ambassador rudolf v. perina - Association for Diplomatic Studies and ...

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PERINA: Vaguely. I remember some friends I played with in Zürich where we lived. My parents told me I picked up basic German, or rather Swiss German, fairly well since children learn languages quickly but also forget them quickly. Sure enough, I subsequently forgot it quickly, though some of it seemed to come back when I studied it much later in graduate school, and later I learned it quite well during assignments in Berlin and Vienna. But getting back to Switzerland, my parents applied for emigration to the United States, Canada and Australia, since the Swiss did want us to move on. My father had a congenital heart condition, for which he was later operated in the U.S., and he did not pass the physical for Canada which had a rule at the time that all refugee immigrants had to spend two years working as laborers on farms. Australia was not favored by my mother, who felt that the distance would make a return to Europe more difficult, and the U.S. visa was not forthcoming. My parents still believed the Communist government in Czechoslovakia would not last long and they would be able to go home in a year or two. This led to the strange episode of our short immigration to Morocco. The French wanted Europeans to move to Morocco because there was growing resistance to colonial rule, and many French were leaving. They wanted more Europeans to populate the country and made immigration there very easy, and even subsidized it. We took this up and traveled to Morocco in August 1950. We went via boat from Marseille to Tangier, and then on to Casablanca. Almost immediately, however, my mother got culture shock and became very depressed. At the beginning of October, we returned to Switzerland before our Swiss visas expired. The Swiss were not completely surprised to see us come back. But this was an interlude that I remember because Casablanca, where we lived, was so different from Europe. I remember markets with parrots and monkeys and things like that—very exotic things for a young boy. When we returned to Zurich, my parents submitted visa applications for other places, including New Zealand and Venezuela, but still hoped for a U.S. visa. This finally came through in January 1951. Q: Do you recall how this worked? Were you sponsored? PERINA: We were sponsored by a Czech fraternal organization from the Czech diaspora in the United States. We did not have any relatives in the U.S., though my father had a cousin in Canada. Q: Where did you go? PERINA: We went from Le Havre in France to New York City by ship on the USS Washington. I do remember watching from the deck as we arrived in New York harbor, and my mother pointing out the Statue of Liberty to me. In retrospect it’s almost like a movie scene but it did happen, and I remember it. Q: When was this, 1951? PERINA: It was May 15, 1951. My father always kept records of important dates. We were met by a lady who was from the New York chapter of the Sokol organization and 8
taken to an apartment which initially we shared with another Czech family that had come over at approximately the same time. It was in Astoria, in Queens, right under the Triborough Bridge. But it was very convenient because it was right across the street from an elementary school, PS 85, which I went to for the next five years. Q: Up to this point I take it you hadn't had any English? PERINA: No, no. I didn't know any English and started school a year late. I was six and a half when I began the first grade. I never went to kindergarten. I recall that in my first two years of school I had special classes to learn English pronunciation, especially the “th” in English which is one of the hardest sounds for foreigners to pronounce. But I picked up the language rather quickly, as kids do. Q: What were your father and mother doing? PERINA: Well, my father had a first job washing dishes in a restaurant in Manhattan, and it didn't work out very well because his English was not very good. In his first week, he burned his hands with lye which he had mistaken for soap. So he lost that job rather quickly. My mother went to work as a housekeeper for the family of an older, successful Czech businessman. She later worked in his company, which was an import-export business. My father got a job as a waiter at the University Club in New York City, and he worked there for about a year. Subsequently, because he knew some French, he got an office job working for the French Line, the French steamship company that had ships going across the Atlantic. He worked there until we left New York in 1955. Q: Did you find yourself acting as the interpreter and all for the family for the early part of the time? PERINA: I don't recall that specifically because my parents did have to learn the language, and I think they learned it fairly quickly, although I'm sure I learned it faster. I think within a year or so I was pretty much into the kid culture of the 1950’s: trading cards, Captain Video, Davy Crockett, and all of these things. One of the good things that my parents did was always to speak with me in Czech. Sometimes parents try to help their kids by speaking English with them at home, and usually this does not help kids learn the language but leads them to forgetting their mother tongue. We always spoke Czech at home. I still speak Czech with my mother today and in casual conversation speak it with a native fluency. Q: Did you stay in Astoria? PERINA: We stayed in Astoria for about five years, almost to the point where we got citizenship. But we had some friends--- actually the family which for a few weeks had shared the Astoria apartment with us--- who moved to Cleveland, Ohio. They wrote that the cost of housing was lower in Cleveland, jobs more plentiful, and so on. We moved there in 1955, and we became U.S. citizens there in 1956. I became a citizen through my parents when they were naturalized. I lived in Cleveland until 1961 and then moved to 9
Page 1 and 2: The Association for Diplomatic Stud
Page 3 and 4: Holbrooke visits Albanians Dayton M
Page 5 and 6: throughout the country were execute
Page 7: capitalists and so on. At that time
Page 11 and 12: Q: You said that after Cleveland yo
Page 13 and 14: they agreed to send me there. Marxi
Page 15 and 16: most comprehensive collection of in
Page 17 and 18: Q: What was the background of your
Page 19 and 20: is there from that trial?” I thou
Page 21 and 22: word that he was going to come to a
Page 23 and 24: Q: During the Vietnam War, there wa
Page 25 and 26: very different interpretations. The
Page 27 and 28: Q: So you were there from 1979? PER
Page 29 and 30: I will always remember that staff m
Page 31 and 32: was very tough. We did suspend the
Page 33 and 34: line was that a person was made to
Page 35 and 36: there. The Polish economy was nose-
Page 37 and 38: Q: What sorts of issues did you tal
Page 39 and 40: war. But I can tell you that the So
Page 41 and 42: museums. Even in the private sector
Page 43 and 44: to the Soviet Union. Everything tha
Page 45 and 46: phrases “Open this gate, tear dow
Page 47 and 48: PERINA: Yes, they did. Jumping ahea
Page 49 and 50: Those plenary sessions I actually w
Page 51 and 52: PERINA: That is exactly right. The
Page 53 and 54: Q: OK, in 1989 you’re going to th
Page 55 and 56: PERINA: This was an issue because o
Page 57 and 58: position in Europe, and really the
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Soviet domination. They had histori
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Q: That was my impression as well w
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welcoming dinner in a restaurant an
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Q: How were you received by the Ser
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eard, and he functioned as everythi
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Part of the reason that we didn’t
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One of the more interesting people
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Q: So what was happening with Kosov
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Albanians were very anxious to have
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I remember Holbrooke’s first visi
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cannot now remember what finally tr
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Q: And this was not an idle comment
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price for having a very bad leaders
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PERINA: Certainly during the period
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Q: So you took over the Holbrooke r
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PERINA: Not really. We coordinated
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why I believed that it was not wort
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Q: Can you give a brief summary of
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PERINA: Well the American interests
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shorter visits of three to four wee
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Q: How so? PERINA: Well, he felt un
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Q: Still, it strikes me that all of
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As for the European Union, most Mol
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PERINA: Nagorno-Karabakh is the mos
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e called the “Prague Process” w
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we physically crossed the front lin
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were about three-quarters of the po
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down to the Black Sea. Since I was
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PERINA: It is difficult to say. He
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political interests to keep it goin
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a huge personal embarrassment. It l
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clearly followed the advice because
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good governance and so on. In its b
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Deputy Secretary, Richard Armitage,
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PERINA: Relations with Europe were
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End of interview 129
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