Miloslav (Mila) Rechcigl was born in Mladá Boleslav in 1930. His father (also named Miloslav) was a miller who became the youngest member of parliament in Czechoslovakia when he was elected as a representative of the Agrarian Party in 1935. Mila was raised in and around the family mill in Chocněj...

Madeleine Albright (born Marie Jana Körbelová), 1937 – Biography

Madeleine Albright was born in the Prague district of Smíchov in 1937. Shortly after her birth, she traveled to Belgrade with her mother (Anna) to join her father (Josef), who worked at the Czechoslovak Embassy in the Yugoslav capi...

Thomas Gral was born in Nitra, Slovakia, in 1925. His mother, Helena, was a concert pianist who had studied in Vienna and Brno, while his father, Viliam, was a lawyer who attended Charles University. As Nitra was a large town situated close to Vienna and Budapest, Thomas grew up speaking Slovak, ...

Mojmír Povolný (November 25, 1921 – August 21, 2012) was a Czech lawyer and politician. He was a professor of government at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin, from 1958 to 1987. He began his academic career with a J.D. degree from Masaryk University School of Law in Czechoslovakia. On Au...

Jan Vilcek (born Ján Vilček), 1933

Jan Vilcek was born in Bratislava in 1933. His father Julius was a business executive and his mother Bedriška was an ophthalmologist. Prior to WWII, Jan recalls often traveling to Hungary, where his mother was raised, to visit family. In 1942, when deportations...

George Drost (born Jiří Drost), 1946 – Biography

George Drost was born in Brno in December 1946. His father, John, was a lawyer while his mother, Doris, stayed at home and raised George and his older brother Rudy. George says the Communist putsch in 1948 was a ‘turning point’ for his father, who...

Matt Carnogursky (born Matúš Čarnogurský), 1960

Matt Carnogursky was born in Bratislava in 1960. His mother Isabella had a job as a chemical engineer and his father Ivan was a mechanical engineer working for a construction company. After the fall of Communism, Ivan served in the Slovak parliamen...