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Petr Torák
Life in Czech Republic

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My name is Petr Torák.

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My grandparents come from Slovakia, from Veľké Zálužie.

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My grandfather lived there, as well as my grandmother,

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who then moved to the Czech Republic in the 1950s.

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I talked to my grandfather a few times about why they actually left.

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But most of the time I was told

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that because of better work opportunities.

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Grandfather wanted to find a job in the Czech Republic, where they lived.

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Despite the fact that they did not live somehow badly.

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But grandfather was aware that the possibilities

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would be much better in Czech Republic.

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That is why he moved with the grandmother to Liberec,

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where they raised their nine children.

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And one of them, Stanislav Torák, is my father.

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They all lived there in a family house.

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Unfortunately, I never learned anything specific

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about any war or pre-war period.

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How they experienced it.

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Unfortunately, when we left for Great Britain,

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I lost my grandfather and then also my grandmother.

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So that possibility was no longer there at all.

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But from what I remember of their talks,

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they actually did not want to return to it in any way.

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They kept talking about what it was like in the 1950s.

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And then about the beginnings in the Czech Republic in Liberec.

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But they didn't want to talk too much about the rest.

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My childhood in the Czech Republic was quite peaceful.

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I have to say that we grew up in the village of Jeřmanice.

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Just behind Liberec.

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And we are actually there with my parents and my siblings

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At that time I had one sibling, a brother.

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Later we had two more siblings, Stanislav and Drahoslava.

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And we lived in a family house in the village,

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so a person had the opportunity to grow up

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in such a peaceful environment, in nature.

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And at the same time, I didn't have to deal with my identity for a long time.

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The point was that we were actually the only family

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of Roma origin in the area of that village.

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So for a long time, practically until I was six or seven years old, I didn't have to deal with it at all.

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I didn't even know that we were different

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from other people in that village.

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I think sometime in second grade

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I started hearing some comments in class.

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I think that was the first time I heard the word gypsy.

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And only after that I asked my parents what it meant.

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Why do they call me that?

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Or if it's something bad.

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So only then I did start to find out

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where we come from and who we are.

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Education was very important to my parents

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and it was in the first place.

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When we were little, we mostly got books

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for our birthdays and Christmas.

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Because father wanted, above all, for us to have what he couldn´t have himself.

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Despite he wanted it very much.

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And that was the education.

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So he often tested us from those books.

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We had to read a passage.

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Then tell him about what we read

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so he knew we really understood it.

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And as for the Roma identity,

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when I first found out about it,

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or I heard some comments at school,

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my parents explained it to me by saying that we are different, we are Gypsies.

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At that time, the term Roma was not used that much.

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But my parents always made me aware

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that even though we are different, it does not mean

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that we are any worse than other people.

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And I actually grew up in that my whole life.

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We had no other traditions

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than other children or other families in the village.

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We lived in a normal, standard way.

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Parents attended various balls in that village.

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I went to school, on school trips.

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After school, my friends and I played at the fields, we went to the forest to collect mushrooms and stuff like that.

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So I had a standard childhood.

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Surrounded by some animals, of course,

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because we raised rabbits, chickens.

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We grew our own potatoes and vegetables and stuff.

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So really a very high-quality childhood in this regard.

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But when I was about ten or eleven years old,

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we had to move back to the center of Liberec.

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Because there are far fewer job opportunities living in the village.

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So the father finally decided

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to move back to Liberec, where he worked as a bricklayer.

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After we moved to Liberec,

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I started going to the Elementary School U Soudu.

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I think I entered the second stage right away.

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To the sixth or seventh grade, I believe.

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So I and my brother Radek, we were attending this school

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until we finished the elementary school.

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And then, subsequently, I entered the high school.

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When I finished the eighth grade,

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the teacher talked first with me, then with my parents.

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And she actually tried to influence them in the direction that,

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for example, I would either go to some vocational school

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or that I would go to an industrial academy.

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Father didn't even want to hear about it.

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My father, as I was saying, insisted on an education.

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And also, for example, I think it was in the sixth or seventh grade,

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when the teacher tried to convince my parents

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to send me to a special school, because I was the only Roma in that class,

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I was lonely, I didn't have many friends there,

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so father completely denied it and he said

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he didn't even want to hear about it, that he wanted his son to be a lawyer.

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And that's what happened, practically.

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After I finished the eighth grade,

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instead of a vocational or technical school,

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my father was very interested in sending me to the Private Law Academy in Liberec,

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with a social focus.

