RJ: This is tape one of an interview with Andrew Hudak. We re in the Slovak Institute in

Transcription

1 Andrew Hudak Interview, DVD#1, May 12, 2010 Interviewer: Rosie Johnston (RJ), Interviewee: Andrew Hudak (AH) RJ: This is tape one of an interview with Andrew Hudak. We re in the Slovak Institute in Cleveland, Ohio, and the date is May 12, So, can I ask you for your full name as it appears on your birth certificate? AH: Okay, my name is Andrew Hudak Junior. I was born on August 22, 1928 in the little village which was Kecerovské Pekl any, now Kecerpeklany. [At] that time it was part of Czechoslovakia. Now my village is in the free state of Slovakia. RJ: Okay, and can you tell me what your parents did? What was your mother s job and your father s job? AH: Okay, my parents were original[ly] farmers. There is ah my father comes from a little village in the mountains, about ten miles away from my village, [there] was an opal mine there. His father worked in the opal mine, and almost everybody out of that village immigrated to the United States. My father, my two brothers beside him, almost three-quarters of the village immigrated up here. He immigrated; he worked in an Iowa mine and after like At that time was a system, you know, the people come from poor countries to America, make some money, so you could save, and come home, buy a farm and a house, and marry some Slovak girl and start the family. That s what happened in my father s case - he married my mother and had We, I have three brothers and one sister and we lived in a little village as farmers. My father was a very progressive farmer because he gained a lot of experience in America about life. Which in a little village in the mountains we knew nothing about it. As, for example, he had one of the best 1

2 orchards in the town a fruit orchard. We had about one hundred and twenty bee houses, which he made some good money on selling honey. RJ: Okay, so where had he been living in America, when he came? AH: Most of the time he been living in a mine in Iowa. Then when he started communicating with his countrymen, he found out that some Slovak people were working in Yonkers, New York in a - in a carpet factory. So he moved there to work there. And then he came to, he came to Slovakia just before WWII developed. During WWII he stayed in Slovakia, but the United States government advised, when Hitler went to war with the United States, all the citizens to come back to America. Well, he went, but the communication was bad - public transportation. So he went to Prague, by the time he came to Prague, the American ambassador the American Embassy was closed. There was a sign: you report to the American Embassy in Vienna. So he finally went to Vienna. It was closed too. They said, Well you have to go to Rome. He went to Rome, but finally American Embassy was closed in Rome too. So he was forced to come back and stay during the World War in Slovakia. And after WWII, the American government apologized and [sent] apology letters to all the citizens; they said we re sorry we had to abandon you, but there was no other choice. So they said we are offering you free transportation back to the what s-his-name back to the United States. So my father came the second time back in , no - 48: 1948, yeah. 1946, pardon me. And by then, see most of the coal miner people, Slovak people, were all over. His older brother moved to Cleveland, so he came to Cleveland. And he worked in Cleveland as a maintenance man in Fairview Park Hospital. RJ: So, do you know the year that your father first came to America? AH: My father came first time in America sometime around, ah RJ: Okay, and was he going back and forth? When you were a little boy, did he spend 2

3 AH: Yeah, he came twice back, he came twice back before WWII, yes. RJ: And was that very normal at that time? AH: That was very normal, yes. RJ: And what about the actual journey for him? I mean, if he was travelling to and from, it must have been taking him weeks on boats. AH: Oh yeah, see, one time he traveled on the boat for a month. Just before he came up, see. I came on a boat - it was a modern boat already - I came during five days already. He claimed he originally came up on a one month trip. RJ: Did he ever tell you stories, when you were a little boy, about America? AH: Yeah, it was all about, all about America, yeah. He talked about America. Even, as a matter of fact, everybody in Slovakia - in the village - called him the American, Mr. American. RJ: And the stories he was telling you, can you remember any of them? Can you remember what he said, what interested you? AH: Well, I don t exactly remember him, but there was another American - he [my father] never spoke jokingly about America, but another American down there living, his name was Mr. Mišík, sitting on the front of his house on a bench, he wore American jeans, uh pants, and a jeans jacket like a typical American. And all those kids ran around him, around here, around there, and asked him how things were in America [as opposed to] how s things in Slovakia. And Mr. Mišík says Ha! In America they put the bull on one end of the factory and on another one comes the sausage. And they taste the sausage. If it s good, fine. If it s no good, they throw it back, here comes back the bull. And we kids [said] oh yeah, oh yeah? So we - you got up in the morning and ran to see Mr. Mišík to get a story. 3

