Pepa left Czechoslovakia before I did.
Tag Archives: Pepa
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.
Dušana
Dušana was in a parallel class. We really got to know each other on a ski trip in tenth grade, when Vašek and I ended up with two girls — the other one interested in Vašek, and Dušana interested in me. The four of us joked around together the whole trip.
My Father’s Second Case
They came for my father a little before four in the morning, and the search that followed went on for hours. I do not remember hearing them arrive, only waking up to the fact that they were already there, moving through the rooms and going through everything we owned.
Jana Kolembářová and the Letter
I met Jana Kolembářová while I was still at AŽD. Pepa had arranged a small party with two girls. Jana was supposed to be part of that evening, but instead of becoming interested in Pepa, she became interested in me.
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
AFCR 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. AdamekJirka’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 StreetKLH 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.
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.
Trying to Go Back
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.