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And despite the fact that the school was private, i.e. we had to pay for it,

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we were able, or father was so interested in it,

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that he basically did everything so we could go there.

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Both me and my brother.

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At that time, my father was working in Germany,

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so he earned quite decent money

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and was able to pay a considerable amount for me and my brother.

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For studying at this school.

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So I studied there for four years.

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I graduated from high school with a high school diploma

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and I was choosing a university thereafter.

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I had several options.

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I wanted to go to the Military College in Vyškov.

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My father wanted me to go to a seminary to become a priest.

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And then I also had the University of Law in Prague.

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And then I still considered the idea of going to a diplomatic university.

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So there were several possibilities.

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And at the same time during this process I gave myself a backup plan.

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I also applied to the Police of the Czech Republic in Liberec,

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where I and my father decided to try to pass the tests.

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And if no college would work out for me,

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so I would have a place to start working right away.

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My memories from primary and secondary school,

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as far as my Roma identity is concerned,

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are relatively, I would say, balanced.

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The negative incidents

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where I heard some comments were relatively rare.

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Apart from one or two incidents at the beginning, there was almost nothing

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in the village of Jeřmanice.

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In Liberec, there were a little more of those incidents,

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and I also had the feeling that there was a little more segregation there.

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That it was actually me and them.

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Despite the fact that we talked in class,

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it wasn't a real friendship, when we went on various trips and so on.

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I felt segregated.

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Maybe not even intentionally, but the segregation was there.

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Even in class, where I mostly sat at the very back.

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As for the teachers' attitude, it was mostly fine.

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Of course, there were teachers

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who behaved unprofessionally sometimes.

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I can give an example of one teacher at a second grade elementary school.

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This happened few times, but when something was lost in the classroom,

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she usually asked me first if I knew where it was.

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Because it was assumed that I, as a Roma, Gypsy,

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would probably know where it is, or I would have it with me.

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So of course it wasn't very pleasant.

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But in any case, I think

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that mainly thanks to the attitude of my parents,

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who did not allow something like this to happen.

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And every time something like that happened,

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or when they felt that something was bothering me,

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they went to the school, they went to the teacher, to the principal.

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And they dealt with them.

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And I think that with the approach that the parents showed

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that they were really interested in my education and that they wanted the best for me,

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that school perceived this and knew that this would probably not be tolerated at all.

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So there weren't really that many negative experiences.

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In high school, I would say almost none.

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We were two Roma there in the beginning.

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My colleague then left in the first year, so I was left there alone.

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Until my brother joined there.

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And I don't remember any incidents there.

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Of course, I didn't quite feel like a part of that whole class.

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That we would be a whole.

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As, for example, the other students were among themselves.

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But even so, I had at least one or two

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good friends with whom I spent time.

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And I could concentrate on my studies at school.

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So when I was deciding which college to go to,

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of course like most teenagers at that time,

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I was mainly thinking about something

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I could see myself doing, something I could be good at.

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Back in the days, I think since about I was ten years old,

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until the time before I was a teenager,

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I always had this dream of becoming a superhero.

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I imagined this classic scene where a man rips off his shirt,

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wears a uniform underneath and goes to help and protect.

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So I saw myself in some security forces.

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Either in the police forces or in the army.

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That was something that attracted me and I wanted to be involved in it.

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That's why I applied to the Military College in Vyškov.

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Or eventually in the diplomatic services.

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For the father, probably like for all parents,

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and especially I would say for Roma parents

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who are interested in the education of their children, it is often a lawyer.

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I think that this is also typical for other minorities.

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I see it, for example, in Great Britain,

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that parents want and see the career in law

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as a very prestigious job, well paid.

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So my father also wanted me to be a lawyer.

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That's why the private law academy.

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And then either the priestly university

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or the Law University in Prague.

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In the end, I submitted all four applications.

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And at the same time the plan B was the police.

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But that was at that time in 1999, when I was still taking exams for some

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of those universities and waiting for the results.

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And I had already passed half of the police tests,

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when things actually started to change, for us, for our family.

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My father was very politically engaged at that time.

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He wrote petitions against the construction of the wall in Mateční Street.

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And he was in a political party.

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And most likely because of this, because of this engagement, skinheads started attacking us.

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They threatened us, they started making our life very uncomfortable.

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It was April, May 1999, when my father was already

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regularly receiving threatening letters.

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Where they threatened him, warned him to stop his activity.

