Dagmar’s first job in the United States was as a dishwasher at a Czech restaurant. She quickly became involved in the Czech community in Chicago and was particularly active in a tramping group called Dálava. Dagmar enrolled in English language classes and began studying liberal arts at the College of DuPage. She attended evening classes, working in the library at the law firm Baker & MacKenzie during the day. She worked full-time in this job until 1990, when she had a daughter and resigned from this position – although she did stay on at the law firm on a part-time basis for one more year. It was in also 1990 that her mother came to visit the United States for the first time.
In 1991, Dagmar moved to Prague in order to work for a travel agency, but returned within one year. Back in the United States, Dagmar worked as a freelance translator and interpreter before landing a job as the librarian at the Czechoslovak Heritage Museum – an experience which she says was very fulfilling. Today Dagmar works as a cataloger at the law firm Sidley Austin and is pursuing a degree focusing on cross-cultural communication at DePaul University. She has been involved with the Prague Committee of Chicago Sister Cities International for almost 15 years.
Dagmar says that it is important to her to not only keep her Czech heritage alive, but also to educate others about the culture and history of her home country. She visits the Czech Republic every summer. Today, she lives in La Grange, Illinois.
]]>Dagmar Bradac was born in Litomyšl in eastern Bohemia in 1964. Her father Milan was an engineer and her mother Jana was a teacher. Dagmar says that growing up in the small cultural town of Litomyšl has had a lasting impression on her. In the aftermath of the Warsaw Pact invasion on August 21, 1968, Dagmar’s father moved to Vienna where he had relatives, leaving Dagmar and her mother in Czechoslovakia. In 1970, he moved to the United States. As a result, Dagmar says that her and her mother’s lives were made more difficult – her mother had trouble keeping her job and much of their property was reclaimed by the Communist government. After graduating from high school, Dagmar knew that she would not be accepted to university and instead applied to a training program for those interested in working in the cultural sector. When she was not accepted for this program despite excelling at the entrance exams, Dagmar decided to leave the country. She arranged to visit her father in the United States and, in June 1982, flew to Chicago with her high school diploma and jewelry smuggled in her luggage.
Dagmar’s first job in the United States was as a dishwasher at a Czech restaurant. She quickly became involved in the Czech community in Chicago and was particularly active in a tramping group called Dálava. Dagmar enrolled in English language classes and began studying liberal arts at the College of DuPage. She attended evening classes, working in the library at the law firm Baker & MacKenzie during the day. She worked full-time in this job until 1990, when she had a daughter and resigned from this position – although she did stay on at the law firm on a part-time basis for one more year. It was in also 1990 that her mother came to visit the United States for the first time.
In 1991, Dagmar moved to Prague in order to work for a travel agency, but returned within one year. Back in the United States, Dagmar worked as a freelance translator and interpreter before landing a job as the librarian at the Czechoslovak Heritage Museum – an experience which she says was very fulfilling. Today Dagmar works as a cataloger at the law firm Sidley Austin and is pursuing a degree focusing on cross-cultural communication at DePaul University. She has been involved with the Prague Committee of Chicago Sister Cities International for almost 15 years.
Dagmar says that it is important to her to not only keep her Czech heritage alive, but also to educate others about the culture and history of her home country. She visits the Czech Republic every summer. Today, she lives in La Grange, Illinois.
“I do remember it vividly. I was about four and a half years old, but no matter how much our parents were trying to shield us from it, they just couldn’t quite do that. Litomyšl has a very long square – it’s not a square, really; it’s a main street – and it’s the second longest square in Czechoslovakia, second to Wenceslas Square in Prague, and they were trying to prevent the Russians from invading the middle of the town, so they put a barrier as a bus. And I just remember that there was a bus that was on the main street preventing traffic, and that people tore stones from the paving and stuff like that. The wave of invasion was from Polish [soldiers] and then Russian soldiers, and I remember my father took me to see them in a car, and I remember being scared for my dad. He said ‘Do you want to see the soldiers?’ and then we would just go past them and then he couldn’t back up, so that was a little tense. As little kids, four and a half, five years old, we had some kind of a notion that something was going on.”
