Vera Roknic
<p>Vera Roknic was born and raised in the Nový Žižkov district of Prague. Her father, Jan, was a manager at the city’s main post office, where he met Vera’s mother, Marie, who worked as a long-distance telephone operator in the building. Vera studied at the capital’s Vyšší Dívčí School on Vodičkova Street and then at the Akademie obchodní Dr. Edvarda Beneše [Benes Business School]. Her studies were interrupted by WWII and she was sent to Lyšov, in southern Bohemia, to work on her relatives’ farm. During the War, Vera lost her younger sister, who fell ill with meningitis and was unable to see a doctor, as the hospitals were so full of soldiers, says Vera. After the War, Vera graduated and began working as a multilingual secretary for an import/export company in Prague.</p><p> </p><p>In January 1947, Vera went to Sweden on what was supposed to be a one-year work exchange. She successfully prolonged her stay once, but when she visited the Czech Consulate to extend her stay a second time in the summer of 1948, she was told it was time she returned home. Vera wrote to her parents who told her to come back only when Czechoslovakia was again ‘free’. On the basis of this letter, Vera applied for asylum in Sweden. Later that year, she started meeting other Czechs and Slovaks who had been taken in by Sweden, having fled Czechoslovakia. One of these immigrants was Vaclav Pavel, who became her first husband. The couple were married in 1950, and, on the insistence of Vaclav – who feared the spread of communism in Europe – the pair left Sweden for America in 1952. They moved to Chicago, where Vera quickly found a job at International Harvester. In 1954, Vera gave birth to a daughter, Jana. It was at this time that Vaclav fell ill with Hodgkin’s disease, for which a cure had still not been found. Vera and Vaclav ran into financial hardship and were helped by the Czechoslovak National Council of Women in Exile, among other organizations. Two years later, Vaclav died.</p><p> </p><p>In 1960, Vera married Sava Roknic, another Czech émigré who had settled in Chicago. He adopted Jana, and in 1962, Vera and Sava had a son, David. Vera took a job in the banking sector, which she still works in to this day. Vera, now widowed, is active in many Czech and Slovak organizations, such as the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences (SVU) and Sokol. She works closely with the Czech Mission in Brookfield, Illinois.</p>
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Vera Dobrovolny
<p>Vera Dobrovolny was born in Prague in 1938. Her father Jan worked as a quality controller for Škoda during WWII and then as a technician at Správa spojů (the state-owned telecommunications company). Her mother Aloisie, meanwhile, worked as a supervisor at a dorm for student nurses in the capital. Vera spent a part of WWII being raised by her aunts, as her mother was hospitalized following the birth of her younger brother. He was named Vladimír, which was (like Věra) deliberately Russian-sounding, as both of her parents were, she says, ardent Pan-Slavists. Towards the end of WWII, Vera’s family moved out of Prague to live in their summer house near Mokropsy, where she remembers attending school in the corner of a local pub, as the village schoolhouse was occupied by German troops.</p><p> </p><p>Vera attended commercial academy in Prague and then worked for Ferromet, a steel export company. In 1955, she met her husband, <a href="/web/20170609083217/http://www.ncsml.org/exhibits/pierre-dobrovolny/">Pierre Dobrovolny</a>, at a dance. The pair were married in 1958 and have two children, Eva and Lucie. Vera had been raised by parents who strongly believed in building socialism, but says her relationship with Pierre ‘spoiled her’ ideologically. She was repeatedly denied promotion in her job, which she says was most likely due to her relationship with Pierre. In 1968, Vera was finally promoted and says her family enjoyed a degree of financial stability. She refers to this time as one of the happiest in her life.</p><p> </p><p>Following the Warsaw Pact Invasion, in 1969, Vera and Pierre decided to leave Czechoslovakia. They traveled to Vienna in the summer, where they applied for visas to the United States and registered at the American Fund for Czechoslovak Refugees. Their youngest child Lucie, however, fell extremely ill after a couple of days, and so the family decided to return to Prague and seek medical assistance. After a couple of months, on August 21, 1969, Vera and Pierre again left Czechoslovakia. They traveled with their children to Yugoslavia from which they crossed into Austria without the correct paperwork; Pierre says the border guards did not care. The family spent about one month in Traiskirchen refugee camp near Vienna before being sent to stay in Bad Kreuzen. They arrived in America in December 1969. Vera says her first impressions of the United States were less than flattering and did not live up to the expectations she had formed from films and books. The family first lived in a rented apartment in Cicero before settling in Hawthorn Woods, Illinois. Vera worked as an accountant for CSA Fraternal Life before taking a job at Bosch, where she remained for 26 years. She has played active roles in the Czechoslovak National Council of America (CNCA) and the Society of Arts and Sciences (SVU) in Chicago. She makes frequent trips to the Czech Republic and has taken her grandchildren to Prague to show them where she was raised.</p>
