You see things; and you say 'Why?' But I dream things that never were; and I say 'Why not?'
George Bernard Shaw
23 year old Memories of Escape
I remember 7 of July 1980. Exile is the best and worst of all possible worlds: Australia is my country, Prague is my hometown.
· One Man Survives the Iron Curtain Crossing
Bohemian youth mixed with a desire for freedom defies even the unbreakable barriers such as the Iron Curtain. A daring escape which almost left none to tell the story.
James Bond once said, ‘You only live twice.’ Once when you are born and again when you face death. He may well have been referring to my life on 16 May 1958 and 7 July 1980
My life, all of it, comes down to 7 July 1980.
This story is everybody's story, for the capacity and desire for freedom are engraved right into our genes. Let me begin with a story I read about in the paper, in the train, on my way to work last July. I read it and I could not believe it, and I read it again. Then perhaps I just stared at it, at the newsprint spelling out the story of Andrea ... of Houston who killed all five of her children.
Not in a burst of gunfire, but by methodically drowning them in the bathtub. Anyone who's tried to give an unwanted hair-wash to a kid will appreciate the effort involved in holding five struggling youngsters under water. The oldest, seven-year-old Noah, was the last to die. He ran, for his life. But she caught him and dragged him back to the bathroom, and forced him under, legs kicking, arms flailing. He was old enough to know, as he looked up and fought against the weight of her hands, that his own mother was killing him.
This morning on 7th July I am reading about a woman who tried to toss her kids into the river Friday, and jump in after them, in an incident that happened within sight of the Taste of Minnesota. A good samaritan recovered the woman and one child. Naomi Gaines would have been able to see the crowds shortly after 9 p.m. as she stood with her 11-month-old twins on the Wabasha Street Bridge facing east on an observation deck. Without warning or calling out to anyone, Gaines, a mother of four, dropped her babies over the 5-foot railing into the debris-laden river 75 feet below. Late Saturday afternoon, one of the children was still missing and presumed drowned.
Back in July 1980, two burial vaults awaited the caskets of my two drowned friends. Our mother country Czechoslovakia forced them under, legs kicking, arms flailing.
--Biography:
Jozef Imrich was born in Czechoslovakia in 1958 and escaped to Austria in 1980. Jozef has lived and worked in Australia for 20 years, for almost 18 years of which he worked as a reference officer and a researcher at the NSW Parliament. Indeed, life doesn't get much stranger than that. Jozef was the youngest boy in the family of six and therefore, statistically, the person most likely to seize upon the rebellion culture, the child to keep the family awake at night. Everyone is born with some special talent, and Jozef discovered early on that he had two: a good sense of where to hide samizdat magazines and sound research skills. Jozef is, above all things, every dictator’s & every power hungry bully’s worst nightmare.
One of Jozef’s favorite quotes from Anna Karenina is: Where was I left of? On the reflection that I couldn’t conceive a situation in which life would not be a misery, that we were all created in order to suffer, and that we all know this and try to invent means for deceiving ourselves. But when you see the truth, what are you to do?”
