In 1975 I learned about a new diplomatic arrangement between the United States and Czechoslovakia that had come out of the Helsinki Accords. Under this agreement, naturalized American citizens traveling on US passports would be guaranteed consular protection and could not be detained for previous offenses against the state — provided they obtained a Czechoslovak visa legally in the United States. For people like me, who had left without permission and faced criminal charges for doing so, it was the first time returning to Czechoslovakia had seemed legally possible.

Jana, Milan, Pepa, and I all applied for visas at the Czechoslovak consulate. Everyone received one except me. My activities with the Czech secret police before I left in 1965 had apparently not been forgotten. I was told informally that if I applied for a visa in a Western European country — Austria, for example — I would receive it, but I would be arrested when I crossed the border.

I had to wait until after the collapse of communism in 1989 to go back.