One Sunday afternoon, sometimes in March of 1960, the doorbell to our apartment in Prague rang. When I opened the door, there was an impressive figure of man, around 40-years old. He introduced himself as Otto Kudibal and asked to see my father. My father was surprised to see him since they had not see each other since 1948. Kudibal said that he had lived in Australia for the last 10 or so years, and he decided to come back to Czechoslovakia with his wife and 4 children. My father’s reaction was fear because my father had been a political prisoner for 3 years after 1948 and could not understand why anyone would return to Communist Czechoslovakia without working for the secret police. He was afraid that the secret police were trying to set him up. Otto Kudibal was surprised about my father’s situation and explained that he came to see my father to ask for advise and help since my father used to be a high government official. He expected my father to still have a high position and a lot of influence and be able to help him to find a good job.
Continue reading Meeting KudibalTag Archives: Friendship
The Plan and What Followed
Kudibal told me many times, after he separated from his wife, that he was planning to “escape” again from Czechoslovakia and go back to live in Melbourne, Australia. He said that if we wanted, he will take my sister and me with him and that after we were in Australia, we would write a book about our experiences in a Communist country.
Continue reading The Plan and What FollowedAn Unexpected Discovery
When my wife and I visited Vera Motlikova in 2018, my wife asked her directly if she and Otto Kudibal ever had any children, and Vera told her no. That is why it came as such a surprise when, in January 2026, out of nowhere, I received a message on Facebook from a woman named Lenka Machackova, who lived in the Czech Republic. She wrote that she had found my story about Otto Kudibal on the internet and that she had a very personal reason for writing to me. She told me she was adopted right after she was born and that only recently did she find out who her biological parents really were: a woman named Vera Motlikova and Otto Kudibal.
The Army
September 1, 1962, I had to report to Prague’s main train station for military transport to the city of Tabor. Every Czech male 19 years old was drafted for 2 years military service. The exceptions were males attending a university – they attended ROTC-like program in the university and after university was completed they were drafted for 6 month military service.
Continue reading The ArmyAfter the Army
After the army, we stayed good friends and we were meeting frequently for drinks, parties and reminiscing about life in the army. I was going through a lot of changes in my life, the death of my father, and making preparations to leave Czechoslovakia. I applied for a group bus tour for one night in Austria and the rest of the time in Yugoslavia and Hungary. Cedok, the government run tourist agency, let me know that the secret service rejected my application. Next day after the rejection, I met with Honza in a restaurant, Na Stare Fare, near where he lived in Prague. After we were served beer, Honza started to visibly shake and he was telling me that the secret police came to him and interrogated him about me. He said that they wanted to know about my feelings on the communist regime, if I became bitter after my father death, they suspect I plan to escape, and stay in Austria during my trip. Honza told me that he did not say anything negative about me, but he is very sure that the secret police knows everything about me and about my intentions.
Continue reading After the ArmyThe Revelation
When I was visiting Prague in 2018, I went to the Archive of Secret Police Files and obtained access to their online files, accessible via ebadatelna.cz web site. Not all files are there, but to my surprise I found the file on Jan Kotva, my friend. He was recruited by Czech army counterintelligence 3 month after we were drafted for the 2 years service to spy specifically on me, and 3 other soldiers. His controlling officer, Captain Josef Uruba, trained him, using his being kicked out of school for the May Day student demonstration, as part of gaining our confidence. He was trained how to watch us to potentially attempt any sabotage. Four of us were specifically named for our “dangerous” political background: in my case, because my father had a high government position and was two times in prison for actions against the communist state; in the case of Ginter Bedrunka, for his uncle being a WWII pilot who stayed in England; in Rudolf (Risa) Wagner’s case, his uncle was thirteen years in prison for actions against the Communist state; and Bohumir Cuhel, for being a Catholic priest. Kotva was reporting on us for the remainder of the two years in the army. He also reported on his own, not ordered to, on one other soldier, Jiri Cerny. The funny thing is, that for his reporting, he received at one point a reward of 50 Kcs, which was like $10.
Continue reading The RevelationStory of Pepa the Spy
Pepa left Czechoslovakia before I did.
Výčapky
My mother’s sister, teta Gabi, was an elementary school teacher in Výčapky, and her husband, strýc Štefan, was the principal of the school. Their children were Peter and Danka. The family lived in the same building as the school.
