them through.</p><p> </p><p>From Vienna, the family was sent to Wegsheid refugee camp in Linz where they spent just over eight months. Dusan and his family arrived in Canada in 1950; they were sent first to Lethbridge, Alberta, to pick sugar beets before moving to Toronto, where Dusan and his brothers Emil and Milan played for the local Hungarian football club – Pannonia – and through this found work assembling scooters at Simpson manufacturers. Dusan moved with his family to Chicago in 1952, settling first on the city’s North Side. He quickly found work at the city’s Continental Can Company, where he rose through the ranks to work in the firm’s master plate department, designing and producing labels. Dusan says he made some extra money at this time by playing violin at Chicago Slovak and Czech events. He attended art classes at the Chicago Academy and then the American Academy of Art in Chicago. Together with artist Charles Vickery, Dusan founded the Oil Painters of America club, which to this day attracts a large membership. Dusan currently lives in Cicero, Illinois, with his second wife Anna.</p><p><a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20170611035225/http://www.flickr.com/photos/32224489@N04/page2/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">A link to some of Dusan’s artworks</a></p>
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Eugenie Bocan
<p>Eugenie Bocan was born in Prague in 1942 and grew up in the Podolí district of the city with her parents and her younger sister. As a young girl, Eugenie recalls swimming in the Vltava and taking trips to the country to visit her father’s relatives. During WWII, it was those same relatives who provided food to Eugenie’s family, as items like meat and eggs were in short supply in the city. Eugenie’s father, Václav, was a bank clerk, while her mother, Milada, worked in a shoe store. Although Eugenie enjoyed chemistry in school, she says she was not allowed to continue those studies in university and, instead, attended nursing school where she specialized in newborn and pediatric nursing. Upon graduating, Eugenie worked for one year at the children’s psychiatric facility in Prague – an experience she calls ‘very interesting.’ She then became a maternity nurse and also worked for a short time in a dentist’s office.</p><p> </p><p>One of Eugenie’s coworkers had relatives living in West Germany who sent Eugenie and her husband, Vladimir, a letter inviting them for a visit. They took advantage of this opportunity several times before deciding to leave Czechoslovakia permanently. In the spring of 1968, Eugenie and Vladimir crossed the border and stayed at a refugee camp near Nuremberg. During their eight month stay, Eugenie worked cleaning floors and in the Grundig factory while her husband worked in a toy factory. The couple had a car (which they had driven across the border) and traveled on weekends.</p><p> </p><p>Eugenie and Vladimir arrived in New York City in December 1968. Sponsored by the Red Cross, they were first put up in the Wolcott Hotel, which Eugenie called ‘terrible.’ They shortly found an apartment in Queens and Eugenie began working at Booth Memorial Hospital. Although she initially had a hard time getting her state nursing license, Eugenie worked for over 30 years as a newborn and pediatric nurse. She and Vladimir raised one daughter, Monica. After receiving her American citizenship, Eugenie began traveling back to Czechoslovakia frequently. Now widowed, Eugenie lives in the house in Queens that she and Vladimir bought not too long after their arrival.</p>
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Frank Fristensky
<p>Frank Fristensky was born in Olomouc in Moravia in 1948. He lived with his parents on his paternal grandparents’ farm outside of the city until 1953, when the Frištenskýs moved to Rožnov pod Radhoštěm, close to the Slovak and Polish borders. Frank’s mother was originally from Prague, where her Jewish family was quite wealthy. During the Nazi occupation, her entire family was sent to Terezín. Although she and her brother survived, the rest of her family was deported to Auschwitz and killed in the gas chambers. Frank’s paternal great-uncle, Gustav Frištenský, was a world-famous Greco-Roman wrestler. Frank’s grandfather accompanied Gustav on his tour of the United States in 1913 and 1914, and Frank recalls hearing of his admiration for the country. Many of Frank’s family members were keen sportsmen – and to this day, Frank carries on that tradition.</p><p> </p><p>Frank attended a technical school in Valašské Meziříčí and, upon graduating, began serving his two-year military service. After the Warsaw Pact invasion on August 21, 1968, Frank was unexpectedly discharged from the army at the request of his father. Shortly after, he left the country with his parents and two younger brothers. The family settled in Switzerland where, coincidently, Frank’s uncle and his family had traveled just days earlier. Frank attended the Swiss Federal Institute of Sport and received a degree in teaching and coaching sports. After graduating he joined a semipro hockey team.</p><p> </p><p>In 1976, Frank traveled with a friend to the United States. They spent several months driving around the country and visiting Hawaii, and they ultimately traveled to Montreal where they attended the Olympics. Although Frank returned to Switzerland, he hoped to move to the United States. Two years later, after attending a conference in Texas, Frank visited his friend, Arnošt Lustig, who lived in Washington, D.C., and taught at American University. Arnošt helped him to secure a job at American as the women’s volleyball coach, assistant athletic trainer, and assistant physical education professor. Frank says that his first classes were taught with the help of a German translator, as he did not know English.</p><p> </p><p>Frank met his wife, Victoria, while at American University. The couple had a daughter and moved to Michigan when Frank became the head volleyball coach at Eastern Michigan University. When Frank’s father fell ill, he and his family returned to Switzerland for what he thought would be a short time. They remained in Switzerland for nine years, and their two younger children were born there. Frank and his family moved to Durango, Colorado, in 1996. Today, Frank is a personal trainer and fitness consultant. He also runs a tour company that specializes in travel to central Europe. Frank is extremely proud of his Czechoslovak heritage and has taken a particular interest in his family history. He recently organized a Fristensky family reunion, which was held at Bohemian National Hall in New York.</p>
