Photo: archive of Eva Nováková
In the third episode of our series looking at the recent past through the eyes of the youngest generation, we hear a story of exile and return. Fourteen-year-old Eva Nováková chose the format of a short radio play to draw us into the world of her great-grandmother, Olga Szántová. Older listeners will remember Olga, who died in 2003. She was a legend of Czechoslovak broadcasting and a good friend to many of us here at the radio.
Eva’s play is called The Story of Radio’s Voice, and it takes us back to 1962, when Olga was thirty and her daughter, also Eva, was seven. By that time Olga had already been through more than most of us will experience in a lifetime. As the Nazi grip on Central Europe tightened, she and her parents fled Bratislava and then Prague in 1939, reaching New York via Norway, Sweden, the Soviet Union and Japan.
The family had good reason to fear persecution. They were Jewish and Olga’s father Dezider Benau was a well-known Social Democrat.
See the rest here.
Author: David Vaughan