4 RJ: Alright, so you said you grew up on a farm. What sort of things did you grow on that farm? Was it like an American farm? AH: We - I grew up on a farm. Everything we ate, we produced. In other words, from what we didn t eat we dried ah, what s-his-names - we picked jablky 1 from the trees in the forest and we dried them up in the attic - apples. We smoked meat, we dried it. Everything we what s-hisname, we eat, we produce. We didn t almost buy nothing in the store, except the salt, pepper, vinegar, and that s it. Everything else we produced. RJ: And in your village, were there things like a town store or a town cobbler? Did it have a lot of infrastructure, or was it actually very small? AH: Our village had about a hundred homes. It was sort of small. It was in a valley of the river Oľšava, and everything we bought in a little store (like I said vinegar, and salt and pepper) - we got by barter. In other words, we took some eggs or butter and traded it in and he marked it down, and gave us a credit or we had a deficit there. RJ: Okay, so can you tell me the names of the schools you went to and a bit about your school days? AH: School? Okay, now, I went to the school in the lower village up to the sixth grade. Then I went to the something like a college, like a high school. It was ah It was a little bit different but a combination of a college and a high school, with the missionary order of the Society of the Divine Word Missionaries. Okay, they were in Nitra, Slovakia. I went there for four years. They teach that They prepared their young boys to be missionaries all over the world. RJ: Was religion very important in Czechoslovakia at that time? AH: Yeah, religion was a prime subject. We celebrated Christmas [over] three days, yeah. And also every Sunday we had a priest and a preacher, and we sang, yeah. 1 Jablky is the Slovak word for apples. 4

5 RJ: And when you moved to Nitra, presumably you moved away from your parents, you moved away from your home. How was that? Was that quite hard? Or AH: Well, remember that the village I left, as I said to you - everything we ate, we produced ourselves. The village had no running water, no sewers, no electricity, no telephone, and no paved streets. It was just a dirt street. And no bus transportation. So every The closest city - the closest bus transportation was maybe something like fifteen miles away. We depended on the horse and buggies, horse and buggies. So after leaving my school I was - since it was a Catholic school, okay, I was very, very, not friendly, but very, uh, I ll say friendly at that time with the Archbishop of Nitra, Slovakia: Kmet ko. 2 So when after WWII, there was a German, no a Czechoslovak government, [which] threw about three and a half million Germans from Czechoslovakia, [from the region] they call the Sudetenland, and the land was empty, completely - there was a mass transportation of young Slovaks there, to the Czech Lands. So this was about six months after I gave up school already. I was sent by the, by Archbishop Kmet ko to the Sudetenland to see what the Slovaks are doing. And I organized the Slovak Federation of the Slovak Catholic Federation of Youth in the Czech border up there. Everything was very good. I mean the government went along with us fine and dandy. But when the Communists were trying to tie it up, tie it up, they wanted to give us a big hotel. I was in charge of the household accommodations for those people who kept on coming up. There, there was a radio program. They finally accused me and my friends of trying to create a Slovakia in the Sudetenland. Free Slovakia in the Sudetenland, because by then there was about a couple hundred thousand people from Slovakia - young, living there. So me, they expelled me and my friends out of the what shis-name mountains, out of Czechoslovakia. Not [allowed to] enter Czech lands no more. So I came up to the, to my old village, and I went to register at the office of workmen s 2 Karol Kmet ko became the Archbishop of Nitra in He died in

6 compensation. And I started thinking now what am I going to do? So I figured well I might as well go to America. I ve got my father in America, and they are after me here back and forth, back and forth. And my mother s brother was a [Michal Bobel?]; he was something like an officer in the army. So I asked him what to do, and [he] says hey, you better go down out of there because they are not going to give up on you now. You know. So I went to the American Embassy in Prague, and I explained them my situation, they said it would take them a day or so to check it. After they checked it out, they told me yes, we agree, you are an American citizen, we agree, you better not even go back home. Stay here because they might put you in the jail. Well I convinced them to send me at least home before Christmas in 1946, before Christmas. So I convinced them to let me come home. And here I came home and the next day or so I was delivered the paper that I am - I must have a permit as a foreigner to live in Slovakia - in Czechoslovakia. See, they were tremendous at watching who was coming to the American Embassy, you know and so forth. And they thought that I will that my father is a citizen, that I am a citizen, so they, okay, they told me I must have a permit to stay [in the country]. And I say are you crazy? I was born here. I m, you know No he says. So I, on December 28, 1946, I got done with Christmas, I went to the American Embassy in Prague, and they kept us there. There were some more cases and I wasn t the only one. I met there may be about 25 people in the same situation. They had a hotel there; they kept us, they fed us, until they got our papers straight up. So on uh, about 20 - about 30 days before New Year, they put us on a train, on a train for Paris. And we slept the night in Paris. Then another train to Le Havre, then I took the boat to America. 6

7 RJ: Okay, to go back a bit, can you tell me your memories of WWII? Because, well, I mean, you were old enough by then to kind of know what s going on. Did you, for example, see lots of soldiers in your village? Or was it kind of out of the center AH: Okay we were - our situation in our village: Slovakia I have to say clearly and true: Slovakia was very progressive during the Slovak Republic. That was from 39 to 45. The Germans didn t sort of bother us. The only thing they started; we had everything that we needed because we grew things - but the only thing was when the front moved in, you know, so the major frontline was on the Carpathian Mountains there, about four, about seven miles away from our house in the mountains. We held the front; that s where the Germans decided they were going to hold the Russians. In our house, they opened it up to the commando; the guy who was in charge of the Eastern Front was living in our house. But accidently I, uh, during the same time I caught malaria. And I was sick for a long time, that s why I left, I left the school. And when the German doctor came up to see the general who was running the front in our house, so my mother begged him with the plea please look at my son, he s almost dying. One time he s cold, one time he s what s-his-name and the German doctor who had just come up looked at me, held my hand for a second, says I know what happened to him. [He] says I ve been in Africa - a doctor with the German Army - I have to come back in one week s time. I ll bring him the medicine, and I ll cure him. So I said Oh, another baloney story. You know? And sure as hell, he came back in about two weeks, gave me some shots, and gave the nurse, the German nurse some shots. And cured me completely from the malaria. 7