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Vera Borkovec
<p>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.</p><p> </p><p>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.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>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.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p>
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Stan Pechan
<p> </p><p>Stan Pechan was born in Michalovce, eastern Slovakia, in 1951. His father was an engineer who became head of the local road-building department, while his mother stayed at home with Stan and his brother, Marcel. After graduating from the local <em>gymnázium</em> in Michalovce, Stan went to medical school in Košice, studying at the Univerzita Pavla Jozefa Šafárika, at first general medicine and then dentistry in particular. A keen handballer, Stan continued to play for his home team Michalovce throughout his studies, as well as making it to the university world cup in the sport in Prague. Upon graduation, Stan was conscripted into the military for one year, which he spent in the Army Medical Corps, mostly at a clinic in Olomouc in southern Moravia. Following discharge in 1975, Stan returned to eastern Slovakia to work as a dentist in Budkovce. He met his future wife, Julie – an American of Slovak extraction – during a trip she made to Czechoslovakia at this time. The couple were married in Slovakia and Stan embarked upon the process of legally moving to the United States. The paperwork took one-and-a-half years, says Stan, who eventually arrived in Cleveland in March 1977.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>After a number of years spent learning English and retraining as a dentist in the U.S., Stan became progressively more active in Slovak and Czech societies in the Cleveland area, such as Krajanský výbor, the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences (SVU) and the Zemplin Club. To this day, he is an active member of the Cleveland chapter of SVU. Stan has his own dental practice and counts a large number of Slovaks and Czechs in Cleveland amongst his patients. He has two children, Michael and Nicole. He lives with his wife, Julie, in Avon Lake, Ohio.</p>
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Savoy Horvath
<p>Savoy Horvath was born in 1933 in Brno, Moravia. Six years later, his family moved to Hradec Králové where his father worked at a German airport as an interpreter and accountant for the Nazis. Savoy’s father was also the leader of a Czech resistance group called 777. Immediately following the War, Savoy’s father was given management of an ESKA bicycle factory in Cheb, a city in the Sudeten region close to the German border. Savoy remembers being active in politics as a young teenager and, as a supporter of the Czech National Socialist (or Beneš) Party, clashing with his peers who held communist views. Savoy went to trade school and began an apprenticeship at his father’s factory, where he became friends with a number of Yugoslav workers. In 1948, he helped a couple of them across the border illegally and, after one escapee changed his mind, Savoy says he was in danger of arrest. Convinced that he must leave the country immediately, Savoy crossed the border into Germany in April 1948.</p><p> </p><p><img class="alignright wp-image-3499" src="http://web.archive.org/web/20170609044934im_/http://ncsml.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Handler-211.jpg" alt="Savoy Horvath" width="300" height="333" /></p><p>After time spent in a series of refugee and holding camps, Savoy joined the French Foreign Legion. Because he was only 15, he lied about his age. As a legionnaire, he traveled to North Africa for training and then to French Indochina, before deciding to leave the service. He returned to Germany where he was sent to Aglasterhausen Children’s Center and then to Bad Aibling Children’s Village. Savoy recalls the 10 months he spent at Bad Aibling as extremely enjoyable; he started a Scout troop, made many lifelong friends, and met his wife, Nadia. Savoy’s uncle signed an affidavit which allowed him to come to the United States in December 1949. He lived on his uncle’s farm in upstate New York until settling down in the Chicago area with his parents, who had escaped from Czechoslovakia in the fall of 1949 (his father had been working for the OSS, collecting information and escorting Czechs across the border). Savoy and Nadia married in 1953 and they had four daughters. He became an American citizen in 1956. He worked as a sheet metal fabricator for the Ford Motor Company for 32 years, and spent 12 years in the Illinois National Guard.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Savoy is a member of the Society for Czechoslovak Philately and has traveled back to the Czech Republic several times in this capacity. He also has one of the largest collection of letters sent to and from Czechoslovak labor camps during the 1950s, and was interviewed for an exhibit at the Museum of Exile in Brno. Upon retirement, Savoy built a house in Readstown, Wisconsin, where he now lives with his second wife.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p>
