Recording Voices and Documenting Memories in New York City, January 2012

Recording Voices & Documenting Memories staff have been gathering interviews in New York City and environs over the past two weeks. Here are but a few of the nicest materials gathered:


Joseph Ben-David feeding pigeons in Prague, circa 1933

Joseph Ben-David (born Josef Polák) was raised in a Jewish family in Prague until the outbreak of WWII in 1939, when he fled to Palestine.


Photo of Joseph on ship to Palestine, October 1939

Joseph came to the United States in 1954, where he worked at first as a printing ink maker (a trade he had inherited from his father in Czechoslovakia). In 1973, he founded the Church of Humanism, in which he remains active to this day.


Portrait of Joseph Ben-David in New York City, January 2012

Otto Ulc (also known as Ota Ulč), meanwhile, came to the United States in 1960, after working as a judge in Czechoslovakia. He is the author of numerous books, including The Judge in a Communist State: A View from Within.


Selection of books by Ota Ulč released by 68 Publishers

One of Otto’s first jobs in New York City was at (the now defunct) Vašata Czech Restaurant on East 75th Street.


Otto in uniform at Vašata Restaurant, 1960s


Business card from Vašata, courtesy of Otto Ulč

Otto now lives in Binghamton, NY where he is retired following a career teaching political science at SUNY Binghamton.


Katerina Kyselica, New York City, January 2012

Katerina Kyselica came to the United States in 2001 after working as a lawyer (and, prior to that, a professional swimmer) in the Czech Republic. She settled in New York City two years ago, where she now heads the dob2010 initiative, promoting new Czech and Slovak design in the States.


Peter Sís DJing in Poland, 1960s

Peter Sís arrived in the United States in 1982 to make a film in Los Angeles. When he decided to remain in the country after his travel visa expired, his first offer of work came from Milos Forman, who asked Peter to design the poster for his Oscar-winning film Amadeus. Before settling in the United States, Peter had worked as a DJ (with his own show on Radio Prague) and had himself won a Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival for his animated short - Heads.


Portrait of Peter Sís in his studio, January 2012

Today, Peter lives in Connecticut and works in Manhattan. Watch out for clips from his and these other interviews on the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library’s web pages over the weeks to come.

Recording Voices and Documenting Memories in Prague

Prague Castle, 1938 (photo: Thomas Hasler)

In September, the NCSML went to Prague to interview a number of Czech émigrés who returned home following the Velvet Revolution in 1989. The oral history team also took the chance to meet a couple of other Czechs (and indeed Americans) with interesting stories to tell. Watch our web pages for biographies and clips from the interviews over the months to come. Here, however, is a taster of what to expect:

Eva Eisler moved to New York City with her husband and children in 1983. It was there that she became particularly well known for her jewelry design. She moved back to the Czech Republic some twenty years later and now teaches at Prague’s VŠUP (Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design). When Recording Voices & Documenting Memories visited Eva, she was in the process of installing an exhibit of her students’ work entitled Treasure Hunt at the Czech capital’s Rudolfinum Gallery.


Eva Eisler installing an exhibit, Prague, September 2011


Detail from Treasure Hunt exhibit

Gene Deitch is an American animator (born in Chicago in 1924) who describes himself as “the only free American in Prague during 30 years of Communism.” He moved to the Czechoslovak capital in 1959. Gene and his team of animators at Prague’s Barrandov Studios subsequently won an Oscar for their film Munro. Gene spoke to Recording Voices & Documenting Memories about his decision to move and his time in Central Europe at his studio in Prague’s Malá Strana.


Altered passport photo of Gene Deitch

Meda Mládková went to Geneva, Switzerland as a student in 1946 and decided not to return to Czechoslovakia following the Communist coup in 1948. After more than half a decade in Switzerland, she moved to France where she studied art history and married her husband, Jan Mládek. At the beginning of the 1960s, the pair came to Washington, D.C. on account of Jan’s job at the International Monetary Fund. In 2001, Meda (now widowed) opened a gallery on the Prague island of Kampa where the couple’s collection of Communist-era Central European art could be displayed. Meda now spends her time between Prague and Washington, D.C.


Meda Mládková at Kampa Museum, September 2011


Book published by Meda Mládková (née Sokolová) in exile in Geneva, early 1950s

For full biographies and interview highlights, visit the NCSML's oral history web pages over the months to come.