8 RJ: Now you said you were about seven kilometers away from the fighting. Were you aware of any battles or anything? Because you weren t far away from Dukla, 3 and you were near some of the nastier battles there. AH: Wait, repeat it, I can t quite.. RJ: Did you witness any actual fighting between the armies? AH: Oh yes, oh yes. I saw that. Now the second frontier from our house was about five, no about three miles away. Eventually the bullets went over our village. Because, you know, we were in a valley, and another hill was And, oh yeah, and I remember that when the Germans - the Russians - came up by foot, they, in our village - there was a Jewish-owned liquor manufacturing plant. It was Jewish-owned. Jews weren t They were shipped out already. So they came up and they broke this factory out there. And the whole army was horrible, they were so drunk, if the Russian sol If the German soldiers knew about that, they could have come up and massacred them all. But eventually they went from house to house, searching the what s-hisname, and they were pretty hungry. When they were marching, there were thousands and thousands of Russian soldiers marching down there toward Germany. RJ: I wanted to ask, you just mentioned, were there Jewish people in your village and what happened to them? Were any of them hidden, or AH: Well I ll be very honest with you, the Jewish situation in Europe around the war was never clear. Okay, in our village there were two huge farms, the best farms, owned by the two Jewish families. They owned that liquor store. They owned all the stores, the synagogue in our village, everything - all the commerce was owned by the Jewish. And they weren t quite fair to our people. The poor people went down there to work for them, and they really - in 1932, they would 3 The Dukla pass in Subcarpathian Ruthenia was the scene of a major battle between Red Army and Nazi troops in

9 really whip them if they could not work so hard. So the situation is - not just in Slovakia, but over Europe - it wasn t exactly favorable to them because they were, okay; they made a marking system in the beer joint, you know, for the thing Even my father, my father, my father didn t drink, because father worked in an opal mine, and on the way home he stopped there at the beer joint and you know So they marked it down, he cashed his what s-his-name there, and very seldom he drank all his money, because the Jews marked him more or less. I don t know, like he says to me. There was a feeling that wasn t exactly friendly toward them. RJ: And I guess, did any of those families come back? Did they all go away during WWII and did any of them come back? AH: OK, you mean the two Jewish come back? RJ: Yes AH: Two people come back from this rich family, Okay? The blond, beautiful wife of Weiss - his name was Weiss the blond came up - back. There was all kinds of stories about her, but I don t know, but she came back. But eventually she moved to Israel. And one, one young guy came - Joe Gottlieb - he came back but he immigrated to Miami, someplace in Miami up here. RJ: Okay, so I ll ask you how it was that you even got involved with the school in Nitra, because it was quite far away. So how did you hear about it, and how did you get the idea to go there? AH: Well, that was ah, it was really to talking. You see, when the Germans came and locals [unintelligible] generally speaking many people trying to help them. Even one Jewish boy stayed up at her house - even when Germans were already in her house too. But let s say the parish priest hid two families in someplace - in a barn. So finally, somebody must have reported him, reported him so that people came up to this A German soldier came up to the place and picked 9

10 up two boys to come with him. One boy was my brother Joey, and the other boy and the SS [soldier]; they came... So they go to the parish house and told the priest: [the soldier] says we understand you re still hiding some Jewish people up here. And [he] says you better tell us where because now we are going to burn - we are going to put you in jail and we are going to burn the parish house. So finally he had no choice, so he went to the barn, my brother was there too, was there with them. And he hollered some kind of who s there? And the whole Jewish family But they didn t know that the Germans were there. They come out, out of the hay, someplace. And they took them down with them. RJ: Now, do you remember WWII as a scary time? Was it full of situations - scary stuff happening? Or was it, like you said, a time when your family had an okay time because you had enough food? How do you remember that time? AH: I ll be very honest with you - in Slovakia from 1939 to 1945, we had plenty of food. Plenty of food. But we were farmers, and it happened to be a rich valley up there too, so RJ: Okay, what I asked you before and what is interesting is maybe how you went from this village to Nitra. I know that is where you went to the Divine Word. How was it that you thought to do this? Did you have a teacher who suggested you go? AH: We had at the village school, we had a good teacher. We had a Catholic school, okay, and we at school were very good; no problem about, as a matter of fact, all the kids were pretty smart. I say that the education in Slovakia was better than here at that time. RJ: But, you went far away. I just wondered how you got the idea to go to AH: Okay, so my [unintelligible] - my father was a good Catholic. So he was distributor of, distributor of the Slovak Catholic paper Voice of the Mission, okay? And they were looking for young boys to join the - like going to the abbey here, the mission house. They d be 10

