Zdeněk Bažant
<p><img class="alignleft wp-image-3237" src="http://web.archive.org/web/20170609085212im_/http://ncsml.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Handler-119.jpg" alt="Zdeněk Bažant" width="200" height="253" /></p><p>Zdeněk Pavel Bažant was born in Prague in 1937. He was raised in Prague, though during WWII he spent a long period in southern Bohemia with his aunt. His father and grandfather were engineering professors ČVUT (Czech Technical University) and his mother – a junior colleague of Milada Horáková – held a doctorate in sociology. Zdeněk recalls the time following the Communist coup in 1948 as difficult for his family. He was labeled ‘bourgeois’ because of his parents’ backgrounds. His maternal grandmother had acquired a number of properties through the sale of her factory; at this time Zdeněk says that all of these buildings were nationalized. He says that it was at this young age that the idea of leaving the country began to germinate. An excellent mathematician, he was national champion of the Mathematical Olympics in 1955.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Zdeněk studied civil engineering at ČVUT and graduated at the head of the class. He was not, however, accepted into a postgraduate program, which he attributes to his decision not to accept an invitation to join the Communist Party. Instead, Zdeněk began working as an engineer for Dopravoprojekt, a state company, and was able to complete a doctorate in engineering as an external student. In 1966, after earning a postgraduate diploma in theoretical physics from Charles University, he traveled abroad on two fellowships, to Paris and Toronto, and then on a visiting appointment to Berkeley, California. Zdeněk was in Toronto during the Prague Spring in 1968. He and his wife Iva (whom he had married the previous year) were planning on returning to Czechoslovakia; however, upon hearing the news of the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in August, they decided to stay abroad.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>In 1969, Zdeněk was appointed associate professor at Northwestern University, and is still today at this school, holding a distinguished professorial chair in civil engineering and materials science. He is a world-renowned, frequently-published researcher with much of his work focusing on structural and materials engineering. Zdeněk and Iva have two children, Martin and Eva, who, although they did not learn it at home, can both speak Czech. Zdeněk enjoys many hobbies, including skiing, tennis, and playing the piano. His passion for skiing led to his 1959 patent of a safety ski binding which was mass-produced and became very popular among Czech skiers. Although he visits Prague several times a year and says he misses the ‘beautiful landscape of Prague,’ Zdeněk says that he has been ‘very impressed with America’ and has no plans to return to the Czech Republic to live. He also has no plans to retire. Today, Zdeněk lives with his wife (a retired physician) in Evanston, Illinois.</p>
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Vojtech Mastny
<p>Vojtech Mastny was born in Prague in 1936. His great uncle, also named Vojtěch Mastný, was one of the most important Czechoslovak diplomats of the interwar period. His father, Antonín, meanwhile, worked as a high-ranking official for the Ministry of Trade, while his mother, Jindřiška stayed at home raising Vojtech, who was an only child. Vojtech attended elementary school and the first years of secondary school in the Prague district of Letná, where the family lived, but was unable to pursue his education further the way that he had hoped because of his class background and school reforms in the early 1950s. Instead of being sent to <em>gymnázium</em> in Prague’s Malá Strana, Vojtech was sent for reeducation to work as a mechanic at the Elektrosignal factory not far from his home. On a part-time basis during this period, he attended Střední škola pro pracující [Workers’ Middle School] which, he says, was a good institution. At this time, Vojtech also became interested in learning English, and subsequently German, which he was taught by his great aunt Paula in her flat in Žižkov.</p><p> </p><p>After a time at Elektrosignal and a car parts factory, Vojtech was hired as an assistant archivist at the National Museum, which eventually wrote him a letter of recommendation, paving the way for him to study at Charles University. Despite becoming ever more interested in contemporary history, Vojtech says this was not an appealing field of study at Charles University, which he says was run by apparatchiks in the late 1950s, and so he opted for medieval history and archival studies instead. Vojtech’s graduation was postponed by one year when he was sent for further reeducation to work at a collective farm. He finally obtained his degree in 1962, which was the year that he left Czechoslovakia. He booked himself onto a Soviet cruise and, after some research, decided to split from the group during a stopover in Tunis. He applied for a U.S. visa immediately and received one after a couple of months. Vojtech first settled in New York City, where he worked at the municipal port and studied at Columbia University under the tutelage of Fritz Stern. He wrote his dissertation about Nazi rule in Bohemia and Moravia.</p><p> </p><p>Vojtech has taught history and international relations at Columbia University, the University of Illinois and the Naval War College, among other institutions. He is a senior research scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Vojtech has written a number of award-winning books on the Cold War and heads the Parallel History Project on NATO and the Warsaw Pact. He lives in Virginia with his wife, Rebecca.</p><p><a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20170609134730/http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?topic_id=1409&fuseaction=topics.profile&person_id=73635" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">A short biography of Vojtech Mastny on the Wilson Center’s website</a></p>
