George Dlouhy

The traumatic years of WW II brought an unimaginable suffering to population of many countries, and millions of lives were senselessly and brutally terminated. With the benefit of hindsight I could confidently say that this was not my case, since one day during the war my life just started. This was for me a remarkable event, which happened in a maternity ward of one hospital in Prague. It was dutifully noted in German and in Czech on my birth certificate, and my presence in this world begun.

As I learnt much later, my parents welcomed my birth very much. As a thank you gift from the grateful government, my mother received tricolor pin with a gold-plated ornament. My father, who until that day was not a father at all, suddenly became my father, and because of this newly acquired status, he did not have to go to bombed-out Germany, and join thousands of others, embarking on compulsory work there.

For the first seventeen years of my life I lived in a small village Záryby, in the central Bohemia. During my childhood the world became divided into two parts, East and West. Both parts were not just diverse systems, but they were in fact deadly enemies. They both claimed superiority and accused each other of lies and diversions.

In former Czechoslovakia, the motto of those days was to believe that the West is bad. It was obvious to everybody indoctrinated by Czechoslovakian education system, but not all adults believed that.

Yet, for the whole of his life my father believed this unsophisticated propaganda. He was a menial Communist party official, spending more time on his political errands than at home with us. Just a few years after the end of the war my grandparents died, and only my mother, our dog, and I were permanently living in our household. I did not have a male role model to learn from, and the only remedy for that was a self-education. That's why I soon learnt from our dog that one does not always have to do what was told, and my childhood became more interesting.

The summer before my first year at school, my uncle Josef taught me how to read, and gave me my first book by Julius Verne, 'Around the World in Eighty Days'. This book had a profound influence on me, and since then I loved books, and spent most of my free time reading them. That had its consequences, and for the next ten years I was wearing spectacles.

Although my eyesight did not improved, after ten years I decided not to wear them any more. That was not just a single decision, but a part of the whole bundle of decisions, brought about by changed circumstances. For ten previous years I was suffering from an ill health affecting my heart, and I was forbidden to undertake any strenuous sport activities. The feeling of missing on many pleasures in life made me quite uneasy.

After the matriculation I left my spectacles in a draw of our kitchen table, and never saw them again. I started to study medicine at the university in Prague, and participated in all compulsory sporting activities. Even after a whole year I was still alive, what obviously was the proof that my health was not a problem any more. However, other problems appeared.

My first problem was Marion, pretty girl from Halle in East Germany, where I was sent as one of the winners of a competition, conducted by a science magazine. I fell in love with Marion, and later could not figure out how to forget her. Eventually, I found another girl, which made my forgetting of the first, platonic love much easier.

There were other problems too, although in comparison with the lost love for Marion, they initially seemed to me very petite; at least I thought so. According to my father, the biggest problem was that soon after I finished my first university exams, my mother died. Father also saw as problematical my decision to abandon the study of medicine, and live with Gypsies in western part of Bohemia. Later, he did not like my working as office clerk, builder's laborer, maintenance man, etc. etc. The very first time he was not terribly unhappy was, when I worked in one ski resort as a ski instructor, and later in one hotel as a waiter. Yet, my impression gained at that time made me believe that he was not happy either. I was twenty three already, and finally my father gave up trying to persuade me that life is not a mere game, and that I should take it seriously.

When one year later he visited me in Vienna, where I stayed after leaving Czechoslovakia illegally, he was still not happy. He was unfoundedly optimistic in his beliefs that the 'Iron Curtain' will filter off any problems I might create, and they will not reach him any more. He was wrong, and surprisingly, he later acknowledged that with a smile.

I intended to immigrate to Canada, but actually I immigrated to Australia, simply because in unknown Vienna I could not find the Canadian Embassy in time. Once in Australia, I was happy about my decision. When a propeller driven plane, full of immigrants like me landed into a full Australian summer of 1967, we were welcomed with an awesome plethora of new scents and colors.

I decided to go to Tasmania, since I believed that this island is beautiful, and also very sparsely populated. That was exactly how I found it, and with a great enthusiasm I started with bushwalking, skiing, and fishing. I also managed to successfully prove that the proverbial lack of women in Australia was only a myth.

Soon, I decided to do something about my future and subscribed to evening classes. At the end of 1968 I passed all exams needed, and with the Australian Matriculation in my pocket, I started to study Physics and Chemistry. After finishing two years of study, I moved to Australian mainland, and spent 7 months in a dessert, on one of many construction sites in Western Australia.

With money saved I traveled to Singapore, and using all means of transport, slowly progressed through many countries towards the Europe. It was a different world than the one we are experiencing today. The tourism was at its beginning, and trekking alone in Himalayas, for example, was still an accepted modus operandi. In Afghanistan people were friendly, and nobody took me as a hostage. That would be nowadays considered as a sheer luck.

All that happened early during 1972, and in May I eventually arrived to Czechoslovakia. Everybody there considered me as somebody very dubious at least, and nobody could understand why I returned. The West was in the minds of most Czechoslovakian citizens the 'golden goose', everybody there was rich, and nobody could understand, how comes that I left all that behind. The population of socialist Czechoslovakia was during the 70s constantly reminded the superiority of Western world by the never-ending processions of West German tourists. They all had cars, jeans, bottles of Coca Cola, and plenty of money to spend on the black market. Most of the local girls wanted to marry them, and have all those goodies too.

It was surprising that despite this prevailing general trend, I still managed to find Olga, one girl which wanted to marry nobody else but me. Nobody knew the reasons for her decision; not even her displeased parents.

Unfortunately for both of us, Czechoslovakian secret police was also puzzled; they did not understand why I returned, and especially they questioned the timing of my return. It coincided with not-yet announced amnesty for people living abroad illegally. They were also surprised by the amount of money I had in my bank account with the Deutsche Bank, and they decided to watch me bit more closely than they watched most of all other citizens. For these reasons alone, I was not allowed to travel outside Czechoslovakia, and was not allowed to work in any better positions.

I worked as waiter, barman, boiler attendant, ice cream salesman, night receptionist, and finally as a taxi driver in Prague. That was not a satisfactory situation, and together with my wife Olga we were applying over and over for the permission to leave and travel to Australia. Needles to say, it was always rejected.

The Czechoslovakian secret police kept a dossier on us, containing hundreds of pages of testimonies and accusations, and only after the change of the political system there, some of these documents were released. They questioned my connections with people in high places, who they believed were far remote from my social status in society. These connections were all accidental and yet, they were good enough reason to accuse me of being a spy, and start years of investigations.

Being not happy with all that, we decided to leave Czechoslovakia illegally. In 1979 we finally did, and after a month in Vienna we moved to Australia. Twice I committed the 'crime' of leaving Czechoslovakia illegally, and twice I was given there a jail sentence. Paradoxically, the only days I spent in detention were my first days during 1966, after I entered the free Western world.

Only after the change of the political system in 1989 we were exonerated, and were free to visit Prague again. Our present stay in Australia is another, so far open-ended colorful chapter, and I am still investigating any possible ways how to put it on paper, once this chapter closes ...

In my opinion, the world during my younger days was a better world, and I consider living through those exciting times as a priceless reward; the reward, for which I am still short of merits to deserve it.

(My experiences until 1979 are summarized in my book 'The Vigor Ting', containing 142 true short stories, presented on 446 pages and complemented by 114 illustrations and photographs. The book is available on the Amazon as B&W paperback, ISBN 978-1451517651, and in color as eBook. On my website www.dlouhy.info is more detailed description.)