11 missionaries all over the world. Most of my colleagues, who I went to school with, were missionaries all over the world. Like I, you know, the Archbishop Bukovský 4 was a nuncios, a nuncios at my school. That s ah, I know my involvement with the world was because of my background with the Society of the Divine Word (SDW) Missionaries. My friends were missionaries in Austria, Australia, Indonesia, and I visited them in Mexico - I visited quite a few of them. RJ: Did any of your brothers go with you to the Divine Word, or was it just you? AH: No, I m the only one. Because after that, don t forget it was - they closed that SDW Mission because of the front coming up in 1944 in Fall. And in 1945 in Spring there was nothing moving up there. No, none of them. But my brother Joe applied for things, but he came to America after that. RJ: Now, when the mission was closed - when the Divine Word Mission was closed in the last bit of the war, what did you do? AH: Well, no, I was out already. They sent us home. They sent us home, and they were closed. RJ: So, whereabouts did you move to in the Sudetenland? Where were you? AH: Well, the biggest movement of the Slovak people to the Sudetenland was Aš. (spells) A-Š. That s where we moved up there. And again up there we became very friendly with the Catholic priest and we started taking over and singing the Mass in Slovak. It was when Beneš evicted all the Germans from that everyone went on The farms were taken care of by the Army and things like this. RJ: When did you move there? AH: I came there to the Sudetenland in 1946, in September. 4 Archbishop Bukovský studied at the Society of the Divine Word Missionaries in Nitra. He subsequently spent years in Rome before settling in Illinois, where he worked as the head of a school. In 1994, he became the first nuncio in Russia. He died in

12 RJ: Now, that was a very tumultuous time in the Sudetenland. Can you tell me a bit how it looked? I mean, was it in a good condition after all of the dekrety, 5 after all of the pushing out of the Sudeten people? AH: That relation - we got along with the Germans very well because we were also oppressed by the Czechs. So we got along very well. The only thing the people were allowed to take with them was forty pounds. They left everything down there. When we came up to the apartment, everything was there: clothes, food, everything, yeah. RJ: And who else was moving in there? You said there were lots and lots of Slovaks. But were there also people from, you know, from different parts of Czech Republic? I mean, what was the society like there? AH: What? RJ: What was the society like there in 1946? The people who moved in: who were they? AH: At that time, the Czech borders, the Sudetenland; almost 90% of that population that was moved in was Slovaks. So that s only But Czechs held other what s-his-name - held controlling power. Like I told you when they accused me of trying to create a First they give me a radio program, a space on a radio program. So then I was speaking down there every afternoon for a couple of hours, playing some Slovak songs, whatever it is. See they, at that time there was also the same party in the, the Czech, in the Czechoslovak Republic as in Slovakia: the People s Party. 6 The Czech officers in the Sudetenland, they wanted us join up with this party. To gain power there. Well they went along with us very well. 5 Dekrety (dekréty in Slovak) is the Czech word for decrees and refers here in particular to the Beneš Decrees, which were put in place by the President of Czechoslovakia Edvard Beneš following WWII. The decrees provisioned for the mass expulsion of ethnic Germans and Hungarians from Czechoslovak territory. 6 The Československá strana lidová (the Czechoslovak People s Party) was founded in 1919 and exists to this day in the form of KDU-ČSL. The party typically enjoys support in rural areas in particular and cites Christian values as being at the heart of its policies. 12

13 RJ: So, can you tell me the name of your radio show, and where you were - like on which channel you were broadcasting? AH: The channel I don t remember now, but was under the name Hlas Slovenska -Voice of Slovakia, yeah. RJ: And can you tell me what sort of activities you organized with this youth group, with this youth movement? AH: Okay, You asked the hotel for the headquarters, it was a huge hall, a huge hall. We had a hundred dances, we had a Slovak play, like I says, we have a, we teach them how to do - we had one nurse we taught them how to do first aid. We got cooking lessons. So we tried to keep these people all occupied, you know, and thinking in a good Slovak sense. RJ: And what sort of jobs were these people doing? AH: Okay, the Sudetenland was most of them textile, so most of them - I was working in textiles. I happened to get a job in one of the biggest textile factories in charge of the cafeteria. It was a very good job and a good paying job too on top of that. And they gave me a castle, like a house. Completely furnished with a big garden with an apple orchard and everything. RJ: This was in Aš? AH: In Aš, yeah. RJ: And the name of the textile factory? AH: Fischer Brothers and Sons. RJ: Okay. Maybe you could tell me - did you ever consider becoming a priest? Because you had this very religious education. And if you didn t, why? AH: Well, I went to the Mission House of the Society of the Divine Word with the idea that I would become a priest. But after they, after the front came up, they closed everything - us up - 13

14 and sent everyone home. So I wasn t, I didn t get to return. But I, also I stayed on good terms with them. I mean, you know, they when I told the what s-his-name, my superior I m not going to return. He was very surprised. He said well now, there were eighty boys in my class he says. He was the what s-his-name, one of the few of us who never doubts anybody, you know. But I just decided not to continue. RJ: And I suppose in this time period - can you tell me, we talked about WWII, but during WWII the Czech Republic and Slovakia broke up for the first time. At that time you were still young, but what were you thinking this was a good thing? How did you feel about that First Slovak state? AH: No, First Czechoslovak state! RJ: No after, you know when there was the Protektorat Böhmen und Mähren. 7 And then there was Slovakia. How did you feel about, you know, Tiso 8 and Slovakia and that state? AH: Slovakia welcomed the republic and in my opinion Tiso was a fair, good president. I mean, you have to remember the thing took the whole world to defeat Hitler, not just the Okay, so what does, what will Slovakia do? We never saw the Germans until the front came in here. They, sure, they knew we have to live under their rules up there. But there was a complete freedom in Slovakia. Germans did not appear, not, not you know? My father was American, and when the Germans came in, he was their translator - from German to Slovak, in the village, you know? And his what s-his-name, on my birth certificate, it says I born of American parents in Slovakia. So the feeling for the Slovak Republic was very, even in Slovakia, was very good. I would say about 90% of people were for the thing. 7 The Protektorat Böhmen und Mähren (in English, the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia) was under the control of Nazi Germany following the invasion of Czechoslovakia in March 1939 until the end of WWII. 8 Father Jozef Tiso (13 October April 1947) was a Roman Catholic priest and President of the Republic of Slovakia from

