• 04/08/2022
• By wizewebsite
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Irozhlas Catholics Jaroslav Macha communists closed to Mírov.'Was rebellious,' remembers his daughter<

Due to her father, the strict Catholic, she could not study at the university and the emerging normalization in her aroused so hopeless feeling that she was looking for any opportunity to emigrate.Fortunately, coincidence brought her together with a man who not only helped her legally leave the republic, but was the opposite of her father who broke the stick over her.With her husband, Anna Balev has lived in the heart of New York for almost 43 years and the United States still considers the country of his dreams.

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Anna Machová was born in 1951, three years after the February coup.At that time, her father Jaroslav Mach, originally a high school professor of languages at the grammar school in Olomouc, was suspended and made a hard time as a laborer.The family lived in Březce (since 1960 part of the village Štěpánov) about 10 km from Olomouc and very hard to seek livelihood.

In a few leaflets 15 years in prison.From the Jáchymov camp Tomík fled, they got it on the bridge in the elbow

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“We had to make food ourselves because we were terribly poor.But even though I grew up in the village, I don't understand the garden at all - I'm downright urban man and the city I love.Even other housework - like sewing and knitting - never went much, paradoxically they were more brothers.I just cook, I like cooking and apparently well, because I am praised for it, ”explains Anna.

The regime, however, was not satisfied with the fact that the uncomfortable educator prevented contact with the young generation, but persecuted it.Professor Mach did not intend to accept the harsh and systematic oppression of believers right after the Communist's accession to power.Was an important representative of the underground Catholic movement and made his disagreement clearly.

“He was highly intelligent, very rebellious and fought against the Communists completely publicly - he wrote open letters against them and for freedom of religion.He sent his treatise everywhere, corresponded to Rome and friends with a lot of priests.His close friends included later Cardinal Tomášek - he was already a bishop (he was consecrated secretly in 1949, note.author), but the Communists 'dismantled' him to an ordinary priest and sent him to the neighboring village of Moravian Huz, ”describes her father Anna.

“He often came to us on a pioneer and led with his father a long and sophisticated spiritual conversations.Every time we saw that the pioneer was standing in front of the house, we knew Tomášek was at home again, ”adds.

Penalty

The continuous anti -regime resistance did not remain without consequences.In the spring of 1958 Jaroslav Mach was arrested and spent about four months in custody, followed by a court.Originally he was supposed to be a judgment for two years, but even during his trial he showed very sharply his views and disagreement with the reigning circumstances and judicial trial, the sentence climbed for five years and served it in one of the most difficult prisons in Mírov.

They held me aside to be alive when I get to the Gestapo, remembers Professor Demeter

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“It's pretty terrible and absurd, but we actually relieved to go when my father went to prison because he actually left Despot in the family.He was truly fanatical, he himself was unloved child and could not love, just punish.We were a total of four children and we were all constantly beaten a lot to make something of us, ”says the woman about her childhood.

“We had to go to church every day and pray for half an hour on hard pavement every night, and then read half an hour from the Bible.Father believed that it would correct sins and genes that we have inherited from his wife, from our beloved mother.We adored it.Even though we got from her sometimes, even a slingshot on the knocking of the carpets, but we knew we deserved it.While Father exaggerated, ”recalls.

Tasks in prison

Nevertheless, the family went to the nearby prison every two weeks to visit regularly, as a political prisoner was eventually released after two years at the President's amnesty Antonín Novotný.

Anna still remembers the roads - first by train, then by bus and finally a piece of foot uphill to the prison.Apparently, her head was tied up because even in prison, her father required the fulfillment of certain duties.

“A year before he closed him, he started teaching me German, that was six.And then from seven to nine years old when he was in Mírov, I always had to carry his tasks from German.He sat there behind the grid because the prisoners were not physically affected with visits.From the last task I brought, he tried me on the spot and then gave me a new task for the next date.I was a good pupil, I wore from school mostly and I had a strictly talent for tongues and I liked to learn them.This is probably the only thing he gave us good, ”says the woman who eventually saved the languages.

On guard with a shovel and bayonet.The church has been an eagle since birth, because of which it ended up at the black barons

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“He taught Greek, Latin, German, French and Italian at the grammar school, I can do five languages, although each slightly different.I did not resist Russian - I will not have prejudices because of the tongue.When you think of the political, it's a pretty nice language.The whole war and peace I fired in the original and later I improved in it paradoxically in the US, because my mother -in.

