Leaving Czechoslovakia comes to Cleveland

 

The National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library's traveling oral history exhibit, Leaving Czechoslovakia, is currently on display at Cleveland's Bohemian National Hall. Click here for a list of opening times and directions.

On Sunday, July 28 Project Coordinator Rosie Johnston and the NCSML's Director of National Development Charity Tyler will be on hand to discuss the exhibit's creation, and the work that the NCSML has been doing more generally over the past couple of years - in Cedar Rapids and around the country.

The NCSML is excited about presenting Leaving Czechoslovakia in Cleveland, as so many of the materials used in the exhibit originally came from oral histories recorded in the city. The exhibit contains excerpts from interviews with Zdenka Necasek and Melania Rakytiak, and artifacts such as this theater program, which was shared with the NCSML by interviewee Kveta Eakin:

The presentation of Leaving Czechoslovakia will take place on Sunday, July 28 at 3:00pm at the Bohemian National Hall. For photos of the event, watch this space!

A Tale of Two Transcripts

Two new oral history transcripts are now available online. Misha Griffith from George Mason University has been working on interviews with two émigré activists, Mila Rechcigl and Andrew Hudak. To read the full transcripts, visit Mila Rechcigl and Andrew Hudak’s profiles on our website, but here are excerpts from each interview in which both men talk about their activities in the Czech and Slovak communities respectively:


Photo of Mila Rechcigl, circa 1990

“Many people don’t realize why the SVU actually started and under what condition, and the reason was that at the time there were lots of political disputes in the Czechoslovak community and there were numerous organizations and clubs and what have you. And the politicians, if they belonged to one particular group, they wouldn’t talk to politicians in another group; they just wouldn’t talk to each other. And it was sometimes quite nasty, you might say. And, in this type of, at the same time the situation in Czechoslovakia was getting worse, from bad to worse. So this was the time when the intellectuals of Czech and Slovak descent or Czechoslovak intellectuals decided that enough is enough. Let’s focus on the positive. See what’s… Let’s decide on something which sort of unites us rather than divides us. And that was the society. They said that they will create a society where anybody can talk that wishes, where we can explore different issues and what have you. And, from the very beginning, it was meant to be a nonpolitical organization…”

In 1987, Mila was invited to speak at a conference in České Budějovice by the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences:

“When the time came for my speech I started speaking in Czech, because the whole conference was in English. I started talking in Czech and I told them that I’m bringing greetings from Czechs and Slovaks abroad and then I told them that we have –I told them that Czechs have made a tremendous contribution to the United States and that they can be proud of what these people have done. It is a fantastic a sort of advertisement we are doing for the country. And then I told them about SVU and whatever else. And, I don’t know how I ended it, but when I finished this there was a dead silence. I really mean it, dead silence. In the back some young guy, some 25 year old, got up and started applauding then everybody started applauding. (Laughs) So, that was a really fantastic experience.”


Photo of Andrew Hudak, circa 1991 (by Olan Mills)

“I know that I cannot accomplish one tenth in Slovakia of what I accomplished in America. Because when I compare myself to my friends, same education - don’t forget it is a smaller country, smaller opportunity. This is a big country - as long as you have the guts and the know-how, you can move as far as you want in America. That’s a beautiful country - I love America and I never, you know…

“I had tremendous faith when Slovakia came up, and also I wanted to put the impression of Slovaks in America forward to help Slovakia, okay? [I wanted to] put the impression on American Slovak society to help Slovakia. We helped which was the number one thing. I tried to help them rebuild the Church. The same thing with the monastery. The same thing with the Society of the Divine Word Seminary when I went to Bethany. At the same time I encouraged Slovak organizations to give some money. And then I encouraged trade between Americans and Slovakia hoping to better itself… There’s a lot of money coming from America to Slovakia. A lot of pensions, a lot of estates, and things like this, you know? And so the money - American Slovaks help the Slovaks a lot.”

For full-length transcripts, visit http://www.ncsml.org/Content/Oral-Histories.aspx.