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Robert Dobson
<p>Robert Dobson was born in Prague in 1956. He grew up in the Nové Město part of the city. His father Vilém worked in construction and died in a workplace accident when Robert was still a child. His mother Alena subsequently raised Robert on her own and worked as an office manager. Robert says his childhood in Czechoslovakia was extremely happy and, once his own family was settled in the United States, he sent his children back every summer to stay with their grandparents and ‘gain exposure to nature’ at summer camps.</p><p> </p><p>Robert studied to become a waiter at vocational school in Prague and then worked at Klášterní vinárna, near the city’s National Theatre, and Restaurace Beograd, a Yugoslav restaurant not far from Wenceslas Square. At this time, Robert also took part in cycling competitions and worked to earn some extra money as a hair model. In 1976, he met his wife Yvonne; the couple’s first daughter Andrea was born the following year.</p><p> </p><p>Robert’s sister-in-law had emigrated to Downers Grove, Illinois, in 1968. He and Yvonne decided that they too wanted to leave Czechoslovakia. After one failed attempt to emigrate to Switzerland (which resulted in Yvonne’s passport being confiscated), Robert found someone willing to accept a bribe and help them assemble the papers they needed. The family came to Downers Grove to stay in 1984. In America, the couple’s second daughter Tina was born.</p><p> </p><p>Robert’s first job was as a bartender at a hotel near Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. He started working for a friend at Little Europe restaurant in Brookfield before he heard of a Czech restaurant coming up for sale in Berwyn. Robert bought Pilsner Restaurant in 1987 and ran the business with his family for the next 13 years. He says the family ‘loved’ running the restaurant, but that they sold the business as Czech custom in the neighborhood declined. Today, Robert runs a remodeling and construction firm based out of Bolingbrook, Illinois. He and his wife Yvonne enjoy spending time with their grandchildren and are determined, says Robert, to teach them to speak Czech.</p>
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Pierre Dobrovolny
<p>Pierre Dobrovolny was born in Brno, Moravia, in October 1933. His father Ferdinand was an artist who worked with, among others, the Czech archeologist Dr. Karel Absolon. Pierre’s mother Růžena was a seamstress. Growing up, Pierre wanted to become a radio mechanic but, he says, this profession was a predominantly feminine one at the time of his graduation, so he went to ČVUT (Czech Technical University in Prague) to study electrical engineering instead. He graduated from technical university in 1958 and says he was ‘lucky’ to do so, given his outspoken nature and his critical view of the Communist government at the time. That same year, Pierre married his partner <a title="Vera Dobrovolny" href="/web/20170609055449/http://www.ncsml.org/exhibits/vera-dobrovolny/">Vera</a>. His first job upon graduation was at the Research Institute for Electrotechnical Physics, where he worked on equipment to measure radiation.</p><p> </p><p>When the possibility of pursuing a doctorate on top of his work presented itself, Pierre applied to do so, but says the background checks that were run on him by the school resulted in him being kicked out of his job at the research institute as well. Pierre was conscripted and spent six months in the Czech Army; upon his return from military service, he was told he had been let go from the research institute and was being sent to TESLA Hloubětín instead. At TESLA, Pierre’s job was to work on transmitters to be sent to Russia, which he says was somewhat of a poisoned chalice, because he could be penalized if the project went wrong, but had little authority to make changes where they were necessary. The project to develop these transmitters, however, was a success, and resulted in Pierre traveling to Vilnius, Kutaisi and Moscow to show technicians there how to operate them. In 1965, after being repeatedly refused, Pierre was allowed to embark upon a second degree in mathematics and physics. He left Czechoslovakia, however, before he could complete his studies.</p><p> </p><p>Following the Warsaw Pact Invasion in 1968, Pierre was part of a group which set up an illegal transmitter and broadcast non-official news about the invasion, first in the TESLA building in Hloubětín, then in Zahradní Město and finally in the Novodvorská suburb of Prague. He left Czechoslovakia with his wife Vera and their two children the following year. Once in Vienna, the family applied for visas to the United States and registered with the American Fund for Czechoslovak Refugees. Their youngest daughter Lucie, however, fell suddenly very ill and so the family returned to Czechoslovakia to seek medical assistance. Several months later, on the anniversary of the Warsaw Pact Invasion, the Dobrovolnys again left Czechoslovakia. After four months in refugee camps in Traiskirchen and Bad Kreuzen, Austria, they arrived in Chicago, where Pierre found a job at radio and television manufacturer Zenith. He stayed there until LG bought the company in 1990 and continued thereafter to do some external consulting for the firm. Today, he lives with his wife Vera in Hawthorn Woods, Illinois.</p>
