Oral History Transcripts Online

Stalin Monument in Letná park prior to its destruction in 1962

This fall semester, George Mason University History and New Media student Misha M. Griffith has been working to transcribe a number of the interviews gathered by Recording Voices & Documenting Memories so far. To mark the publication of the first interview transcript on Otomar Hájek's profile page, here is a previously unbroadcast snippet from his interview which caught our eye at the NCSML:

"I was a member of the first university workers’, no… students’ brigade to build the Stalin statue!"

You worked on building it?

"Well, yes. We went there and we played cards all day; we managed to do it. And when they were taking it down, I wanted to volunteer to be in the first students’ brigade to take down the statue, but my mother talked me out of it."

...The statue was built in ’52, wasn't it?

"I don't remember. My memory of the time is… I don’t remember... I was still at the university. I was at the university from ’49 until ’53. It must have been built in ’52, or begun to be built. It took a long time."

Could you describe for me the process? That’s such a monster statue. I’m just curious about what the whole engineering setup was like there, and how it was done. How was it organized?

"The statue itself was called the 'food line,' which looked as if a line of people - okay, I don’t have to describe that. The foundations were therefore elongated, and since it was supposed to be solid stone, the foundation had to be extremely solid. An extra railway line was built from the nearest spur to bring in these stones, [each] of a size roughly two yards cubic. And unloaded there and then transported. Some of the sculptural work was carried out in the original situation, and then some of it was finished here."

Was it a big group of people, or how many... Were there hundreds of people?

"There were hundreds of people. There were hundreds of people. The most interesting thing is that the builder, the artist who conceived it, committed suicide immediately afterwards."

Upon graduating from Charles University in 1953 (and waving goodbye to student labor brigades), Otomar worked in a range of research positions, including one at a computer science facility in Prague:



For Otomar Hájek's complete profile (and now the full transcript of his interview as well) visit the NCSML's oral history web pages.

Cleveland's Czech Cultural Garden

The Cleveland Cultural Gardens came into being in the early 1900s on land that had been donated to the city for this purpose by John D. Rockerfeller. The original idea for the gardens, as articulated by founder Leo Weidenthal, was to create “links in a lovely garden chain, symbolizing all the cultures and honoring the dreamers and poets whose ideals have inspired humankind through the ages.”

The first garden (built in 1916) represented the British presence in Cleveland, but construction of the gardens took off in earnest in the 1930s, when expansion was supported by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) program.


The Czech Cultural Garden at 880 East Blvd.

The Czech garden was founded in 1935, though it fell into some disarray and was subsequently rededicated in 1997. Of the 26 gardens, the Czech one currently houses the largest number of sculptures, mostly designed by Frank L. Jirouch – a Clevelander of Czech extraction. Those represented in the garden include Tomas Garrigue Masaryk, Bedrich Smetana, Bozena Nemcova and Jan Amos Komensky.


Masaryk (front) and Smetana (back) by Frank L. Jirouch



On both sides of the garden are pillars, on which you can read this text in Czech and English. The English translation from the second pillar reads:

“Czech Cultural Garden – Bohemia Moravia Silesia – Homeland of teachers, statesmen, martyrs, musicians and artists, this garden is dedicated to our beloved Czech parents who by their teaching and by precept and example have established for us a high ideal of American citizenship. Dedicated 1935, rededicated 1997.”


Paul Burik at work in the Czech Cultural Garden, 2006

In more recent years, the upkeep of the Czech Cultural Garden has been taken care of by Paul Burik (who is now also head of the Cleveland Cultural Gardens Federation). He told Recording Voices & Documenting Memories how he originally became involved:



The park also plays home to a Slovak Garden (founded in 1932) and a Rusin Garden (dating from 1939). The Cultural Gardens also boast an excellent website, which can be found here.