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: Prague
Kudibal’s Story
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 StoryThe 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 RevelationBirth and the War Years
I was born on May 11, 1943, in Prague Vinohrady. My parents were renting a nice apartment at Jana Masaryka 14, which had a large, well-kept private backyard that was not common in Prague. My sister Jana was already 2 years old. My father was 48 and my mother was 37; they had married in 1939.
The Good Years
After the war we returned to live in our apartment in Prague, since it was still ours, and my mother reopened Modni Salon Linie right away. Her sister teta Pisty came to work there too, managing about 10 seamstresses, while my mother did the women’s dress designs and patterns herself. We also had an au pair, I think her name was Ela, who helped my mother with me and my sister.
On the Army Train
I have no memory of my father being arrested.
The Backyard of Our Apartment House
When I came back to Prague after my father had been arrested, the apartment itself was still there, but the life around it had changed. The family businesses and the car were gone. My mother sold what could still be sold. My uncle Antonín Valach liquidated his art gallery and gave my mother the money to help her get through that period.
Father Comes Home
I do not remember my father coming home.
The Ball and the Maturita
Every high school held a formal ball in the winter of the last year, and mine was no different. Ours was at the Municipal House, near the Powder Tower. There were three ballrooms — two of them had proper big-band orchestras, and a smaller room had a student orchestra playing Dixieland-style jazz. Students from other schools came too; we sold tickets to friends of ours who went to other schools around Prague.
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
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 FialaMy Sister’s Visit — Summer 1968
In the summer of 1968, the Prague Spring was underway in Czechoslovakia and Dubček had loosened enough restrictions that ordinary people could get passports and travel to the West. Because of that, I invited my sister to come visit me and paid for her trip. I picked her up at the airport in my Mustang — a used one, about a year old, but I was proud of it. The first thing she told me when she got in the car was that she was here only for a vacation and had no intention of staying, since life in Czechoslovakia was much better under Dubček. I assured her I had no intention of trying to persuade her to stay, and I meant it.
Continue reading My Sister’s Visit — Summer 1968The 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.
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.