Everyone has heard of Cleveland, the second most industrial city in the USA. But not everyone knows that all of its machinery was built by the Eastern European immigrants, including the Czechs.
Ohio in the 18th century was inhabited only by Indians, while the land itself was fought over by the French and the English. While those two nationalities were fearlessly fighting for the land, the Moravian christian missionaries (Moravian Brethren) were fighting for the Indian souls. Besides Christianity the missionaries taught the Indians about hygiene, various useful crafts and farming. About 100 years later the main Indian colony located on the Tuscarawas river was visited by a famous Moravian missionary, David Zeisberger. David befriended the Indian chief of the Netawatweese clan who adviced him to ride down the local river to find a new home for himself. [click to continue…]
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This one will make you laugh. The attachment bellow is a short article taken from a Czech magazine for children, written in 1960 (during deep communism). Here is the translation:
Jana, one of the avid readers of this blog, recommended to me a great Czech article about one’s psychological changes that come along with emigration. What a great topic since many of us are dealing with exactly that! This geographical transition can be the most difficult time in one’s life. In order to cope with a new environment one has to be ready to take risks, face many loses and be ready to possibly change some of his life attitudes and values. The author describes also the technical terms of the process where the first phase is called the getting-to-know-your-new-environment phase through which people usually sale with no problems. Most new things we come across during this time are exciting and interesting. This phase may also change into a so-called ‘honeymoon phase’, an euphoric feeling when one feels like he has arrived to some kind of a heavenly Promised Land. 
My Czech friend Pavla recently prompted me to write about the times when we had a yearly gas mask training at school. It was mandatory, so that we would know what to do in case some capitalist ‘pig’ decides to use the mushroom cloud on us. I don’t remember about it much since I was still kind of young (and my memory is terrible). I do have a vision in my head of putting those weird things on and then walking in the school hallways, feeling like a fool (especially if some cute boy walked right by). Since my story is not that interesting I called on to my Czech friends to help me write these memoirs . This is what they remember about those weird days:
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“Ta nase pisnicka ceska, ta je tak hezka, tak hezka…” (“That Czech song of ours is so beautiful…”).These are the words of one of the most famous Czech songs of all times. In fact, the catchiness of the tune made it almost an unofficial hymn of the Czech people – the old sing it and the young ones do too. It was created by Karel Hasler, a talented Czech composer, singer and an actor known from his early teens through the early 40′s. Hasler paid dearly for the words of this song but his spirit lives and will live forever. Not only through his countless songs and a famous Czech candy called “Haslerky” but also through his son whom he had never met – through Tom Hasler. Tom recently contacted me via Czechmate Diary and enlightened me on his amazing life story. He was born to a German mother, Karel Hasler’s fiance, a month after Karel was brutally tortured/murdered in the concentration camp. When Tom was 7 years old, he and his mom emmigrated to Australia and from there to the United States where he lives up to this day. 
I did couple 
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