15 RJ: Okay, now you said you had come to America in 1946 or 1948? AH: 47, I come in 1947, in January. RJ: So, how was that last Christmas with you mother, with your family? AH: Well we just had, when I left, I left my two brothers and my sister, and my mother. They stayed on the farm. Then we gave the farm to my father s brother, from Lučina. Then my what shis-name, we brought them over to America. And they came to Cleveland. RJ: Now, can you tell me about the journey itself? You said it started with a train from Prague to Paris. AH: Yeah. RJ: And what happened next? AH: Well, they almost took me on the border. They almost took me out of the train, the Czech police, because you know he says American passport? And I didn t speak the Slovakian language. So finally they even held the train maybe, what, a half an hour, to clear that with Prague. They said yes, he is an American citizen. So let him, let him go. The journey on the train was the first time I saw the lights of the [unintelligible] in Paris. It was a surprise that Paris was a big city to me. We came up to Le Havre already; I came on a very nice boat. I can show you a picture of the boat if you want to pick it up there. The Mauretania. 9 I came, I traveled in first class because I had to leave so fast and my father wasn t allowed to buy any cheaper class. At that time, at that time he has to purchase a first class ticket for me, which is - was eleven hundred dollars, you know? RJ: So what was it like to travel first class? AH: Again, I mean, the trip on the boat was five days. It came to New - oh, in Prague, I met one guy, and his name was Mr. Vizda. And he said he s going to Cleveland, Ohio. So I never 9 The Mauretania was the sister ship to the Lusitania, sunk by German U-boats during WWI. 15

16 dropped him out of my sight. If he went to the toilet, I went with him, whether I had to or I didn t. He escorted me all the way up to Lakewood, Ohio, Mr. Vizda. And on the boat I was so sea sick, oh man! I never - in first class I had one meal there and that s it. The rest of the time I was almost dying, throwing up. And from New York, we came on the train and I came on the train to my father s brother in Cleveland, Ohio, on a bus to the road where I lived with them. RJ: So what were you first impressions of America? Presumably you saw the Statue of Liberty and the New York skyline? AH: Well, my impression My opinion of, the first day of America, from the scenery, you know, when you are going on a train, it didn t look so good. But when I came back and when I came to Cleveland, it sounded very good. And when I picked up the paper at my uncle s, I liked the freedom of the press very much. My uncle took me to church - the Slovak Catholic Church here in Cleveland, Ohio - St. Wendelin s, and I met a lot of Slovak people up there and became very active in Slovak life. RJ: Did you speak English already? Had your father given you some lessons? AH: OK, I did not speak English at all, but in my school in Nitra, Slovakia we took German. And German is very close to English; just like bread is Brot. So, I mean, water is Wasser; it s very close. So I could communicate very I learned English fairly [quickly]. I never was perfect or anything, but I learned. Then I went to college here in the night time to try and improve. RJ: Now, did you spend a lot of your time, especially in the beginning, with lots and lots of Slovaks? I mean, did you find yourself speaking English very much, or were you in a very Slovak kind of group here? 16

17 AH: Well, I stayed with my uncle: they spoke Slovak. But I went to school at night time and every night, about four nights a week, I went to the school at night time and I met a lot of different people in the school, and we communicated the best we could, you know? RJ: Were you surprised by the amount of Slovak activity here in Cleveland? Or had your father told you all about it so you knew what to expect? Or were you surprised by the amount of Slovak clubs and groups and churches here? AH: I was amazingly surprised by the activities of the Slovaks in Cleveland. My father, three days later, took me here to the Slovak and Benedictine Abbey because also he was a good Catholic. And he, I met Father Andrew Pier was a pres He had the same job as I ve got right now. And my uncle took me to the Lodge, the Jednota Lodge 10 which he was a member of, and in about three or four months I became the secretary because they were looking for some young blood in the building to work. And then I - there was in the school, okay the night school - I saw a lot of Slovak people, almost three quarters of the people in the class were Slovak kids, boys and girls. So I figured I must do something, so I founded a Slovak-Catholic Federation in America. And they have here about 80 members so it even still exists; now it has changed its name to the Slovak Dramatic Club. We did Slovak plays, I can show you some pictures, Slovak dances, and sponsored the Slovak celebrations like March and the Tiso Celebration, Slovak Day, the Štefánik Monument, we went down to Saint [unintelligible]. So our generation, meaning the Slovak Republic generation, prolonged the life of the Slovaks in America another 50 years. Because even, even - sure there were old Slovaks, but it was dying, it was tired, you know? But we prolonged the life for 50 years. 10 Jednota is the Slovak word for unity. It was (and is) the Lodge name of the First Catholic Slovak Union, as well as the name of that union s newsletter. 11 March 14 is marked by some as Slovak Independence Day as it was on this date that Father Jozef Tiso declared Slovakia s independence from Bohemia and Moravia (the Czech lands) in