Tongue as the key to the Iron Curtain

Despite the obvious language talent, however.After graduation at the grammar school in Šternberk in 1969, although she successfully passed the entrance examinations for the field of Czech and English at Charles University in Prague, but not accepted.

She continued her studies at least on a two-year superstructure for nurses in Olomouc, and then first in the psychiatric hospital in Prague-Bohnice and a year later in Karlovy Vary.This is already full of Husak's normalization - a 21 -year -old girl out of the reach of hard paternity education experienced more personal freedom, but apparently felt the loss of the political.

But without knowing Anna, her journey to deliverance began in 1970 during a trip from Olomouc to Prague.There she accidentally encountered a twelve-year-old architect Paul-Nice Balev, a son of emigrants from Eastern Europe growing up in West Germany.

“We met on the bench in the park.Asked me if I speak English, I said that no.Then he tried German and Russian, both of me, so we first entertained a mixture of German and Russian and at the same time became my first English teacher.But then he wrote a farewell letter, married and divorced again and returned in 1975 and got married.Meanwhile, I almost got married to a German just to get out of here, ”says.

As a child lived in Terezin, after the war it was raised by the Communists from the homeland.Jolana Blau today lives on Manhattan

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"I wanted a man for the exact opposite of my father and I got that.Nick is an atheist, he is very creative - a graduate architect, and also paints and takes pictures.And is a very sensitive person, a huge difference against my father, insensitive to their own children.If everything was to be according to my father, both girls we became nuns and both brothers would be priests.But that didn't happen, we all made a marriage, we all had children and two we ended up abroad.When I told my parents that I was going to America, my mother was sad, but my father was just waving that we were unsuccessful children and that I was going to Sodomy Gomory, I remember it exactly, ”recalls.

Cultural feasts on Manhattan

Anna Balev lives with her husband right in the center of New York, on the island of Manhattan.Local freedom full of sips - above all, embarked on the Communist of the forbidden Studio - at the City University at work and later as a mother in the home she devoted English and theater to.

She loved this since her childhood, when one of the local enthusiasts could go to Olomouc every month in Olomouc on drama, opera or ballet.He goes to the theater to this day, after all, the legendary Broadway and to the Metropolitan Opera only a short walk, some time ago she saw Dvořák's Rusalka.

And a piece of Dakota House - a house where John Lennon lived and before which he was 8 at night.December 1980 shot."It's at 72.street at Central Park, beautiful corner house.Yoko Ono is still alive there and had a commemorative place in the park where fans gather.Every time I ride a bike, I hear music there and feel marijuana.At that time I was just driving just before that murder from school in East Side, it's about 10-15 minutes from our house.And at home I released the news and I heard that before the house I recently drove, some bull has committed murder, ”says Anna, who rode the house regularly by bike.

American education

Anna Balev is four times the grandmother at the age of 68.She cares about her two grandchildren and two granddaughters, as in raising her two daughters, but be careful not to deviate too much from the cushions extremely liberal American education.

During the war we listened to London, recalls the daughter of the gardener at the Villa Stiassni, which was taken by the Gestapo

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“After my father, there was some strictness in me.Not such that I would beat the children like him, but over my ass, I gave them the Czech Republic, that's true.And that is not much here.Even the girls then told me that I was very strict when comparing it with other American children to whom they went home.They were praised for every bullshit while we just criticized, ”says.

“Here is more discussed with the children.Even if he bursts in the sandbox another child with a bucket over his head, so his mother comes and begins to explain to him: that it is not right and it should not do that he would certainly not like it if someone slammed him, it would hurt him.Everything very nice - I shouted in Czech and I slapped them on my ass, ”describes the differences between Czech and American education.

“But I learned at least partially American education from other mothers, when we had the baby sitting club, I got a book of one important child psychologist.But his attitude that you have to let the child do everything he wants, not again!For example, I put my children on the potty when they were a year and from two without diapers, while other children cake and pee into diapers within four years because they leave them, ”adds.

Anna and Nick now divide her time fairly between New York with grandchildren, winter stays in Florida and traveling in Europe - they usually have a base in Prague and Karlovy Vary, or with relatives in Olomouc.In the US, it supports Czech culture and compatriots, but it would not want to return to their native country.

“The situation has improved significantly, but people are too homogeneous there.Especially my generation born in deep Stalinism is still a lot of communism.I know I generalize, but I feel like I know in advance what anyone tells me, they have similar opinions and that just bothers me.I love New York, it was actually the first western city I stepped into in 1976.Here is simply the whole world, in all directions, ”concludes his story.

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