Petr Torák Life in Czech Republic
My name is Petr Torák.
My grandparents come from Slovakia, from Veľké Zálužie.
My grandfather lived there, as well as my grandmother,
who then moved to the Czech Republic in the 1950s.
I talked to my grandfather a few times about why they actually left.
But most of the time I was told
that because of better work opportunities.
Grandfather wanted to find a job in the Czech Republic, where they lived.
Despite the fact that they did not live somehow badly.
But grandfather was aware that the possibilities
would be much better in Czech Republic.
That is why he moved with the grandmother to Liberec,
where they raised their nine children.
And one of them, Stanislav Torák, is my father.
They all lived there in a family house.
Unfortunately, I never learned anything specific
about any war or pre-war period.
How they experienced it.
Unfortunately, when we left for Great Britain,
I lost my grandfather and then also my grandmother.
So that possibility was no longer there at all.
But from what I remember of their talks,
they actually did not want to return to it in any way.
They kept talking about what it was like in the 1950s.
And then about the beginnings in the Czech Republic in Liberec.
But they didn't want to talk too much about the rest.
My childhood in the Czech Republic was quite peaceful.
I have to say that we grew up in the village of Jeřmanice.
Just behind Liberec.
And we are actually there with my parents and my siblings
At that time I had one sibling, a brother.
Later we had two more siblings, Stanislav and Drahoslava.
And we lived in a family house in the village,
so a person had the opportunity to grow up
in such a peaceful environment, in nature.
And at the same time, I didn't have to deal with my identity for a long time.
The point was that we were actually the only family
of Roma origin in the area of that village.
So for a long time, practically until I was six or seven years old, I didn't have to deal with it at all.
I didn't even know that we were different
from other people in that village.
I think sometime in second grade
I started hearing some comments in class.
I think that was the first time I heard the word gypsy.
And only after that I asked my parents what it meant.
Why do they call me that?
Or if it's something bad.
So only then I did start to find out
where we come from and who we are.
Education was very important to my parents
and it was in the first place.
When we were little, we mostly got books
for our birthdays and Christmas.
Because father wanted, above all, for us to have what he couldn´t have himself.
Despite he wanted it very much.
And that was the education.
So he often tested us from those books.
We had to read a passage.
Then tell him about what we read
so he knew we really understood it.
And as for the Roma identity,
when I first found out about it,
or I heard some comments at school,
my parents explained it to me by saying that we are different, we are Gypsies.
At that time, the term Roma was not used that much.
But my parents always made me aware
that even though we are different, it does not mean
that we are any worse than other people.
And I actually grew up in that my whole life.
We had no other traditions
than other children or other families in the village.
We lived in a normal, standard way.
Parents attended various balls in that village.
I went to school, on school trips.
After school, my friends and I played at the fields, we went to the forest to collect mushrooms and stuff like that.
So I had a standard childhood.
Surrounded by some animals, of course,
because we raised rabbits, chickens.
We grew our own potatoes and vegetables and stuff.
So really a very high-quality childhood in this regard.
But when I was about ten or eleven years old,
we had to move back to the center of Liberec.
Because there are far fewer job opportunities living in the village.
So the father finally decided
to move back to Liberec, where he worked as a bricklayer.
After we moved to Liberec,
I started going to the Elementary School U Soudu.
I think I entered the second stage right away.
To the sixth or seventh grade, I believe.
So I and my brother Radek, we were attending this school
until we finished the elementary school.
And then, subsequently, I entered the high school.
When I finished the eighth grade,
the teacher talked first with me, then with my parents.
And she actually tried to influence them in the direction that,
for example, I would either go to some vocational school
or that I would go to an industrial academy.
Father didn't even want to hear about it.
My father, as I was saying, insisted on an education.
And also, for example, I think it was in the sixth or seventh grade,
when the teacher tried to convince my parents
to send me to a special school, because I was the only Roma in that class,
I was lonely, I didn't have many friends there,
so father completely denied it and he said
he didn't even want to hear about it, that he wanted his son to be a lawyer.
And that's what happened, practically.
After I finished the eighth grade,
instead of a vocational or technical school,
my father was very interested in sending me to the Private Law Academy in Liberec,
with a social focus.