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Vladmir Pochop
<p><img class="alignleft wp-image-2533 size-full" title="Vladimir in 2012" src="http://web.archive.org/web/20170609195344im_/http://ncsml.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/vladmir-pochop.png" alt="Vladimir in 2012" width="283" height="283" /></p><p>Vladimir Pochop was born in Lázně Bělohrad in northeastern Bohemia in 1946. He grew up in the town of Nová Paka where his grandmother owned a fabric shop. When her shop was nationalized following the Communist coup in 1948, she hid part of the stock so that it would not be confiscated; however, she was found out and arrested. Vladimir’s father offered to take the punishment for her and was sent to a labor camp in the uranium mines of Jáchymov. Vladimir (who was not told where his father was) says that once he was released, he had trouble finding work and ended up working menial factory jobs for the rest of his life. Vladimir himself had trouble getting into high school and, at the age of 14, moved with his mother and stepfather to Ostrava where he attended mining school. In addition to classroom studies, Vladimir worked in the mines on the weekends. On the recommendation of the school director, he was admitted to ČVUT (Czech Technical University in Prague) and began studying electrical engineering. After two years, however, Vladimir was put into a special program for computer science. He graduated in 1969 and, the following year, married Jana Pochop, whom he knew from his home town.</p><p> </p><p>Vladimir worked for a technical consulting company which he said allowed him free reign to focus on his research in geometric modeling. In 1974, he was invited to spend one year at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. He received his doctorate in mathematics from Charles University in 1977. Although Vladimir was satisfied with his professional life, he says that living under communism was a struggle, as he and Jana had had trouble finding a place to live in Prague and he felt stifled by the lack of certain freedoms. In January 1980, the pair received visas to London for two weeks and, on their way home to Prague, got off the train in Munich and made their way to the American Embassy. Vladimir was questioned by U.S. military intelligence for four months. They were given asylum in Germany, Vladimir found a job at BMW and they moved into an apartment.</p><p> </p><p>In 1981, the Pochops received permission to immigrate to the United States, but they had to wait eight months as Jana was pregnant. Their son Jan was born in September 1981 and, in April 1982, the Pochops flew to Atlanta, Georgia. Two weeks later, Vladimir went to California in search of a job. When he found one at a start-up tech company in Silicon Valley, his wife and son joined him and the family settled in Mountain View. Vladimir and Jana had another son, Martin, in 1984. That same year, Vladimir joined the company Autodesk and, as a chief scientist there, helped to develop AutoCAD and other products. He became an American citizen in 1989 and today holds dual citizenship. As both of their sons now live in Prague, Vladimir says that he and Jana have considered returning to the Czech Republic. Today, they live in Concord, California.</p>
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Vladimir Maule
<p>Vladimir Maule was born in Prague in January, 1952. His father (also called Vladimír) had been part-owner of Prague’s high-end Savoy Hotel until the Communist coup in 1948. Following the takeover, he was arrested and subsequently sent to work as a manual laborer in Pražské papírny, a paper factory. Vladimir’s mother, Yvona, worked as a part time typist at the state export company, Pragoexport. Vladimir grew up in the Prague district of Braník. In eighth grade, Vladimir says, he and a number of school friends formed a band called The Explosive Group, which performed cover versions of songs by The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. Vladimir says that this group, alongside the long hair sported by the band’s members, was not viewed favorably by Vladimir’s teachers. He does say, however, that The Explosive Group made him popular with girls.</p><p> </p><p>When Czechoslovakia was invaded by Warsaw Pact troops in 1968, Vladimir’s parents decided to leave the country. Vladimir’s father, who was considerably older than Vladimir’s mother, was walking with crutches recovering from surgery and so decided to join the family at a later juncture. In October 1968, with faked exit permits that, Vladimir says, had cost the family savings, he and his mother traveled to Austria where they planned to apply for asylum in Canada. Vladimir, however, fell ill with scarlet fever, forcing him and his mother to return to Czechoslovakia. A couple of months later, Vladimir and his mother again found the money to purchase fake exit permits and travel to Austria. They spent around four months in Traiskirchen and Bad Kreuzen refugee camps before abandoning the idea of settling in Canada and opting to move to the United States. They arrived in Chicago on April 20, 1969. It was at around about this time that Czechoslovakia tightened its border controls, meaning that it would be another 14 years before Vladimir saw his father again.</p><p> </p><p>Vladimir and his mother settled in the traditionally Czech neighborhood of Cicero in Chicago. After a short period spent working for Sears, Vladimir went back to school, first to the local Morton High School and then to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he gained a four-year scholarship to study film. Today, Vladimir owns a film production company called Filmontage which, among other projects, produced a documentary about Czech artist Jiří Kolář shortly after the Velvet Revolution, including interviews with the newly-elected president of Czechoslovakia at the time, Václav Havel, and with the author Bohumil Hrabal. A keen pilot, Vladimir today lives in Naperville, Illinois, in a home which has space for his plane in the garage. He lives with his wife, Eva, and has two daughters.</p><p> </p><p> </p>
