Jan Kulísek An Immigrant's Web Page
One of the many
I am one of the many thousands of Czechoslovak refugees who came here in the U.S. during the Cold War escaping the communist dictatorship. The reasons for leaving permanently my home were not any different from the majority of the many other thousands of refugees from Eastern Europe. I just wanted to live a decent life without the necessity of double faced life: Showing one personality full of lies in the public and the real one to my friends and family. I got so much sick of this that I made a decision to leave once for all never coming back including not ever to see my friends, family and the place where I grew up. Despite that I didn't accumulate too much of wealth since my coming into the land of opportunity in terms of monetary value, I never regret my decision. Yes, even despite that I got homesick many times during my escape and even now after all these years I still miss many of my wonderful friends and family I grew up with. I am extremely thankful to the people of America for giving me the chance to come here and live in peace the life I was once dreaming about. And the most of all, I am thankful for giving me the chance to serve God and this country in its armed forces enriching me by real and unique experience to see and learn what the world and human life is really all about. Read more...
Where I Came From
Czechoslovakia was founded on October 28, 1918 on the ruins of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire after its defeat in World War I. Once in a while a question is raised whether or not the break up of the Empire was reasonable and whether or not it actually led to the next and the greatest man-made disaster of World War II. However, what happened, happened. And what's worse, the country ended up on the other side of Iron Curtain. Why it happened, why the Soviets had to come again in 1968 to squash Prague Spring, that's a another story.
Escape
Well, I had to get ouf there. It was the communism, you know? It seem to me that this term, which defined my life, is harder and harder to explain in these days. The explanation found on Wikipedia doesn't look like it would be something so terrible that one would have to leave everything behind risking life to get away. I can assure the reader, yes, it was so terrible and maybe even worse. Black Book of Communism puts the number of Cold War victims at 100 million lives. I have a reason to believe that the number was much larger.