And despite the fact that the school was private, i.e. we had to pay for it,
we were able, or father was so interested in it,
that he basically did everything so we could go there.
Both me and my brother.
At that time, my father was working in Germany,
so he earned quite decent money
and was able to pay a considerable amount for me and my brother.
For studying at this school.
So I studied there for four years.
I graduated from high school with a high school diploma
and I was choosing a university thereafter.
I had several options.
I wanted to go to the Military College in Vyškov.
My father wanted me to go to a seminary to become a priest.
And then I also had the University of Law in Prague.
And then I still considered the idea of going to a diplomatic university.
So there were several possibilities.
And at the same time during this process I gave myself a backup plan.
I also applied to the Police of the Czech Republic in Liberec,
where I and my father decided to try to pass the tests.
And if no college would work out for me,
so I would have a place to start working right away.
My memories from primary and secondary school,
as far as my Roma identity is concerned,
are relatively, I would say, balanced.
The negative incidents
where I heard some comments were relatively rare.
Apart from one or two incidents at the beginning, there was almost nothing
in the village of Jeřmanice.
In Liberec, there were a little more of those incidents,
and I also had the feeling that there was a little more segregation there.
That it was actually me and them.
Despite the fact that we talked in class,
it wasn't a real friendship, when we went on various trips and so on.
I felt segregated.
Maybe not even intentionally, but the segregation was there.
Even in class, where I mostly sat at the very back.
As for the teachers' attitude, it was mostly fine.
Of course, there were teachers
who behaved unprofessionally sometimes.
I can give an example of one teacher at a second grade elementary school.
This happened few times, but when something was lost in the classroom,
she usually asked me first if I knew where it was.
Because it was assumed that I, as a Roma, Gypsy,
would probably know where it is, or I would have it with me.
So of course it wasn't very pleasant.
But in any case, I think
that mainly thanks to the attitude of my parents,
who did not allow something like this to happen.
And every time something like that happened,
or when they felt that something was bothering me,
they went to the school, they went to the teacher, to the principal.
And they dealt with them.
And I think that with the approach that the parents showed
that they were really interested in my education and that they wanted the best for me,
that school perceived this and knew that this would probably not be tolerated at all.
So there weren't really that many negative experiences.
In high school, I would say almost none.
We were two Roma there in the beginning.
My colleague then left in the first year, so I was left there alone.
Until my brother joined there.
And I don't remember any incidents there.
Of course, I didn't quite feel like a part of that whole class.
That we would be a whole.
As, for example, the other students were among themselves.
But even so, I had at least one or two
good friends with whom I spent time.
And I could concentrate on my studies at school.
So when I was deciding which college to go to,
of course like most teenagers at that time,
I was mainly thinking about something
I could see myself doing, something I could be good at.
Back in the days, I think since about I was ten years old,
until the time before I was a teenager,
I always had this dream of becoming a superhero.
I imagined this classic scene where a man rips off his shirt,
wears a uniform underneath and goes to help and protect.
So I saw myself in some security forces.
Either in the police forces or in the army.
That was something that attracted me and I wanted to be involved in it.
That's why I applied to the Military College in Vyškov.
Or eventually in the diplomatic services.
For the father, probably like for all parents,
and especially I would say for Roma parents
who are interested in the education of their children, it is often a lawyer.
I think that this is also typical for other minorities.
I see it, for example, in Great Britain,
that parents want and see the career in law
as a very prestigious job, well paid.
So my father also wanted me to be a lawyer.
That's why the private law academy.
And then either the priestly university
or the Law University in Prague.
In the end, I submitted all four applications.
And at the same time the plan B was the police.
But that was at that time in 1999, when I was still taking exams for some
of those universities and waiting for the results.
And I had already passed half of the police tests,
when things actually started to change, for us, for our family.
My father was very politically engaged at that time.
He wrote petitions against the construction of the wall in Mateční Street.
And he was in a political party.
And most likely because of this, because of this engagement, skinheads started attacking us.
They threatened us, they started making our life very uncomfortable.
It was April, May 1999, when my father was already
regularly receiving threatening letters.
Where they threatened him, warned him to stop his activity.
To stop him from being involved in stuff and to stop him from writing the articles.