“It was written in all my papers. It totally made a difference if I was accepted to any school; it had nothing to do with my student status. I know that my mother tried extremely hard to put on a good face. She was not willing to make a compromise with the socialist state to become a member of the [Communist] Party, but she was trying to be very involved in some social and civic organizations so we could put that on the resume. So I was able to go through a good college prep.”
“We traveled by bus from my hometown, through Hungary, through Romania, and into Bulgaria. It was very interesting in the sense that our bus broke down and we had to stay and camp out in Hungary. But Romania was by far the most startling experience I ever had, because we would stop at the rest area and there were corn fields, and all of the sudden the bus stopped and you have all these children running to you and begging for chewing gum and watches. It was really startling. Even just passing the Hungarian-Romanian border was startling enough, that the children would be sleeping in sleeping bags and you had all your bags and stuff, and they would order all the people to get off the bus and match every parent with each child, because there was a slave trade, and they were just so adamant about having every child to be accounted for. And Bulgaria, it was very interesting. It was interesting how different that was. Lack of working toilets. Lack of toilets, period. Lack of plumbing in the house. There was something that was outside and that was where you were supposed wash. It was like ‘Really? No privacy at all?’ So that was another lesson in being humble.”
“Because I had some severe allergies growing up, I was pretty much excused from a lot of this work. We did go picking potatoes a couple of years. When I got my exemption from the doctor that I really shouldn’t be submitted to anything like that, I was put to alternative work at the Litomyšl archives which was a totally cool place, and it started me on my archival experience. We did some really interesting things. We worked on reading through old judgments and old court documents, and everything that was more than ten years old was to be discarded, with the exception of that being political matter. So we got to read through all the court documents and, actually, if you think about it, high school kids deciding which material is going to get retained by local courts, it’s sort of an interesting experience. It was headed by some wonderful people, PhDs, who used it as a learning tool for some of us. There were some interns from Charles University from the philosophy department, and we had little breaks when we had little talks, and that was really very rewarding.”
“When I came here – and of course my knowledge of English was quite limited – people automatically assumed that I was somehow handicapped or that I came from a part of the world that was behind the Iron Curtain. People asked me, believe it or not, if I ever saw snow, and it’s like ‘Yeah, every winter.’ People asked me if we had cars or flushing toilets, and I just thought that it was a lack of information. So being here with an accent, it automatically put me at a place of being a second-class citizen, which I was already, at the economical level. I knew that I had to embrace being part of America, but I also knew that I wanted to have my own cultural identity – that I didn’t want to succumb to McDonald’s, that I didn’t want to succumb to other things. I felt that there was a good life somewhere else and I wanted people to know about it. That there is something else outside of their little world, and I’d like to be acknowledged for it.”
Vera stayed in refugee camps in Germany for one year and a half. She and her sister were able to get secretarial jobs at the International Refugee Organization in Munich, where she met her husband, Alexej (Sasha) Bořkovec. Through an acquaintance of her father’s, Vera’s family received permission to immigrate to Bolivia in the spring of 1951. While there, Vera and Sasha married, and Vera worked for Braniff Airlines. Vera and Sasha obtained U.S. visas in the spring of 1952 and they moved to Blacksburg, Virginia, where Sasha was able to accept a fellowship at Virginia Tech that he had been offered five years earlier. Vera worked as secretary for the head of the university’s Department of Dairy Science and also became involved in the theater on campus. She says they became good friends with the faculty and even the president of the university. After short stays in Texas (where they became U.S. citizens) and Roanoke, Virginia (where Vera obtained an M.A. in French at Hollins College), the couple moved to the Washington, D.C. area when Sasha got a job at the Department of Agriculture. In D.C., Vera gained a second masters degree, in Russian, from American University and received her doctorate in Russian literature from Georgetown University. She became a professor at American University, and taught in the Language and Foreign Studies Department for more than 30 years.
