"I was afraid that I wouldn't make it in time to the university. That's why I decided to make the border crossing from Germany to France on my own. It was somewhere near to Verdun but I don't know exactly where. The crossing was very troublesome for me because of the physical disability of my left leg. I lost orientation because I didn't have a compass or a map. I had to follow the stars. After two days, I found myself in almost exactly the same spot where I had started my journey. As I didn't want to stay in Germany, I set out again for a second try. This time, it worked out despite adverse conditions - a heavy storm cast over the sky and the stars and thus I lost orientation again. When I arrived in the border region and boarded a bus that was supposed to take me to the nearest city – I think it was Nantes – I got arrested. The bus stopped in front of a restaurant and two police officers came out of the restaurant. They asked where I was from. Although I spoke French, they have a distinct dialect in that region – it's a sort of a German dialect. The police officers were French and they knew that I wasn't a local even though I claimed I was from the neighboring village. They didn't trust me and they arrested me."
"Our professor was organizing a trip of the Romanic seminar to Strasbourg. 50 students signed up for this trip and I was among them. Finally, 49 could go to Strasbourg and I was the only one who had been rejected. It was because of my bad cadre profile. That's when I decided to leave the country illegally by crossing the border."
"In 1946, a group of students – I was one of them – didn't have the money for the return journey and we found out in Paris that our Czechoslovak soldiers are transporting UNRRA trucks from Le Havre to Czechoslovakia and that they would take us with them. So we went to Le Havre and we got in touch with them – I don't remember any more if they were officers but I don't think so. They were very helpful and offered us to take us with them but we had to wear uniforms. That wasn't so difficult. The only odd thing was that I was walking with a limp because of my leg. But we pretended that I was a wounded soldier. The uniforms were essential because on the way to France, the soldiers who drove the trucks stopped in U.S. camps for a meal. So it was quite a funny situation to pretend to be a soldier. I took a ride with them and I ate with them in camps."
"We experienced an adventure on the train. Soviet soldiers came to check the tickets and we were really lucky because we still had with us old IDs from the Protectorate. The Austrians had exactly the same IDs just like the ones we had. We saw that the Austrians showed their old Protectorate IDs so we pulled out ours. Somehow they accepted this and we could pass."
"Five of us decided to cross the Soviet-American zone in Austria. We had to get out of the American zone in Vienna across the Soviet zone to a place that separated the American zone from the Soviet zone. If I remember it correctly, it was the Enns River that flows into the Danube not far from Linz. As there were a few of us who couldn't swim and the river was pretty wild, we decided to cross it on dry land. On the southern side of the river, the American zone started and that's where we decided to make the crossing. It wasn't really a clever decision as that section was tightly guarded by Soviet soldiers. The five of us crossed as if by a miracle unharmed. I couldn't walk on any longer because of my handicap so I told the others to go and leave me behind. As I spoke Russian – my mother was Russian – I assured them that I would be just fine. However, finally, they took me on their back and carried me away. When we arrived in the U.S. zone, the Americans were puzzled because they couldn't understand how we managed to cross the river. They told us that two days prior to our crossing, a group of people that wanted to flee across the border was shot to pieces at exactly the same spot."
Professor Vladimír Zbořílek was born in 1924 in Morkovice nearby Kroměříž. He attended the grammar school Křenová in Brno and studied history and French at the Masaryk University. He graduated from university in June 1948. After he was denied to go on a study trip to France in the summer of 1948, he and a friend fled via Břeclav to Austria. In Austria, they made it through the Soviet zone to safety in the U.S. zone. Mr. Zbořílek then continued via Germany to France, where he began to study at the Sorbonne University in Paris. After passing a year of studies at Sorbonne, he went to Madrid to perfect his Spanish. In 1952, he immigrated to the USA. The beginnings in the USA weren’t easy. At first, he worked in a factory in New York that manufactured stapling machines. Then, he worked for the Stechert-Hafner company that engaged in import-export of books from all over the world. After a year, he found a job as a substitute teacher at a college in Colorado, where he taught Spanish. At this time, he also taught at a girl’s school in New Hampshire. Since 1956, he continued his doctoral studies of history at the University of California, Berkeley; later on he changed his field of studies and specialized in Slavic studies. He worked at the Czech department of the University and was its director since 1965. In 1969, he was awarded a doctoral degree. The title of his dissertation thesis was: “Tolstoy and Rousseau”. In 1970, he moved to Miami, where he worked as a university teacher until his retirement in 1995.