18 RJ: What about social places? You suggested you were here at, you know, the Slovak Institute or at the Benedictine Abbey. But what about did you go to dances? Were there things being organized like musical evenings, theater evenings? AH: Yeah! RJ: Whereabouts were they? AH: They were held by the Slovak churches. We had eight Slovak churches down there. We had a Slovak play, like at Saint Wendelin s, at Saint Benedict s here. At Sts. Cyril and Methodius we held dances and we held the plays. And then we went down to the West Side Park, the Stěfanik Statue, the Cultural Garden. 12 We created activities by ourselves. At that time I happened to get along with a lot of people very well. Monsignor Tomasek, who was a pastor at the St. Wendelin Parish, he liked me and gave us a room, one room, in an old school building for our activities. We had our meetings, we had our night classes, we had a sewing lesson, it was just things like this. RJ: Why was it important for you to take part in these sorts of events and even organize these sorts of Slovak events? Why didn t you, I don t know, spend your evenings going to baseball matches, you know? Why did you want to do Slovak things in America? AH: Well, because that s the society I fit in, I feel right there, okay? I could not become an American because I didn t know nothing about them at that time, okay? So the society I fitted - being educated in the Catholic [faith], I always wanted to marry a Slovak Catholic girl. I had a family; I had to associate from that time with the people who are closest to me. And even, okay so my I live at my what s-his-name, my uncle s; he had two sons, but we had almost nothing in common. They spoke English and so They didn t think I am same, equal while I was there. 12 For more on the Cultural Gardens in Cleveland, go to: 18

19 Okay, that, no they never told me this, but I - you know - they never spent enough time with me just to say hi Andy, you know? They never You know, like I told Joe, 13 we talked about the girls up here. I kind of dated a Slovak girl. We are going through the papers right now, the Slovak papers - and most of all I went to other dances to try to date the Slovak girls - a Catholic girl. RJ: And I wanted to ask you, after you came here - about one year after you came here - was there a new wave of immigrants sort of coming for very, very political reasons with these kind of very AH: There was a big movement then when I came in here; it was a big movement of immigrants coming from the concentration camps 14 where they held them like from Germany, Italy, Rome. So we sponsored hundreds of them. I sent them regular invitations to come up here. We were trying to get them a job. That s why I Joe says how come you know this guy? Ninety-five percent of the people who came to Cleveland which I sponsored, I also got them a job. You know, one time I - my what s-his-name, my uncle, my uncle lived right next to a guy named Gonzi; he was a superintendent of the Weiss Sewing Machine Corporation. The Weiss Sewing Machine Corporation was founded by a, well he was a German, by Kuntz, but he was from Slovakia. Yeah, so we took, he was a Slovak but he was like of German descent. And his superintendent, lived right next door. So I came in on Friday, my uncle took me out for a walk in his yard, and Mr. Gonzi walked up. Hey he said, Mr. Gonzi, this is the boy I told you who come in from Slovakia, my nephew. You told me you were going to give him a job. He says Yes, I ll pick him up Monday. And he was right next door. So he took, okay, so he was walking with my uncle, with my uncle down there in the garden, my uncle saved all the money 13 Joe Hornack is Andrew Hudak s assistant at the Slovak Institute at St. Andrew s Abbey. He is the Joe being reffered to by Mr Hudak in this instance. 14 Mr Hudak may be talking here about refugee camps, not concentration camps. 19

20 from shopping and bought a whiskey, but he could not drink in the house so he hid it in the garage. So he gave me some sample of the bottle, and we both drank it up. And then he says when you get a job, we can have a bottle together. And I says Okay. So next morning, I tell you, was Saturday morning, Saturday morning, my aunt took me up, took me shopping, okay? She put out three hundred and fifty dollars on the table, and she says we re going to go shopping. And [she] says when you get a job, you pay me the money back. So we went shopping, and I came [to America] in a brand new suit. But she burned it up for me. Everything I brought from Slovakia she burned it up, because it was going to bring in some flies or something. So she bought me a suit. So after I came back from shopping, I said hmm, I am in America two days, and I owe fifteen hundred dollars already! At that time! So I got a job in Weiss Sewing. He happened to give me a good job. After about six months I become a timekeeper. And every time he needed help, he asked me: Andy, do you know any Slovak boys? So I, I got him about maybe - one time he was working about forty Slovak boys from the Sewing Machine Corporation down there. You know, I got them. And I ended up being a timekeeper. And from then on, I quit. I went into the restaurant business, because don t forget - oh, when I was in the Society of the Divine Word Missionary okay, so you studied for the school, and also you worked there. So I was working in the kitchen. And so I became a fairly good cook. So I opened up a restaurant on West 25 th Street, across the street from the Westside Market. It was very good, but hard work. RJ: What was the name of the restaurant? AH: Lorraine Square Lunchroom. RJ: And was it a particularly Slovak restaurant? 20