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Vit Horejs
<p>Vit Horejs was born in Prague in 1950. His father, Jaromír, was a teacher and author (who published over 50 books), while his mother, Věra, taught gym and Czech. Vit was the youngest of three siblings. Growing up in communist Czechoslovakia, he says he ‘believed in the system’ and even became Young Pioneer of the Year when he was around ten years old. Vit says he became disillusioned following the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. That same year, he made his first trip to France. It was at this time that Vit began studying French, philosophy and theatre at Charles University in Prague. He returned to France in 1969, having faked an invitation to secure himself an exit permit. Also during his studies, Vit visited England which, he says, made him ‘fall in love with English’ and consider a life abroad. He stayed in the United Kingdom for longer than his exit permit allowed and so had his passport confiscated upon his return to Czechoslovakia.</p><p> </p><p>Vit graduated from university in 1975 and went to the Moravian town of Šumperk to take an acting job in the municipal theatre. He left the theatre after one year so as to move back to Prague, where he worked as a freelance actor and developed plans to leave the country. The chance came in 1978 when Vit was translating Primo Levy’s <em>Il Sistema Periodico</em>; he says he managed to procure an invitation from the author to consult with him on the translation in Italy. Vit left Czechoslovakia in March 1978. He did travel to Italy, but continued on to France, where he spent one year in Paris, studying mime and waiting for either the United Kingdom or the United States to process his visa request. He arrived in New York City in February 1979, sponsored by the American Fund for Czechoslovak Refugees. Vit settled briefly in Queens, working first as a bike messenger and then a cab driver. He subsequently moved to Manhattan and became involved in the Czech-American black light theatre company <em>Divadlo Ta Fantastika</em>. He stayed with <em>Ta Fantastika</em> for a number of years, moving to Florida in the mid-1980s with the company. Towards the end of the 1980s, however, Vit embarked upon his own venture, the Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre – using (among other props) puppets unearthed in the attic of New York City’s Jan Hus Presbyterian Church.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Vit has toured the United States with the Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre on several occasions, often performing his adaptations of traditional Czech fairytales (such as Rusalka and Jenůfa) in American schools. He serves on the board of the Bohemian Benevolent and Literary Association and lives in Manhattan with his wife Bonnie. The couple have one daughter, Sarazina, who is currently in the Czech Republic on a scholarship learning Czech.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p>
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Viktor Solarik
<p> </p><p>Viktor Solarik was born in Prague in 1961. He lived in the Smíchov district of the city with his parents (who were both chemists) and his older sister, Helena, who still lives in the family home in Prague. Viktor began elementary school in 1968, right after the Warsaw Pact invasion, which occurred in August of that year. He says that it was apparent that the Communist Party had an ‘arm in every organization,’ including sport activities and youth organizations. After graduating from high school, Viktor attended ČVUT (Czech Technical University in Prague) where he studied architecture. An avid windsurfer, he asked permission to travel to Malta to represent Czechoslovakia in a global competition, but the dean of architecture refused to sign for him. Shortly after graduating from ČVUT, Viktor married his wife, Eva, whom he had known since high school, and they decided to emigrate. Viktor says that the pair had the full support of their families who, even though there was a chance they would encounter repercussions, felt fairly secure in their professional lives. They signed up for a tour going to Austria and Germany and, in August 1987, left the country. When the bus stopped in Munich, Viktor and Eva went to the police station where they claimed asylum. After two months in a refugee camp, Viktor found work with a surveyor and the couple were able to move into a small apartment while waiting for their paperwork to clear. They were granted immigration visas to the United States after 18 months and arrived in New York City in March 1989.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Viktor and Eva’s sponsors were friends of their parents who had emigrated in 1968 and lived in New Jersey. They stayed in New Jersey for a few weeks while looking for a job. Viktor was offered a position at the architectural firm Kaeyer, Parker and Garment in Mount Kisco, and the pair moved to Westchester County. In 1998, Viktor started his own firm (VKS Architects) which focuses on residential design and construction. Viktor and Eva have two daughters who are now in college. They both speak Czech and, when they were younger, spent summers with their grandparents and cousins in the Czech Republic. Viktor tries to visit his home country every year to spend time with family and friends. Today he lives in Carmel, New York, with his wife Eva.</p>
