Otto Kudibal was born July 8, 1918, in Budapest, Hungary and he grew up in Kosice, Slovakia. After he obtained his high school diploma, he worked at a factory for arms in Brno. In 1939, when Germans invaded Czechoslovakia, he and his father left for France, where they joined the French Foreign Legion. Eventually, they were transferred into the Czechoslovakian Army group based in England. He survived the German bombardments of soldiers at Dunkirk, France, where Germans drove whoever remained into the English channel to be picked up by fishermen boats from England. He also talked about being parachuted into either Norway or Normandy, and shot while parachuting. He ended up in the ocean and being picked up by some boat. I forgot the details. He said that he was a leader of a reconnaissance unit in the Czechoslovakian Tank or Mechanized Division.
Continue reading Kudibal’s StoryTag Archives: Immigration
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.
Leaving Czechoslovakia – April to October 1965
My father was in a bigger room with several beds, but his bed was isolated from the rest so we had some privacy to talk. He was bedridden and visibly frail, but alert. He was almost 70 years old. When the Communists released him from his second imprisonment in 1962, they brought him home on a stretcher. The doctors were predicting he would die within 3 months. He had serious heart and lung damage from tuberculosis he contracted in prison. He had very strong will and he lasted until 1965, even if he was most of the time very sick.
Continue reading Leaving Czechoslovakia – April to October 1965
The First Days in Vienna
The bus departed from Prague around 1 or 2 in the afternoon on October 27, 1965. There were around 30 passengers on the bus, most of them in pairs or small groups who knew each other. I did not know anyone on the bus. My jaw was still swollen from the tooth extraction that morning and I was not very sociable. The whole group traveled on a single collective passport, which was the standard arrangement for these CEDOK bus tours. The only exception were 2 middle-aged doctors on the bus who had their own individual passports.
Traiskirchen
The Traiskirchen camp for refugees was an old army barracks complex, fenced off with a guarded entrance. There were 3-story barracks buildings alongside the street and inside the complex there were other single-story houses. We were taken under guard to the 3rd floor of one of the barracks buildings. The majority of the people who had been interrogated with me in Vienna were placed in the first half of the 3rd floor. Myself and a couple of other new arrivals were taken to the second half, which was isolated from the first half under lock and key. I was assigned a cot in one room and there was a common bathroom for our half of the floor.
Continue reading TraiskirchenAFCR and Dr. Adamek
Everyone in the camp was unhappy with AFCR — they were not very helpful. Mr. Trcka retired or left not long after I arrived. Some Czechs who had emigrated to Canada complained about AFCR operation in Vienna and in January or February 1966 Dr. Jan Adamek came to the camp, introduced himself as the new head of AFCR, and told everyone how he would change everything and make life easier for everyone. He explained that he was a veterinarian — not a medical doctor — that he had been very successful, and he showed us pictures of himself with his Cessna airplane and told us he was closely connected with the CIA. He was basically trying to impress everyone.
Continue reading AFCR and Dr. AdamekFinding Work
The camp wanted everyone to find work outside the camp and not need the food coupons. I was lucky, since one of the guys about my age from the isolated section of the 3rd floor was married and both he and his wife had the same occupational training as I had, as a radio mechanic — which today would be called an electronic technician. His wife, before we were released to the free camp, had somehow found a Czech speaking owner of a small factory in Vienna that assembled radios. The owner offered them jobs and also hired me.
Continue reading Finding WorkJirka’s Wife
Jirka had a wife and a young child back in Prague. She was able to get a permit to go on a CEDOK bus tour to Yugoslavia in August 1966. The secret police let her go since her young son stayed behind in Prague with her parents, so they assumed she would come back. Through Martin, we knew the places the bus tour would stop and on which days.
Leaving for the USA
By the summer of 1966, 3 things had come together that made me decide against Australia.
Arrival – October 1966
I left Vienna on a flight to Zurich, and from Zurich on a charter flight to New York arranged by AFCR. It was the first time in my life I had been on an airplane.
I felt better equipped for this journey than I had been for the last one. When I left Czechoslovakia a year earlier I had almost nothing. Now I had two hundred and forty dollars in cash, my original briefcase, and a large new suitcase filled with clothing I had accumulated during my year in Vienna. It was not much by any measure, but it was mine, and it felt like wealth compared to where I had started.