Dad published quite a lot in newspapers in Liberec.
And he also wrote to Mr. Uhl and various other politicians.
So he was very active, that's why they tried to intimidate him.
At the same time, that May, I was attacked by skinheads, in a daytime.
I was in a shopping center and then when I was leaving
there was a group of five skinheads
standing between two staircases.
And they were standing there, waiting, and as soon as I came and passed by them,
they surrounded me, started kicking me, hitting me, threatening me.
Then they also wanted my wallet.
Fortunately, I managed to escape.
But when we went to report it to the police,
they turned to us saying that
if we don't know their names, they can't do anything about it.
And even with a smile on their face.
So I began to doubt
whether it was really the right choice to work for the police,
where a person is not even taken seriously as a victim.
And a few days later, they attacked the mother and the brother
when the brother was walking the mother home from work.
So they attacked them, they beat them.
And they had to go to the hospital for a checkup.
So, thanks to these incidents, the parents then decided
to call it quits and go to Great Britain.
Just before we left the Czech Republic,
I was working at that time, I had a part-time job in a local store.
So that I could earn some money
before going to the university or to the police.
And I still remember, that day I came home from work
and my father told us to pack the most important stuff in a small suitcase,
in a few days, I think in two days, we are leaving for Great Britain.
And of course, I was 18 at the time, I had a vision.
But despite everything that happened, I took it as OK, it will pass.
But I worked really hard on that, on that education.
I want to go to university, I want to do different things.
Of course, I had my friends and family there.
That's how I saw it, that I really didn't want to go.
As a young person, at the age of eighteen,
one tries to somehow reject it.
But the decision was made already.
Father had already bought the flight tickets.
So we had to pack only the most important things in a small bag.
And that was also difficult when I think back.
Of course, a person, a young person, collects many things over the years
that are sensitive and emotionally important to him.
Whether it's a different notebooks, pictures from school, or whatever he had.
School books and all such things that a person wanted to hide,
but he could not take them with him.
So we left it all in the attic of the house where we lived.
And so after two days we left.
Of course we were extremely nervous.
Just the journey from Liberec to Prague by train, then to the airport.
We have never traveled like this before.
Few times we were on a trips around Liberec, or something like that.
But we were never practically beyond the borders.
So it was very stressful.
We had never flown on a plane before so that was extra stress.
And we also had my siblings with us,
who were about ten years old at the time.
So I actually had to look after them while we were traveling.
We were worried that we might forget something somewhere.
So that we don't forget, for example, a brother somewhere.
So a person had various stresses.
And then, when we flew to Britain,
we flew to Heathrow Airport.
Where such another added stress was that my parents expected
me to translate, because I had English in high school.
It was, of course, very basic English, with an American accent.
So the person had some basics.
I could ask at the airport where the toilets are, for example.
Or I could have answered what were our names.
But it was really just the basics.
So we spent about 10, maybe 14 hours at that airport
where they locked us in a small room.
We didn't know what would happen to us.
The immigration officials were going in, they came, they asked something, then they left.
They kept giving us some papers to sign.
One did not really understand it.
Of course, we have heard of cases of people
who emigrated and then were deported back.
So we were afraid what would happen to us.
In the Czech Republic, we have nowhere to go back to.
Now, all the money my parent had saved, they put it all into this trip.
So it was a huge stress, what will happen to us, if we will be arrested.
I was already an adult, so will they lock us up somewhere?
What will happen to my siblings.
So it was really a huge nerve-wracking experience.
After about fourteen hours, they took us all at once and loaded us into the car.
And they took us to the center of London.
At that time I didn't know where exactly we were.
But we got off somewhere in a populated area.
We went down to a cellar.
And they accommodated us there
and said that we should stay there, sleep and that someone would come for us in the morning.
The fact that the parents left and decided to take such a huge step, practically into the unknown,
so of course I see it not only as enormous bravery on their part.
But at the same time, it also shows how much they were forced to do it.
For them, it was not actually a question of comfort or possibilities.
For them, it was simply the only way out, how to protect their own family.
How could a father protect his wife, our mother, us, his children.
So they probably had no choice there, and a person will do really extreme things
to survive in these conditions.