Recording Voices and Documenting Memories in New York City, November 2011

The National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library’s oral history project is coming to New York City. Over the next two years, the NCSML will record the oral histories of 50 Czech & Slovak Cold War-era émigrés, and 25 newer immigrants from the Czech and Slovak Republics who settled in New York after 1989.

The NCSML made a first recording trip to New York City this November. As ever, watch our website for biographical profiles and video clips over the weeks to come. Here though, is a preview of some of the materials we gathered:


Ivana Edwards in her home in New York City, November 2011

Ivana Edwards left Czechoslovakia with her family in 1948. She settled first in Israel and then Canada before coming to the United States to study. This is a snapshot from her first visit back to Prague in the 1960s. Ivana says that she had her hair done specially for the occasion, which is evidenced by this photo:


A well-coiffed Ivana Edwards with her grandmother in Prague

Gabriel Levicky came to New York City from Bratislava in 1979. This was the second time he had left Czechoslovakia, having emigrated to Israel following the Warsaw Pact invasion in 1968 (he then decided to return to Czechoslovakia as part of an amnesty one year later).


Gabriel Levicky, New York City, 2011

Today, Gabriel works as a translator, tour guide and cartoonist. A book of his work, entitled Pardon Me, Which Way to Heaven or Hell; Whatever? was published by the New York Chapter of the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences (SVU) in 2010.


Cartoon drawn by Gabriel Levicky in Prague, 1990

Tomas Hadl arrived in the United States more than a decade after the Velvet Revolution in 1989. He lived first in Washington, D.C., where he worked as a life-guard, before moving to New York City and starting out as a waiter. Today, he is the manager of the Bohemian Benevolent and Literary Association (BBLA), which is based in New York’s Bohemian National Hall.


Tomas Hadl at the Bohemian National Hall, New York City, 2011

Watch our web pages for excerpts from these interviews (and more) over the weeks to come.

The Czechoslovak Society of Arts & Sciences

The Czechoslovak Society of Arts & Sciences (Společnost pro vědy a umění - SVU) was founded in Washington, DC in 1958. According to the organization’s website, the main goal of the society was ‘to provide a forum for the free development of Czechoslovak culture in exile and make the world aware of Czech and Slovak cultural traditions, which date back more than a millennium.’


SVU Presidents Jan Mladek, Jan Triska, Rene Wellek, Mila Rechcigl, Frantisek Schwarzenberg and Jaroslav Nemec at the 9th SVU World Congress, Cleveland, 1978

The SVU’s first president was Professor Vaclav Hlavaty. The longest-serving head of the organization, however, was Dr. Miloslav (Mila) Rechcigl who led the SVU from 1974-1978 and then again from 1994-2006. Dr. Rechcigl became involved in the organization shortly after its creation; in his interview with Recording Voices & Documenting Memories, he discusses the context in which the SVU was formed:



Today, the SVU has different, expanded functions. The society wants to ‘become a bridge between Czech and Slovak professionals and those in other countries. It allows scholars abroad to benefit from contact with their Czech and Slovak colleagues, as well as helping to reintegrate the intellectual life of these two nations into the main stream of world science, arts and letters, from which they were separated for so long by political barriers.’

One of the ways in which the society attempts to facilitate communication between Czech & Slovak professionals is through its very useful SVU Directory, which lists contacts and brief biographical details for each of the organization’s members:


The well-worn copy of the SVU Directory used by Recording Voices & Documenting Memories

The SVU continues to publish a review entitled Kosmas as well as a number of books. In Washington, DC (where the local SVU chapter continues to be particularly active) an annual Christmas bazaar of Czech & Slovak crafts remains particularly popular. Dagmar White is an SVU member who contributes each year to the Christmas fair; she believes the organization’s purpose is changing:



The SVU is known in particular for its biannual World Congresses (which Dr. Rechcigl has been involved in since the inaugural meeting in 1962). The next World Congress will be held in 2012 in Žilina, Slovakia. For more details, check the SVU’s website over the coming months.

In the course of Recording Voices & Documenting Memories, many people have spoken of their involvement with the SVU. For more on the organization over the years, see Zdenek David, Vera Borkovec and Paul Burik's full-length interviews.