Vera and Sasha were instrumental in the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Science (SVU) at both a local and international level. Vera became a member in 1965 and sat on several committees before being elected Secretary General of the organization in 1977. She was Chairman of the Washington, D.C. chapter, and also started a student essay contest to promote interest in SVU and Czech and Slovak culture among younger generations. In her retirement, Vera has worked as a translator and published several books. In 2003, she received the Artis Bohemiae Amicis award from the Czech Ministry of Culture for her translations. She lives in Silver Spring, Maryland.
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Vera Borkovec was born in Brno in 1926. She grew up in Prague with her parents and younger sister until 1934, when her father became the director of Škoda Works in Tehran, Iran. Vera remembers Tehran as a progressive city, and the schooling she received there was an important influence on her. After graduating from the American Community School, she began teaching sixth and seventh grades there, and the principal encouraged her to continue with her education. Vera moved to Beirut where she attended a French school for one year. After WWII, Vera and her family returned to Czechoslovakia; she says they were very happy to be back. Vera majored in English and Oriental studies at Charles University and received her degree in 1949. That same year, she left the country with her family. Through an uncle (who had been involved in the resistance during WWII) Vera’s family was introduced to a guide who helped them across the border into West Germany on July 4, 1949.
Vera stayed in refugee camps in Germany for one year and a half. She and her sister were able to get secretarial jobs at the International Refugee Organization in Munich, where she met her husband, Alexej (Sasha) Bořkovec. Through an acquaintance of her father’s, Vera’s family received permission to immigrate to Bolivia in the spring of 1951. While there, Vera and Sasha married, and Vera worked for Braniff Airlines. Vera and Sasha obtained U.S. visas in the spring of 1952 and they moved to Blacksburg, Virginia, where Sasha was able to accept a fellowship at Virginia Tech that he had been offered five years earlier. Vera worked as secretary for the head of the university’s Department of Dairy Science and also became involved in the theater on campus. She says they became good friends with the faculty and even the president of the university. After short stays in Texas (where they became U.S. citizens) and Roanoke, Virginia (where Vera obtained an M.A. in French at Hollins College), the couple moved to the Washington, D.C. area when Sasha got a job at the Department of Agriculture. In D.C., Vera gained a second masters degree, in Russian, from American University and received her doctorate in Russian literature from Georgetown University. She became a professor at American University, and taught in the Language and Foreign Studies Department for more than 30 years.
Vera and Sasha were instrumental in the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Science (SVU) at both a local and international level. Vera became a member in 1965 and sat on several committees before being elected Secretary General of the organization in 1977. She was Chairman of the Washington, D.C. chapter, and also started a student essay contest to promote interest in SVU and Czech and Slovak culture among younger generations. In her retirement, Vera has worked as a translator and published several books. In 2003, she received the Artis Bohemiae Amicis award from the Czech Ministry of Culture for her translations. She lives in Silver Spring, Maryland.
“I was two years in the elementary school and my recollections of that time are not happy ones. I was being punished by my teacher constantly for being able to read when I came to first grade.”
So that was out of line for the times?
“Today that would be something a teacher would welcome probably. I was reading already Greek mythology and all sorts of things and I was bored with the primitive things that you learn if you are learning to read. I already was reading quite well.”
And how had you learned to read? Did anyone teach you, or did you just pick it up yourself?
“Well, I had an uncle who was a teacher – a first grade teacher – and he said, ‘Don’t let her learn to read because she will have problems.’ So I asked the maid to teach me. And I learned to read from tabloids.”
“This school was just really outstanding. It was a Presbyterian missionary school, and it was such an outstanding [school]. We learned things that, well, we learned about democracy. We learned about getting together and having relationships – good relationships – with people of other nationalities or religions. In that school, when I was graduating, we had 200 students, 20 different nationalities, and eight different religions. Tolerance was one of the things we learned, above all. And the principal [Commodore Fisher] was the best man I ever knew.”
