The story of Ivo & Jindriska Syptak - Parts One and Two
Anyone who has ever spent a few days among Czechs in Toronto will have probably heard of Ivo and Jindriska Syptak - one of the most amiable and dedicated couples in the city's Czechoslovak community. In their sixties, Ivo and his wife regularly bring together Czechs and Slovaks, regardless of whether they've been in Canada for three months or for thirty years. As you'll find out, they have remarkable stories too. In Part One: Ivo's parents, Ivo's childhood during the war, and one of the most dramatic escapes from Czechoslovakia ever. In Part Two: Jindriska and life in Canada.
"He was in the underground movement. He lost his restaurant, it was taken over by the Nazis, his other businesses too, and that was mostly because they suspected him of transporting Jewish people - his friends - to Hostalkova. Then they would go up into the hills and hide there. They were living there with the partisans, there were partisans in those hills. Lots of 'samoty': places that were quite hidden, quite out of the way. His principles, I guess led him to do this, the friendships, most of them went back way before the war. It was the commitment that he had to his friends and he was a Christian and also a Sokol. The first organisation that was banned by Hitler in Czechoslovakia."
But, says Ivo, his father's selfless dedication soon landed him behind bars, at the 'mercy' of his German interrogators.
"First he was in Pankrac, which is a prison in Prague, he was interrogated many, many times there. Then he was sent to Terezin concentration camp. He spent about three-and-a half years there. My mother spent most of her time in Prague trying to get my father out of prison of course, so she would be in Prague, she would be in Terezin looking for him, he was moved to different prisons for a while, too. And so they shifted me to Hostalkova - that's where my dad was born - so I stayed with my grandmother, or my uncles, and I spent my youth sort of being hidden away there."
Hostalkova was the town in eastern Moravia where many friends of the family and family members hid. Though Ivo himself was just a few years old at the time, there were some moments he could never really forget:
"There were times when there was nothing to eat, you know, the Germans came and they would take everything that we had, all the food. So, I remember Grandma going to the fields, trying to dig out a few potatoes after the field had already been dug. It was during the winter, they had been frozen, and that's all we had to eat. I also remember the partisans coming into town and asking for food too. So, there was a bit of hunger."
Even more horrifying were Nazi atrocities on the local square:
"There were a few times, I remember as a child, we were forced out onto the square, and I witnessed people put into lines, and every tenth person or so was shot. I was just a little boy at the time, but I witnessed this."
Eventually, as the war dragged on, the Syptak family returned to Prague. An uncle took part in the battles on the barricades in the war's final days. Once it was over Ivo's father, too, returned home: he had survived.
Did your father talk about what he had experienced during the war?
"No, he couldn't. He didn't talk too much about that."
Still, it didn't take long for Ervin to find his old roots. Ivo says the next few years were industrious ones and that most Czechs, including his father, looked to the future with a measure of guarded optimism.
"My dad got to work right away: as soon as he got his health a little bit together he opened 'Cerna Ruze", that was one of his restaurants - and he got his life together very quickly and was enterprising and very successful again."
Tragically, Czechoslovakia's renewed freedom would not last long. By February 1948 the country had fallen to a Communist take-over and by March that same year the country's beloved foreign minister, Jan Masaryk, was found dead below his second-story bathroom window. To this day most Czechs still believe he was murdered by the KGB.
"The Sokol movement went to the Castle to protest the killing of Jan Masaryk: so they were 'marked men' right there. The next day they took over my dad's businesses: he couldn't go to the bank, he couldn't go to his home. My dad was in denial more or less, and actually his cousins who had more of an overview of everything - what could happen - convinced him that we should leave Czechoslovakia right away. Within three days we stole a plane, a Dakota DC-3, that took twenty-one people, which was more than capacity for that plane. It belonged to a Czech general, Husak. This was arranged in three days."
The plane flew from Bratislava to Prague and was boarded by the Syptak family, including six-year old Ivo, who naturally had not been told a thing. He held excitedly onto a favourite book and a small ball.
"They told me to be quiet and we had to cut a hole in the fence. But, there we were met by some of the guards of the airfield. This had been pre-arranged by my cousins, and most of the guards who were guarding the airport came with us. Karel Stastny and another uncle, Eman, flew the plane. We were supposed to fly to Paris, but they decided to continue to London."
Ivo says he learned only much later that they were in fact followed by fighter planes ready to take the stolen jet down.
"My uncle said a few planes had been looking for us, right over France they violated international air space. We heard planes all around, they used all the clouds that they could. Once we over France they had to give up the search."
By then they were almost free at last, but there was still the problem of fuel: there was barely enough. The pilots were forced to make an emergency landing, barely reaching the English coast. They landed in the sand.
"It actually landed quite well, except the propellers were busted, the under-carriage was busted, but we got out of the plane with no injuries. In Great Britain they welcomed us with open arms and the reaction in Czechoslovakia was pretty awful. The first thing they did is sentenced everybody in absentia to death, death by hanging, they even specified that. The second reaction was that they wanted their plane back. Well, the British government had actually fixed it and the Czech government had to have that plane back. They were really furious at what happened. This was the first plane, there were several planes after that that also escaped, we set a precedent maybe! {laughs}"
Ivo & Jindriska Syptak - Part Two
In Part One you heard about one of the most dramatic of escapes ever from Communist Czechoslovakia ...
