In exile

“I was one of those lucky people who throughout all these forty years were actually able to stay in touch with the Czech language, Czech events, living in this microcosm of the Czech exile community. I didn’t have any serious financial problems, although there were times when I was not doing well. In Frankfurt, Pavel Tigrid founded the organization Czechoslovak Relief Committee to help Czechoslovak refugees. Germany was still under the Allied occupation, but this was coming to an end, and the organization had some legal status in Germany. I was thus working for a small salary in the administrative department of this small organization which was helping people from refugee camps to be able to deal with the immigration formalities, to prepare their way to other countries, to America, Australia, Canada, to all parts of the world. Then there was a brief episode of my stay in Norway, when I was again as a social worker, so to speak. I went there to organize a transport of women and children, refugee families. Women and children were given the opportunity of a convalescent stay in Norway, which was provided for them by an organization of former Norwegian concentration camp prisoners, where there were many people who had contacts with their Czech fellow prisoners. This was a short time and then I returned to Germany and soon after, Free Europe in Munich began to be organized, and I began working there. So I have been there for about seventeen years, again mostly in the Czech community, working with the Czech language and being in touch with Czech politics.”

• born April 23, 1927 in Horinchevo in Carpathian Ruthenia
• growing up in South Bohemia and Prague
• after the war study at the Law Faculty of Charles University, publishing activity in the magazine Vývoj
• emigrated after February 1948
• 1951–1973 editor of Radio Free Europe
• leaving for the USA, studying library science
• 1976–1977 working for the Voice of America
• from 1977 working in the Library of Congress
• poet, prose writer, historian, translator