A Czechoslovak family’s escape to Austria

We continue Drea Hahn’s story with her family’s escape to Austria and the realities of being a refugee. In 1986, under the pretext of a “ski trip” to Yugoslavia Drea’s family escaped to Austria. We hear about the sadness of being unable to tell anyone they were leaving and how her relatives were summoned to … Read more

Drea – A Cold War Czechoslovak childhood

Drea Hahn was born in Czechoslovakia in 1980 in Teplice. Her mother was a secretary and her father was an engineer but refused to join the communist party and this was a source of tension in Drea’s family. She was partly raised by her grandparents and her grandmother shared stories about growing up in “the … Read more

Eva – A Czechoslovak childhood

Born in Communist Czechoslovakia, Eva Caletkova has written an honest and unflinching account of her childhood in Bratislava. Eva’s parents were Catholics, and the communist regime began to persecute the Catholic Church right from the start in 1948. They had to hide their faith from anyone outside of their home. Eva provides us with an … Read more

Czechoslovak hockey star defects to Canada

Vashi Nedomanský is the son of Czech former legendary ice hockey forward Václav Nedomanský aka “Big Ned”  who is best known as the first hockey player to defect to North America to play. Vashi provides us with vivid descriptions of the 1969 Ice Hockey World Championships where the Czech National Team faced  the Soviet national … Read more

Mark – Eyewitness to the events of 1989

Mark Baker was a journalist in Vienna who covered Czechoslovakia during the 1980s. In a wide ranging conversations we discuss the events of 1989 with Mark providing some vivid accounts of his experiences and how events were viewed at the time. Now as I’m sure you know some of our fans who are helping the … Read more

Watching Socialism : The Television Revolution in Cold War Eastern Europe

Watching Socialism: The Television Revolution in Eastern Europe is an exhibition co-curated by the Wende Museum and British scholars Sabina Mihelj and Susan Reid.  Both the capitalist West and the communist East attempted to leverage TV as a medium that represented modernity and progress during the Cold War. While television was indeed a tool that … Read more

Cold War Spy Stories from Eastern Europe

Today we’re talking to  Alison Lewis, a professor in German at the University of Melbourne. She is the author of several books, including one in German about love and gender in literature during Germany’s reunification and a book in German about the Stasi’s infiltration of the literary underground. We spoke to Alison in episode 71. … Read more

Why Preserve Cold War Communist Architecture?

We welcome back Mark Baker from episode 9 where we spoke about his time in 1980s Czechoslovakia. Mark is a freelance journalist & travel writer living in his adopted hometown of Prague. I really recommend his blog which can be found here. Mark has lived in Central Europe for more than two decades and seeks out … Read more