Continue reading Arrival – October 1966The House on Babcock Street
After 2 weeks at Pepa’s apartment on Beacon Hill, I moved to 170 Babcock Street in Brookline. Pepa had found me the room, since his girlfriend wanted to move in and he only had one bedroom. The room and board cost 50 dollars a month, which was manageable on my dishwashing wages.
Continue reading The House on Babcock StreetFugitive Nightmares
For the first year or so after I arrived in America, I had a recurring nightmare. I would find myself in Prague, walking through familiar streets, meeting friends, everything feeling completely normal — as if I had never left. And then, gradually, the realization would set in. I was not supposed to be there. I needed to get back to Austria, but there was no way out of Czechoslovakia. The borders were closed to me the same as they had always been, and this time I had no bus tour, no plan, no Kudibal to advise me. I had nothing.
Continue reading Fugitive NightmaresLiz
Liz was quite a woman. Whenever I was home and Jeanne was not around, Liz and I would communicate as best we could. Growing up in Czechoslovakia, I had never met a Black person; there were essentially none in the country. But in high school in Prague, an American film came to the movie theaters — I believe it was called Syncopations, or something close to that. It was an old movie about the origins of jazz in New Orleans, interlaced with scenes from the Civil War era and following the music as it moved to Chicago. It portrayed Black musicians and white musicians together, and it had wonderful New Orleans jazz throughout. I saw it many times and for a period I wanted nothing more than to become a trumpet player like Louis Armstrong. That film started a jazz revival across Eastern Europe; dixieland orchestras were forming everywhere, and we learned from our mothers how to dance the charleston. So by the time I arrived in America, I was already very interested in Black history and culture, and I had a lot of conversations with Liz because of it.
Continue reading LizThe Draft
Every male who came to the United States as an immigrant was required to register for the Selective Service draft, within a few months of arrival. I registered as required. I was living at that time at 170 Babcock Street in Brookline.
The Passport
Sometime in 1967, not long after I had settled into my routine in Boston, I noticed something in the wording of my Geneva Convention travel document — the refugee passport issued to me in Austria before I left for America. The Convention was clear on the matter: after emigrating, the holder was obligated to surrender the document to the immigration authorities of the new country, and in exchange, the new country was obligated to issue a replacement. It was not a favor. It was a right, written into international law.
Continue reading The PassportKLH and Honeywell
Mrs. Toy got me the job at KLH because of my language handicap — initially as a laborer, unpacking and setting up record players. KLH made high-quality audio equipment and record players, and it was a real company with real production standards.
MIT
In the spring of 1969 I was overwhelmed with dealing with my mother’s and sister’s immigration problems and could not keep up with taking 4 subjects at Lincoln College at the same time. I could not afford to fail any of them, since I was required to submit my report cards to the Selective Service board and a failure would have ended my student deferment immediately. So I made the decision to stop night school and instead look seriously at becoming a full-time university student. After discussing it with Jeanne and with my mother and sister, I started applying.
The Czech Community
When I arrived in Boston there were not many Czechoslovakians in the area. Most of them were older people who had come to the United States right after WWII and the Communist takeover in 1948, and they had organized themselves around the Masaryk Club. Pepa told me that there were only 2 Czech girls around our age, Marie and Anneta, and that the rule between us was to stay friends and nothing more, since a romantic involvement could spoil the friendship. After my experience in Austria I was not particularly interested in joining the Masaryk Club, but I met with Marie once in a while. She helped me practice for my driver’s test using her car, which I appreciated. I kept the rule Pepa had asked for.
My Sister and Mother Stay in America
At the end of August 1968, the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia and my sister immediately wanted to go back to be with my mother. I talked her out of it, and we decided that we would first try to get my mother out to join us; only if that failed would my sister go back. We made the invitation right away, and some friends in Prague helped my mother get a passport quickly and obtain her visa. She was able to come. I do not remember the exact timeframe, but it worked out. After the invasion, even the hardline communist government employees were helping people get out — it took several months for the regime to tighten its grip on the population again and close things back down. We were lucky to get her out when we did.
Continue reading My Sister and Mother Stay in America