Honoring Czech Resistance Leader – Josef Robotka
Today I honor my late husband Charles Novacek’s uncle Josef Robotka and am posting an unedited paper Charles wrote about him. The paper was eventually incorporated in Charles’ memoir, Border Crossings: Coming of Age in the Czech Resistance, Ten21 Press, 2012. Sixty-four years ago on November 12, 1952, at 5:40 a.m., Josef Robotká was executed …
World War II Silk Escape Maps – Ingenious and Colorful
While doing research for BORDER CROSSINGS: Coming of Age in the Czech Resistance, I read that during World War II, the United States and Great Britain manufactured silk and cloth maps. The maps were issued to RAF paratroopers, Special Forces, and members of the Nazi resistance in case they were shot down or trapped behind enemy lines …
Hoffer Celebrated, Novacek Remembered
Today is the birthday of Eric Hoffer (1898 – 1983), working-class philosopher, migratory worker, and longshoreman. He became a social writer, grounded in the practical experience of the common worker, and was the author of ten books. Hoffer was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in February 1983. His first book, The True Believer (1951), was widely recognized as a …
Picnic in Czechoslovakia
Self-confined to my air-conditioned condo in the city this morning, I look at old photographs and write, determined to escape the heat. One photograph set in the Tatra Mountains of Czechoslovakia in 1931, soothes me. It captures a happy moment of my late husband Charles Novacek and his family picnicking in a scenic place, surrounded by their friends …
After death, something new. . .
“Why should I be frightened of dying? I did not know what death truly was; no one did. Who had made dying a bad word? Yes, it was universally considered awful—unwanted, painful, feared—because when it happened it stopped us from moving and being, and we interpreted that as if something had ended. But what if …
