Karel Steiner

„I returned twice or three times to visit my parents in the 1980s. It was always very pleasant but also strange. Everyone was… I don´t want to say… afraid. The atmosphere was quite gloomy compared to the present when everyone is smiling, there are advertisements and lights everywhere. Back then, when I arrived, it seemed to me that everything was “switched off.” Everything was dark and gloomy, I would compare it to North Korea. My parents came to see me in the 1970s and I returned to Prague two or three times. So I could see how it worked here, it was gloomy, or how to express it.”

„I had the possibility to study, to emigrate. I came to the United States. My aunt, my father´s cousin invited me. My parents spent almost the entire year deciding if they should send me abroad or if I should stay. I was invited already in 1968 after the occupation. I and my parents think that the relatives wanted to do a good deed but did not go as far as to invite the whole family, they invited just me. I travelled alone to Washington in September 1969. It was quite easy but I was very lonely. I did not see my mother for seven and my father for eight years. First, I finished grammar school, a high school in Washington. Then I lived in the State of Indiana and it was interesting to come from the East coast to a farm in the middle of nowhere. There were huge fields of corn and soybeans.”