Phil Kasik - working for a deeper Czech-American relationship
If you go to Massachusetts Avenue in Washington DC - to the point where Embassy Row begins - just round the corner from the World Bank - you'll find a statue of Czechoslovakia's first president, Tomas Masaryk, head of state from 1918 to 1935. The statue was unveiled just over a year ago to commemorate both the close links between Masaryk and the United States, and his deep commitment to democracy in Europe. For this week's One on One, David Vaughan is joined in the studio by Czech American Phil Kasik, who was instrumental in having the memorial established.
And you're a second generation Czech American?
"I am second and third generation, depending on which side of the family you look at."
Could you say hello to our listeners in Czech?
"Dobry den. Jak se mate? Tesi mne." [Hello. How are you? Pleased to meet you.]
And that's pretty impressive after three generations! [Both laugh]. Tell me, what are the American Friends of the Czech Republic and what do they do?
"The American Friends of the Czech Republic is the American organization which has as its chief goal the support and the fostering of the American-Czech relationship, building it up from a security standpoint, from a diplomatic standpoint, a business standpoint and a cultural standpoint - and occasionally for emergency assistance."
"That's correct. We do work with the State Department and some of the White House offices in Washington, the Foreign Ministry here in Prague, the Ministry of Culture, and we also have a very close relationship with the Embassy of the Czech Republic in Washington and the US Embassy here in Prague. We do projects from time to time where we coordinate with those institutions."
Before we started recording you were telling me some of the things that you have done. It's an impressive list. Could you tell us about some of these initiatives?
"Sure, I'd be happy to. The one I'm most proud of is the development of the Masaryk Memorial in Washington. It was the first Czech memorial, and this is a statue of Tomas Masaryk which was built in the diplomatic area, and it was built by the American Friends of the Czech Republic, using a statue that was provided by the Czech government as a gift. Then we built the pedestal and the park that went around it. It was fully completed last March, when the last pieces were put together.
"This was important for the Czech-American relationship, because it allows us to put out some information about the importance of Masaryk in the Czech-American relationship. I was also very proud of the work we did after the terrible floods of 2002, when we were able to create a flood-relief fund, which raised money and supported projects for flood relief throughout both North and South Bohemia, and these were important projects at schools, hospitals, municipal buildings, museums and those kinds of things."
And you raised a substantial amount of money. How did you go about this?
"Well, it wasn't easy, because we needed to do it rather quickly, but we used our network of resources. We have a website where we can put out information about the situation that was existing in the Czech Republic. So we used all our electronic media methods, our connections to the Embassy, both here in Prague and in Washington. We used them for recommendations and we reached out to corporate contributors, working here in Prague, who cared about the situation from the United States. So there was a collection of these things. And we raised over 300,000 dollars."
And you've got a list here of some of the projects you've supported after the floods. There's a great variety - everything from hospitals to the former concentration camp in Terezin, which was flooded...
"It was close to the people, it was cultural icons - like the Jewish Museum which was badly damaged and we supported the reconstruction of a couple of the synagogues there - and the museum in Terezin you mentioned, and the Bohemian Museum in Roztoky, and some housing units in Veseli nad Luznici. We were happy to be able to prepare some medical projects - a hospital in Kladruby and another in an area in South Bohemia, which was quite damaged."
And I'm sure you are not here in the Czech Republic now just on holiday. Tell me what has brought you here.
"It's always enough just to be on holiday in the Czech Republic! But I did have work to do. We were meeting with the Foreign Ministry on the next stage of the Masaryk Memorial project and to work on planning for a possible celebration of the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Plzen [Pilsen], which is a very important event coming up next year for the Czech Republic and is another connection between America and the Czech Republic. And I'm meeting some important officials here about our plans and our projects."
For over forty years the Iron Curtain separated Czechoslovakia from the United States. What did you do from the United States to keep in touch with your homeland?
"I'm sorry to say that until the Iron Curtain dropped we had no knowledge of any family that we might still have in the Czech Republic. We had little knowledge of where those families came from, and it was only in the late 80s, when the Iron Curtain was dropping slowly, that we were able finally to discover locations in Moravia and in South Bohemia where Kasiks came from on both my father's side and my mother's side. So we are now closely attached to these families here, we stay with them when we come here and they have become our own family.
Mr Kasik, thank you very much - 'Dekuji Vam'.
"Dekuji Vam taky!" [Thanks to you too!]
