It is 1968, the Cold War is raging, and the United States is bogged
down fighting the "Communists" in Vietnam. The Berlin Wall is the
symbol of a world cut in half, a punitive wall, isolating the
Soviet republics that then formed the USSR. In the spring of 1968,
the Czechoslovakian Communist Party experimented with "socialism
with a human face"-known then as the "Prague Spring." Suddenly
there was freedom of the Press; an end to arbitrary wiretaps; and
citizens regained the right to travel without prior authorizations
and visas. The borders opened to the West, consumer goods appeared
in the stores---and the winds of freedom blew over the country.
That summer, Alexander and Anna boarded their Skoda Felicia, a
brand-new convertible, to join their daughter Petra in Bratislava,
where she had just completed her brilliant medical studies. Tereza,
the daughter of a railway worker who survived the concentration
camps and a Pravda editor who had long taken in Hungarian refugees
from 1956, stayed in a kibbutz in Israel to reconnect with her
Jewish culture. Jozef, a pastor defrocked for refusing to denounce
parishioners to the Party, delivered his first uncensored sermons
on the radio. Then, suddenly, on the nights of August 20-21, Soviet
tanks invaded Prague to put an end to this brief liberalization
experiment. For a few hours, the border with Austria would remain
open. Vienna was an hour's train away. Everyone now must make a
choice: leave or stay? Fleeing violence or resisting the oppressor?
Faced with the invasion of our country by an overmatched foreign
power, what would we do? Viliam Klimacek's historical novel looks
back at these major events in Czechoslovakian history. Celebrating
the identity of a people, its folklore, its beauty, and its
vitality, he makes this novel personal and real by focusing on the
story of ten people enmeshed in this difficult moment in history.
By telling the human stories of the Czech diaspora, Klimacek
reveals the impact of these rapidly moving events on his characters
and the lives of their families (based on real people whose names
have been changed). Through Tereza, Petra, Jozef, Sena (Alexander),
Anna and Erika, he tells us about the lives of these
(extra)ordinary people-their lives in Czechoslovakia, Their
decisions to leave, their flight, their families torn apart and
separated, the abandonment of all that they possessed for unknown
elsewhere, their perilous journeys, their arrival in a new country,
their reception and integration in a new country. The novel
describes the vicissitudes and hopes of newcomers, mainly in
Canada, the United States, Austria, England, and Israel, who face
obstacles-learning a new language, encountering red tape with
registration, validating their diplomas and finding a job and
housing. They quickly realize-depending on their own situation that
many will never see or visit the families they left behind in
Czechoslovakia. The experiences that Klimacek's characters face,
endure and overcome we all know will be repeated for untold
millions again and again as people around the world flee
intolerance, war, calamities in weather and other disaster in our
contemporary age. Constructed his stories on very real testimonies,
Klimacek's novel is simultaneously a hymn to tolerance, to
acceptance of others, and to the need to support and help the
weakest or the poorest. It leads us all to ask ourselves questions,
to reflect and perhaps, with a little goodwill, to see certain
things differently. While the story is at time dark, it is also
full of hope. You may know someone in your own community whose
experiences are mirrored in this novel and through your reading you
may now appreciate their unbending spirit and desire for freedom
and well being for themselves and their families.
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