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Paula Moss
<p> </p><p>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.</p><p> </p><p>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.</p><p> </p><p>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.</p>
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Olga Prokop
<p>Olga Prokop was born in Kyjov, Moravia, in 1949. Her father was an officer in the military and her mother stayed at home and raised Olga. Later, her mother would become the director of a nursery school and her father worked for Škoda. Olga’s family moved to České Budějovice when she was two and, a few years after that, to Prague where she started school. Olga says that when she was growing up, her head was ‘full of the West.’ She loved movie stars, music, and fashion, and especially enjoyed borrowing <em>Seventeen</em> magazines from friends. While at <em>gymnázium</em>, Olga says that she wanted to study medicine, but that she was offered a spot in the school of dentistry instead. By the time she was to enroll, however, Olga had decided to move to Britain to marry her high school sweetheart. She arrived in London in the summer of 1968, with her wedding planned for August 28. Her mother arrived on August 19 and, on August 21, they received word of the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia. Olga says that the two did not receive word of her father for several days.</p><p> </p><p>Olga first visited the United States in the early 1980s, after she and her husband split up. A friend from New York City encouraged her to experience the city for herself and, after a three month visit, Olga realized she wanted to live there. Back in London, she went about obtaining a green card and a sponsor and returned to New York in 1988. She worked at several places before becoming a receptionist at a holding company; she held that job for eight years. Olga also studied English literature at Hunter College and earned her bachelor’s degree. In 1998, Olga moved back to Prague. She says that she considered returning to London, but felt that it would be hard to re-establish herself there. Indeed, she says that returning to Prague was a difficult adjustment as well, as she had trouble getting an apartment and reconnecting with her fellow Czechs. However, Olga says that amid the growing pains of the country with its relatively newfound freedom, she is happy to be back home.</p>
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Monika Smid
<p>Monika Smid was born in the village of Hájske, western Slovakia, in 1950. Her father, Vilém, spent the week in Bratislava where he worked in construction, while her mother, Maria, stayed at home raising Monika and her five siblings and tending to the family’s vineyards and fields. Monika attended school in Hájske and, for three years during her childhood, traveled to nearby Nitra to learn the accordion in the evenings. Upon graduation from high school, Monika moved to Bratislava where she worked for <em>komunálne služby mesta Bratislava</em> [communal (municipal) services of Bratislava] as a pedicurist. In 1970, Monika was sent for training in this field to Gottwaldov (now Zlín) in Moravia, which was also home to the shoe factory Bat’a.</p><p> </p><p>Monika says she loved her job at a salon right in the heart of Bratislava; she counted famous actors and ballerinas as her clients, and maintains friendships with some of her former colleagues. She left the salon in 1974 after marrying her husband, Mirek, and moving to Trnava, where the couple were guaranteed accommodation through his job at a local car factory. In 1975, their daughter Martina was born.</p><p> </p><p>Monika says it was her decision to leave Czechoslovakia four years later. She says she had a number of relatives already in the United States, and that a love of travel ran in her family. She traveled with her husband and daughter first to Austria, where the family spent seven months near Salzburg before gaining visas to travel to the U.S. Monika and Mirek’s son was born in America. The Smid family settled in Seven Hills, Ohio, where they now own several properties which they rent out. Monika plays an active role in the local Slovak community, particularly through her involvement in the trio Slovenské mamičky [The Slovak Mothers], who perform traditional Slovak folk songs as well as a few of Monika’s own compositions.</p>
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