Browse Items (71 total)
Sort by:
Karel Paukert
Karel Paukert was born in Skuteč, in what is today the center of the Czech Republic, in 1935. His father worked in the local bank, Kampelička, up until the Communist takeover. Following the coup, he was sent to work in the town’s granite mines and…
Katarína Hybenová
Katarína Hybenová was born in Poprad, in northern Slovakia, in 1983. Her mother Daniela worked in finance while her father Ondrej was a civil engineer. Katarína lived with her parents and younger brother Martin in apanelák until the fall of communism…
Katerina Kyselica
Katerina Kyselica was born in Karvina in northern Moravia and grew up in the city of Havířov. Her parents, Ladislav and Marcela, now retired, worked as a technician and a nurse while Katerina and her younger brother, Robert, were growing up.…
Lubomir Ondrasek
Lubomir Ondrasek was born in Topoľčany in western Slovakia in December 1972. His father, Ľubomír, was a military officer and his mother, Elena, worked in various clerical positions. In the early years of his life, he was raised by his maternal…
Luboš Brieda
Luboš Brieda was born in Brezno in central Slovakia in 1980 and grew up in nearby Banská Bystrica. His mother Katarina worked in the local dom kultury [House of Culture] as an event organizer and his father Peter was an economist who worked as a…
Lucia Maruska
Lucia Maruska was born in Cífer, a small village not far from Trnava, Slovakia, in 1953. Her father, Alfred, was an accountant at a poultry farm in the village, while her mother, Lydia, was a production manager in the knitting factory there. When…
Margret Vesely
Margret Vesely was born in 1988 in Aurora, Illinois. Her mother, Anna Vesela, had moved to the Chicago area from a small Slovak village the year before and married Margret’s father, a Czech-American. Her sisters, Brona and Zuzana, had stayed behind…
Marie Cada
Marie Cada was born in the small village of Komorovice, southeastern Bohemia, in 1919. She became an orphan at a young age and spent her early teenage years looking after the family farm with her brother Václav. Marie went to school in nearby…
Mark Zejdl
Mark Zejdl was born in Petrovice, a village outside Prague, in 1943. His parents owned a butcher shop in Prague; however, Mark lived with his grandparents in Petrovice until he started school due to unrest in the capital brought on by WWII and the…
Melania Rakytiak
Melania Rakytiak was born in Paris in March 1936. Her father was a Slovak laborer at a furniture factory while her mother, also Slovak, was a maid in the home of a wealthy French family. Melania’s mother died when she was only 10 months old. Her aunt…