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Vladmir Pochop
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…
Vladimir Maule
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…
Vit Horejs
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…
Viktor Solarik
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,…
Veronika Heblikova-Balingit
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…
Vera Plesek
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…
Vera Borkovec
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…
Tony Jandacek
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…
Suzanna Halsey
Suzanna Halsey was born in Karlovy Vary in western Bohemia in 1951. Her father, Alois Pakeš, was a grandson of the mayor of Písek. He studied law, but Suzanna says that his bourgeois background prevented him from practicing after the Communist coup…
Roman Prokes
Roman Prokes was born in Svitavy, a city in central Czechoslovakia, in 1960. Roman’s mother and father met after they both moved to the city following WWII, when it had been annexed by Nazi Germany as part of the Sudetenland. At the age of three,…