Benesov Mayor Marik greets Tomas Masaryk at Benesov Rail Station

https://youtu.be/MZgf8l56tQg  In this video from 1918, at about 8:10 minutes, the Mayor of Benesov, my dad’s Czech hometown, greets Tomas M. Masaryk returning from exile during WWI to become the president of the newly former Czechoslovakia. At the time my dad was six years old. My father’s aunt Valda was married to Jaroslav Marik, the son of the Mayor.  In the 1960s, when my father was visiting Czechoslovakia, Uncle Jaroslav, knowing my dad collected hats, gave him the top hat that Mayor Marik wore on that day.  After my father’s death in 2000, I chose the hat as part of my inheritance as I knew what it meant to my father. I intend someday to return the hat to the Marik family, a family I’ve gotten to know well through my writing journey and multiple family reunions, hosted at great Aunt Valda and Uncle Jaroslav’s Neveklov home, passed down in their family to their grandsons.

Vaclav Havel speaks at American Friends of Czech Republic 2011 Prague

Sixty-eight years ago, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia seized power in a violent coup. At the time just after WWII, my parents were living in Long Island, NY in the hamlet of Sayville.  Before the coup, they’d considered moving back to my dad’s Czech homeland where he wished to practice medicine. His interest in returning was confirmed in a letter from his Aunt Valerie, a letter he kept until his death in 2000.  With his dream dashed, he was forced to watch from the outside the next 41 years in which hundreds of thousands of non-Communist citizens of Czechoslovakia were tortured, imprisoned, persecuted in many ways and some killed.

At last, in 1989, Czechoslovakia regained freedom through its famous Velvet Revolution. In a stunning 2016 announcement for the anniversary of the coup, the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia issued a statement which praised the legacy of the 1948 coup and recognized the “selflessness of the generators of this form of socialism.”  Memories remain firmly in place in the Czech Republic of what happened under Communism with Soviet Union influence.  As founding Czechoslovak President Tomas Garrigue Masaryk proclaimed the 1918 motto: “Truth prevails,” former Czech President Václav Havel kept alive with his statement “Truth and love must prevail over lies and hatred.”