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Veronika Heblikova-Balingit
<p>Veronika Heblikova-Balingit was born in Havlíčkův Brod in southeastern Bohemia in 1973. She lived with her mother, Milena, a secretary; her stepfather who worked in construction; and her younger sister. She regularly visited her father who lived in Prague and worked as a sound engineer for public broadcaster Czechoslovak Television. Veronika spent many weekends and vacations at her family’s cottage in Slavníč. She was interested in art and participated in after school art programs. At the age of 14, Veronika moved to Prague to attend an art school where she studied furniture design. She was 16 in November 1989 at the onset of the Velvet Revolution and, although she was not in Prague during the major student demonstration on November 17, Veronika says that she had participated in earlier protests and continued to gather in the city with other students in the following weeks. In the summer of 1990, Veronika took advantage of the newly-opened borders and traveled throughout Europe. Upon graduating, she took a job as a sales assistant in a clothing store and also did freelance work creating posters and flyers. Later, she worked for a new architecture firm designing office layouts. Her father helped her to secure an apartment in the Černý Most area of the city, and she was able to rent out several rooms. Veronika also took private English lessons.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>In 1994, at the suggestion of an American friend who was renting one of her rooms, Veronika and a friend traveled to the United States. She arrived in Chicago and quickly became involved in the Czech community there. Her first job was working at a carpet store, but she soon began waitressing and found a job at Klas, a Czech restaurant in the Chicago suburb of Cicero. Veronika married and decided to stay in the United States. She took English classes to improve her language skills and also received a certificate in computer graphics from the International Academy of Merchandising and Design. She was offered a job building web sites at Apartments.com. After the company changed hands several times, Veronika took a job at Bank of America editing the firm’s internal web site. She has been with the company for over 12 years and has had various job titles and responsibilities.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Veronika says that she tries to visit the Czech Republic once a year and loves that her teenage daughter is aware of her heritage and history. She hopes to send her daughter to school abroad and to spend more time in the Czech Republic as a result. Veronika is active in the Czech community in Chicago and volunteers her time and talents to the Chicago-Prague Sisters Cities organization.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p>
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Vera Plesek
<p> </p><p>Vera Plesek was born in Vrchovina, northern Bohemia, in 1949. Her father, Petr, died when she was four, leaving her mother, Františka, to raise her and her brother on her own. Vera’s mother held strong anti-communist views and because of this, as well as for reasons of her health, she refused to work. In the early 1950s, Vera’s mother was sentenced to four years in prison for criticizing the communist government, though was granted a pardon after the death of President Klement Gottwald in 1953, before she was sent to jail. Vera started school in Vrchovina, but was bullied so badly because of her mother’s behavior that she was moved to a larger school in Nová Paka after two years.</p><p> </p><p>When she was 15, Vera left school and started to work at a road equipment factory called Silniční stroje a zařízení Heřmanice Nová Paka, in a job which she says she ‘loved’. Among other duties, Vera worked as a crane operator, welder and upholsterer. She left the factory at the beginning of 1969 when a disagreement with her mother led her to look for a new home. She started working as a dishwasher in a hotel in Špindlerův Mlýn which offered employees room and board. After one week of washing dishes, she wrote to a Czech-American family friend, Jimmy Valesh in New Albin, Iowa, asking whether she could come and visit him there. Vera left Czechoslovakia legally on September 9, 1969. When she took a job in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, one month later and did not return, she was handed a nine-month sentence in absentia for leaving Czechoslovakia. Vera has lived in Cedar Rapids ever since. For more than 30 years, she worked in the radiology department of St. Luke’s Hospital. She also wrote a regular column for the Czech-American newspaper <em>Hlasatel</em> for over a quarter of a century. She became an American citizen in 1976. Vera currently lives in Cedar Rapids with her third husband, Brian, and works as an artist.</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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Tony Jandacek
<p>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.</p><p> </p><p>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.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p>
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