Czechs & Slovaks Around the World

Cover of The Australian Slovaks' Calendar, 1957, courtesy of Anne McKeown

While Recording Voices & Documenting Memories focuses on Czechs and Slovaks who immigrated to the United States, it is important to remember that this is only one part of the story, and that thousands of Czechs and Slovaks settled elsewhere around the globe.

Here are a few of the highlights from our own oral history collections, which show some of the other locations in which Czechs and Slovaks set up a new home at various points throughout the past century:

Vera Borkovec, who was born in Prague, lived with her family in Tehran, Iran until after WWII. Her father worked as the director of the Škoda factory in the city, which employed a number of expatriate Czechs, some of whom are photographed below:


Vera Borkovec's father (second row from the bottom, fourth from right) with colleagues from Škoda Tehran

Joseph Ben David fled Czechoslovakia in 1939 and lived in Israel until 1954. The picture below shows him on the beach in Tel Aviv in the early 1950s.


Portrait of Joseph Ben David, Tel Aviv

Vera Roknic found herself stranded in Sweden, where she was on a work placement, at the time of the Communist coup in Czechoslovakia in 1948. She lived there for a number of years before emigrating to America in 1952. This photo shows her on a camping trip in the Swedish countryside with her late husband, Vaclav (himself a Czech émigré in Sweden):


Vera Roknic camping in Sweden, 1950

Jerri Zbiral, meanwhile, lived in Norway for three years before emigrating to Canada with her family. She refers to the years she spent growing up in Norway as ‘extremely happy.’


Jerri Zbiral competing in a skiing competition in Norway, 1954

A large number of Czech and Slovak emigres settled in Canada during the Cold War period. The photo below shows Ivana Edwards’ father selling Czech and Slovak books at a summer fair there in the 1950s. His International Book Service operated out of the Edwards’ adoptive hometown, Montreal.



Oliver Gunovsky settled in 1970 in Kitchener, in the Canadian province of Ontario, after two years spent in England. He found work in the restaurant business and eventually came to own the city’s Metro Tavern, which he says specialized in Central European fare - in particular schnitzels:


Promotional postcard for Metro Restaurant & Tavern, Canada

Émigré Otto Ulc has spent years documenting the stories of Czechs and Slovaks who settled around the world. This photo from his collection shows the Czech staff at Praga Technical Services & Manufacturers in Pretoria, South Africa:



Two good websites with lots of information about Czechs and Slovaks around the globe are krajane.net (in Czech) and Slováci vo svete (in Slovak).