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To stop him from being involved in stuff and to stop him from writing the articles.

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Dad published quite a lot in newspapers in Liberec.

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And he also wrote to Mr. Uhl and various other politicians.

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So he was very active, that's why they tried to intimidate him.

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At the same time, that May, I was attacked by skinheads, in a daytime.

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I was in a shopping center and then when I was leaving

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there was a group of five skinheads

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standing between two staircases.

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And they were standing there, waiting, and as soon as I came and passed by them,

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they surrounded me, started kicking me, hitting me, threatening me.

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Then they also wanted my wallet.

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Fortunately, I managed to escape.

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But when we went to report it to the police,

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they turned to us saying that

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if we don't know their names, they can't do anything about it.

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And even with a smile on their face.

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So I began to doubt

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whether it was really the right choice to work for the police,

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where a person is not even taken seriously as a victim.

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And a few days later, they attacked the mother and the brother

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when the brother was walking the mother home from work.

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So they attacked them, they beat them.

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And they had to go to the hospital for a checkup.

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So, thanks to these incidents, the parents then decided

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to call it quits and go to Great Britain.

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Just before we left the Czech Republic,

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I was working at that time, I had a part-time job in a local store.

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So that I could earn some money

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before going to the university or to the police.

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And I still remember, that day I came home from work

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and my father told us to pack the most important stuff in a small suitcase,

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in a few days, I think in two days, we are leaving for Great Britain.

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And of course, I was 18 at the time, I had a vision.

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But despite everything that happened, I took it as OK, it will pass.

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But I worked really hard on that, on that education.

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I want to go to university, I want to do different things.

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Of course, I had my friends and family there.

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That's how I saw it, that I really didn't want to go.

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As a young person, at the age of eighteen,

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one tries to somehow reject it.

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But the decision was made already.

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Father had already bought the flight tickets.

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So we had to pack only the most important things in a small bag.

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And that was also difficult when I think back.

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Of course, a person, a young person, collects many things over the years

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that are sensitive and emotionally important to him.

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Whether it's a different notebooks, pictures from school, or whatever he had.

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School books and all such things that a person wanted to hide,

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but he could not take them with him.

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So we left it all in the attic of the house where we lived.

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And so after two days we left.

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Of course we were extremely nervous.

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Just the journey from Liberec to Prague by train, then to the airport.

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We have never traveled like this before.

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Few times we were on a trips around Liberec, or something like that.

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But we were never practically beyond the borders.

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So it was very stressful.

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We had never flown on a plane before so that was extra stress.

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And we also had my siblings with us,

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who were about ten years old at the time.

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So I actually had to look after them while we were traveling.

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We were worried that we might forget something somewhere.

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So that we don't forget, for example, a brother somewhere.

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So a person had various stresses.

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And then, when we flew to Britain,

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we flew to Heathrow Airport.

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Where such another added stress was that my parents expected

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me to translate, because I had English in high school.

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It was, of course, very basic English, with an American accent.

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So the person had some basics.

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I could ask at the airport where the toilets are, for example.

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Or I could have answered what were our names.

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But it was really just the basics.

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So we spent about 10, maybe 14 hours at that airport

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where they locked us in a small room.

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We didn't know what would happen to us.

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The immigration officials were going in, they came, they asked something, then they left.

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They kept giving us some papers to sign.

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One did not really understand it.

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Of course, we have heard of cases of people

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who emigrated and then were deported back.

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So we were afraid what would happen to us.

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In the Czech Republic, we have nowhere to go back to.

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Now, all the money my parent had saved, they put it all into this trip.

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So it was a huge stress, what will happen to us, if we will be arrested.

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I was already an adult, so will they lock us up somewhere?

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What will happen to my siblings.

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So it was really a huge nerve-wracking experience.

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After about fourteen hours, they took us all at once and loaded us into the car.

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And they took us to the center of London.

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At that time I didn't know where exactly we were.

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But we got off somewhere in a populated area.

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We went down to a cellar.

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And they accommodated us there

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and said that we should stay there, sleep and that someone would come for us in the morning.

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The fact that the parents left and decided to take such a huge step, practically into the unknown,

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so of course I see it not only as enormous bravery on their part.

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But at the same time, it also shows how much they were forced to do it.

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For them, it was not actually a question of comfort or possibilities.

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For them, it was simply the only way out, how to protect their own family.

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How could a father protect his wife, our mother, us, his children.

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So they probably had no choice there, and a person will do really extreme things

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to survive in these conditions.