21 AH: No, no, no, American. I mean coffee and doughnuts, coffee and hamburgers, I mean simply American. No, I tried to put up some Slovak dishes, but nobody touched them. My chicken paprika, no. It was a Westside Market deal, you know? RJ: Okay, so it sounds like you, you were sponsoring people to come over here from the lágry, 15 from the camps in Germany. Why - you told me why you were doing Slovak things over here, why were you following events back in, you know, Czechoslovakia itself? Why was it interesting to you to know what was going on in Europe? AH: Well, because I read all the Slovak papers from, in America. And the publicity about Czechoslovakia was very good. All my friends were there, my schools were there. So I was, like I said, I was very interested in the situation in Slovakia and trying to help those people who came up. I was such a known person to the immigration office here, because when anybody needed a translator, they put me on, I translated. If anybody needed a letter of invitation to come up, I gave them a letter of invitation. So, immigration - if some guy was with a transfer document, at that time they said so if you want a transfer document for immigration, you better get it done by Andy Hudak because that is the only one they trust. You know, that s the thing, you know. RJ: Did you, in 1948, when things changed, a lot of people didn t think maybe it would last that long. Did you yourself at that time think I ll be going back to Slovakia in ten years? Or were you expecting to spend the rest of your life in America? AH: As a matter of fact, I tell you what, I was very lonely. Myself and myself and there was what s-his-name and my friend named Mike Valco, we even went to the American Consul at that time to try and enquire if we could go back. But, they said no. Yes, we were always thinking, I was always thinking I m going to go back some place, sometime. 15 Lágry is a term used to refer to DP and concentration camps in Czech and Slovak. 21

22 RJ: And would you have gone back to Czechoslovakia? I mean, you have said that you were not particularly enamored with Beneš, you were not very happy with the way Czechoslovakia was when you left. But would you be willing to go back to that country and AH: Well, don t forget that eventually we were hoping for - going to be a free Slovakia, going to be free Slovakia. We were fighting for free Slovakia, you know. But the only reason I didn t was that finally I got a family here and things got tied up and I was sort of fairly successful here. So one tied the other one, you know. RJ: Now when you were here in America, how could you fight for a free Slovakia? What could you do? Was that question of writing petitions, or AH: How I fight for the what s-his-name? Number one thing: I wrote an article against communism in all the Slovak papers. I was a speaker on Slovak Radio to the public. I, every time American politicians like congressmen, senators, mayors and government want advice on Slovak, they ask me. I give them advice like: you see that new resolution here what you got there? Mary Rose Oakar 16 asked me to speak in front of their Congress. Okay, when Czechoslovakia was invaded by, invaded by Russian troops, I organized for Czech and Slovak people to go to Washington and ask President Johnson for immediate financial aid for Slovak refugees. And the next thing we organized, set things up, a bus tour for a big rally in Detroit. I showed you the picture of the Russian holding the Slovak back, and I said we will tell them Russians to go home. And I found American funds for the Slovak refugees. I tried to stay away from Czechoslovaks because when it was Czechoslovakia, they didn t give us our share of money. Most of the Those are the facts. Most of the Slovaks came in, they came out [sponsored by] the Slovak Catholic organization. When the fund for Czechoslovakia got 16 Mary Rose Oakar was a Democratic congresswoman who represented Ohio in the House of Representatives between 1977 and

23 [money], Papanek(?) 17 and them held it for their own people. So we organized the fund for Czechoslovakia for Slovak refugees. We got it, we got it. And many, many Oh, we held a big rally at St. Wendelin s Hall against the occupation in Slovakia, we collected 12,000 signatures; we took them to Washington to President Johnson. We got a letter from Secretary Rostow 18 acknowledging them. So I was always active in politics. Even then when When Czechoslovakia or Slovakia was free. Like Congressman or Senator Voinovich had a tour to Slovakia, a business tour. I ve got a letter in my file; he asked me to help him escort a tour to Slovakia. Same thing came from Congressman Mica in Florida. He asked me to hold a what shis-name tour to Slovakia after the Slovakia was - after communism fell. I was at that time in Florida, living in Florida as the president of the Slovak Garden. We started bringing, see I was, again with the matter of luck, I was at the right place at the right time. Everybody from Slovakia, from Czechoslovakia, wants to be free. They don t want to come to Cleveland! They want to come to Florida! (Laughs) Because you know? And then, well, see I felt sort of sure, so I got about maybe 15, 20 different groups come to Florida, and then I shipped them to Cleveland, whether they liked it or not, because I mean, you know, I m going to show them that Cleveland is a Slovak stronghold, you know? So they came to Cleveland. Then we organized the sister cities: Cleveland/Bratislava, Kent/Dudince. I was always active in Slovak affairs. RJ: Can I ask, you referenced a letter that I saw over there which had the name as well of Mrs. Hyvnar on it. Can I ask you about the relations between the Slovak groups here in Cleveland and the Czech groups? Did you sometimes work together, sometimes not? I mean, how were relations? Were they friendly, were they not? Were they different from in Czechoslovakia? 17 Andrew Hudak is probably alluding here to Jan Papanek, the founder of the American Fund for Czechoslovak Refugees. 18 Eugene V. Rostow served as Secretary of State for Political Affairs under President Lyndon B. Johnson. 23

