Leaving Czechoslovakia Exhibit Preview

Since January 2012, the Recording Voices & Documenting Memories team has been working to assemble a traveling exhibit which presents some of the highlights of the oral history project so far.

The exhibit, Leaving Czechoslovakia, will debut at Oak Park Public Library on May 11, 2012. It will run until May 27.

The exhibit focuses on Cold War-era Czech & Slovak immigration to the United States, and is split into three sections: the first presents some of the reasons why Czechs and Slovaks emigrated, the second deals with how Czechs and Slovaks made it to the United States and the third looks at what happened next.

The exhibit consists of display panels with photographs and quotes, and a DVD in which 20th-century Czech & Slovak émigrés to America present their stories in their own words.

Here are a couple of the clips you will see in the second section of the exhibit, in which interviewees discuss how they left Czechoslovakia:

Karel Ruml was raised in Nymburk, Bohemia. In 1951, he and a group of accomplices hijacked a train in order to cross the border into West Germany:



Jiri Pehe, meanwhile, left Czechoslovakia with his wife in 1981. The pair traveled to Yugoslavia, where they succeeded in persuading two Austrian tourists to help them across the border into Austria:



The opening reception for Leaving Czechoslovakia will be held at Oak Park Public Library on May 11 at 7pm. It is free and open to the public, though guests are asked to RSVP to Leah Wilson (lwilson@ncsml.org) by May 9. The exhibit will run until May 27 and then go on display in New York City in June.