Ninth Grade
In ninth grade I did not fit in, since all my classmates were new to me. The school itself treated me politically the same as everyone else, so that was not the problem. My school was the 14. jedenáctiletá střední škola in Prague 12, on Máchova near Náměstí Míru, and in the school year 1957 to 1958 I was in class 9.a. It was an eleven-year school, and the last three years — ninth, tenth and eleventh grade — were the high school part, so all of the high school material was packed into those three years.
Slovakia with Pepa
After the examinations were over, Pepa had a proposal. We would work in June to earn money, and then in August we would go to Slovakia and hike and hitchhike for the month, sleeping outside, eating what we could find in the fields, and buying only what we had to.
Continue reading Slovakia with PepaTenth and Eleventh Grade
My friend Vojta (Vojtěch) Štefek was heavyset and collected books and old things. Among the things in his family there was an old Colt .45 revolver.
Mr. Konir
The gas station was owned by a man named Mr. Konir, who spoke Czech fluently. It was near the center of Vienna, though quite a walk from the Baden train station — we called the train to Traiskirchen in Czech “Badenka”, since Baden was the end station. The gas station was in the courtyard of a building block that had 2 exits. There was a room where the gas station attendants waited, and there was an office where Mr. Konir sat in a white coat greeting customers. Next to the office was a car bay with an underground area where the mechanic could do oil changes and work under the car, and next to that was another bay with a drive-on lift and pressure water hose hookups on each side. That was where we washed cars. Most of the time we washed the outside of the car and also lifted it to wash the underside. Some cars we had to wax and sometimes we had to apply an oil-type undercoating to protect against road salt in winter. The courtyard had enough room to park about 24 cars and on average we washed 1 car every half hour. Mr. Konir had one supervisor, Hans, who did not speak Czech and who kept everything running smoothly. All tips were shared equally between all of us. On Saturdays around 2PM, when there were no more scheduled cars, we had to clean everything spotlessly. Mr. Konir called this “Zammaramma” — supposedly a Czech nickname for the big household cleanup, from old Czech households.
Continue reading Mr. KonirMartin the Courier
Since we could not freely communicate with our families in Czechoslovakia — correspondence with someone from a Western country was enough to attract the attention of the Czech secret police — we found another way. One of the Austrian workers at the gas station was a man named Martin. He was married to a Slovak woman who lived in Bratislava and he drove to Czechoslovakia once in a while to visit her. We paid him to deliver messages to our families and friends in Prague on those trips. He had a beautiful and powerful 4-door MG. When he was driving my sister somewhere in Prague one time, he had to brake suddenly and someone behind him could not stop fast enough and ran into his car. He was not happy about it.
Alice
Sometime in April, there was an older couple in the camp living in one of the separate rooms in the single story buildings. I was visiting them and they told me about a girl about my age named Alice Pelcova. They explained that she was in a difficult situation — she had been married to some Czech guy working at the Czech Embassy in Paris, and her old boyfriend from before the marriage had found out she was there and went to Paris to see her. She left her husband and came with her boyfriend to live in Vienna. The boyfriend had been her boss at a ski resort near Karlovy Vary and was 20 years older than she was. After she moved in with him he became very possessive and started beating her. She planned to leave him by emigrating to Australia and had already filled out an emigration application at the AFCR. Since I was also emigrating to Australia, the older couple wanted to introduce us so she would have some known company. They invited us both over to their room to meet. She was beautiful and I fell for her immediately.
Bohous Fiala
Bohous Fiala had gone to the same high school as me in Prague. He was one year older, very charming and athletic. He was not strong academically in math and sciences but was very good at languages. I once went hitchhiking with him and some other friends for a month through Slovakia and I tutored him in mathematics and physics along the way. We became good friends until I left for Austria. When Martin went to Prague to deliver messages, he tried to reach Bohous, but Bohous was very suspicious and would not trust Martin enough to talk to him.
Continue reading Bohous FialaThe Vacation with Zdenek Renftel
Zdenek Renftel was one of my closest childhood friends. We had been in the same class from 1st grade through 8th grade in Prague and stayed in touch right up until I left Czechoslovakia. Zdenek had married young — he and his wife were both eighteen when their son was born, about a year before I went into the army. To avoid his own 2-year military service, he took advantage of an exemption that was available at the time: he signed up for 10 years as a coal miner in Ostrava.