Early Learning from Interviews with Post-1989 Immigrants

Jozef Bil in Pittsburgh, 1990s

Since 2011, the NCSML has been recording with newer Czech and Slovak immigrants who came to the United States following the Velvet Revolution in 1989. In doing so, the museum has gathered new types of information.

For a start, those who came after the fall of communism in Czechoslovakia have provided us with eyewitness accounts of the Revolution. Responses to this have been particularly varied.

Irena Kovarova was a student at Charles University in Prague in November, 1989. She says she felt impelled to get involved in the protests which brought about the fall of the government: “What I really started feeling more and more, I felt embarrassed that I’m allowing these people to rule my life... And so that was sort of brewing, and when this November demonstration of students was going to take part, it was absolutely clear. I mean, we had to be there.” 

Pavlina Parks, meanwhile, was a few years younger and in eastern Moravia. She suggests that events took her somewhat by surprise: “I was in seventh grade and I remember going to Rožnov for my piano lesson... I remember there were a lot of people on the square… and I didn’t have quite an idea of what’s going on… There was a main speaker and I do not know who he was, what he was talking about… It was a very new experience for me; I was just there with a lot of new people around me and I could feel the big energy and the big vibe and the whole power of something happening, but I didn’t know what.”

“Then they were showing some stuff on TV and we were slowly explained to in school what’s happening, but we didn’t understand why the change is happening because we did not feel that we had a bad life up to now... Teachers started to explain to us that there is democracy in different countries and what a democracy is, and these words were empty to us. We didn’t know what to [think].”

Czechs and Slovaks who came to the United States following the Velvet Revolution often suggest they left for different reasons than those who came before. Many interviewees suggest that they were attracted to America by wanderlust, and so as to seek adventure. This was the case with Ludmila Sujanova, who came to the United States from Košice, Slovakia in 2003. She makes a direct link between the events of the Velvet Revolution and her ability to travel west:



… Others, meanwhile, came to the United States to make money. Many discuss their immigration in initially temporary terms (which is another difference between post-1989 immigrants and those who came before, and who sought political asylum). Stanislav Grezdo moved to New Orleans in 1999:



To date, the NCSML has recorded around 45 interviews with Czechs and Slovaks who came following the Velvet Revolution. This constitutes about one sixth of the interviews we have in our collections.

Related Reading #2: Prague Winter

To mark Secretary Madeleine Albright’s visit to the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library on May 17-18, Recording Voices & Documenting Memories suggests her most recent book, Prague Winter: A Personal Story of Remembrance and War 1937-1948, as an interesting piece of reading related to the oral history project. 

Prague Winter tells the tale of Secretary Albright’s early childhood in Prague (and then in Great Britain during WWII), and of the more recent discovery of her family’s Jewish background.

Secretary Albright pours over her parents’ diaries and papers to learn more of their WWII experiences. She references correspondence sent to and received from the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia throughout the War. She also conducts interviews with relatives and former neighbors as part of her research.

She does so to try and understand “Why we make the choices we do… What prompts one person to act boldly in a moment of crisis and a second to seek shelter in the crowd? Why do some people become stronger in the face of adversity while others quickly lose heart?”

Prague Winter provides a unique eyewitness account of WWII from a Czech émigré perspective. The book is meticulously researched and comments originally on the Czech history of the period.

Prague Winter is sold at the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library’s store. For more information on purchasing the book, click here.