“My favorite uncle was a veterinarian. Since I was a little kid, he would take me around when he was making his rounds all over the country, and I wanted so badly to be a veterinarian like him. There weren’t many veterinary school and they really didn’t want women either, and I said ‘I want to go to that university in Brno that you went to.’ And he said ‘What do you think you are? Look at yourself, you’re too [small].’ I was littler then. And he said, ‘You don’t have the strength to be a veterinarian. Come with me.’ And he took me out and he showed me how he was pulling out a calf, how he was pulling out a colt. And he said ‘Can you do that? That’s what a veterinarian has to do. No, you go to the philosophical school in Prague and do something else.’ So I went and I did English studies and then later I was lured into Oriental studies because of my living in Iran and knowing something about Persian literature.”
“Then one day he [my boss, František Slabý] said, ‘Věruška, I have to find you a nice husband. I have just the man in mind. He’s in Ludwigsburg [refugee camp], and I will call him and he can be our accountant here.’ And guess who arrived? Sasha Borkovec. When he arrived I thought ‘Good looking enough, but he seems so aloof and so stand-offish.’ I wasn’t particularly interested. But then, František, my boss, invited us to a party and I went there with my sister, and Sasha was playing the guitar and singing beautiful songs. That was it. And then at that party, I think that’s what sort of started things going, he asked me if I would teach him English. And I said yes, and we would take walks and I would teach him English, spoken English, and I guess that brought us together.”
“We thought we would stay in Bolivia. It was a beautiful country. I was working for Braniff Airways and Sasha was working for a pharmaceutical company; we were quite comfortable and everything. But then they had another revolution. We lived through three different revolutions during the year and a half that we lived in Bolivia, but the last one was socialist. They were going to nationalize everything, and so again we said, ‘This is not for us.’ Because I was working for Braniff Airways, I could get Sasha a ticket for five dollars to go to Brazil to find out what Brazil looked like, and to Uruguay. And he went on this expedition to find out where we could move to. And then he came back very happy from Brazil. He had been to Uruguay as well and to Paraguay. But he came back from Brazil and said, in front of a gathering of Czechs, ‘So we are moving to Brazil. Brazil is a fine place and we can find work.’ And I said ‘No we’re not. We’re not going to Brazil, we’re going to the United States because we received immigration visas to the USA.’”
“In 1968 when we were in Prague, my relatives and friends would say ‘You poor thing, how can you teach that awful language, that awful Russian literature?’ And I would say ‘The Russian language is a beautiful language and Russian literature is really world-class literature. I don’t teach socialist realism. I teach the classics, which have nothing to do with communism.’”
“Recently, two or three years ago, I published a book on Josef Topol and his various plays. But I wanted to meet the man, and I knew people here at the embassy who knew him and they said ‘Oh, you will not have a chance to meet him because he’s very shy and he doesn’t want to meet other people.’ So I asked people in Prague and everybody said the same thing, that you just can’t get close to this guy, that he doesn’t want to meet anybody. And then finally, the former cultural counselor came very happy to me and he said ‘I have found a way and Mr. Topol is willing to accept you. He’s inviting you to his home.’
“And he took me inside, brought the dog inside, he put me on the sofa and asked if I wanted coffee. I said ‘Yes, please, thank you.’ And so he went to the kitchen to make some coffee and the dog and I were sitting there together. And you know I told you that I wanted to be a veterinarian and how much I love animals and dogs especially. I called Zorinka – her name was Zorinka – I called her over and she came, sniffed me, and then she sat in my lap. And the playwright comes out of the kitchen with the coffee, he nearly dropped it and he said ‘My god! She’s sitting in your lap. Zorinka sat in your lap!’ And I said ‘Well she knows, she knows I like dogs.’ Well that did it. He started talking, he was telling me his whole life story, his love stories, whom he was going to marry, whom he married, how he worked with [Václav] Havel. He didn’t want to let me go home. And we have seen each other ever since. Every year when I go to Prague we see each other, in Café Slavia usually.”