Ten years without mum and dad. The story of a boy who was left behind the Iron Curtain
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Václav Fiala was born in Plzeň on 24 April 1956 into a Czech-German family but grew up in Karlovy Vary. In 1970, his parents fled to the West and had to leave their children at home as a “guarantee of return”. Fourteen-year-old Václav Fiala was thus left in Czechoslovakia with his eighteen-year-old sister without a legal guardian and faced trouble due ot of his parents’ emigration. The communist authorities sentenced the parents for abandoning the republic and the children had to pay to stay in the apartment. He trained as a telecommunications technician, worked at a post office and was closely monitored by the authorities. Following his attempt to escape across the border, he was sentenced to 18 months in prison, a half of which he served in Bělušice. He was not allowed to visit his parents in the West until ten years later when he was 24 years old and had his own family. After 1989, he met his parents again regularly. He was living in Chodov in 2025.