24 AH: Well, see, that s, even Joe (points off camera) wonders sometimes how. I happen to be, I happen to have very good relations with the Czech and Czechoslovak groups in Slovakia because I have such a strong personality. I ve got two letters to prove it, okay? We flew - when we celebrated on March 14 Slovak Independence Day I went to the mayor, the mayor knows me already because I helped his election, helped his what s-his-name campaign, and things like this. So I asked him for permission to fly the Slovak flag in the public square and he gave it to me. [Unintelligible] He protested to Mayor Stokes, 19 about letting us fly our, flying our flag on the City Hall and on the public square. So at that time I knew [Carl Stokes personally?] and he called me in and discussed it with me. Andy Dono was his secretary and I have to say that with the politicians in America I have good relations. Okay, so I We had a nice conversation, and I figured what, I figured well, we overcame - I said use this statement or not to go there, we overcame the tyranny of Turks, Hungarians, and with God s help we ll overcome the tyranny of the Czechs - Czechoslovaks. Bang! (claps) He took the [letter], put the stamps on; you got the permit! That I ve got, you know, I ve got a copy of it, and also he gave me a copy of the letter where [unintelligible] complained. Okay, Mrs. - uh Mrs. Hyvnar, okay? Oh, Mr. Hyvnar was the secretary of the mayor. Next thing I know Mayor Perk, 20 when I ran my restaurant, Mayor Perk was a nice man, very, very, nice in my restaurant. So that what s-his-name became a - from then on we become with the mayor, became a very good friend of him. And we founded in Cleveland that American Missionary Movement, which had about 48 different ethnic groups becoming a member. I was a co-founder with Mayor Perk, [unintelligible] and Mr. Hyvnar. And Mrs. Hyvnar was that time, was that time an editor of the Czechoslovak newspaper, very active. But [Mr. Hyvnar] was a very good friend of mine so that then she wrote some, she wrote some 19 Carl Stokes was a Democratic politician who became the 51st mayor of Cleveland in Ralph Perk was a member of the Republican Party who became 52 nd mayor of Cleveland in

25 article, and I stepped on it. So she got a lot of bad backfire from Slovaks. And from then on she never bothered us no more. We came into conflict, and [we said] you ve got to let bygones [be bygones] we do one thing. So as a matter of fact, when there was the occupation of Czechoslovakia by the Russian Army, so we, they invited us Slovaks to attend their celebration. And I said yes, we shall come, but on one condition: say there are two nations occupied by the Russian Army. They agreed. That was in And Mr. Hradek who presided the meeting, had a big sign up there, and he introduced me as a speaker from the Slovak League of America, which is the second nation - something like this - in Czechoslovakia. So from then on, our [bad] situation with Mrs. Hyvnar fell away, and I become very close friends. Because don t forget, I was a co-founder of the American Missionary Movement and Mayor Ralph Perk backed us. And at that time Cleveland Slovaks were a strong community politically. So that Mr. Hyvnar had no choice, I have to say, just to be neutral everyplace. And we became very good friends. So every time I had some good Slovak friends [over], I went down there to see them, to see the Hyvnars. So by that time I told them Mr. Hyvnar is alright, but Mrs. Hyvnar is a Czechoslovak and she is from Prague. She didn t exactly like us, but [unintelligible] was on sight, and he told us almost the same thing. So we both laughed about it. So, you know, and now we are very good friends with Mr. and Mrs. Hyvnar. She sees that we went to Washington, D.C. and you know, was funny, was funny. When we went to the meeting, Ralph Perk went there, myself, Mrs. Hyvnar, Mr. Hradek, [unintelligible] - I happened to have the same tie as Under Secretary of the State Rostow. You know, the same, just like, you know. So that guy never, never left his eye off me, okay? And when the first time I met them I asked that Senator Lausche make arrangements to see the president and discuss the thing about the Czechoslovak refugees out there. When we came down there I - you know - there was a piece of the letter from the Czechoslovak 25

26 delegation. So I right then and there, I complained. This is not right. And I said, I told Senator Lausche this is a Czech and Slovak delegation. You know, they called Lausche, he came down there, and they corrected the letter. And I said I cannot, we cannot go; the Slovak delegation cannot go under this headline because they are the ones who are paying me. So then they corrected the letter, and we went under the Czech and Slovak delegation. RJ: Now, we ve spoken a bit about the politics between Czechs and Slovaks here. Can you tell me a bit about your involvement in American politics? You said that you had had the fortune of getting along pretty well with quite a lot of politicians here. Was it important for you to be active in American politics? AH: Yes, why? RJ: Yes. AH: Because I figured at this time that if I am not going to be in there, if I m not going to be busy in American politics, I m not going to go no place, I m not going to be able to help anybody. You know, there was a time that there were those senators and governors that just plain asked me the question, you know. And the poor man on the radio and the television program, when I went to Washington I asked that, what was this Czech senator from Lincoln, Nebraska, no from someplace? Voice off Camera: Oh, from Nebraska? OK, I thought it was Vanik 21 you were talking about. AH: No, no, no. So I went down there and I said - I never met him before, the Czech senator at that time in some [place], but I got I rang him up and I said I would like to meet you. He said okay. So he met us for lunch and we promised our help to convince President Johnson to give the refugees aid. 21 Charles Vanik was a Democratic congressman from Ohio who served in the House of Representatives between 1955 and