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George Grosman
<p>George Grosman was born in Prague in 1953. During WWII, his father, Ladislav, was drafted into the Slovak army and then sent to a forced labor camp because he was Jewish. His mother, Edith, who was also Jewish, spent most of the War in Auschwitz. After the War, George’s parents moved to Prague where Edith worked as a biology researcher and Ladislav found work in the publishing industry as an editor and writer. George’s father became well-known after writing the screenplay for the Oscar-winning film <em>The Shop on Main Street</em> [<em>Obchod na korze</em>]. George has early memories of walking the streets of Prague with his nanny and spending his summers in the country. He attended three different schools in Prague where he enjoyed history, grammar, and the humanities. However, George’s main interests lay in music. At the age of nine, he began learning classical guitar, and one of his teachers introduced him to more popular music. George spent many weekends and summers at Dobříš Castle, which was owned by the Czechoslovak Writers Union of which his father was a member. In 1967, it was there that George joined his first band.</p><p> </p><p><img class="alignright wp-image-3418" src="http://web.archive.org/web/20170609083637im_/http://ncsml.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Handler-14.jpg" alt="George performing" width="500" height="583" /></p><p>After the Warsaw Pact invasion in August 1968, George’s family made plans to leave the country. George himself forged a letter from his grandfather living in Israel requesting that the family come to visit him. They were able to secure exit visas, and left Czechoslovakia on September 3, 1968. After about a month in Vienna, George and his family arrived in Tel Aviv in October 1968. Although at first George had a difficult time adjusting to life in Israel, he says he eventually learned both Hebrew and English, made some good friends, and got involved with local musicians. George studied English literature and linguistics at Bar Ilan University in Tel Aviv and spent a short stint in the Israeli army.</p><p> </p><p>In 1977, George moved to London to continue his education. He was there for three years and remembers it as “the best time of his life.” In 1980, George secured a position as a teaching assistant for Slavic languages at the University of Toronto. He got married and had two daughters, and eventually became involved in the Czech community there, specifically joining Nové Divadlo [New Theatre]. In 1989, he moved to Reykjavík, Iceland, for a few years, and recalls hearing about the Velvet Revolution there, listening to a short-wave radio. George first returned to Czechoslovakia in 1991, and says that he was able to enter the country at the same border crossing he had used to leave 23 years earlier. Today, George is a professional musician. He frequently performs for Czech audiences throughout North America. He splits his time between Toronto, Canada, and Orlando, Florida.</p>
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George Havranek
<p>George Havranek was born in Prague in 1927. He grew up in the city’s Pankrác district where his father Josef worked as a head guard at Pankrác prison. George’s mother Sylva, meanwhile, stayed at home raising him and his sister Marta. He attended elementary and high school in Pankrác with the intention of pursuing a career in mechanical engineering. George remembers the end of WWII, in particular the Prague Uprising, which occurred several days before the liberation of the city. He says there was heavy fighting in Pankrác in which several of his friends were killed. Following the War, George graduated from high school and worked at Českomoravská zbrojovka for one year, during which he built cars and tanks and learned to be an auto mechanic. He then enrolled in<em>průmyslová škola</em> [technical college], but did not finish his studies, going instead to work at Barrandov film studios. George says he lost his job there for speaking out about the production of Soviet films in the facility.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>After the Communist coup in 1948, George was not happy with the new government and says that there was ‘nothing to hold him’ in Czechoslovakia. In September of that year, he took a train to southwest Bohemia and attempted to cross the border with an acquaintance from Prague. He says the two were chased by border guards and dogs, and were lost in the forest for a few days. Once in Germany, George spent eight months in refugee camps. He says that his plan was to go to America but ‘the door was closed’ for him. In the spring of 1949, George traveled to Birmingham, England, where a friend he had met in Prague assisted him in finding a job and a place to live. While in Britain, George applied for a visa to the United States; however, he had an opportunity to immigrate to Australia and in 1950, sailed to Sydney. He found employment selling carpets and stayed in Australia for two years before receiving a visa to the United States. His trip to America in 1952 took about two months, including a two week stop in Fiji.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>George settled in Cleveland where his second cousin lived. Shortly after arriving, George joined the U.S. Army, attended military intelligence school, and was sent to Korea and Okinawa. He was granted citizenship as a result of his military service. After his stint in the military, George returned to Cleveland and worked evening shifts as a tool and die maker while attending classes during the day. He eventually earned a degree in mechanical engineering. In 1969, his parents were able to visit him in the United States; he says that they had been punished because of his escape, as his father lost his job and they were forced to move from their apartment in Pankrác. George has been back to Prague several times since the fall of communism, but considers America home. Today he lives in Fairview Park, Ohio, with his wife Martha.</p><p> </p><p> </p>
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