Recording Voices & Documenting Memories in Washington, D.C.

It has been a long time since Recording Voices & Documenting Memories staff were in Washington, D.C. This August, the NCSML set out for the capital to record the stories of a number of Czech & Slovak immigrants who settled there after the Velvet Revolution in 1989. Here is a small sampling of some of the materials gathered:

Photo courtesy of Jana Kopelentova Rehak

Anthropologist and photographer Jana Kopelentova Rehak settled in the United States in 1994. In the Czech Republic she had worked as a photographer and studied at the film and photography school FAMU in Prague. She continued her studies in the United States, writing her doctoral thesis on Czech & Slovak political prisoners, whom she also photographed. Today, she lives in Baltimore and teaches at Towson and Loyola Universities:

Jana Kopelentova Rehak at home in Maryland

Ludmila Sujanova came to the United States from Kosice, Slovakia. She settled first in New York City and then Florida before coming to Germantown, Maryland. Following her interview with Recording Voices & Documenting Memories, she shared these photos from her youth in Eastern Slovakia:

While in D.C., we revisited former interviewee Juraj Slavik and rummaged through some of his old class photos from the Czechoslovak State School of Great Britain during WWII. Here’s an image from a music lesson complete with the Allied powers’ flags as classroom decoration:

In this clip from his interview with Recording Voices & Documenting Memories, Juraj remembers his school days in Great Britain during WWII:

The NCSML also met with Czech restaurant owner Jarek Mika while in Washington. Look out for another blog post about his business, Bistro Bohem, over the weeks to come:

Jarek Mika at Bistro Bohem, September 2012

… And be sure to check the NCSML’s oral history pages for each of these interviewee’s profiles and more!