"The propellers were busted, the under-carriage was busted, but we got out of the plane with no injuries. The reaction in Czechoslovakia was awful: they were really furious."
A regular Monday evening in Toronto inevitably means a gathering of Czechs and Slovaks at the Syptak's: friends and acquaintances drinking beer and talking after a Sokol volleyball match. On the table: Polish sausages & Czech beer, with Ivo Syptak attending to his guests until he is satisfied everyone has exactly what he or she wants. Soon, I take the opportunity to ask him more about his family, how they gained new bearings in England, and how they heard only long afterwards that their abandoned Prague apartment was sacked.
"We heard from our friends after that the Communists came into the apartment and smashed everything. Including, my mother's set of Dresden and Sevre figurines, they also smashed that. They didn't even keep it - they smashed it."
The old life behind them, the Syptaks stayed in Britain for almost ten years. But, although his family liked London it wasn't their destiny to stay.
"We lived in suitcases for several years, until '56, when the Hungarian Revolution happened. They were free for a whole week and even more, and nobody helped them. We were set to go - there was a whole 'army' of people ready to help - but at that time the Americans put out a directive that nobody should help them. At that time, we decided not to go back and actually my father got very sick in England and we decided to move to Canada."
Eventually, the Syptaks settled in Toronto, finding new purpose in organisations in the city like the Masaryk Memorial Institute, which echoed the moral values and resolve of Czechoslovakia's First Republic. The older Sokol gymnastics chapter also provided an important cultural framework: sports and a sense of community around which they could build their lives. Ivo's father had been an important Sokol figure in Prague and continued in that role in Canada. Those are some of the reasons Ivo believes his family never lost touch with its Czech roots.
"I don't think they really faded because we were political refugees. It's different if you come over looking for a good living. We kept our ties to Czechoslovakia, we always wanted to go back, especially my dad and mother, of course, but we lived in a Czech community over here. Of course, I assimilated into the Canadian way of life. But I don't think my parents ever did."
If that was Ivo's family's experience, that of his wife, Jindriska, was different. Her family had come to Canada earlier - in fact she was born in Manitoba. She explains, her family while proud of its Czech traditions, became strongly Canadian too.
"My parents came in 1939 and apparently it was the last boat leaving Europe before the war. And, it went to Montreal and from there they ended up about 300 miles north of Winnipeg, in Minatonis and they established a community alongside two other European communities: one was Ukrainian, and the other one was German. Of course I grew up in the Czech community. In those days, in order for them to come to Canada, they had to sign a document that they would work the land for five years. And, everybody who came out of Europe - my grandparents and three other uncles and my father and their wives - went to the land."
One of Jindriska's earliest memories, in fact, is of her family at work:
"My grandfather and my father... I still see an image flash before me, I was maybe three or four years old, of them pulling stumps out of the ground from acreage they had cut down. I believe they had cleared 100 acres of bush land, and this was all part of Canada's 'breadbasket' - the Prairies. So, it's a proud heritage, actually, being the pioneers of Canada and still having Czech ties."
After five years, though, their obligation was up, and it was time to move to a more convenient setting - the big city.
"They decided that it was too bitterly cold up there - with the bears and the wolves - to stay, and they scouted other areas of the country in which they could live. My uncle, a businessman, came to Toronto and decided there were better conditions down here, so we decided to come to the Toronto area."
Both the Syptaks and Jindriska's family were involved in Czech organisations like Sokol but also the church - and it was there that Ivo and Jindriska met. She had studied at an arts college but put her career on hold to raise a family.
"After graduation, that same summer, we married. And, I became expecting twins within the first year. Within six years I had five children, so it was full-time occupation. So, I didn't go to work to earn money, but I considered myself fully employed at home."
Today, their marriage has lasted many years, the last of their children was born in 1969. Ivo built a good life for his family, working first as a toolmaker - a die and cast man - then running his own business, and finally, working in managerial positions, while Jindriska opened a day-care centre.
Throughout it all they never forgot their Czech, which they both speak very well. Also, for years they always kept an eye on issues in Czechoslovakia, always hoping the Communist regime there might one day collapse.
"We had an inkling of it when Reagan became president - we had an inkling that he would do something to really destroy the Russian Empire. I didn't think it would happen so quickly, but we were ecstatic when it happened."
"I recall my father-in-law's expression when he was in hospital - quite ill - and he was told that the walls had come tumbling down: he was extremely excited and exhilarated. It's like 'thoughts of going back home', you know, those were his feelings, now he was free to go home and he could never, ever do that before. I was thrilled because now I would have a chance to see my home country - which I'd never seen. And so, it was like going to a fairy land, you know. It was very, very moving for me. It was the first time I heard the Czech language 'spoken universally', and it was, um... it just brought me to tears."
