Czech and Slovak Cultural Center

President Gasparovič and Donald Pafko

The annual meeting of all Honorary Slovak Consuls was held in Chicago, Illinois, from May 20 to 22, 2012. The occasion for this meeting , not only for the annual get together for Slovak Consuls but also because the President of the Slovak Republic H.E. Ivan Gasparovič was in Chicago attending the NATO Summit. The NATO Summit was attended by many world leaders including President Obama. In addition, a new Honorary Consulate was opened in Naperville, Illinois, while the President and former Slovak Ambassador to the U.S. were in Chicago.

A series of meetings over a three day period provided an annual opportunity for Slovak Consuls to network and interface. A private audience was held with President Gasparovič and an informal dinner was also held with former Slovak Ambassador H.E. Peter Burian. The three day event was concluded by the appointment of a new Honorary Consul for Illinois.

While in Chicago, some of the Slovak Consuls utilized the opportunity to have a private tour of the Czech and Slovak Museum in Oak Brook, Illinois. The staff of the museum , as well as the President of CSA opened the doors of the museum and conducted a very informative and educational tour of the museum.

By Dr. Josef A. Mestenhauser

(Part One of Dr. Mestenhauser’s article appeared in the June/July Slovo.)

Proclaimed on Apr. 5, 1945, the Kosice Program—although written by the communists–defined the postwar state of a democratic Czechoslovakia. Two ministers were to be non-partisan: Ludvik Svoboda, Minister of National Defense, and Jan Masaryk, Minister of Foreign Affairs. As future events proved, these ministers were anything but non-partisan. Jan Masaryk refused to resign during the crisis; if he had resigned, then it would have meant that a majority of the cabinet had done so, and constitutionally Beneš would have been required to reject the resignations, keep the existing government in place, and declare immediate elections.

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Donald Pafko and H.E. Ambassador Petr Gandalovič

On June 15 2012, the City of Phillips, Wisconsin held its annual commemoration of the destruction of the Village of Lidice, Czech Republic. As most of us know the village was destroyed by the Nazis during the second World War and many of its inhabitants were killed. This year marked a very special commemoration as it was the 70th anniversary of this unfortunate tragedy.

A special guest at this year’s event was the Czech Ambassador to the United States H.E. Petr Gandalovič. A solemn ceremony was held at the Lidice Memorial and a flag dedication ceremony was held as the flags of the Czech Republic, the Slovak Republic, and the United States were raised. In addition, spotlights were installed to provide perpetual lighting of the three flags adjacent to the memorial. H.E. Petr Gandalovič, Czech Ambassador to the U.S. and Honorary Slovak Consul Donald Pafko were honored to have raised the Czech and Slovak flags.

A memorial service was held at the Baptist Church in Phillips, Wisconsin, during which Ambassador Gandalovič gave a very moving speech about the events that occurred during the second World War and in particular the destruction of Lidice. A film was shown depicting all the events surrounding the Lidice tragedy.

The Lidice commemoration was held in conjunction with the annual Czech and Slovak Festival conducted in Philllips, Wisconsin.

By Dr. Josef A. Mestenhauser

Contemporary political, economic and social scene in the Czech and Slovak Republics have been largely defined by the dissidents and their generation of the Dubcek’s Prague Spring 1968 era. This seemed to hide the fact that there was an important antecedent, the communist coup d’état on February 25, 1948. I was an active participant in those events and wanted to include this topic in one of my articles. The unexpected occasion came up now. We were moving from our house where we lived for 55 years into a nice cooperative housing which necessitated the painful act of sorting out all the stuff that we have accumulated over the half century. To my great surprise I discovered hidden behind my book shelves my diary from 1948 that apparently my family salvaged before the communist police could confiscate my property. The diary started in Prague and ended with the date of March 19th 1948 – the day I was escaping from Czechoslovakia. Suddenly I was confronted with the traumatic memories of what I chose to call the “day of shame”. It surprised me that even after sixty some years I was overcome with the same feelings of despair, resignation, disappointment and impotence that we experienced then, in disbelief that the country of Masaryk and the hair of the Western tradition that gave birth to the only democracy in Central Europe could surrender itself to one of the worst dictatorships, for the second time in a decade, without a single shot or resistance. It took me some time to recover some distance and perspective with which I write this article.

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By Dr. Josef A. Mestenhauser

The communists did not just gain power overnight. Understanding the context of how this event happened is very important, because it is now so long since it occurred that people might simply forget or ignore this occurrence as no longer relevant, or because the events of the Prague Spring of 1968 have overshadowed the country’s own history. Yet there are lessons to learn for the present time.

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